← Pursuit of Wellness
Pursuit of Wellness
Why Most Women Are Training Wrong: Fix Hormones, Build Strength, and Recover Smarter w/ Dr. Andy Galpin | Part 1
00:47:03
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- [00:00]
A
Do you want to be more focused throughout the day? Do you want to have more energy? Do you want to make better decisions, be a better leader, feel less pain? Like, what is the thing that's all physical performance? To me, it's all mental performance. And so what I love doing the most out of all this is having an answer for somebody who's searching because they want to perform better and then being able to be like, oh, you just have to do this.
- [00:20]
B
This is the Pursuit of Wellness podcast and I'm your host, Mari Llewellyn. What is up, guys? Welcome back to the Pursuit of Wellness. Today I am joined with Dr. Andy Galpin, a world renowned human performance scientist. This episode is so packed with insights that we split it into two parts. We talked for so long and there's so much good information in here. You're going to want to listen to part one and two. In part one, we cover Dr. Galpin's fascinating journey with growing up on a farm to working with elite athletes. And we dive into topics like stress, sustainable systems, fat loss strategies and the importance of daily movement. Part two will drop this Thursday, so stay tuned. Dr. Andy Galphin, welcome to the show.
- [01:09]
A
Ah, it's a pleasure to be here.
- [01:10]
B
I'm going to have to read your credentials here because there's so many. You are a human performance scientist with a PhD in human bioenergetics. You work with elite athletes, you're a professor. The list goes on. I'd love to just start by hearing how you got to where you are now. Like where did the interest start?
- [01:29]
A
You know, I grew up in the country with just everybody around me who were on horses and logging and farming and things like that. And my parents were really loving and supportive. No one where I'm from was, was highly educated. I could not have told you as a kid what a PhD was. I had no idea.
- [01:48]
B
That's crazy.
- [01:49]
A
I had no, I didn't have any lawyer parents or anything like that not to, but we just don't any different. And so my parents were super supportive of my siblings and I and they didn't care what we did professionally. But all they said is, you're not going to do what we did. And they just wanted a better life for us. And so the only thing back in the 1980s and 90s then was for country people was like, well, you're going to go to college. We don't know what. This doesn't matter. It's a different thing than it is now. So they just pushed us to go to college. And again, they could be artists or whatever we wanted to be, but just like you're not going to be a manual labor person like your entire life. So okay, that was great. So then as a country kid, I played sports. I wanted to be better at all those things. And I was trying to figure out how do I have a life that is not as hard as my parents. But I knew I wasn't going to be a professional athlete. I knew actually pretty quickly I didn't want to be like a sport coach. I didn't want to coach football. And then actually after I got into college and got through that stuff, I spent a little bit of time as a professional strength and conditioning coach of very high level athletes, major league baseball players, NFL players. Realized quickly I didn't want to do that full time either. And so basically I spent the rest of my career trying to figure out where, like how do I make a career out of sports but not doing those things. Yeah, I love science. I was a decent athlete, but not a tremendous one. And so what that meant was I was good enough to where if I did things better, it mattered, it would be the difference between me playing and not playing. But I also wasn't so bad where like, hey, it doesn't matter what you do, you're not going to get out there kind of thing. And so all I knew at that point in my life was the only thing I can control is working harder than everyone else, doing things better than everyone else, being more focused so on and so forth. And if I can carry that through a college degree somehow and then try to figure out how I can do this as a profession, that was really as far as I was focused. So collectively that's how I really got into this field and then just was able to carve a 20 year path into making it where I am now.
- [03:51]
B
What interests you the most about performance and optimizing?
- [03:55]
A
I think it's actually how well rounded that phrase can be. So I want to be really clear. I try to reiterate this as much as possible. I will talk a lot about the athletes and things that we do, but performance to me really means what do you want out of your body? Right? What do you want to do? Performance can be defined as hitting a ball better and scoring more points. Sure, no problem. But do you want to be more focused throughout the day? Do you want to have more energy? Do you want to make better decisions, be a better leader, feel less pain? Like, what is the thing that's all physical performance? To me, it's all mental performance. And so what I love doing the most out of all this is having an answer for somebody who's searching because they want to perform better. And then being able to be like, oh, you just have to do this. And then they go that their life is better. And it's like this amazing feeling to know you have these answers sometimes and then you can give that gift to somebody and then they get something more that they want, that they want and their life is more enriched and they're better with their family and things like that. And so that ultimately is the thing that gives me the most joy is being like, oh, hey, I have this little solution over here. Now you want to use it to whatever you're doing, I don't even care. But that, that to me is what I love the most about performance. I love sports. So it's great when that gets manifested and I get to watch people I coach on TV win championships and stuff. But we have as much reward out of our non athlete clients and folks that come to us too for the same things. It's like, wow, I was just suffering for all these years, now this is gone. That's pretty awesome too.
- [05:24]
B
So do you have people who come to you who are not just peak performance athletes? You have regular people, oh, 100, possibly overweight?
- [05:32]
A
We have honestly. So we have a coach coaching program and we have many servicing companies. But in our coaching program we will often have a pretty big dichotomy. Over here on one side is you. We do have plenty of professional athletes in there. We have probably, I don't know, four or five of the highest contracts in the, in the country. In the big sports here we have all pro, we have the biggest of the biggest athletes, but by number we don't have hundreds of athletes in those programs because it's a little bit different. But for our non athletes, which is more people, you generally have this split and we have some people at the top where they're pretty dialed and they just want to get more focused. They, they're either trying to like compete, they like to run races or do, you know, kayak or do some activities. Kind of the weekend warrior folks. Or they're not that, but they're just, they're trying to get every last little bit of brain function or back health for longevity or whatever. Right. So we have those people who are dialed and they're trying to go from like a 9 to a 10. And then we have people at the opposite that are saying like I'm just starting this health journey, I'M finally ready. I've got to lose the weight, I've got to stop the drink, whatever the thing is. And then they're like, I'm going to commit to this, but if I'm going to do that, I want to start with everything perfect that's unique to my physiology, Right? So it's kind of like I'm not going to start this journey and then be wondering am I eating the right foods, Am I doing the right workouts for my body? I don't want that. So I want questions gone. So I start there. So we have a big split between people that'll generally fall into both those buckets. So we spend more of our coaching time with definitely non athletes than athletes.
- [07:10]
B
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- [10:30]
A
Okay. It's impossible for me to answer because it's going to be. We could be here for hours.
- [10:33]
B
Okay, here's how set up Joe Rogan style. Three hours.
- [10:36]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah. We've done that plenty of times. Okay. If I started listing off to you things, I want you to tell me, is this something I'm going to give to an athlete?
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B
Okay.
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A
Or general population person?
- [10:48]
B
Okay.
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A
Okay. Mental focus.
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B
Oh, I feel like that's both.
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A
Okay.
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B
Yeah.
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A
VO2 max athlete. It's also arguably the number one predictor of longevity.
- [10:59]
B
Okay. So both.
- [11:01]
A
Okay. Bone mineral density.
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B
Both.
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A
Oh, like, you see, you can see how I can run this train, right?
- [11:08]
B
Yeah.
- [11:08]
A
There's not a metric I can pick where you're gonna be like, oh, that's an athlete thing. With some very small exceptions. Okay, you want to hit a baseball better. Okay, okay, fine, yeah. And you want. But outside of that, like, you pick your health metric, you pick your longevity metric, you pick whatever thing you care about the most, you're going to have a 99% Venn diagram overlap between these two people. So what are the things that we give the athletes? What are the things that we give the non athletes? It's almost identical. It's not the athlete thing that matters. What matters is it specific to your physiology and your demands and your goals. And that is the same answer. I would say, by the way, when you say women versus men, okay, we don't coach women versus men. What we coach is you, okay, Individually, your physiology, demands and goals are unique to you. I don't care what body you put that in, I don't care what sport you put that in or not. We're going to coach you as a unique human being and whatever that means. Of course, there are generalities we can kind of COVID that functionally split them, but it's the same as old versus young. Right. Or movement person, not movement beginner. So there's, there's a thousand different categories that split people up. But the reality of it is it's just you based on your unique physiology. So could we go down the supplement route? To answer your question, sure. Could we go down recovery? Yeah. Sleep. Right. Water. Like we could go any of these routes that you want. And what we're going to generally say is our goal with any of our athletes is to get their physiology into a position where they have the least amount of what we call performance anchors. Okay, so these are things that are holding your physiology back, that are draining your system. They're non specific stressors. So what we want to do is create the way that you create physiological adaptation. That's the fancy way to say change, right? You want to grow muscle, you want to lose fat, you want to have more or less back pain, or you want a higher libido. Okay, fine, you're trying to do some change. Awesome. Well, that is a response to stress. Adaptation happens because of stress. And so the way that you create change is you put a whole bunch of stress onto a system. The reality of it is, though, your body can only handle so much total stress. This is the science word, is allostatic load. When that stress load gets too high, then any more additional stress no longer creates adaptation, it creates Maladaptation right backwards and you get overrun or run down or whatever the case is. So the way that you enhance that stress load is not to actually necessarily just dump more stress on the system, is to make sure you don't have any non specific stressors. So what that means is if you pre fold your stress bucket 80% from shit you didn't want coming in, you don't have much room to put in the stuff that you do.
- [13:45]
B
Yeah.
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A
So this means like I work out a little bit, I get super sore or I get exhausted, I'm like, interesting. I have a couple of meetings a day and then my brain shuts down. Interesting. Those are stressors, but I can tell you're preloaded. There's lots of different things in there. Right. So if we can remove those non specific stressors, our ability to put in the ones we want to create, then adaptation. So it's the same goal no matter what it is. These non specific stressors can be things like poor sleep, it can be a micronutrient insufficiency, it could be a suboptimal, not even like a clinical deficiency in something in your blood. Right. It could be a thousand different things. We're running environmental scans on every one of our people that go through Pro like. So there's a lot of ways that we can find things. It could be mental health, could be stress management, it could come from any of these routes. But we're looking at all of it and we're going to see where is it coming in the most from. You remove that and now we generally just get to back away. We want people in an environment where they're not following 600 supplements and a 90 minute routine just to go to bed every day. And like, like these are unrealistic long term solutions, but you have to kind of figure out what is putting the most strain in the system initially get that out of the way and then generally let physiology do what it wants.
- [15:03]
B
I was the 90 minute supplement every two hours person for a very long time and flexibility has been like a new thing for me because I do love like a very regimented routine, but I've had to sort of ease up on that. Do you think, and this is a bit of a deep question, but do you think for someone listening who wants to be in the best shape of their life, lose fat, gain muscle, do you think suffering is a part of that or do you think there's a way to go about it that is enjoyable?
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A
Okay, so it's clearly both. Right. The way that you want to think about this is you want to suffer in the way that you're most able to handle.
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B
Okay.
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A
And you want to do this in a way that is going to establish the most long term consistency. The goals you just outlined are different than other client goals we hear. But let's just take the ones you said. Okay. I want to have fat loss. I want to be in the best shape of my life. Do you want to be in the best shape of your life for a week? The assumption is you want that to stay around for a while, right?
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B
Yes.
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A
Great. So we're automatically thinking we have to put ourself in a system that is somewhat sustainable.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Okay. So that is a different approach maybe than other approaches where compare this to say our professional fighters who really want to be in the best shape of their life and they only really have to be there for a week.
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B
Okay.
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A
Right. Because they're going to compete and they're going to fight for a world championship and things like that. We're going to get them in good shape, but they don't. They're actually literally trying to peak.
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B
Yeah.
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A
The Olympics we just had this like our athletes were peaking. You get it? Right? So when I, when those questions go my head I'm literally thinking, okay, you're probably talking like long term, stay that way for a long time.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So it's a different approach. So to your question, what we want to do is figure out can we get those things done in a way that is sustainable and where your suffering is a way that you can handle it. So could this be hunger suffering? Okay, fine. Some people are fine with that. Some people, that is a huge trigger. Yeah, no problem. Can it be other types of suffering? Fine. Can the suffering be. We're going to be walking more often so you don't get as much work done. God, we have to stop working. Is that, that may be a different type of suffering we ask of you? Could be any number of things. It could be we have to actually carve out 45 minutes before sleep because we have to get more effective sleep as a huge component to effective fat loss. People like completely miss that or disregard the important role of sleep in successful fat loss. So we will do like it could be number of ways to different suffers. So ultimately there's going to have to be some. But we can be as intelligent as possible and to not put you on a shortsighted goal, we want to go off the long game there. And so what we'll always say with that question is a lot of people will think I have to lose weight to kind of get healthy. That's true. Sometimes though, we need to get you healthy first to then have let you have more successful weight loss. So we have to pick our suffering and be intelligent with what we ask of people. What we don't want to do is set people up into positions that are extremely unrealistic. I'm particularly sensitive this one because I have young kids, right? You take somebody who's got kids and a job and other things going on, you're going to lose that battle. If you put them in like really ridiculous food prep modes or like, all right, that was just a bad coaching decision. Their suffering might have to come somewhere else because you're making an unrealistic expectation and they might have the willpower, focus and determination to crush it for six weeks. But eventually that kid thing will just eat you up or, or lifestyle or traveler, whatever the thing is for you. So you got to make sure that you're giving them a chance, a realistic shot to, to win against the battle that they can win.
- [18:42]
B
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A
Okay.
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B
And I'd bring my little meal prep every day. It was pretty funny. But yeah, like I could really zone in on it. And for people with kids and school and whatever else, it's a lot. What would you say is the biggest like barrier to entry for people who want to like lose a lot of weight or have a fitness journey? Like what, what is stopping them along the way?
- [22:11]
A
It's, it's always about systems. So I was kind of saying a second ago, like, put yourself in a better system. I'll give you a direct example we will split people up into what I call cooks or bakers. All right, so do you know what the difference between cooking and baking is?
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B
I feel like baking is very exact and measured and cooking's a bit more creative and flexible.
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A
Right. So initially, if you were to come to me and say, I got 90 pounds to lose, the very first thing I'm trying to figure out is, okay, what kind of a system is going to work best for you based on your situation? If you were a, identify you as a cook and I can ask this question. Okay, Mari, like, I'm going to give you this meal plan. You're going to weigh and measure everything you eat for the next six months.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Okay.
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B
That's what I did.
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A
Or we can have a call once every two weeks, we can talk about kind of some concepts and then you'll be out to pasture. Which of those would you have picked back in that day?
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B
Option A for sure.
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A
Great. So we would have said, all right, you're a, you're a baker. You want precision, you want detail, you want systems. Even if the system isn't perfect, it doesn't matter because you actually would probably have some relief. That's anxiety. Because you have a plan, you have a system, you're just gonna follow it. Could there be other options? Sure, sure, sure. I don't really care. I just want to know what to do and I want to win Amazing. Other people that does the exact opposite. Right. People that are what I would call a cook. That's gonna give them insane anxiety because they're like, oh my God, I have no flexibility, I have no freedom. I feel claustrophobic and trapped and oh, this is gonna be terrible.
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B
Yeah.
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A
If I were to give you the concepts approach back then, you would have been more of like, ah, but like, like what to do, like how, how? And you would have probably given you a worse approach. Cause you don't know exactly what to do. So when I'm, when I say like systems, that's the type of stuff I'm trying to figure out. Right. Am I, I'm immediately gonna say, am I gonna create chaos in your life because I'm not giving you enough detail? Then I need to give you specific detail and I don't wanna give you any wiggle room. Other people, then we're gonna go the opposite direction. So when it comes to successful long term fat loss, in this example, that's the first thing we're trying to figure out. If you are, it doesn't matter if you have the kids or don't have the kids or whatever stage life you run, companies, you're traveling. How can I put you in a position to succeed for your personality? Based on this, I would strongly encourage people at the beginning of their journey to spend at least, I'd like to say, 30 days, but give me, like, 14 days a week if I have to. Being that baker, you need to know you need some calibration. What is 6 ounces of meat really look like?
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B
Yeah.
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A
What is a cup of rice? What is a serving of olive oil? Or whatever foods you're eating or not eating? It doesn't matter, because that alone is like, oh, I didn't realize it. When I've done this activity in my classes, you will find a couple of things. People are always stunned how little protein they're eating and how much fat that they're eating. Like, always, like, oh, my gosh. Like, I thought I was eating, you know, 200 grams of protein a day, and I'm eating 110. And I didn't realize I'm eating 250 grams of fat a day. Like, they just have no calibration to that stuff. So I don't necessarily need you to follow that the whole time, but we need to have a little bit of awakening and awareness so that you can go, okay. So when I ask you to eyeball stuff, we're at least in the stratosphere of realistic. If you don't have some calibration, then it's impossible. Imagine that you're driving and I took away your odometer and your speedometer. It was like, oh, yeah, okay, great down there. But just don't overspeed. Go from here all the way to Houston. And never speed. Like, you have no idea what you're doing because you're always relying on that output. Right. So you have to have some calibration. If you're going to run the cook approach, which is kind of like concepts and things like that, you got to get some calibration. When I need to get dialed in personally. When our athletes have to get dialed in because we have a specific weight to make or time, we always revert back to baking. So when I have to hit a goal, we get detailed. But once we've done that, then we go back into cooking mode.
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B
Yep.
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A
So an athlete comes into the off season, we tend to give them their stuff in, like concepts.
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B
Okay.
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A
Make it a little bit easier for them. Yeah. Take some time off. Like, I just want you to do a, B and C. Right. Make sure you kind of hit your protein numbers. Get this much vegetable in per day and get close. Okay. But then when it's like we're getting closer and tighter and tighter, we got to get dialed in, we get really specific. And then when the season starts, we actually kind of go back to concepts because they got a lot going on to manage. Right. So you can play back and forth between both of these things. But definitely my big advice for somebody just starting it, get a little bit calibrated. Don't worry about the specifics of the diet. Don't worry about the specifics of the exercise routine. Be consistent. Establish a baseline, whatever it is you're eating. Okay, we'll improve the system. We'll improve the numbers later. But you gotta get a consistent pattern down, get some understanding of what we're doing. So the system is number one, and then I just gave you number two, which is you have to create stability.
- [27:06]
B
Okay.
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A
You don't have to eat the same thing every day, but, like, we have to have some sort of thing. There's actually excellent research showing this. When you match people for calories per calories and for other macronutrients, the ones that eat them more consistently at the more consistent times will have more effective weight management than those that are eating inconsistently throughout the day. Has nothing to do with timing or anything like that. Eat one meal a day, six meals a day, I don't care. That doesn't really particularly matter physiologically. If it makes a better system for you, fine, yeah, doesn't matter. But you need to be somewhat consistent in your approach. Right. Again, within reason for you. So if you do those two things, most people will have a huge amount of progress for the first six weeks, six months, or whatever that domain can be without needing to get into any detail really past that. That is always our first two battles. And once you get those down, they're typically getting a really good spot.
- [27:59]
B
I think that's such a fantastic way of phrasing it because I've. So when I started losing weight, I used my fitness pal, like, religiously tracked every thing I was putting in my mouth. And I'm so glad I did that because I had zero understanding of nutrition before, so I didn't even really understand what a carb, protein or fat were until I was plugging everything in. And I was watching all the bodybuilding girls on YouTube.
- [28:22]
A
Sure.
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B
So I was like, imitating their diets for a while and I was like. Thought I was going to be a bikini competitor. But, like, that's what taught me how to eyeball a plate. So I feel Like, I was baking for a year and now I've been cooking for the past five years or whatever.
- [28:36]
A
You know what's crazy about that? You'll hear that story if you, you did it a year. I'm telling you, do it for 30 days and you can go back into cook mode for a decade.
- [28:45]
B
Yeah, that's smart.
- [28:46]
A
It'll last a really, really, maybe potentially forever.
- [28:50]
B
Yeah.
- [28:50]
A
Like, my wife hasn't gone into baker mode in probably over a decade.
- [28:55]
B
Does she weightlift?
- [28:56]
A
She, I mean, like strength train. Yeah, for sure. But she was, you know, back in the day, growing up kind of in the LA thing. Like it was weigh and measure everything, like be this specific body weight. And so she spent years doing that and now she, like, she will tell you you could put up anything in front of her and she will know the macros of like any amount.
- [29:14]
B
Yeah.
- [29:14]
A
Because she was like way too far down that road.
- [29:16]
B
Yeah.
- [29:17]
A
You know, bad position probably. But now because of that, the rest of her life, she'll, she has a incredibly good calibration of where she's at and even for other people. So her ability to portion for our kids and stuff, like, she, she knows exactly what they're getting.
- [29:30]
B
Yeah, it's really beneficial.
- [29:31]
A
So a little bit of work, it sucks. It's kind of a grind. I get it. But it's going to pay dividends the rest of your life.
- [29:37]
B
I also feel like people get caught up on scheduling and I don't know what you do with your clients, but I feel like everyone has a very individual lifestyle and you kind of need to make it work for you. Like, I was going first thing in the morning and I still do that. Like I have to work out first thing, otherwise it's not going to happen. What do you recommend to people who feel like they don't have time in the morning or they work all day? Like, I think people get caught up on they don't have time or it's not at the optimal time. What do you say to those people?
- [30:09]
A
Yeah, optimal time won't really exist for the overwhelming majority of people. In terms of exercise. You can say the same thing with the number of meals you have per day, the time. Right. Should I do a 12 hour fasting window or four? Like those things don't matter. They matter very, very, very little. Same thing with exercise training. More. I don't care at all. Like, we've seen, we've broken world records in strength sports. We've coached Olympians and weightlifting. We've done like, we've done them all we've done thousands of normal people. And when I say that those things don't matter much, like they really don't matter that much.
- [30:44]
B
Yeah.
- [30:44]
A
Some of our professional athletes will train at 7 in the morning. Some of them don't wake up before one. Like, like we've won world titles in every sport.
- [30:53]
B
Yeah.
- [30:53]
A
Doing it lots of different ways. So it's not that it's irrelevant, it's just not that important relative to the more contextualized parts. So when do you feel best? When do you have time? What's more realistic? What will you execute better or even more consistent? And those things just matter so much more than things like timing of the day. The only caveat I'll give you there would be there is some negative consequences to doing a bunch of really high intensity work really late at night.
- [31:22]
B
Okay.
- [31:23]
A
If you can avoid that, that's, that's generally better. And we've had to do that a number of times with clients, non athletes. Typically we deal with this with athletes, but that's part of the course. Right. You're going to play a baseball game till 11pm?
- [31:36]
B
Yeah. I was gonna ask you, what do you. For fighters who are going on at like 10 or 11pm how do they prep for that? Like are they not exhausted?
- [31:44]
A
Nope. No. Because their life is scheduled around that.
- [31:47]
B
Really.
- [31:47]
A
Yeah. That's why if we're never gonna have a fighter wake up at 7:00am, 8:00am it makes, we only generally deal with like main event fighters. So it's 8 to 9, 9:30, 10pm We've also fought in many different time zones and Fight island and Abu Dhabi and like Singapore and like we went all over the place. Right. And the Olympics were in Paris. Like we're all over there. Right. And so what you need to do is go reverse then engineer so that that competition time is when they're peaking physically throughout the day.
- [32:19]
B
Got it.
- [32:20]
A
And so for the six to eight or ten weeks before their schedule is being changed so that, that is when they are performing their best. Which means they're going to train at 8, 9pm every night. And then it's going to be incredibly unrealistic for then for us to expect them to be in bed by 11. Yeah, that would be. Actually even if it's possible, it would be horrible coaching decision because you're certainly not peaking physically and cognitively two hours before your sleep time. And so those people might go to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning and then they're sleeping until 11 or noon the next day. So now we're still getting them in their physical peak. Typically like five to eight hours after waking is going to be when their competition time is. So we are engineering their life around that because that's what they're there for. Yeah, so that is one exception. The people that are not like that. But you still kind of. I work till 6 and then I get off work and then I go train at 7pm and then I try to go to bed at 9 and you do a lot of high intensity stuff. Doesn't always happen, but it's very likely that will be detrimental to your sleep. And we'll see that in a number of areas pop up. This will a lot of times be the I fall asleep super easy. Then I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back.
- [33:27]
B
To sleep because the cortisol's up from the workout.
- [33:30]
A
It's not the cortisol per se that will probably be up. It's a whole host of physiological cascades that are churning and burning. So if you want to call it cortisol like fine as one representation of general stress. But cortisol is often quite maligned when it doesn't need to be. It's super productive. But yeah, in general just call it the global stress response is quite high temperature recovery processes. All these are in the wrong direction. And so people will often fall asleep pretty quickly.
- [33:57]
B
Okay.
- [33:58]
A
Because they're tired and fatigued. But then their system gets woken up within a couple of hours and they have a really hard time going back to sleep. We can see that in the respiratory rate and their heart rate and HRV different metrics like that that'll pop up and we're like, okay, we have to do either some sort of very specific match down regulation. So if you are in this boat and you're like this is no way you can work out at any other time during the day. And you're not going to do only like low intensity walks. Okay, fine. If you have to do the high intensity stuff at night, you need to leave that session or before you leave do a very diligent down regulation. You have to pay that thing back or you're going to have trouble sleeping and it's going to be a problem. So that downregulation piece can be a number. It's honestly specific to you. Like what helps you down regulate. Simple examples. Go to the corner of the gym or leave the gym, sit in your car, wherever that it's kind of quiet. Or you can be dark with something over your eyes and just breathe through Your nose for five minutes. We can do different, like longer exhale stuff, that's fine. But the reality of it is like you sometimes just need like five to seven minutes without music blasting, without lights on super bright and, and just bring it back down. A lot of times that alone will be enough.
- [35:15]
B
I've heard you use the phrase exercise snacks, Is that correct?
- [35:19]
A
Oh, yeah, sure.
- [35:20]
B
Can you tell us about exercise snacks? What does that mean?
- [35:22]
A
Yeah, sure. So it's a basic idea of when you think about exercise, physical activity. A lot of times we bundle it all together. But the reality of it is you want to kind of think about like physical activity as how much movement you have throughout the day.
- [35:36]
B
Yep.
- [35:37]
A
So if you're sitting at a desk all day, your general physical activity. This is a step count.
- [35:41]
B
Okay.
- [35:42]
A
Right. Basic things like that. So you want to bucket physical activity as kind of a thing where all of us basically want that as high as we can. Realistically, that's good. But it's not a surrogate for true structured planned exercise. Okay. We want that, we want some of those things over there. You don't want to fall into the trap of saying like, I work out. I do these high intensity exercise for 45 minutes a day and do it five days a week, so I'm super healthy. And then you do no physical activity.
- [36:10]
B
Okay.
- [36:11]
A
There's lots of literature on that is not great either.
- [36:13]
B
So like let's say you're having a crazy workout at 8:00am Yep. HIIT training, strength training. And then you sit at a desk all day and you don't move.
- [36:21]
A
Again, that would be better than not doing the workout.
- [36:24]
B
Okay.
- [36:24]
A
But it would certainly be suboptimal.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah.
- [36:27]
A
We need some sort of physical movement throughout the day and we need structured exercise. That's our best component. Okay. Now in between those two areas are exercise snacks. So what this basically says is imagine you are sitting there all day. We're all dressed up. Yeah. Everyone looks so fancy over here, right?
- [36:46]
B
Do we look fancy?
- [36:48]
A
Yeah. There's a lot of fashion around this.
- [36:51]
B
My best outfit.
- [36:52]
A
Is it?
- [36:53]
B
No.
- [36:54]
A
If I dress myself, you guys would be laughing right now.
- [36:57]
B
Wait, who picked this out?
- [36:59]
A
I'm not allowed to. And nothing that goes in my house is chosen by me.
- [37:03]
B
Your wife is picking it. What do you wear to work every day?
- [37:07]
A
To work every day.
- [37:08]
B
Like active way.
- [37:09]
A
As in like get out of my bed and go upstairs to my computer. Yeah, yeah. Definitely going to be shorts and a very, very old T shirt.
- [37:15]
B
Do you have a walking treadmill?
- [37:17]
A
No.
- [37:18]
B
I'm surprised by that.
- [37:19]
A
I, I don't like, Honestly, I don't jam on it that much. Yeah, I'm a big fidgeter. So if I was working in this room, I would be like dancing up and not dancing, but I'd be moving, jumping, like shaking, shuffling around a lot throughout the day.
- [37:31]
B
Yeah.
- [37:32]
A
In my office, I don't like to walk. I like to like pace back and forth. I have half my wall is a big whiteboard. So I'm doing stuff on there.
- [37:39]
B
It's like my husband or I'm out.
- [37:41]
A
Like I can't, I can't sit like that. I can't like walk. And if I'm like working, I'm there. And if I'm not, I'm going to be moving around.
- [37:48]
B
So I feel like that's an underrated thing.
- [37:51]
A
It's a big deal.
- [37:52]
B
My husband paces on the phone. He's always standing up. He never sits down. He's kind of like crazy entrepreneur vibes, but he's jacked. He's a bodybuilder. He's constantly moving. And I feel like he has the craziest step count because he's just constantly like. You wouldn't think that it's having an impact, but I feel like it does.
- [38:10]
A
Oh, it's a massive impact. In fact, one would argue, and there's a lot of literature to support that, that is the bigger variable than anything else. So if you look at things like total daily energy expenditure, it's the amount of energy you spend, like calories you burn throughout the day. If you want to be in a caloric deficit, okay. You have kind of two global options. You either consume less or you move more. Fine. Now people tend to hear that and they think the movement part means. I just said exercise. You can do that. But structured, intentional physical exercise does not burn the caloric expenditure that people think. It's not even close. The average person's probably going to do a couple of hundred calories in their workout.
- [38:47]
B
Yeah.
- [38:48]
A
They'll often think I burned a thousand or fifteen hundred, like really high numbers. That's really, really rare. It's generally a couple of hundred calories. Strength training, as much as I love it, burns very little calories. So that's not the thing that moves the needle there. There's another component to that that's called neat. Non exercise active thermo thermogenesis. Right. So it's the calories you burn doing non specific fidgeting. It's your foot right now moving around, right?
- [39:14]
B
Yeah.
- [39:15]
A
It's the twitching. It's me Jumping up and down. It's your husband pacing back and forth. It's those things that is actually probably the bigger delta.
- [39:22]
B
Yeah.
- [39:22]
A
In terms of your caloric expenditure than any of the other variables. There's a couple of other variables in that equation that I. I didn't mention, like thermal effect of food and things like that. But there's a strong argument to be made that that neat is the thing that's also the thing that will go down when you have chronic caloric restriction.
- [39:39]
B
Okay.
- [39:40]
A
So if you're on low calories for a very long time, it's not that you're like basal metabolic rate goes down that much. That's the kind of amount of energy that you're burning throughout the day just to stay alive. It's the neat that starts coming down. And if you watch bodybuilders, specifically in this physique world, when they are getting low on calories, watch his fidgeting just go to zero.
- [39:59]
B
Right. Because you don't want to use up energy.
- [40:00]
A
You'll just see them start, like, leaning on stuff all the time.
- [40:03]
B
Yeah.
- [40:03]
A
And sitting and, like, laying and hunching over. They don't have. They have no idea that they're doing it, but their body is trying to bring caloric expenditure down because caloric intake is down. And that's the thing that shuts them down a ton. Is. Is that neat thing. So they'll just be, like, sitting there.
- [40:18]
B
They're on stage, like, about to. Possibly.
- [40:20]
A
For sure. Yeah. That's rough.
- [40:22]
B
So did you see Chris Bumstead?
- [40:23]
A
No. I saw that. He won though, right?
- [40:25]
B
Yeah. It's his last one.
- [40:27]
A
He retired, Right?
- [40:28]
B
Yeah.
- [40:28]
A
I don't follow the physique world that much, but I saw that because.
- [40:33]
B
Yeah.
- [40:33]
A
Six in a row and then hold the plug. Right.
- [40:35]
B
Do you ever coach those people? Because I feel like it's very esthetic and not so much like inner health.
- [40:40]
A
I don't coach them at all really that much. Like, I just honestly don't find that field interesting at all.
- [40:44]
B
Really?
- [40:45]
A
Never. Like, it's like, kind of.
- [40:47]
B
But it's like kind of anti performance, I guess.
- [40:50]
A
I mean, it is. And it is like, no disrespect, but I grew up where, like, we were always going to promote substance over style.
- [41:00]
B
Mm.
- [41:00]
A
It was like we never wear gloves and like, aesthetics. I told. I told you, like, I hate fashion. Like, all my passion. Right. It's like, whatever. Yeah. But that said, it's really. It's not. It's really hard work.
- [41:14]
B
Yeah.
- [41:14]
A
Like, those folks, it's a ton of suffering. So my business partner that runs all of our coaching programs, Dan Garner, he does that stuff. So for those people that come in bodybuilders, he competes in bodybuilding still. And physique, he will do all that stuff in house. To me, I'm like, give me a like figure skater. I'd rather have a figure skater than a bodybuilder. Like, I just don't.
- [41:34]
B
Have you worked with a figure skater before?
- [41:36]
A
I haven't, but Dan has.
- [41:38]
B
That's really interesting.
- [41:39]
A
He did a couple of Olympic medalists.
- [41:41]
B
What is their diet like?
- [41:43]
A
I don't know. I can imagine though, it's not gonna be that different.
- [41:46]
B
Really?
- [41:47]
A
Yeah. I mean you have to manage calories. Right. Because you gotta be. It's not that different from like our gymnasts and stuff like that. We've had to deal with anyone that's gotta manage weight but still perform. It's. It's not that hard of a system.
- [41:58]
B
Because they're like flying through the air.
- [42:00]
A
Totally. But the tr. The thing that's going to get skaters is going to be things like training volume.
- [42:04]
B
Okay.
- [42:05]
A
Because they're skating so much.
- [42:06]
B
Yeah.
- [42:06]
A
And they're training so much. And so you have to keep. It's the same thing with like, honestly it's. It's very similar to conceptually like most distance athletes.
- [42:15]
B
Yeah.
- [42:16]
A
Because body mass is so big. It's such a big deal. And like whether you're a rower, swimmer, cyclist, like you're any extra body weight. That's FTP. Right. For that endurance world is just going to add mass. You got to carry. But at the same time the fueling demands are so high. So you have to really be specific about when. How you're fueling and all that to make sure that you're as lean as you can, but then not sacrificing sleep or recovery.
- [42:37]
B
Do you ever have equestrians?
- [42:39]
A
We have had like three.
- [42:41]
B
No.
- [42:41]
A
Yeah. Oh my God.
- [42:43]
B
I'm so curious.
- [42:43]
A
These would be. I wouldn't say full time professional ones, but folks that like we had a lawyer actually done it. She was from Texas that like. And we actually have like probably two or three that are competing right now.
- [42:54]
B
Wow.
- [42:55]
A
In a program.
- [42:56]
B
Jumpers.
- [42:57]
A
I couldn't answer.
- [42:58]
B
I would guess jumpers if you know, it's my.
- [43:01]
A
I grew up. My mom barrel raced for forever.
- [43:03]
B
Stop. I've been barrel racing.
- [43:05]
A
Yeah. Yeah. It's great, right?
- [43:06]
B
Yeah. I was gonna ask you because you said you grew up in the country and I was like, I figured. I feel like anyone who grows up in the country Ends up rodeoing somehow.
- [43:13]
A
Yeah, we did a little bit of that stuff. I did. I think the first one I did was I was probably like five or six.
- [43:22]
B
What did you do?
- [43:23]
A
The same thing that every six year old does because you're not going to get on Broncos the sheep.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah, that's the way to get mutton busting.
- [43:29]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [43:30]
B
It's very character building, I feel like.
- [43:31]
A
Yeah. I remember I got so mad because I was pretty athletic as a kid and I was like, oh, I'm going to win for sure. Like, I had never been on one, but I was like, for sure gonna win. And I just fell off immediately. And I was so mad.
- [43:44]
B
No, I. Maybe it's like a balance thing. I mean, I don't know how much.
- [43:48]
A
I had never done it before. Yeah, right. I'd ridden horses, so I could ride a horse. I'm like, I'm definitely gonna ride that thing. It's gonna be super easy and all these kids are gonna suck. And then I didn't win immediately the first time. So I was like, I hate this.
- [43:58]
B
Never again. Women who come to you who are afraid of strength training.
- [44:02]
A
Yeah.
- [44:03]
B
But want muscle, like, what do you tell them?
- [44:07]
A
So there's. It depends on what the. Where the afraid is coming from.
- [44:11]
B
Yeah.
- [44:11]
A
All right. So the way we'll always break it down is look, feel, perform. Right. So everyone on the planet wants to look a certain way. You define what you like or don't like differently than me. Fine. I don't care. You set the rules. Tell me what you. You don't want your shoulders to be big. Fine. Or you want them to be big, but you want your weight. Like, I don't care at all. You tell me what you want to look like. Don't want to look like. Fine. That's. Look, feel. What do you want to feel like? Right. So you want to feel strong. You don't care about feeling strong. You want to feel more energy. Right. You don't want to feel the fatigue going up. Like, what is the feeling thing that you're going to care about? And then perform. How do you want to perform? Right. What is that area of performance to you again? We talked about examples earlier, so whatever it is, once I have those. And then we work backwards. Okay, great. So we're going to recommend strength training. Awesome. Why? Because it's going to hit those goals. And then I'm going to show them. We'll actually take them directly through the research, show them the papers that this type of training will get specifically to this goal or Whatever. And it'll not achieve this outcome. So if it's an education piece, it's actually then becomes quite simple. A lot of that, as you're well aware, is rooted in very, very old. We'll call it even mythology at this point. Right. We also have, I don't know how many hundreds of clients. We can look back on them and say, well, it didn't happen to those first 600. Probably not gonna happen to you.
- [45:31]
B
Yeah.
- [45:31]
A
You know, like, we've done this so many times.
- [45:34]
B
Yeah.
- [45:35]
A
It's hard for them to make an argument like they're the special case who's gonna. This is bulk up.
- [45:40]
B
Quote, unquote.
- [45:42]
A
Right. And then because we have people on our team that do compete in physique, their job professionally is to make their physique look exactly how they want. They need this muscle to grow, but not that much. So we can literally be like, tell me which one you don't want to get big. And we will make sure it doesn't get big.
- [46:00]
B
Yeah.
- [46:00]
A
And which one you want to get big. And we can do that. It's like, not that hard of a thing to do. And so when they have that empowerment, they're like, oh, okay. Because ultimately then it just comes down to trust. Saying, like, you promise you're gonna get me where I wanna get and we're not gonna pull the. Like, yes, you said that. But then we're gonna do it anyways because we think it's better for you. We're not gonna do that. Like, if you come in saying you want your glutes to get bigger, great. We're going to make sure your glutes get bigger, but you don't want your thighs bigger. Okay. Like, we can manage that. It's not always perfectly realistic their expectations, but we can get pretty close. So it's an education piece at the beginning, and then it is saying, okay, just be good enough to give them what they want. And, you know, generally we're pretty successful with that.
- [46:46]
B
The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and does not constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor or health team.