Part 2 With Tom Digan: Ben Greenfield's Favorite Biohacks, How Important Are Calories & Nutrition, Microwaved Burritos Vs. Grass-Fed Meat, Cool New Fitness Technologies & Much More.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, it does kind of piss me off because people don't understand that just because someone looks good, that doesn't mean they're knowledgeable. What I wanted to do was take the same type of programming. My execs and my athletes, my actors, and these people I work with are paying a lot of money for replicate that. I get flack. I know I take my shirt off on Instagram and I do the crazy stuff that is specifically designed to get, like, views and clicks. But what I don't do is health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, welcome to part two. If you missed part one of this really great series with Tom Deegon, you can go back and listen to it. And I recommend, honestly, I recommend that you listen to part one before you listen to this. So rewind, go back. It's BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast for part one of this two part series. And then for everything you're gonna hear today, it's gonna be BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast2. Like Ladder Podcast, the number two. All right, folks, well, my guest this morning, I should probably hate him because he's got me up at the butt crack to record today's episode, which is part two. We had such a great chat in our last conversation that we, we wound up not even getting around to half of the things that we want to cover for you. So we're recording a part two. If you missed part one, this podcast is with Tom De Gone, Degon, Degan Degone. I just like to pronounce his name in every way possible. Tom is one of my friends from Austin. If you listened to the previous episode that we did, which came out a few days ago, and you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ladder podcast, we went over like, the biggest fitness mistakes and the perfect exercise combinations for kind of getting the ultimate 12 lineup of health, span and lifespan. We talked about how I program my own workouts. We talked about fitness apps and fitness technology. And Tom, if for some reason you're listening to this episode and you haven't shame you listen to part one. Tom is involved with this company called Last Ladder. And Ladder is an app and a very, very cool fitness app that I have now filmed a ton of exercise videos in and have an entire program in called Boundless. And Tom's like the mastermind behind that and the reason that I now officially Have a fitness app. Yay for me. So that's called Boundless and it's on an app called Ladder which you can find in in the app Store. Just look for my team, Team Boundless. You can join it, get all your workouts, you get your first workouts week for free from me. But I've got everything laid out every single day, exactly what to do. And as Tom and I riffed on in part one, it's not one of those fitness apps that you got to be in a front plank position over a mat to stare at your phone to do. It like follows you around, cues you. You could, you could go through a full on athletic training program in the gym and have me in your ears walking you through everything. Even though my program isn't about athletics as much as it is about longevity. Feeling good, looking good. And speaking of feeling good and looking good, Tom, I that we decided to record early today. It's like eight something. It's crazy. And I'm just curious for you, are you a breakfast skipper or are you grabbing a little brekkie before you head off to the airport? After our podcast here, I had some.

Some breakfast this morning because I worked out. I did some strength this morning so I tried to try to eat a meal if I'm working out in the morning.

What's your post workout flavor?

Usually a protein shake. Try to eat some fruit, a banana, today a peach. Just try to refuel and just make sure there's plenty of protein in there.

We're going to talk about nutrition, but one thing I should fill you in on is you live in Austin. My friend Khalil, who's also been on the podcast before, he has a coffee shop down there and a smoothie bowl and juice bar place called Sunlife Organics. If you go in there and ask for their they call it their billion dollar bowl. It's like everything like colostrum and rice bran and you know, cacao nibs and all these different superfoods and mushroom extracts. But I have them make a keto version of that for me which where they instead of using sie or strawberry or blueberry or anything, they just substitute all of that with coconut meat and nut butter and it's absolutely stellar.

Khalil is awesome. I've got to share some workouts with him over the last few weeks. I will definitely get in. I will get in there. I love Sunlife Organics. Great addition to Austin.

Oh yeah. I'll be back there in October teaching at an event called Runga. So for those of you listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Runga check that out. We're renting a giant mansion and just hauling people away and doing like ice kettlebells for a few days down there. But I will definitely get over to Sun Life. Shout out to Sun Life and the billion dollar Bowl. So Tom, we covered so much in the last episode. And again folks, if you want Tom's whole backstory and everything we talked about in that episode, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast the shownotes for this episode are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadDERPodcast the number two. But Tom, you kind of had me in the hot seat and you were asking me a bunch of questions and we had gotten around to really like the fitness industry. We were starting to talk about and I don't know if you want to jump in there or.

Yeah, let's do it. Let's jump right in. I think where we left off, we were going to talk a little bit about social media. Obviously, social media is bigger than ever, particularly in the fitness space post Covid. As a result, it often feels like one's credentials or experience are less important and sometimes it feels like, you know, it's more about how many followers they have, which is, which is too bad. So wanted to get your thoughts on fake or under qualified personal trainers and just that all of the misinformation that is out there these days, you open.

Up a can of worms. I talked about this. No, there was like a whole study, dude, like the National Strength or the, what's it called? The journal Strength Conditioning Research. Because I subscribe to a lot of journals. I spent a lot of my mornings just, you know, speaking of trying to stay on top of the science, just reading research and articles and these journals that I subscribe to both, both print pubs and online pubs and a couple of months ago, the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research released a paper or a study about perceptions of personal trainers competence or knowledge. And what they found was that when you look at everything, like whether they're an ectomorph or a mesomorph or an endomorph body type or their muscularity, like muscular versus non muscular, their actual competence, their knowledge, their certifications, their sex, everything, you could probably guess this, but you know what? The number one variable that dictated whether or not someone trusted and wanted to work with a personal trainer was what.

The trainer looked like.

Yeah, their physique. So basically it's like if this person looks like X, y, Z then they must know what they're talking about. They could get their body to look like that. Then they must know how to get my body or my health or, you know, whatever it is I'm looking for to that same level. And of course the problem with that and, and you know, I, I, I don't want to insult people's intelligence by telling them something they probably already suspect is that A, that person is different than you B, many of these online trainers are living in the gym, literally living in the gym, and then putting out these programs that say, well, work out for 30 minutes or 60 minutes a day and you can look just like me. And I know some of these folks, they literally go to the gym in the morning, come back, have a post workout meal, crank out some Instagram photos, go back to the gym, you know, take a nap, get up in the afternoon, go on a walk or go to the gym, shoot some more Instagram and then work out again and then go out to dinner with their friends, spending all the money that they're getting from their Instagram ads. And the problem is A, a lot of people don't have the time to train and the focus to train and the access to the type of training materials that say like an Instagram influencer does. And then B, a lot of these fol looks like they are on pretty hefty amounts of gear. And don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against like natural hormone replacement therapy, you know, the use of like testosterone in men or progesterone in women in, in sane, controlled amounts under the controlled advice of a physician. But when we're talking about, you know, whatever, let's say stacking sarms and peptides and steroids and hormones and spending two to three hours a day in the gym and then turning around and telling people, hey, just follow my program and you'll look like me. I mean, it's doing a lot of people a disservice. And furthermore, Tom like so, and I'm gonna get up on my soapbox here as, as I've been doing when you've been asking me questions.

Please do.

I started personal training when I was 15 years old. I got my first personal training certification when I was 16. I trained all through college. Okay, so I took 30 plus credits a semester in organic chemistry, biochem, microbiology, anatomy, physiology, you know, a whole course load for exercise science, which is what I got my master's degree in, and biomechanics. But then I was also studying for the MCATs. I was pre med, so I was deeply immersed in science and I was working at the same time as a personal trainer at three different gyms in town. So I would basically get up at 4am, train people for three hours, go to classes all day, get off classes, train people for another three to four hours, go to bed, get up, rinse, wash and repeat for four years when I graduated with my master's degree, which was in that fifth year. And at that point I was managing the entire wellness club at University of Idaho, or the wellness facility at University of Idaho and designing all their programs, training all their trainers. You know, this was when I was 20 at that point. So I graduated with my master's and then after a short stint in hip and knee surgical sales, I partnered up with a local physician in the Spokane community. We launched like this one stop shop for sports medicine. And I spent the next six years doing exercise physiology, indirect calorimetry, high speed video cameras, blood analysis, nutrition counseling, personal training for literally 10 to 12 hours a day. You know, that, that was almost seven years. Eventually I started a podcast. Eventually I started like a Facebook page and an Instagram channel. But I had literally countless hours, thousands of hours working with real people in the gym, watching real people move, understanding the science, getting actual degrees in this stuff to actually understand what's going on. A cellular standpoint. And so when I see whatever, XYZ buff, 18 year old or bikini clad, you know, 20 year old turning around and dishing out advice on Instagram, it does kind of piss me off. Because people don't understand that just because someone looks good, that doesn't mean they're knowledgeable.

No, absolutely. We won't catch you doing a barbell squat on a bos or something like that to get some reactions on TikTok.

Yeah, I mean, it depends. Maybe. I mean like, like, honestly, like, like I'm rehabbing a knee issue right now. I totally get the fitness industry. Like I wanted to do an arm workout the other day. I just like want because, because I'm weird, because I like that. So I wanted to do like a, it was like a superset triceps and a superset biceps workout. Even though, as we discussed in the last podcast, most of my workouts are full body, I'm fighting a knee issue. And I was just like, hey, I want to, I want to blast my arms today. I got, I had a podcast I wanted to listen to and I'm like, I'm going to have to go to the gym and have some fun. And I was doing arm Curls like dumbbell arm curls on a Bosu ball to challenge my balance and help with my knee rehab. But yeah, I mean, that's pretty few and far between you'll find me doing stuff like that. Didn't have a camera on for it or anything. I get flack. I know. I take my shirt off on Instagram and I do the crazy stuff that I realize is specifically designed to get like, views and clicks. But what I don't do is position myself as being an expert in something I'm not an expert in and then pretend that just like fancy cool IM will allow people to get results, when in fact it takes a lot more than that. I mean, like, I'm reading research articles, books for. Usually it's like two to three hours a day that I'm steeped in learning this shit so I can turn around and tell other people about it, whether it's nutrition or fitness or biohacking or any other form of, you know, scientific immersion. So I think that's what's important. Like, yeah, if somebody has a nice body on social media or a nice image on social media, then maybe they do know what they're talking about. But don't assume that just because they look good means they know how to get you looking that same way.

That gets to my next question, which you partially just answered there. You know, everyone's sending you their products. You're testing all the latest gadgets, you know, so just, you know, how do you personally avoid promoting nonsense or witchcraft?

I do get a ton. So every day it's like Christmas at my house. I realize this sounds like it's just amazing, but it's honestly a little bit time consuming and confusing. And I have like, like a gal who lives at my house who she helps out. Her name's Nessa and she helps out with my son's education and driving them around and everything. But then her secondary job is to just like open packages and get the mail and stuff. Because I get like 20 boxes a day of everything from like biohacking equipment to protein powder to CBD oil to strange concoctions you rub into your hair, to somebody's house made, you know, red wine that they've infused with THC and, you know, whatever, psilocybin. Like, I get everything shipped to my house. And there's a lot that goes into the, into the garbage can that I'm just like, I'm not.

What's the most outrageous product someone's. That you've ever been sent?

Oh, gee, back when I was doing A lot of those men's health articles on men's sexual health. I got every form of penis pump and like penis bag and penis enlargement, pills, bands, tubes, you name it. And I don't even know how to like, I still have a section of my office back behind me where it's just like all penis gear and that's all it is. So if any guys out there want some penis. Gerry, leave a comment in the show notes. I could probably hook you up. So anyways though, so I get stuff all the time and it's like, how do I vet this? How do I know if it works? And yeah, there's a certain amount of testing on myself. Like that anecdotal n equals 1, whatever. I got this new, you know what I do a podcast on the other day, like the HAP B device where you wear it around your neck and it simulates like the feel good effects on of chocolate or the relaxing effects of THC and CBD or the, you know, the nighttime effects of adenosine or melatonin. I wear it. It sounds the science. If you listen to my podcast with the guy who designed it, kind of kooky. Like this underground silo where they infuse this device with the magnetic frequency of specific substances and there's not really any that I'm aware of human clinical double blinded research on whether or not this thing works. But dude, it fricking like is amazing and it works for me. It's called the Hapbeat. Not to turn this into like a commercial, but that's an example where if something works for me, I'll tell the world about it. It might not work for everybody, but I'll at least say, hey, this is a cool thing that's working for me. It's worth a try at least. I don't stop there though. I mean, I self test and self experiment, but I will go to PubMed, I'll go to Sci Hub, which unfortunately they've kind of shut down a lot of Sci Hub. It allows you to get a lot of scientific papers without actually subscribing to, you know, the overpriced journals. I do a lot of research digests. Like I subscribe to the Examine Research Digest. The Examine website is fantastic for vetted advice on primarily supplementation and nutrition, but also exercise. I subscribe to Alan Argon's Research Review, which is also fantastic. I have an entire network of. There's probably 100 people in my Rolodex who I now. And a lot of this is just Based on doing podcasts with really smart people and then staying in touch with them. But like physicians, functional medicine docs, you know, scientists, physiologists, authors, people who I just can bounce stuff off and ask about who may know something that I don't. And I'm not steeped in scientism, Tom. Like. Like I don't believe that, that if science hasn't proven something works, that that thing doesn't work or that it's not provide some benefit. But I always start with self testing, with looking at the actual data and the research. And then if something's woo, I typically come right out and tell people. I'm like, yeah, I can't say exactly how, like, structured water works and survives the acidic nature of the gut, yada, but I can tell you that I stay more hydrated. You know, when I use a urine stick, my specific gravity is better. Somehow it hydrates me. But I can't explain exactly why the difference in the H2O bonding does that. And I haven't really seen a good explanation or a good study on it, but it works. So I have a whole house, you know, home water structuring unit, and I travel with a little, you know, portable thing that structures my water. And a lot of people think that structured water is just total bunk, but it works for me. And it also makes, you know, my coffee taste better. And, you know, I structure my wine, I pour it through, like this, this water vortex or device. And people love it when they come over because I'll pour them a glass of wine, then pour them another glass through this vortex or device, and it works. And, you know, there's. I could probably, and I'm sure my longtime listeners can agree, name like a hundred things that at first glance appear pretty woo, but seem to work out well for me. And then there's a lot of other stuff I talk about that actually has good scientific research behind it. And this podcast started off with me just going through all the journals that I subscribe to as a fledgling personal trainer. You know, I've been podcasting now for, gosh, I think, like 17 years. And all I was doing was sitting in front of my computer, Ben in his little personal training studio, wearing his dumb little logoed T shirt, talking to people like this about research that I'd found before I really found my radio voice. And that that was it. I was just sharing science with people because honestly, like, I've always loved this idea of finding cool shit, looking at the science behind it or the lack of science behind it. Telling people about it, experimenting with it, and that's, you know, that's part of my shtick. So there. There are things I've promoted in the past that might be considered nonsense or witchcraft, but I get, like, I can promise my listeners this. Like, I'm never gonna tell you about something because somebody paid me to do it. I'm never gonna tell you about something because it's like, it's lining my wallet now. Yeah, a lot of times have somebody who advertises on the podcast, but, you know, if you ask the person who runs my advertising, like, it is like. Like, I have to try everything, and they pass, like, 20 opportunities by me before one ad. I'm like, yes, I like that product. It worked for me. I like what they're doing. The ingredient profile is good. They're good people. They have science behind this. They're giving my audience a good deal. So, yes, I'm willing to have this person advertise on my show, but you'd be surprised at how many people will approach me and they'll be like, hey, we'll. We'll write you a 10 to $20,000 check to be on your podcast and talk about our product that, by the way, you've never used. And we're just basically paying you off. That happens to. Happens all the time in the podcast industry. Happens all the time in the personal training industry. So, I mean, yeah, for me, it's gotta be something that I or my family would use in good conscience regularly. That actually works for us before I'll talk about anything.

Yeah, well, and that's. And that's why it converts, and that's what makes a good partner. I think that comes through. Can we. Can we talk fitness now? I got DK last time. We tried to transition to fitness, but I feel like this is a meaty, meaty one here.

Do you mean nutrition?

Yes, nutrition.

Nutrition. I was gonna. Been talking about fitness a lot, bro. Yeah, I'm gang.

Well, the re. And the reason I want to talk about nutrition.

Right.

People come to ladder teams for fitness. Right. I'm sure many of your clients come to you with fitness as a primary motivation. But, you know, for. For a lot of people's goals, you know, for them to actually get there. You know, nutrition is a big part of it. Right? So how does nutrition fit in? How important is it? We'd love you to just riff on nutrition, and then we can kind of. We can peel back the onion and go deeper from there on it.

Yeah, I mean, there. What's. What's the saying abs are made in the, in the, in the kitchen.

Yep.

It's like I, I taught anatomy and physiology lab for a couple years at Idaho. And you know, all the cadavers that we get in from the University of Washington Medical School, the dissect all had six pack abs. Right. Because once you strip away the fat layer, everybody's got a six pack. And, and so it is kind of true that, that abs are made in the kitchen to a certain extent. And, and nutrition does play a pretty big role. I mean, there, there was a study that came out a couple weeks ago showing that when you're looking for a drop in visceral fat, which is the more problematic type of fat associated with chronic disease, what works better? Dieting to reduce calories to get rid of that fat, exercising to reduce calories to get rid of that fat, or exercising plus dieting to get rid of that fat? And it turns out that when you're looking at just the caloric deficit that gets rid of visceral fat, exercise beats out dieting and exercise beats out exercise plus dieting. Meaning like if you want to be, let's say you want to be at a 500 calorie deficit every single day and you want to be at that deficit to get rid of visceral fat, you can achieve that 500 calorie deficit by cutting calories. By cutting calories plus exercising or by just exercising that total 500 calories. And exercising is the most potent. However, at the same time, there's a lot to be said for nutrition that goes beyond just dieting or cutting calories. Right. There's everything from the photonic energy of food, which there's a lot of research being done on right now, like what actually happens to the energy of food and its ability to be able to, for example, nourish the body, increase the production of ATP in the electron transport chain, allow for better mitochondrial health when it's been, you know, and to get back to witchcraft, you know, kissed by photons of sunlight and freshly harvested versus in packages and containers and sitting dead on a shelf for months before you consume it, there's something to be said about the actual energy of food. And for me personally, as a guy who eats animals, you know, even how that animal was treated, how it was sacrificed, how it was harvested and then how it was processed and how it was marinated, how it was cooked and how it was loved. Like there, there's, there's a lot of stuff that goes into food that goes way beyond kind of that typical you know, if it fits your macros type of approach. Now as far as diet goes, I mean, you know my book Boundless, which we named the Boundless program in the Ladder app after there's one chapter in there where I lay out the, it's about a dozen different diets that I rotate through when I'm, when I'm selecting a diet for a particular client that I'll then modify and adjust, you know, calorically, et cetera. But what that section of the book lays out is, okay, well here's your blood test, here's your genetic test, here's your saliva data, your urinary data, everything that you've tested about your body, which frankly we have the ability to test nowadays. And then here's why this diet would be appropriate for you based on what you're seeing, right? And so I might have somebody who comes to me for coaching and I have them on starting off with a two week liver cleanse because they have a high heavy metal load, really high liver enzymes, they're showing a need for like, like a nutritional cleanup or nutritional detox. So I'll put them on like a, let's say like an Ayurvedic cleanse for a couple of weeks or even like a more modern version of a cleanse like Quicksilver Scientific. You know, one of the companies that I like that, you know Dr. Chris Shade over there, he has a program called the Cube, which is like this full on detox program that you do. And so I'll sometimes start people off with two weeks of just cleaning up and nuking the body body. And then we'll shift into something that's super clean, that allows the gut to completely heal, like a paleo autoimmune diet or a carnivore diet or a diet that would be considered a more restrictive elimination diet. And then we'll move forward into a more all inclusive diet like a, like a properly comprised, you know, Mediterranean diet or a Weston A. Price diet or something like that. And so I'm very, very picky about diet and dietary customization. Yet at the same time, when you look at like areas where there's a disproportionately high number of centenarians, you know, these so called blue zones for example, or you look at, you know, me and my wife's diet, which is largely different but still, you know, comprised of like real whole recognizable food, you see prevailing characteristics that overlap. No matter whether these people are like low carb, high fat, high carb, low fat mix of in between you name it. And the main things that you see, and this is something I just weave into all nutrition, I think it's the most important thing for people to understand is you see stable glycemic variability, meaning even if they're eating higher carbohydrates, those carbohydrates are a lot of times from what are called cellular carbohydrate sources rather than processed acellular carbohydrate sources. So we're talking about like purple potatoes in Okinawa or you know, or sweet potatoes in Loma Linda, or quinoa or lentils or amaranth or millet or any of these, you know, super grains or grasses or I personally do a ton of underground storage routes. They're called, that's my fancy name for like tubers, right. So I personally do like sweet potato, yam, parsnip, carrot, beets. You know, I, I have a baby food company that I literally order baby food from that's just like a bunch of different root based vegetables mixed with things like olive oil and fish oil and some grass fed grass finished meat or wild caught salmon. And I do like a whole packet of actual baby food, which is just a bunch of mashed up tubers. My lunch, nearly every day I go through cans and cans of organic pumpkin puree that I order from Amazon. I realize there's a little bit of a carbon cost there, but, but I offset a lot of my carbon. And so I do a ton of these underground storage routes as my primary form of super digestible carbohydrate. But the more important thing, and a lot of people who are into continuous blood glucose monitoring wearing these patches now know this, is that what you see upon the consumption of a lot of these carbohydrates that are, say closer to nature is that you see low glycemic variability, right? Low amounts of blood glucose fluctuating throughout the day. So that's one thing. And I time my carbohydrates to be mostly around workouts or saved until the very end of the day, meaning they can support sleep, allow for better serotonin and melatonin production, et cetera. So low glycemic variability, a near absence of inflammatory oils, particularly vegetable oils. I tell people to ruthlessly eliminate all vegetable oils from their diet. One of the best nutrition decisions you can make make you see some element of fasting, right? We hear people talk about the Mediterranean diet and a lot of folks think that that's Olive Garden unlimited breadsticks and salad. But really the Mediterranean diet, like there's certain days of the week where they don't consume any olive oil. There are certain days of the week where there's no meat. There's a limited red meat consumption. There are elements of religious fasting worked in much of the Mediterranean diet is woven into the practices of the Orthodox Church. My father is Eastern Orthodox. He'll like go from Thanksgiving to Christmas on a protein restricted diet and then have certain other elements of fasting woven in throughout the year, actual religious fasting. And you see some element of intermittent fasting, quarterly fasting, religious fasting, anything from Ramadan to Lent, for example, woven into a lot of these healthy diets. And of course, part of that also is you see like a religious belief or a belief in a higher power as part of the religion or the spiritual practice of a lot of these folks too. But part of that often brings fasting into the scenario. So you see some element of time restricted feeding or intermittent fasting. You also see a huge variety of plants and herbs and spices, like hundreds of different plants and herbs and spices. I think in America it's shockingly low. It's like, like 12 to 20 different foods, like in terms of vegetables that we eat throughout the year, like our tomatoes and our lettuce and our cucumbers and whatever you get the big fluffy produce from the grocery store. But we see a huge variety of plants and herbs and spices in a lot of these healthy diets. And a big part of that that I get kickback on sometimes is people are like, what about the carnivore diet? What about built in plant defense mechanisms? What about, you know, the ability of like the saponins and quinoa to affect the gut or the lectins and a fresh tomato. And the fact is that, yeah, in people with a compromised gut who have been eating an unhealthy, say, standard American diet for a long time, sometimes you do have to eliminate a lot of those plant defense mechanisms and do like a paleo autoimmune diet like I was talking about, or carnivore diet or something like that to clean up and allow the gut to heal. But that doesn't mean that's a diet you follow for life.

Life.

Then you begin to weave in your ginger and your moringa and your turmeric and your black peppers and your different forms of salts and your hot sauces and all these different plants and herbs and spices. So they're not just for medicine, they're also for food. And that's something that you also see as a prevailing characteristic of A lot of healthy diets you see, eating in a parasympathetic state, right? You come over to my house for dinner. You ask anybody who comes to my house for a dinner party. We're doing, like, a minute or two of breath work as we gather before we eat. Then we're singing a song, and we're praying and we're eating with people, and we're smiling and we're laughing. There's not a whole lot of, like, stuffing your face with your superfood smoothie while you're driving 60 miles an hour down the highway, right? Like, if I know I'm stressed, I do not eat unless I realize fully that my stress is due to low blood glucose. And I'm hangry. Like, I don't eat if I'm in a stress state, period. Because the lack of digestive enzyme production, the gut stress, the inability to absorb nutrients, the potential for digestive malabsorption, and the development of leaky gut syndrome and gastric inflammation, all of that becomes a much bigger issue if you're eating in a stress state. So I stand a lot, I walk a lot, I work out a lot. But whenever I eat, I just settle my whole body down. I'll sit down and I mean, you know, I'll give you an extreme example. I've even, you know, I'm one of those guys who, like, in the middle of the day, if I'm just stressed out and I've come up, like, from a. From like, six hours of hardcore work and podcasting and research and writing, I'll sometimes before I sit down to lunch, like, I'll take some CBD or some reishi extract or even, like, take a tiny hit on a vape pen or something that just, like, totally settles my body down. And then I will let my body receive food in that totally relaxed state. After prayer and breath, work and gratitude, I'll eat. I'll chew my food 25 to 40 times, allow my body to really receive and acknowledge and be grateful for that nourishment. And that's actually a practice that you see prioritized amongst a lot of these areas where people are living a long time. Like, they actually recognize the sacredness of eating food in a parasympathetic state, often with people enjoying and sharing that meal with people. And then probably a couple of other quick things would be there's a glaring lack of packages or processed food in a lot of these healthy diets. We often, especially in America, tend to migrate towards Trader Joe's and Costco and Whole Foods. And anything that's at those places we assume is healthy, like the dark chocolate covered almonds and the bags of healthy granola mix from Costco and our giant canisters of kombucha from Whole Foods. But honestly, like, anytime you're eating out of packages, you always have more preservatives. You always have more highly palatable food that lends itself well to caloric over consumption. You always have less preparation that kind of distances you from really understanding what's in your food or even the ability to be able to prepare that food and develop a relationship with it. So if you open my refrigerator or you walk into my pantry, there's a lot of glass mason jars of like, you know, raw grains and seeds and nuts and beans. There's a lot of fermented foods that have been prepared and soaked and sprouted and, you know, packaged by us in our own glass containers. There's a lot of stuff that will go bad within like four to seven days if it's not consumed. But there's not many. Like, honestly, most of the packaged food I get returns back to that, you know, stuff that people just send me to try, you know, like the protein bars people want me to try or some new healthy cereal or whatever. But that's like a very, very small part of my diet. So there's a glaring lack of packaged food versus real, whole recognizable food. And then I'd say the last thing is, and this, I guess, is less stoic, is there are periods of hedonism or what many people call cheating. And by cheating, I don't mean like Pizza Hut and cherry turnovers and donuts. What I mean is certain periods of time where there's a feast, where there's refilling the body, sending the body a message that it doesn't need to be in starvation mode or downregulate thyroid or fertility hormones due to the body being in a time of famine, right? You see certain elements where there's celebratory feasting thrown in. For us, that's like our big Sunday night dinners or when I want to take my wife out on a, like a Wednesday night date. And I'm just like, okay, this is a meal. I'm just gonna go to town and eat more. The good stuff, the ribeye steak, the dark chocolate, the sweet potato fries, you know, the. The organic red wine. And so allowing yourself also to be able to indulge, but indulge in more of the good stuff and having that go hand in hand, you know, the stoicism and the epicureanism, so to speak. And by the way, in the last podcast, Tom, you did use that word metabolization, I think. And then you sent. You sent me a text afterwards from the dictionary showing me it actually is a real word. So. So good on you, doctor.

Thank you for setting the record straight.

Metabolization actually is a word, Tom. Actually is pretty smart, but yeah, epicureanism, I'll make that one up. Maybe stoicism, but having a good balance between those two.

I was gonna call you on that one, but yeah, you make em. You make them sound legit, though. I listen to your podcast all the time. I feel like you're making up words, but I agree.

Well, we know based on the study that I just cited, by the way, Tom, that as long as my body looks okay, I can make up words. And people will try. Trust me. That's right.

All this talk about foods making me hungry. I would love to hear where you come out on the macros versus calories debate. I feel like this is usually controversial. Would love to hear your view on maybe some of the failures of it. It fits your macros, but just kind of where you come out on this debate in general.

Yeah, like I mentioned earlier, the I F, Y M. If it fits your macros. I was talking with my sons about this in the car the other day. This idea briefly for people. This idea that at the end of the day, all that really matters is have you nailed your carb protein, fat percentages, whatever, 40, 30, 30, or, you know, some kind of keto 9010 diet or whatever the case may be, and that the actual content or quality of the food is not important as long as it fits your macros. This is a pain point for me because, and it shocks me that so many people still do not acknowledge the fact that, you know, the carbohydrates derived from, let's say six Oreos is going to be processed by the body differently, have a different hormonal impact, have a different digestive enzyme impact, have a different microbiome impact than that same number of carbohydrates that you get through, let's say an apple and a piece of dark chocolate and maybe a nice plate of sweet potato with a little bit of raw honey on it. There's a real, real difference in terms of the nutrient density, in terms of the. The spike in blood glucose in terms of the hormonal impact. And you simply cannot deny that there's more to food than calories. There was a study that I just looked at this was like six days ago. And it showed that starchy foods can have an impact on metabolism, as we know. But the structural properties of that starchy food affects what they called in that study the digestibility and what's called the postprandial metabolic response, meaning like what happens hormonally into blood glucose and to insulin after the meal. And it turns out that very, very complex factors like the amylose to amylopectin ratio and the starch gelatinization process and the starch protein interaction and the cell and tissue structure of that carbohydrate massively affects postprandial glycemic response and insulin response in healthy people. And so that's a perfect example that. Yeah, your slice of one. I like to make myself this in the fall, right? Like I'll make, make like a nice slice of pumpkin that'll roast in the oven with a little bit of raw honey and cinnamon and sea salt that is going to be processed differently by my body than the carbohydrates from, let's say Ben and Jerry's ice cream or, you know, or an energy bar. Part of it is the chemical makeup of the food and how it's digested. And then part of it, it's the sacredness of food. Like it's where it came from. It's like, yeah, I'm going to get the same amount of protein from a grain of unfinished cow that's been electrocuted to death like you see in Food Inc. And lived its whole life sitting in its own shit, whether it's a chicken or a cow at a CAFO food operation. I'm going to get the same protein from that as I am from a grass fed, grass finished cow raised regeneratively and loved its entire life and sacrificed humanely. But the actual sacredness, the energy of that is different. And this gets more into the woo, right, Tom? This gets more into what you called kind of like, like the witchcraft. But, but it actually is true that there's something to be said about how your body responds to caring for the planet and caring for animals and acknowledging the spirit of the animals and acknowledging sometimes their sacrifice or their death with gratitude and honor than there is with just like going through life, mowing through whatever calories you want as long as it fits your macros, bro. Right? So, so a pop tart is going to be different than a bowl of sprouted wheat with fresh blueberries or a microwave burrito is going to be different than like an authentic Mexican meal with cilantro and gazpacho and some house made sour cream and a wonderful organic bit of ground beef that you eat with your family or a few scoops of the bland whey protein powder that's been sitting in your pantry for two months.

Months.

That's going to be different than the protein that you get from, let's say, a piece of wild caught steelhead that just came out of the river two days ago that your friend gave to you. And anybody who eats holistically knows this. They can feel it intuitively. I can't necessarily cite a scientific study that actually looks into the microwave burrito versus the homemade burrito with all the healthy, holistic Mexican ingredients. But I'm always, always aware of the sacredness of food, the energy of food, the source of food, the impact of food on the planet. And if all you're doing is just blindly fitting your macros with carbs, proteins and fat, I think you're denying. I recently interviewed Charles Eisenstein about his book Sacred Economics. In the same way that money can strip a lot of the sacredness out of relationships and transactions, not acknowledging the sacredness of food and our sacred connection with our planet can strip a lot of the meaning and even I would argue the health out of food. So, yeah, I'm not a fan if you're getting the impression of the Iifym approach. I just think there's way more to food and food is way more sacred than that, to just strip it down to individual calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein.

Will you have your clients track their food? Still though, I feel like there's been some studies showing that whether it's the macros or whatever it is they're tracking, just the, the act of tracking food has been linked to weight loss. Like, do you have people record what they're eating or is that just to get you up to speed so you know what you're working with?

Both. Like, I have people record because many studies have shown that when you record, you actually, you know, that that which is what measured is managed or however the saying goes. But yeah, so all of my clients, I'm very careful because most of my clients, they're like busy execs. They're people, they're actors, they're people who are just like, go, go, go all day long. I don't want somebody to have to spend 10 minutes of their entire meal logging what they ate. But we do everything from quick photo of your food and upload it to just follow what I wrote and let me Know, if you stray from that, that to you know, jot down something on a napkin or a piece of paper and shoot it over to me, you know, via text. So it varies. But yeah, everybody that I coach basically at least keeps me up to date and themselves up to date on what they're eating, you know, and then I personally spent two years as a bodybuilder logging everything, you know, anally, every last thing, you know, that slice of banana. And you know, and I, and I had a software system very similar to like the, the one that I like now called Chronometer C R O N O M E T R And I'll still feed my food into that like every two or three months just to double check and kind of see how I'm doing micronutrient wise and you know, and macronutrient wise and, and you know, look at my vitamins and minerals and nutrients etc. But I spent two years as a bodybuilder doing that like every single day. And the payoff from that now is I can just look at a banana, look at a watermelon, look at a cookie, look at a plate of food, and I can pretty much like approximate with pretty close precision how many calories are in it and what the carb, fat, protein percentages are. And almost intuitively kind of know where I'm at. And that's where I think a lot of the value arises too. Same reason I wear a continuous blood glucose monitor. Every couple months I'll slap one on for seven to 14 days and just check in, you know, how's my body responding to my lifestyle, my exercise, my food, etc. But I try to strike a balance between knowing and measuring and also just relaxing and enjoying, if that makes sense.

And then just even for my own knowledge, I'm in the middle of a hundred day fitness challenge that one of our investors roped me into. Just curious, any cheat codes? I guess my question would be, you know, if I'm burning, you know, a call at 2500 to, to 3000 calories, particularly on the days where I'm obviously, you know, working out hard, you know, what type of caloric deficit are you looking for? It's 500 on a 2500 out. Is that, you know, is that what you're looking for to lean out or is it should be more or less.

If you would have asked me this question six years ago, I would have said for, for men, I typically see most success arise with about a 500 to maximum 1000 calorie a day deficit. It with a refeed that occurs at least once every four weeks, meaning some type of more flexible dieting for one to seven days every four weeks to ensure that there's not that thyroid and endocrine system downregulation. Now it looks like a better approach is cycling throughout the week, like five days of cutting your calories by again, men, 500 to 1,000 women, I typically see 250 to 500 as being more successful. But then having, you know, let's say you're going to be at a caloric deficit Monday, Tuesday and then Wednesday you eat two caloric balance or slight caloric excess and then you're back into caloric deprivation or caloric deficiency. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then Sunday you would eat ad libitum or eat, you know, a few more calories than what you're burning. And that seems to be a really successful long term strategy.

Yeah, that seems, that seems way more, more sustainable too.

Yeah. Then there was another study I was looking at yesterday and it was just basically that idea of rigid versus flexible dieting. And long term, like short term, rigid dieting works really well. Like short term it just strips fat off the body. You know, long term caloric deficits or short term caloric deficits, you know, going like four weeks, eight weeks, etc. But if you want to be in it and see the weight gradually come off for sometimes, you know, a full year in a row, you do more of the flexible approach where it's like, like you know, five days I might be at a caloric deficiency, two days I might be eating as much as my body actually needs. And then a lot of times like I'm working with an actor right now who I'm having lean up for a movie that he's in. And you know, his, his producers wanted me to go straight on to, to literally like close to fasting for two weeks to strip him down for this role. And instead I have him eating enough calories to support his metabolism on five days of the week. Week. But I have that married to a lot of really good exercise on those days. So he's toning his body, he's getting muscle, he's going to look good as he strips the fat off. And then there's two days where we're just doing like sauna, cold walking in the sunshine, yoga. And on those days he's basically on bone, broth, ketones, aminos and a pretty, you know, what you would consider to be like really like 500 calories or so. But in between those days he's really allowing his body to catch up. So I'll use strategies like that quite a bit.

Last question. How about, how about protein though? If you're doing a 500 to 1,000 deficit on a couple days, do you still want to hit your gram of protein per body weight or no, you're going to be lower on the protein.

As well on those days. You're going to be low across the board. Carbs, fat and protein of course. Yeah, but no on those days. So what I typically shoot for on a normal day in most people, depending on how much muscle they're trying to gain and what the actual aesthetic goals are, usually it's 0.55 to 0.8 grams per pound of protein. Higher end for putting on more muscle. Lower end if we're just trying to kind of clean up the body and lose some weight. But that's the range I always play with. I haven't seen a lot of data except in extreme bodybuilders and very high volume weightlifters that exceeding 0.8 grams per pound of protein is that beneficial. And there's a lot of trade offs in terms of like ammonia buildup and too positive of a nitrogen balance. And the only caveat I'd throw in there is in many people who are on more of a calorie restricted diet and trying to lose weight. I'll hit those protein gram ratios by using strategies like essential amino acids or collagen or a lot of these broken down protein sources that allow for protein intake without the accompanying high calorie intake.

So that there's not a part three. Because I'm very happy that you were excited to finish these questions. So we got a part two. So for that sake we'll move on here. Would love to hear just I think this will be should be a fun one. Just what are some actual useful fitness trends or biohacks that you're excited about these days? So you're obviously you have the best visibility into what's cutting edge and what's out there. Curious what has you excited either things you're testing now or things that are coming down the pike.

You know what, we kind of covered some of this in the last show. I really dig blood flow restriction training. I use some form of blood flow restriction training every week at home. That's usually this super fancy, really expensive workout tool I have out in my gym called a Vasper. It's this full body exercise machine that combines cold thermogenesis with blood flow restriction with grounding and earthing with high intensity Interval training, it's a 21 minute workout out. So I typically do two to three of those a week when I'm on the home front. And that involves blood flow restriction training which allows for muscle maintenance or muscle building with less muscle damage. And then when I travel, because a lot of times I'm just throwing down a workout on my, you know, and I have some workouts like this in the Boundless program in the ladder app. I'll just like throw on some blood flow restriction bands or some of these, you know, they call them Katsu bands and do a series of push ups and squats and lunges. And I have a little like, like TRX style suspension trainer that I hang from the door, you know, throwing some pull ups or some suspended push ups or single leg lunges from that. And typically I'll, you know, when I travel, almost all I do is a blood flow restriction training session in the morning, early when I get up and then everything else is just like, you know, walking. And then at home I'll throw in a couple of those vasper sessions. So blood flow restriction training, huge fan of that. I use that a lot. I, it just works for me and it allows me to get really good results, results even when I don't have a lot of weight or I don't want to load my joints or damage my muscles too much but still get some of that muscle growth response. Cold and heat, you know, huge for me every single week, all my clients, cold and heat, you know, we, we replace a lot of the exercise sessions people would normally do that they don't need to do because they're overtrained or under recovered with sauna sessions or sauna blankets and some type of cold tub or cold shower, cold soak. So that's like every single week you will see me doing some form of cold training, some form of heat training, some form of blood flow restriction band training, tons of light exposure, infrared light panels, infrared saunas, sunlight exposure just because of the ability of light to keep the mitochondria healthy. And those photons of light are basically crucial to the shuttling of electrons through the electron transport chain, through the health of the skin, the mitochondria, et cetera. And so light is another huge one that you'll see me incorporating pretty much every day. And then I think another one that's super interesting. I recently did a podcast on this idea of electrostimulation kind of bypassing the central governor of the brain and using a suit or patches or electrodes to actually cause muscles to Fire in ways that they might not have been firing before, to wake up weak muscles, to rehab muscle, to even just get a full body workout that is more demanding than you might do yourself without kind of like the computer or the like. In the case of one that I'm using quite a bit now, called the Catalyst, which is a full body electrical muscle stimulation suit. You tie an iPad to it and the trainer brings you through the workout and doing those type of things. That kind of flies in the face of my general tendency to want to be natural outdoors. Lifting, you know, logs and rocks and swinging from trees. Like that's always my favorite kind of workout. But I do like to marry some of these technologies, like that vasper I was talking about or like electrical muscle stimulation. So typically once a week now I'm doing like a 30 to 40 minute electrical muscle stimulation workout to grab a bunch of muscles that I might not normally recruit. And I like that Catalyst device, for example, for something like that. But like in the Boundless program in, in Ladder, I do work in a lot of cold, a lot of heat, a lot of bfr, a lot of walking, a lot of light exposure, you know, and, and many of those things, you know, even grounding and earthing, being outside barefoot, which isn't really a biohack unless you count the fact that you can now buy like, like I'm standing on a mat right now made by a company called Ultimate Longevity, that that's like a grounding or earthing mat. So I weave in a lot of those things throughout the week. And the cool thing is a lot of people think that the only way to get the body or brain better is through exercise. But heat, cold, light exposure, electrostim, grounding and earthing, there's a lot of ways to improve your body without necessarily a trip to the gym or the health club. And that's one thing I really wanted to focus on in my program was how much can we do without actually it being just like whatever. Bicep curls and tricep push downs and bench press.

That's awesome. I think it'd be fun. And this is, I feel like a good transition here to talk about. It'd be remiss if we didn't talk about tech driven fitness in general. Just curious. Never seen you on a peloton or a tonal. There's obviously a ton of apps out there. These software companies are getting bigger and bigger and Covid accelerated this behavior change amongst consumers. Just curious where you come out on tech driven fitness in general. Whatever thoughts that you want to share?

Well, I mean, it's huge. I'm just now kind of joining an access fund on Angellist that's run by one of my friends who actually lives here in Spokane now. And all he does is he hunts down deals. And a lot of his deals are based on combination of software, fitness, biohacking, and especially in the COVID or post Covid era where a lot of people are working out more from home and relying more on these subscription based apps and at home workout tools. Like a ton of those investments are just like blown up and you know, and you know, there's everything from like Fight Club, which is like the indoor gym based or bag based, you know, boxing workout where you have a boxer on a screen who's telling you which combos to throw. So your mind's working really hard. But the gloves have Bluetooth built into them, so it's tracking your punch rate and your, you know, know and the accuracy of your punches to the, to the tonal, which I thought was super cheesy at first, but once I got a chance to work out on it, it's like a wall mounted cable apparatus with a surprising amount of ability to be able to like pull back against you. So you get this huge eccentric load, which is honestly incredibly efficient for fitness. Then we have the peloton, right? And then they just blew up, obviously with everything from cycling to treadmill. There's another company, I think it's called Agata, that's doing the same thing for rowing. There's even the mirror thing where you can stand in front of a mirror, mirror on the wall and have the trainer walk you through a workout as you're standing in front of a mirror. I think a lot of this tech driven fitness, especially tied to subscription based apps and trainers who are right there walking you through what you need to do is incredibly efficacious for people who normally wouldn't work out because they aren't able to get to a health club or a gym, but now they've got that same experience in their own home. You know, they're still missing out on, you know, some of the stuff I talked about in this podcast I recently did on loneliness, right? Like being around people, smelling people, the electromagnetic signals of people looking in other people's eyes, etc. But it can be incredibly motivating to use these tools. The only thing that I don't like about them is, is again, you're missing out on being outdoors, grounding and earthing. It's hard to throw down a real super functional athletic workout that might involve like sprints and jumps and hops and plyometrics if you're just have your ass planted right in front of like a 5 foot by 5 foot square screen, you know, mounted on your wall. So you want to mix this stuff up with other forms of like outdoors athleticism and sports. But I originally was kind of like disillusioned with tech driven fitness because I thought it was just gimmicky and yet another reason to be tied down to technology and staring at a screen. But I see a great deal of efficacy. They're getting better and better. And one of my main metrics as to whether or not I'll use one of these devices is can it be used with like the WI Fi and the Bluetooth off? Can I download the workouts and not just be bombarded by more non native electricity the whole time I'm working out or by notifications coming from my phone or my iPad or the screen or whatever. So if something can be placed in WI Fi, the workouts can be downloaded, the Bluetooth can be disabled and then I can just jam. In most cases I'll use it or be okay with using it. And probably I say the Bluetooth turned off. But even if you're doing whatever, a 40 minute workout with an electrical muscle stimulation machine and it relies upon Bluetooth to the, for the app to adjust the intensity, that's less of an issue than like you know, Wi Fi and notifications and, and a lot of the other issues. So I'm just a little bit wary about how much non native electricity I expose my body to. But yeah, I think a lot of these, these tech driven fitness tools are super handy and they're, they're, they've just developed the heck out of them to where they, they work really well, I think.

Agree. And you mentioned, you know, that they are particularly useful for folks, you know, getting folks off the couch or maybe people who weren't as likely to work out. That's kind of what the conclusion that we came to as we were thinking about the opportunity with Ladder too. It just felt like a lot of the products out there skewed a little bit more to casual fitness. Certainly for cardio it was about, you know, variety and entertainment because that sells, having that on demand. It was a little bit more of a follow this workout versus versus programming. And so that's why, you know, as we talked about on the last podcast, we believe, you know, the, the, the customer that we were solving a pain point for was someone who was Certainly more serious about fitness. Someone who valued programming and someone who wants to take their kettlebell outside and be able to, you know, do a workout at a gym or be able to do it out, you know, on vacation in the mountains or something kind of like you were talking about. So. Yeah, but agree. Agree with your. With your sentiments there. All right, Ben, so we're about to launch Boundless on Ladder. You're going to. I think the. When this airs, it'll certainly be live on September 20th is when the program drops. What can your listeners expect from Boundless on Ladder?

Well, it's basically like me in an app. I go in there and reprogram all the workouts. So there's fresh workouts that are delivered every six weeks or so, motivational videos from me that, you know, 700 ish exercises I all filmed, you know, down there in Austin. The ability to be able to engage with me in. In Q and A, the accountability, the entire group, you know, like, working out along with you. Like we talked about last time, you know, like the TV show Strong or Biggest Loser. It's like, you're on my team. I'm your personal trainer. You're not trying to beat all the other teams. But. But it's more a deal of you being on the same team as a whole bunch of other people who are following the same program and doing so using, as we talked about in the last podcast, what is actually an app that people who actually work out at a gym designed who know, yeah, you want to be able to do your whole workout without having to look at your phone every 10 seconds. Or not be able to do exercises that are complex because your phone is not allowing you to know set sets, reps, count, time, everything. So, yeah, I mean, it's basically all of my fitness philosophy, my program, my biohacking, everything that we've talked about in these past couple episodes, but basically all compressed into an app. And again, I'm not a fan of fitness apps. I get literally a dozen inquiries a week on Instagram, messages from people who are like, oh, join my app. Be part of my app. I vetted your guys's app. I tried using it myself. I looked at a lot of the other trainers that were on there. I was impressed with the platform, with the exercise library, how easy it is to access workouts, even for kind of a Luddite like me, your team, and the fact that I've seen you actually care. You're not a bunch of Silicon Valley execs making a fast buck off an app. It's instead actually designed by people who like to work out like fitness. And I mean, I know if it works for me, it'll work for a lot of other people. But what I wanted to do was take the same type of programming that again, like my execs and my athletes and my actors and these people I work with are paying a lot of money for and replicate that to as scalable an extent as possible for people who maybe just want to pay like 50, 60 bucks a month to have me in their back pocket and be using my actual programs and have those programs change and have some amount of fluctuation in the program. And again, like you and I talked about in the last podcast, we didn't sit down and say how can we make, inform and sculpt the perfect athlete? Or should this just be for bikini bodies or whatever. What we really decided was to do something that was supportive of longevity, supportive of minimal effective dose of exercise, married the optimum combination of exercise with health span and lifespan. And so it's pretty much the way I work out and the way I work with a lot of my clients all just kind of compressed into an app that you put in your back pocket. So it's like five days that you work out. There's one active recovery day with mobility. There's a special day where you're more focused on like biohacking and a lot of my cool. Not necessarily like super advanced and expensive stuff, but things that you can actually use technology wise that don't involve just hitting the gym, but that still allow you to make your body or your brain better. And then it's all guided movement videos. For me, it's got coaching cues from me. You get to master your movement, keeps you motivated. And again, this is not a workout program. This beats you up and spits you out. It's, it's, it weaves in everything that we've been discussing in these past couple episodes. So, so, yeah, I mean, I think even at the time that this episode comes out, it's launching in I think, what, two weeks? Something like that?

Yeah, September 20th. So it'll be when this, when this comes out, it'll be. Be rocking and rolling. No, that was awesome. You answered a lot of my questions there. I mean, I got a sneak peek actually of, of week one and I, I believe, I think that it looks like this is a workout that's going to come back to and be one of your staples to. Would love to hear about super slow strength because it seems like that is something that comes back. It Might have been every Tuesday, but I was looking a bit ahead.

So this, and this might be the last thing we have much time to talk about, but we'll throw it in there as a little teaser for folks. Super slow training is something that I first discovered in a book called Body by Science by a physician named Dr. Doug McGuff who was using this form of very, very slow training to rehab and allow his cardiovascular patients, people that had a heart attack, to be able to train without undue stress on the heart and still be able to build muscle with low impact that didn't damage the joints too much. And then I started running into a lot of trainers who were incorporating this with their clients and getting really good results like muscle building and muscle maintenance with 12 to 18 minute workouts that were single set to failure. So like chest press, 30 seconds up, 30 seconds down, you know, five to eight reps, boom, done, move on to shoulder press, then pull down, then row, then say leg press or squat and then that's it and you're done. And it's hard and it takes focus and you're moving the exercise, you know, the muscle to a really full range of motion over a long period of time. So there's a ton of time under tension, which compared to sets and reps and weight, like the most important thing is the amount of time under tension that the muscle has. And then I have the option to kind of like finish each set with like some more bouncing, explosive reps that stimulate more of the athletic fast twitch muscle fibers. And you know, I started doing it when I would travel and I'd be in just like a crappy hotel gym that still had a few workout machines on it where I could just do, you know, one single set and still make it to like a conference room, you know, an hour later, or be able to squeeze something at the end of the day before like a group dinner or something. I found it to be such a good time hack and, and so, so good for again building or maintaining muscle with low risk of injury and low joint impact that I began to weave it into my programs. And you can do it with free weights, you can do it with machines, you can do it with bands. But this idea of super slow training, as far as a way to maintain muscle for life with a low risk of injury, kind of like BFR training, it's one of those staples in my program and I mean it's just, it just works really well. It fits into this whole minimum effective dose of exercise methodology. So yeah, I mean that, that's like people who join the, the Boundless program on the Ladder app and, and try this out. Like, you'll, you'll see exactly what I mean. Like, and you only do it like one or two times a week. It's amazing. So, so yeah, I'm a huge fan of the Super Slow man.

Love it. Excited to check it out myself.

I, I guess like, you know, we, we have covered a ton. I know you got to go to the airport soon and I gotta go. I don't know. Like, actually what I have to do is go get ready for heading out to hunt deer here later on. Hunting season officially opens tomorrow and I go get all my gear sorted, you know, speaking of harvesting the sacred proteins from the environment. But ultimately, you know, I think it's pretty straightforward if people want to, want to use the app, you know, go to the app store and download Ladder and find team Boundless Wellness, which is my program. Or you can go to the show notes for part one of this series which is at BenGreenfieldFitness.com LadderPodcast or part two, which is at BenGreenfieldFITNESS.com LadderPodcast 2 the number two. And I've got all the shownotes there, all the studies I talked about, everything you need to know to rock and roll on it. Tom stoked. Tom, how about you?

I'm pumped. I mean everyone's got a seven day free trial too to check it out. It's not going to ask for their credit card or anything. We're just making a bet on how much value they're going to see on it quickly. So definitely encourage people to check it out. If you're a fan of Ben's podcast, I think you'll enjoy it.

I agree. And Tom, I'm grateful to you for making this and for reaching out to me and for bringing me down to Austin to do all the filming for it and developing this whole thing. You guys have a fantastic team. It's been wonderful to work with you guys and I guess for everybody listening in, if you run into any difficulties, if you have questions, if you want to dig into anything Tom and I have discussed on part one of this podcast or this one you listen to now. Part two, go leave comments, go leave feedback, go leave thoughts. Tom and I will jump in and help you out. And we're basically, our goal is to make this easy for you without breaking the bank. So Tom, thanks for putting me in the hot seat on my own podcast. Podcast man.

Anytime, man. Thank you. Thank you for having me. That was. That was a lot of fun.

Awesome. All right, folks. Well, I'm Ben Greenfield. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Ladder podcast, the number two Ladder podcast two for the show notes for this one. Part one is BenGreenfieldFitness.com ladder podcast. I'm Ben Greenfield, along with Tom De Gone, signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.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 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.