DOCTOR REVEALS HOW PRO ATHLETES RECOVER, NOT WHAT YOU THINK

Radio Show Spin Off Kickoff

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show. So I have this uh I have a trainer. Yeah. Uh we trained with him for a while, and I got it, I've had a few trainers.

unknown 0:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

But this guy, he went to Purdue. Like, I have mad respect for him. Like I sent him and I, like, I'll send him videos like of certain people I respect in the in this health and wellness field. And I don't know what his degree, I mean, I know his degrees in whatever, but I don't know all the extra letters that come after it. He's got a few. Like I know you do too, the PhD for one. Right. But I was uh, so I I send him videos, like, you know, Mike Isratel. Yeah. I love that guy. So I'll send him stuff and he'll send stuff back. We'll go back and forth. But whenever I send him other people outside of Mike Isratel, he tears them apart. Sure. He'll be like, this is wrong, blah, blah, blah, blah. I sent him your stuff. And everything you said, he backed up 100%. Oh, right on. Right. So I was like, I got to talk to this guy. Yeah, right on. So I was like, We're off to a good start. Yeah, yeah. This guy's great. Well, what is your background?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Well, to be, yeah, I was a strength and conditioning coach, uh, working with elite athletes uh for a very long time. Um, and uh I uh I've always been science-based in my in my in my work and um, you know, found a real niche in the area of muscle physiology and resistance training and the science of it. And so now, you know, PhD researcher uh at the uh University of Calgary, uh work in the faculty of medicine as well, and uh get to spread the knowledge beyond just the research lab to athletes of all types, getting back from injury, performance, and uh health and longevity.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Oh, wow. So I I have some of that. I'm very much into the health and longevity. And then I have me too. I have three boys that are athletes. Two of them have torn their ACLs and meniscus. There you go. So I'd like to you know pull that back a little bit. But so let me throw a couple names your way then, because uh there's a guy that I know that's written a couple books or written a book, got a new book coming out. Um, Brett Bartholomew. You know, Brett?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Are you kidding? Of course. You've been on this podcast. Of course. Brett's uh Brett's a really good friend of mine. Oh, is he really?

SPEAKER_02 2:24

You know he lives here.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

I totally know he lives here. Yep. Oh, I'll send him a picture. Yeah, I've known Brett for a bazillion years. We've done a lot of speaking together, actually around the world. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Portugal, Brazil. Uh yeah, 100%. Yeah, so Brett's a Brett's a good friend. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, I love that guy. Mad respect for him. Oh, yeah. No, I mean Brett Brett's um Brett is a is a super dynamic coach. He's been very influential in the industry, you know, and uh just uh I'm proud to call him a friend. Great guy.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Yeah, uh I used to train with him about 10 years ago at Exos.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Okay, yeah, yeah. So I I know exactly when that was and was around during that time. Uh, you know, Exos was a company that um, again, similar, left a big footprint on the industry and yeah, good, good place to train.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

As a matter of fact, the trainer I was just telling you about, my trainer, he was he got hired from Purdue, recruited out of Purdue to Exos in San Diego.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

You know how that Exos was back in the day. They don't they bring you from nowhere and work your way up. Yes. And teach you their skills.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yep. Very you know, they they're probably the one uh business that I know of that's been able to create um a templated way to train that um is still highly effective, systems-based, right? You know, something that we can you know taught and scaled and reproduced. And uh it's just a real real testament to their uh to their founder, Mark, right? He was uh he was just a great visionary, came in at the came in at a time when you know the industry was uh badly needing that sort of scalability down to the athletes and uh did a phenomenal job.

The Landeskog Comeback Blueprint

SPEAKER_02 4:06

When you say you worked with elite athletes, are they athletes that people most people would know their names and stuff?

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah, you knew absolutely. Uh, you know, I think one of the one of the most recent ones is public knowledge, so I don't have any shame, so to speak, or or privacy issues in in mentioning is uh Gabe Landiscog, captain of the Colorado Avalanche. Oh uh so Gabe was uh uh captain uh for youngest captain in NHL hockey history, but he suffered a really serious knee injury um that uh essentially put him out for three years. And so uh myself and there's other people too were a big part of his rehab and return to return to sports and return to performance. And Gabe chronicled the whole thing, uh, which eventually became like a HBO documentary. Yeah, yeah. What's it called? Uh it's called a clean sheet. And it shows his recovery, the surgery. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it goes, it's really interesting because uh Gabe had uh a cartilage injury that we get in ski racers a lot, and that's actually one of the sports in my past that I worked a lot with. So it's a particular type of uh injury to the knee. Um hockey players don't really get this. Um Gabe got it. Uh it was sat him out, and he uh, you know, essentially was a facing a career-ending injury. And so as the story goes, um, you know, Gabe, I think realizing that this could be the, you know, the end, right? Uh he decided to chronicle it because he said, you know, my his kids were young at the time. And and you know, he's like, My kids may never know who I was or what I did. So I'm gonna document this. And so, right from the day where he comes back out of surgery all the way through the arc, my lab actually, he'd come up to Calgary where I'm based, and he would test in our lab. And so in episode four, there's uh him in our lab and testing, and we're talking about the stuff that we're doing. But it arcs all the way through through to the end. I think it's like the fifth episode. We're in October. He's battling through, you know, um, the start of the season and still question mark whether he's gonna make it back. And then he makes it back for the playoffs, uh, ball arena, Denver, um, in for basically the playoffs. Uh, and he uh, you know, the the the the the vibe in this in this in the arena was unreal, you know, chanting his last name and his his wife's in the corner with their kids, you know, sign saying, Go daddy, we're so proud of you. It was unbelievable. So, you know, the we had a we had a we he had you know kind of brings chills when you think about it. But why I bring this up is because Gabe's story is so compelling and it it can be such a help for athletes. Yeah, anybody going through a battle, you know, whether it's your kids dealing with their knee injuries, um, you know, sometimes you sit there and you think to yourself, uh, I don't think I can do this. And, you know, really at the end of that's where my research lies and it's my expertise. So I I always say I'm I'm honored to be able to help out where I can.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

And uh the gabe story sounds a lot like uh so when my kids got hurt, yeah. I first of all I watched every I I as as big of a guy as I am, I wasn't a sports guy or sports fan. I didn't know anything, but now I have three boys, so yeah growing up, I learned all the baseball players, all the basketball players, football players. So I would watch every documentary I could. And then when they got injured, I started watching recap recovery videos, like you know, Kobe's Kobe Bryant's recovery video. You got it. But then when you brought up hockey, there was one I think it was called Whatever It Takes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um that was Connor McDavid. Yes, McDavid, and that it was a 45-minute one episode documentary, right, which was freaking phenomenal. When I went and you reminded me of what you just said, kind of, because I remember the end was like a Rocky movie. Yeah, he gets back out on the skates with his dad, and he wasn't and he he shattered everything. Yeah, and then his recovery, which I always felt, and it's funny now in the age of peptides now, right? When I go back to then, I always felt that they left something out because that dude recovered so fast. He was doing hyperbaric. Yeah. I remember I think he did 45 days of 90-minute hyperbarics every single day, which I my kids did that too. Um, and then the rehab and all that stuff. And I was like, there has to be something else.

Peptides And The Rehab Big Picture

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Yeah. And now there's peptides. And I wonder if he was doing peptides then or what's your take on the whole peptide thing?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Well, I mean, the first thing is to say that, you know, uh large-scale, you know, peptides uh could very well revolutionize how we, you know, prevent and and treat. Um now the the the future of peptides uh is obviously um we're just in the beginning stages of seeing where this could go. Um what I always say though is that many times things like peptides or any any biologic, any treatment, anything is usually an opportunity to unlock your body to be able to do the work, if you know what I mean. Yeah. And that's the side of uh rebuilding the athlete, the type of training, the load progression, you know, the the peptides or whatever, whatever class you want to say is the thing that opens the body to be able to start the journey. And where I think the real science comes in as well is how we progress that athlete over time. So, you know, for for any NHL hockey player or professional athlete, you know, there's there's really a massive team behind them, an integrated team, right? That's driving the care, driving the conversation. I can tell you with Gabe, you know, there was four or five of us that would be on the call daily, you know, trying to manage the next day. Uh, and so, you know, I think uh it's really about having a holistic integrated approach. How long ago was his injury? When was this? So he he did this, I think it would have been um in like the spring of 2022. Is he still playing?

unknown 9:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Oh wow. He made it back. He they ran the playoffs last year, and Gabe had a phenomenal Colorado, the Avalanche had a phenomenal year this past year. Uh, but um Gabe was Gabe was um um uh I would call, you know, he's he's an unbelievable leader as a person. Um so he led that team towards unbelievable success through this success through the season. Now, granted, they didn't go all the way, but Gabe played great. I mean, he really, you know, but there's but there, these are the things, right? So my job is to apply my knowledge of muscle physiology, strength training, uh, load progression, understanding the you know, the signals, and then being able to design the arc, you know. And for a guy like Gabe, you know, the these conversations, even for an ACL injury, like we know it's not a 12-month conversation. The doc's gonna tell you you can be back nine to 12 months. But what we know is that that performance crust is probably two to three years. So it's it's like it's the as I say, once you're back, that's when a new journey begins. You know, and that's really where you know we can apply, you know, that that level of knowledge to to bridge the gap.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Do you believe in the hyperbaric oxygen therapy and all that?

SPEAKER_01 10:49

You know, it's here's how I look at it is at an individual level, it's a lot of times really hard to know what works and what doesn't work. Uh, it's hard to know what's gonna move the needle for somebody. But what I can tell you is that when the body is inflamed and when the body is caught in a pain cycle, we want to try to do everything we can to break it. And, you know, at the N equal one level, which is kind of where it matters, it's trying to determine what's the right protocol for the right person. So there may be situations where hyperbaric chamber becomes a kind of a core part of what we do, but the fundamental idea that we need to break that cycle, break the pain, break the inflammation so we can get moving again and apply exercise and training, which is really where the real medicine is.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

You know, it's funny because you say you don't know exactly what it is that works. So I had uh so I had my mom and dad both died early, 66 years old. So, and I have three boys, and so I'm like, you know, doing everything I can to be as healthy as I can for them. And I have done so many things. And I just got a full body MRI uh a couple weeks ago and got the results back last week. And it was like fantastic. Now keep in mind, I've had issues, and now it's like I reversed all the my I got an email from my doctor going, This is incredible. It's incredible. You've done this, this, keep doing what you're doing. I'm like, holy crap, I'm doing so, I don't know what it is that worked. Right. So it's like I was doing hyperbaric, I do red light therapy, I do sauna, I do co-plunges, I've had my plasma removed, I've had ozone pumped into me, I've done peptides, yeah, yeah, I've done testosterone, HGH, I've done it all. And I'm like, okay, which I've done, I've gone to Mexico and done stem cells eight times. Okay. So I'm like, so what is it that's working? And my doctor's like, well, stop doing some of them. Like, no way, man. No way, because it's working. I know. Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, in in the the conversation we're having now around longevity, uh, or let's just call it um health span extension. You know, it's not just living longer, you know. I mean, lifespan is. You got it, right? So we we want to try to extend the quality. You want to be able to play with your boys. You want to be able to play with their kids when they have this is what we're looking for. And so I think at the end of the day, we know that it's not about a standard protocol that can be universally applied, like a template. It's kind of figuring out what's right for the individual. And there's only one way to know what works, is you have to be able to be in a in a in a process of assessing, intervening, and reassessing. Because maybe an individual follows the exact same template that you have, and they get down the road for the re-up MRI or whatever, and they're like, you know, we're still not seeing the change. Well, everybody's different. Genetics drive it, right? Genetics drive it, environmental stressors drive it. What you've done for your entire life drives it. I mean, as much as it's the most unsexy thing to say, exercise, sleep, based nutrition, I mean, those are huge rocks.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Right, right. Sleep is so important.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Sleep is so important. Um, so really, you know, people want templates, but you figured out something and a system that's working and you know it's working because your reassessments are showing progression. And so, really, that's where, you know, our our uh focus is. I'll give you an example with Gabe. And again, it's in the it's in the series. So I I can I can sort of speak to it, but it's just an example. Very common treatment for uh MSK pain, PRP. Oh, yeah, I've done that. Yeah, PRP. Tell you what, with Gabe, and this is this will sort of air, when he would get that sort of a treatment, it would cause an inflammatory response and a setback that would be measured in multiple weeks. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

Because that's not normally what you hear with PRP.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

No, right. But we started to learn N equal one, right? Monitoring the things that matter, tracking the things that matter, how to fine-tune to the individual, you know. So I think the message to me, you know, that I always try to share is, you know, we have to be in the business of going where the ball is heading, which is understanding the individual. And that's where things get complex.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

But you still had to try it.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

You have to you've got to try it, and you've got to be in a in a model of assess, intervene, reassess. Because it's that reassessment that lets you know whether you're getting closer to or away from the outcome of interest. And that's, I think, where you know, health span research is definitely heading. Uh, it's where certainly we operate in the world of pro sport, trying to figure out the right treatment for the right person at the right time. And uh ultimately I think that's where we're gonna be.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

I have this friend of mine, he uh tore his meniscus and his uh MCL, his ACL, and um he was gonna have surgery, or he did have surgery last week, but he was trying to get to Canada because they have some sort of gel they put in your knee or something. Have you heard of this thing?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

He was like, it's right now it's in Canada, then it's gonna get approved in Germany and then maybe the United States.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There, there's uh, you know, the world of biologics right now for these sorts of things are like it's a super exciting area of research. Now, you know, to be transparent, it's not my main area of research that I do in my lab. Uh, but we uh, you know, a lot of my colleagues were in this space, and it's highly, it's a highly exciting time because, you know, if you think about a knee injury and you think about meniscus, which is essentially the cushion in your knee, our current treatment is as that thing starts to fray, and just like you get wrinkles. I mean, your meniscus responds almost like your skin with more wrinkles and pieces, right? It starts to fray. Our treatment has been to take it out and you take out the cushion in your knee, and essentially that's the stepping stone towards developing arthritis, right? So the ability now with biologics to start to treat or prolong or extend, that's a big, big area of interest. It's one of the things my lab's very much interested in. We're applying a lot more around resistance training to understand how the exercise component and the training component can help keep musculature strong to offload the joint.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

Is that your expertise in the Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

My expertise, my entire passion in life from the time I've been, you know, uh a preteen was the gym and lifting weights. I was like what I always was driven to try to understand. When I got into school, I was the kid at the front of the classroom in my undergraduate degree asking the profs about how I could learn more about this. But what I found was that you had to look over to at the time, Eastern Europe, Russia, Germany to find really good information about resistance training. It just wasn't super common in North American research back in the 90s.

Why Muscle Power Matters Most

SPEAKER_01 17:33

And so as you start to arc to today, it's literally um had a renaissance in some ways, where uh, you know, in terms of uh health span, in terms of the um relationship between qualities like muscle power, you know, you think of muscle power being something that only the athlete needs at. It's actually an independent predictor of functionality across the age span, even community dwelling older elderly women. So muscle power, this muscle power, is it different than strength? It is, yeah. Because muscle power is the ability to make fast force. So think about what would prevent you from slipping on the ice or slipping on you know your bathtub and kind of regaining. You need quick force, fast force development to sort of like stabilize your system. It's not balance like sitting there with your eyes closed. Right. This is about the ability to uh walk across the street before the hand stops flashing. For you and me, our ceiling for power is so high that we that's not a power task for us. But as we age, the ability that's actually related to power. And for many people, as they get to their 80s and 90s, their power capacity is so low that they can no longer even stand up to get off the toilet.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Does it drop faster after a certain point? It does.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

It does it it drops faster than your strength. So you're gonna lose power twice as fast as your strength as you start to age. And that begins in our 30s to our 40s, where we start now losing about a percent per per year, you know, roughly. And that translates over time as a much more slippery slope, especially as we get into our mid-50s and 60s.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

So, what are some exercises that help you with power as you get older?

SPEAKER_01 19:17

You know, the there's there's a there's a couple of simple things that I can I can uh you know relate uh back to you. I mean, in an athlete setting, you think about doing things like plyos and jumps and medicine ball throws and all these things. As we age, obviously you're probably like, oh, I'm not sure I want to be doing depth jumps off a box. Right, right. Right. Um but things like um uh uh bike sprints, you know, 10 second bike sprints, excellent way to train power because of uh, you know, just the loading and and the obviously the the fact that it's easier on the joints. But strength is good too. Strength is fundamental as well. Strength is fundamental as well. It's a huge, huge uh quality as well that we need to preserve. Um, strength, power, muscle mass. Three interrelated connected things, you know, you don't have one without the other, right? Uh, but independently are laying a foundation for how you're gonna function. And so what I always say is, you know, your muscle, your ability to maintain muscle, your ability to increase your envelope for strength production, and your ability to express force fast are the three main ingredients across uh our lifespan that gives us health span.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Would that also mean uh is it more important than to lift heavy?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Lifting heavy is one of the absolute most important stimuli for our bones, for our tendons, like for tendon health, and uh absolutely exerts uh a very positive effect

Heavy Lifting For Bones And Confidence

SPEAKER_01 20:53

on our muscle. So, some research that we're currently doing in uh uh postmenopausal women, for example. So uh postmenopausal women were talking about that first year. Uh so you're what we call early postmenopause. Uh, we did a nine-month heavy resistance training program was led by a colleague of mine, Lee Gable. Um, these women came in deadlifting, squatting, doing five by five, 85% of their max. Uh massive, massive gains in strength, massive gains in power. And the most important thing is that they prevented bone loss in all the vulnerable bones where women tend to develop fractures over time.

SPEAKER_02 21:34

But were they, if they're postmenopausal, were they then on hormone therapy?

SPEAKER_01 21:38

So in this particular study, we had some women who were on hormone replacement therapy or menopausal uh uh therapy, and we had uh uh women who weren't. So there was a uh at this present uh study that uh that we're gonna do next, we're gonna start to have cohorts who have are getting treated with hormone. And Those who are not. But it's a it's a really I guess I guess my point would be is that uh resistance training is is an absolute essential path. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

I've been doing every like I I do a radio show and I'm up at three o'clock in the morning. Yeah and I usually do about three miles walking on a treadmill and get a little sweaty, and then I do a quick round of weights, not a workout, but like, you know, some bench, some bench, some biceps, uh, some pull downs, and I do a lot of mobility. And then I go to work at five. I'm at work at 5 a.m. And I feel that I I feel after I do weights so much better. Yeah. Right? Like, I mean, let's say I'm lifting at 330 by 345, I feel like a million bucks. Absolutely. Does that coincide with what you're saying? Like, I mean, I Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

I mean, you know, your muscle is this. Um, a lot of people don't realize this, but when you when you expose a muscle to stress, it's releasing all sorts of little uh um sources of communication that go to your pancreas, to your brain, to your skin. Um, it is it's a you know, it's a it's a central tissue for our overall health. I mean, when you're growing up and you're into the gym, you think it's about getting big biceps and big bench, but you don't realize that muscle as we age, it's highly responsive. I mean, even into our 90s, we still retain the ability to increase our strength and power and even our muscle mass, which is sometimes a little bit baffling to people, that you could be in your 90s and you could actually do resistance training, you could actually feel better. You know, and I'm not talking about lifting the blue bands, right, you know, and the and the little blue weights. I'm talking about proper progressive resistance training. So the idea that, you know, what you feel from a workout and you walk out of there and you say, Man, I feel great. This is a this is a universal benefit that, you know, right across the lifespan, we remain the you know, retain the ability to adapt like that. So, you know, it's a thousand percent. It's a great form of training. I, you know, I often talk about my mom who found resistance training late in life in her mid-70s. Um, the COVID scare, you know, was a big thing for her. Uh, watching her friends in long-term care not do so well. Um, spurred her to go to the gym. She canceled her train uh her appointment with her personal trainer five times before she actually went. And I'm not joking you, in her back of her head, they have a water cooler downstairs and they have a jug. It's about probably 40 pounds, and they need to lift it up and put it on top of the water cooler. She needs to be able to carry them from her trunk. She couldn't do that, she didn't have the strength. I go visit her this summer. She's got two water cooler jugs in each hand, walking in, and she's like full of water? Hell yeah. And she's like, How do you like my muscles coming back? And what an unlock. Confidence building, you know, she's kind of that fear of falling's diminished. Right. She's reversed her type 2 diabetes. She's reversed many of the metabolic uh Did you say that's from actually resistance?

SPEAKER_02 24:56

That's from other supplements too.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Uh, you know, primarily diet modification and exercise. Those were the two big sort of lifestyle. It's it's unbelievable. It's really unbelievable. It really does. I mean, it's uh, you know, when you when you when you you know you spoke about your parents and it's you know it's for all of us, right? Like you, you are it's really at the top of mind, you know, wanting them to uh be okay, right? So the fact that your parents who live in a different city are demonstrating more resilience, it's you know, it's uplifting because you know that you know they've got that extra gear. Like they can, you know, they can take care of themselves. They, you know, they've got that uh ability to withstand some of the curveballs that life life throws at you.

Creatine Protein And Aging Better

SPEAKER_02 25:44

What do you think about creatine? You know, creatine is um I hear it's like the most tested supplement in the world in the fancy.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

It is, it is the most researched supplement in the world. Um, it's been around for, you know, I would say popularity-wise for you know, three or four decades, but around for five or six decades. Um, I can tell you that as a former strength and conditioning coach working with athletes, you know, since the early O's, you know, creatine was absolutely on the menu. Mind you, at the time, there was also a lot of um, I would call it uh pushback from, especially from the medical community, yeah, you know, is this really safe? You know, is this gonna damage your kidneys? Is this going to cause um, you know, a problem, you know, other than, you know, you know, improving your performance? And and what we know as we are sitting here now, 30 years later, is not only has it proven itself to be super essential for athletes, but it's actually a really important um uh supplement as we age. So uh is your mom on it? You know what? She gave me a call last week and she said, Hey, honey, can you tell me about creatine?

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Oh, yeah, yeah. Can you tell me about creatine? You know, and she said, you know, I was thinking I I you know I should I should start taking it. And I heard about it, and you know, how much should I take?

SPEAKER_02 27:06

And what'd you tell her?

SPEAKER_01 27:07

You know, I told her I'm I'm sort of that uh uh as I say, uh I'm a I'm a very basic guy. I say my my whole supplement, I call it the three C's, cottage cheese, and creatine. That's the core of what I do, right? I don't supplement much more than that. And so uh coming from that basic approach, am I like, mom, five grams a day, you know, in the morning, be consistent with it for 30 days, take little breaks throughout the year. It's super simple. You know, she was like, Well, should I take 20 grams a day? I'm like, eh, you know what?

SPEAKER_02 27:39

You know why she said 20 grams?

SPEAKER_01 27:40

I do, yeah. Because of Rhonda Patrick. Because of Rhonda Patrick. Right, right, right. Because of Rhonda Patrick. And, you know, I'll be, you know, again, transparently, I haven't dug as a researcher, I haven't dug into it.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

What I'll tell you is, as an athlete or as a strength coach, you know, I've done creatine loading where I've taken 20 grams of creatine for five days, you know, and that was one of the protocols we used to do in very short course order, was to really load up. That was the and then we'd go into what's called a maintenance dose. But what I know to be true is those five days, again, back to the N equal one. Some people would not have the best reaction to that amount of creatine coming in the system. Now, nothing like catastrophic in terms of, you know, diarrhea, probably. Yeah. Some people get GI upset, right? Some people retain a lot of water, some people get really crampy.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

What happened to you?

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Um, you know, I never really noticed anything other than fullness in my muscles, and just like a sense that if I was to go and let's say do a really hard sprint, that my hamstring would go on me. There was just a little bit of sense, yeah, yeah, just because you're the creatine binds with water, comes into the muscle, right? With a little bit extra, so you retain a bit more water, gets brought into the muscle fibers. And so you feel a little fullness, which sometimes can feel like you're just on the verge of a cramp.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

And so you do it with cottage cheese every morning, five.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Well, you know, what's funny is I I mean, I take my creatine. Uh, I I mentioned this to another pro athlete that was in my lab this week and I sort of said it in a joke. He's like, Do you actually mix the creatine with your cottage cheese? I was like, No, I don't mix it. Um, but but the idea of creatine every day, uh, I have that as my morning start, you know, and then just in water? Uh yeah, pound it back with some water and uh empty stomach. I do it with electrolytes. Uh yeah, yeah, it's uh I mean that's perfectly fine. You you know, one of the ways that it can help a little bit is to have it with uh just a touch of something like electrolyte or a little bit of sugar. Uh but I uh I find I'm good with it. You know, if I have it on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, get up, yeah, start my day and um, you know, and then uh yeah, have the cottage cheese later.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

But the Rhonda Patrick thing, so because she said 20 milligrams, and I really like her a lot. So I was like, so the I tried to trick myself. So I would put, I take the biggest scoop ever, so over five milligrams, put it in my electrolytes. Then I'd have someone else, it might have been her, said to put it in your coffee too. So I take another five milligrams a couple hours later, right, a little bit thicker, and put it in my, and then every couple days I try to put a little bit more, a little bit more. So I'm probably at 15, because I heard it's so good for your brain. Yeah. I heard that it's good for your muscles, and then I heard it just helps your brain. And then I heard if you go to 20, it just all these other benefits. But I'm afraid, I'm afraid to go to 20 on purpose.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Yeah, I mean, yeah, transparently, I've seen it. Haven't read it, I haven't read the research deeply, you know, on the brain side in this 20 gram dosage. Um, I think that the 20 gram dosaging protocol has been well established for decades with athletes as a loading phase. Um, you know, creatine, your creatine reservoir, think about it like a reservoir, right? Your body has a reservoir where we are sort of depleted in it, if you want to say. That, you know, talking to some of my friends that are a little bit more in evolutionary biology, the idea maybe is that, you know, whatever, 900,000 years ago you were eating meat, right? Raw meat, and so you're getting lots of natural creatine, and now we cook our meat and we don't get that. So the idea that you top up your stores is really kind of a well-accepted maybe um viewpoint on how creatine improves muscle performance and improves um uh you know uh some aspects around uh, I would call it that anaerobic uh energy expenditure. Um But around the brain, it's an interesting, it's an interesting value proposition.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

Do you tell your mom to eat protein too?

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Yeah, and absolutely. And and one thing that we know is as we age is uh we actually become um less effective at using the protein that we take in. So when we look at this, uh there's been studies out of your uh out of McMaster University by a researcher named Stu Phillips. But what they look at is uh sort of a marker that's telling you how much the protein furnace in the muscle is turned on, if you can imagine. And what they find in, let's say, young adults is you give them 30 grams of protein and it turns the furnace on, you give them 40 grams and the furnace kind of stays where it is, indicating that the furnace is sort of like as hot as hot as it can go. Interesting in older adults, you do the same thing. You give them, let's say, the 20 gram dose and then you bump it to 40, um, they get a book, they get a boost. And so the idea that as we age, that for some reason our ability to use protein is starting to become diminished, has really highlighted a conversation around the importance of protein uh intake for older adults. So it's a it's a fundamental piece, you know, and I, you know, it's a it's a it's a piece that I think we often overlook because so many people emphasize the training piece. You know, you don't make your gains when you're training, you actually make it when you recover, right? So this idea of how do you promote recovery in that 48-hour period after a training uh session is so important. And uh protein supplementation has just got to be a core part of that conversation.

Sauna Cold Plunge And Recovery Timing

SPEAKER_02 32:52

Outside of sleep for recovery, what are some other uh recovery modalities you believe in?

SPEAKER_01 32:58

Cold plunge? Yeah, I mean, you know, I I uh I am a fan of sauna and cold plunge. Um now, cold plunge, interestingly, um, I think there's a this is something we've known uh over the past uh few decades with athletes where we used to be aggressive with cold plunging. This was before it was a thing, by the way. You know, now it's a now it's a thing and it's all a rage. Everybody's trying to, you know, get as cold as they can, as long as they can. But, you know, I would have started to notice this 25 years ago when we were using this systematically with athletes, that some athletes would develop almost like a um uh a stress response to excessive cold plunges. So it works really well at first. They feel awesome. They feel uh sort of uh that parasympathetic drive, right? That relaxation, that recovery from it. Then we started to learn that the excessive amount of cold can actually impair how our muscles repair. Right. I've read that. So that started to become a thing where it's like, oh, so maybe we need to periodize how we recover. Right. Meaning, if you're in a phase where you're trying to build muscle, don't hop in the cold plunge right after your strength session. You've got to time it right. Right. So we started to periodize it. And then we started to realize that people start to build a stress response over time to the high stress of cold. And so there's been new conversations around cold plunging, especially with athletes, where we're a bit more judicious. So it's not like, you know, let's go in for 20 minutes at three degrees and, you know, you know, torch our torch our systems. Much more now, we're having conversations about the right amount of cold exposure. And um, in line with that, I would say is sauna. You know, it's another phenomenal recovery tool. But similarly, it's the right person at the right time. So if you take a person into an extremely hot sauna right before bed, and they get that sort of cortisol spike or that stress response, it can be very disruptive to sleep. So you have to kind of again come back to the right true right modality for the right person at the right time. But coal plunging sauna, the contrast, by the way, that's an old Russian. Um, it's funny, I used to have this article, I still probably have it somewhere in my in my files, but we uh we went and uh, you know, uh in our old library at the university, there was what was called the Soviet sport reviews. So in Soviet Union back in the day, they would be researching recovery modalities. And I remember reading this one article, and this was probably done in the 60s. Uh, one of the recommendations was going for a run in a pine forest. Oh wow. That was one of the recovery modalities recommended in the 1960s by the Russian scientists. But they talked about contrast, so hot, cold combination. And that hot, cold combination where you've got periods of heat, cold alternating, is a phenomenal source of recovery. So that's that's a that's a good way to bring it into practice.

SPEAKER_02 35:45

Did you see that there's a there's two documentaries that you just reminded me of? And actually the director is a guy named Gabe, and I can't remember, it was a hockey one, read something, and it's it's about the hockey team in Russia and how they trained. Did you see that one?

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Uh no, I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

It's it's it just reminds me what they how hardcore they were in their training. Right. Read something. And then the other documentary, and the guy, same guy made it, I think it's called The Greatest. Okay. In search of the greatest. And it it is got Gretzky, right? It's got Muhammad Ali, it's got uh Jerry Rice. It's all what what do all these great athletes have in common?

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

And it's really fascinating. God, God, I wish I had, but anyway, if you get a chance to do that.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah, no, no, I mean, and you know, it's it's just so interesting when we look at the arc of training through the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, by the way, especially when we look back to um uh doping, which was, you know, it's still it's still something that, you know, obviously is at play today, absolutely. But um uh, you know, uh the classic is you'll have um people who maybe go back and revisit pumping iron. Oh, I love that. With our art too. Yeah, so many times. And you know, you watch the volume of training and what they're doing, and and it's natural for you know, uh people who are getting into training to think, well, that's how I should train. And then you realize, like, man, why am I not recovering from this? And you're like, oh, right, you know, I'm not on a stack of stuff, right? So I think, you know, really today the the evolution in in how we train athletes and how we're progressing them and monitoring recovery and making sure that we're getting to the edge, but not over the edge.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Well, that's the thing we see when you bring up steroids. I I used to think about how some would go, yeah, well, I'd be like that too if I took steroids. No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't. You have to work really, really hard to be as big and as cut as those guys. There's a lot of hard work.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, there's another, you know, uh place where uh the recovery that you get is the primary benefit of taking anabolic steroids. It's the ability to recover, which means you have more room to push. Right. So you don't work less.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

That's why I like Mike Israkel. You've seen that. Do you know the freaking love? We've DM'd each other a few times. Yeah, he said he'd be on this podcast. Yeah, he's but he's all hey, but he's pro steroid, he takes it. He's very he's very so smart.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

He's very transparent, and I think he understands training. Yeah. So I think that's one of the the the hard parts with you know, with people who are in that space is um some people can be uh disguising a relatively low sophistication on their ability to design training by you know compensating obviously with with anabolics and these sorts of things. But you know, when you get somebody who understands training fundamentally and obviously understands the world of anabolics, it's really helpful because it helps to kind of like it puts a spotlight on where energy needs to go.

GLP Ones Need Training Guardrails

SPEAKER_01 38:41

I mean, I always come back to the fundamentals, things like GLP one, right? I mean, GLP1s are all the rage, but nobody gets counseled on the fact that it's not a it's not a free ticket. You actually have to train more on a GLP one to maintain your muscle. You have to eat more protein, you have to consciously train even more than you would if you weren't on it.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

But because we're in the Or you get Ozempic face, or you get that weird look. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

You you you know, you run the risk of of of lots of things that we don't fully understand.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

Are you a fan of the GLPs?

SPEAKER_01 39:14

I think the GLP ones will be a they already have been a major game changer in a lot of different uh uh societal problems.

SPEAKER_02 39:24

Are you dialed into the other ones like Reta?

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Yeah, I mean, you know, we're you know, we're uh from what I've seen with Red A True Tide, the the the obviously the triple action uh effect and uh what that potentially stands to mean for you know weight loss um and obviously sustained weight loss, I think it's very impressive. Um and I think that, you know, where if there's any place that I have concern at the present time, and you gotta you gotta sort of always say you have to, you have to write talk about the right person at the right time, the right context. You know, if you're somebody who's severely obese, um, you know, this is potentially a gateway to, you know, uh reducing your risk for all kinds of things. Right. Right. If you're talking about somebody who just wants to look good and they're taking it and not being counseled on how to train and exercise and eat, um, it can be a real disservice. And it's not to me that GLP ones are bad. It's just means that the whole package has to be there. Yeah, for sure. I think so. I think you're gonna have, and until until um until the tide of the uh buzz around it subsides and we see what it really is, we're kind of seeing that now, right? Where you start to see all the movie stars where you're like, what's going on there? Right. But the conversation now is servicing more and more people are becoming aware, like, shoot, if I'm gonna be on GOP1, and especially to look better, I'm gonna have to have some conversations with a trainer about how to train and what to eat and what to do, because that's a big part of the puzzle.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Are you a guy that takes multivitamins and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_01 41:00

You know, I'm a sporadic uh taker of of uh of vitamins, uh, and based on what time of year and what I have going on. Really? Um, so multivitamin is a foundation, 100%. So I take a multivitamin uh as a kind of a core. Any brand? Uh I go, I'm quite fortunate to have uh uh access to pure encapsulation. Yeah, yeah. So that's who I started getting all my stuff from. Yeah, they're great. I like that brand. Yeah, they're they're amazing. I mean, I'm not I'm not trying to endorse any anything, but you don't have to, but you simply need to be. I don't have any uh personal uh affiliation other than the fact that uh other stuff is good, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:38

They've got great stuff. Yeah, I get what about creating I get momentous creatine.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

Yep, yep. Momentous creatine. Yeah, that's it's a good one. I mean, creatine is a little bit, you know, for me, it's a little, right? Like it's a simple, and and no matter what research you read, a simple creatine monohydrate, right? It's a good old tripod. Third party tested. Yeah, just just that your your third party tested is great.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

Yeah, I think what about energy drinks? Do you like it? And I bring it up because there's one energy drink I've heard about, and I I drink it every while someone, I freaking love it, is Gorilla Mind. Okay, because have you heard of that dude? That's the dude from More Plates. What's his name? Oh, is that uh he has a podcast? Sean Ryan. No, no, that's not. If I heard his name, I always know his name. More plate Derek. Derek something. Okay. But he created this brand called Gorilla Mind. They have all kinds of stuff, and they're in I heard the energy drinks have the best of everything you put in it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Okay, so I think, you know, it again, transparently, when I when I thought of energy drink, because I've got three boys. Oh, I thought of my 19-year-old son coming home, you know, with some s you know, thousand milligrams of caffeine and you know, oh yeah, five tablespoons of sugar, you know, and I'm like, geez, you know. How old are your boys? Uh 19, 11, and 8.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Oh, I my youngest just turned 20. Okay, 20, 22, and 24.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

Oh, right on. Yeah. So my oldest is uh same as have they had any injuries? Um, you know, the the older boy uh is uh his name's Kieran. Kieran's uh played baseball in high school. Um, you know, the typical stuff broke a collarbone, you know, uh rolled the ankle, but nothing single, no, no ACL injuries.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

We've had two ACL injuries, two of my kids, my my middle and my youngest. And uh, and in fact, I was gonna ask you to tell you this because I know you say it's individual, but I would tell you, um, my middle son, Torres ACL and meniscus, had to have surgery, right? And it was and they did the patella, the patella deal. Um, and the recovery was just brutal. But he he made it. Youngest one, same thing, uh, Torres Meniscus, ACL, then Torres Meniscus again, had the surgery, and then I took him to Mexico with me, and we got stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells. Yeah, 250 million of them on an IV drip for him. And he didn't want to have surgery again. That he was 16. Now he's 20, and he has it's healed. We've got MRI. Unbelievable. It's crazy, right? Unbelievable. Yeah. But then when my middle son he hurt his leg again, he didn't tear it, he hurt it, and he was really scared. I said, Take it to Mexico. Took it to Mexico and they injected his knee with stem cells. 100%. He's 100% now. Yeah. Like that stuff to me. I was telling you about my friend that was going to go to Canada to get the gel. Yeah. He tore his meniscus, his ACL, his PCL, and he he took the stem cells, um, and his ACL healed, but the other two didn't. So, like, there's something there with that.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Yeah, there, there is. I mean, we're, you know, we're in an arc uh in in in sort of the that space where I think over the next decade and a half we're gonna really start to understand much, much more. Uh, you know, I was uh I was sort of joking with uh an orthopedic surgeon friend of mine, um, watching uh show 1883. I don't know if you've seen that one.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you watching it right now? Because it's I just I just rapped. Yeah. Oh, it's so sad.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

The ending.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

That's the one of the ending, it's horribly sad, right?

SPEAKER_01 44:49

Horribly sad. Yeah, I got through the whole thing and I said to my wife, I'm like, you gotta watch this because you're gonna love it. Like it's you know, anyway. But you know, you look at the medicine medicine, the way they represented in 1883, you know, it's like the the country doctor comes over and gives you a bottle whiskey and straps you down on the table and treats you for, you know, I think the guy has some sort of brain aneurysm or something. I don't know if you remember that scene, gets uh gets his craniotomy and they take out the the the blood or the subdural hematoma or whatever it was that was going on. And uh, you know, it just looks so archaic. And, you know, it's it's interesting where we sit today and and you uh, you know, I've I've had the opportunity over um the course, of course, my career. I spent hours and hours and hours in the operating three operating theater with surgeons and watching them do their work. And it's very interesting to think about, you know, the one constant being is that what we know to be true today is probably gonna be completely proven to be not wrong, but well, there'll be better advancement advances. That's my friend with his knee.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

He's like, I'm gonna get this thing done because I'm that one doctor suggested knee replacement. He goes, in five years, they might have something totally different where I don't have to have my knee replaced. Yeah, yeah. So he doesn't want to do it. But hey, because of 1883, though, have you are you I'm a big fan of Tyler Sheridan or Taylor Sheridan, whatever. Have you seen Landman?

SPEAKER_01 46:06

I you know what, I just started that one. I just start, I just started it, you know. I just I just kicked it off.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

Uh remind me because Sam Elliott or yeah, Sam Elliott is in that show, and he's he comes in Landman season two.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got through 1883 then I did 1923.

SPEAKER_02 46:20

1983 is great too.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

So good. Yeah, I power watched those, but have you watched Lioness yet? I I am I am currently uh start I've through episode one of the new season three the new season three.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Oh I I I'm up to date. I think that show is so freaking good.

SPEAKER_01 46:35

I've got that downloaded on my trip here, yeah, because it's it's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

That dude is so good. Like used to man, I'd like that dude is fit too. Have you seen him? He's he's a beast. I'd love to interview that guy in this routine.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, you know, I think it's uh it's a you know, kind of full circle. It's the the non-negotiable is always going to be like you want to talk about the one universal truth, you know, exercise, nutrition, sleep as your foundation, but they are, you know, they are uh so hard for so many people to do behavior change, all the things that come around it. Um, obviously the advancements that we see in medicine, you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

So you couldn't go do these three things. Like you wouldn't give us some advice right now. Do the outside of sleep and eating right and exercise. Are there three other things you would recommend someone to do? No matter what, do these things.

SPEAKER_01 47:26

Yeah, I mean, I think uh three things. Um, because I think exercise is too general for me. You've got to move weight.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

Have you ever been to a gym and you see someone doing something wrong?

SPEAKER_01 47:37

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Yeah. Is there is there an exercise a lot of people do that's wrong? Is there one general one?

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Leg press.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

Leg press.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Yeah, I mean, I I tend to note that people who get into squatting have uh somehow found enough videos online to understand what a good squat looks like. But I I I shudder when I see these young 16 to 20 year old kids on a leg press loaded up with nine plates aside, crater down into like a full posterior pelvic tilt with all that compression coming through their spine and just grinding up through their lumbar spine with this like flexion compression mechanism. It's a sure way to to to you know to push your your discs to the wrong in the wrong direction.

SPEAKER_02 48:23

Can one time doing that ruin you for a long time?

SPEAKER_01 48:26

If you did or yeah, I think if you, you know, there's nothing worse than herniating a disc. And uh, you know, I I I'm a I'm a prof at the university and and so I teach, right? My my one of my classes I teach is a uh course looking at the neuromuscular adaptations to resistance training. We look at it from the standpoints of aging and health and performance. And I'll tell you, I do one lecture on lower back injuries, and there are always those 20-something young kids that who put up the hand and say, Hey, hey Doc, can I come talk to you after class? And they're like, man, I blew my back up. You know, and it's been like nine months, and I'm struggling, and what can I do? And uh, how'd you do it? Oh, bad form in the gym, you know, lifting too much, and just like you said, getting into the wrong position. And so, really, it's preventable, right? So I think it's one of those exercises, and why I bring up the leg presses, it's one of those leg presses or what one of those exercises that you probably don't need to be coached on it. Like you can just go put the plates on, set up your thing and put a 45 on the start doing this, you know, and you can cheat and you can compromise because you can't really feel that lumbopelvic position. Um, so it's one of those weird.

SPEAKER_02 49:38

Is it the most dangerous one?

SPEAKER_01 49:39

Well, I mean, uh, if you do leg pressing properly.

SPEAKER_02 49:43

But if you do you're but you're saying people put too much weight on it, that's why it's dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 49:47

Uh what I see people doing is they don't realize that even a leg press requires good form and technique.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:53

Even a leg press requires good control of your, you know, lumbopelvic position. Uh, even a leg press requires progression.

SPEAKER_02 50:00

What about you're not at a gym? Are there exercises you recommend people to do?

SPEAKER_01 50:04

Um, you know, I think there's a um uh a good uh a good basis for um, you know, uh uphill walking, treadmill walking. I think that's a good foundation for a lot of people. And I bring that up because uphill walking, treadmill walking, being sort of in that uh it's accessible to almost everybody. Uh you probably feel those benefits when you get up and you the the benefits you get from low-end zone two aerobic work is really different than the high intensity stuff. A lot of times people don't know how to go easy, but it is actually a really valuable tool. Um, I think that some amount of focus around mobility as we age for sure, super essential. Um, so I would broadly say mobility that helps to get that mid-back moving and hips moving, fundamental way to unlock your movement potential. We tend to get really restricted to our mid back and our hips. That's what puts a lot of load through the spine. Would that be the world's greatest stretch? It's a great exercise. It's a great example. Yeah, yeah. There's lots of examples. 99s, 9090s, uh hanging variations. Oh, yeah, they hang. Yeah, I mean you try to hang.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

But I can't go very long. I mean, I could, but I wouldn't always in a hurry.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

I think that's a that's a that's such a not just hang, dead hang. You got a dead hang, dead hang with some rotations, right? I think it's a it's a great everyday.

SPEAKER_02 51:24

It's a good time to do like is it a minute, 30 seconds, or just anything?

SPEAKER_01 51:28

You know, I I try to think about it from what I'm doing to my tissues. And if you want to get fascia to stretch, so fascias think about it as like the gift wrapping around all your muscles, right? It's all the all the saran wrap. Yeah. Um, you know, it's uh one of the really interesting things. I'll I'll I'll circle back here in a second. Uh when I was in grad studies, I would always do the preparation of the cadavers for our uh anatomy class. So you'd get a cadaver in there and we'd have to take the skin off and the fat off and start to expose the muscles because that's how the students would come in and learn. And you know, you take the fat off, take the, you know, kind of get down below, and you start to realize the fascial layers in the in the body. So the muscle's not just sitting there, it's it's it's like wrapped up in all of this connective tissue. And the fascial system is something that we're always trying to bring more movement and life to. Um, so when you're hanging, what fascia doesn't like is a really sharp aggressive stretch, you know. So you see people in the gym where they're like, uh, you know, forcing in, you have to kind of like put the tension on and then hold and breathe. The tension on, hold and breathe is what fascia really likes. So I always say, you know, obviously you're limited potentially by your grip strength, you know, hanging, but if you can get there for about a minute to 90 seconds, wow, you know, um, and even if you're, you know, even if you're able to, you know, sort of reposition a little bit to give your grip a little bit of a break, it's a phenomenal way.

SPEAKER_02 52:47

Do you stretch every morning?

SPEAKER_01 52:48

Uh I don't stretch every morning, but I do know I don't do it every morning. I've I find uh for me, mobility work uh is best suited typically sort of more towards end of day.

SPEAKER_02 52:59

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 53:00

So yeah, how how I normally do it is um my end of day routine after I get the kids to bed, the little ones, um, is I fire up the sauna. I have a sauna in my backyard, a wood-burning sauna. So I get out, get the sauna going. The sauna, because it's a wood-burning uh sauna, it takes about 35 minutes to heat. I spend that 35 minutes typically on the treadmill uphill walking, you know, disconnected, just like what level incline? Uh typically 10 degrees. For how long? Um 30 minutes. And yeah, and about maybe three miles per hour or something like that, 3.4, something that's you know, kind of a brisk walk. I go in the house, get into the sauna, and I my sauna comes to temp. And uh temp? Uh I get the thing hot. So uh it's wood burning, which means I can get this thing supercharged. And so, I mean, I don't know what my uh my my Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion is gonna be here, but I get it up to about 110 Celsius, which is about 240 Fahrenheit. Holy smokes. Yep, yep. So it's it's hot. Whole yeah, yeah, it's really, really hot. And that's why I'm so glad I got the wood burning sauna over the uh electric.

unknown 54:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 54:06

Um, so I get the thing super, super hot. But what that allows me to do is do all my mobility work in the sauna in the sauna. Oh wow. Yeah. So I do all my mobility work. What are you in the sauna for? Um, well, you know, if I'm being gentle on myself, and let's say I'm sitting more around 90 Celsius, which may be a little bit more tolerable. Um, I can usually stay in there for a good 15-minute block, cool off back in for another 15. So for a total of about, yeah, 20 to 30 minutes. But if I'm up at 110, I can usually get in there for about five or 10 minutes. I have to cool off, and then I can come back in and spend about another five or 10 minutes. You do this every day? Um, I'm probably doing it three to four days a week. And then you'll go to bed within a half hour. Uh, I cool off. Uh, so you know, in the wintertime it's nice in Canada. I roll around in the snow. Right. Right. Um, but uh I cool off in the summers, obviously bring my core temperature down, rehydrate, come in. I need about probably 30 to 40 minutes of cooling before I actually get into bed. I go into bed hot, I don't sleep. Right. Yeah, same. Yeah. So I bring my temperature down, uh, cool off, usually uh, you know, sit underneath the stars for a little bit, listen to the fire crack and the sauna is a great way to sort of start that process, rehydrate.

SPEAKER_02 55:14

How many hours of sleep will you get?

SPEAKER_01 55:16

Um, I'm usually in bed by 10 to 10:30 and uh usually getting up around six to seven. So, you know, just uh Do you monitor your sleep and all that?

SPEAKER_02 55:24

I don't, I don't. Do you what do you think about all these wearables and all that?

Wearables HRV And Zone Two Fixes

SPEAKER_01 55:27

You know, what's so funny of I spent an entire career monitoring athletes. I mean, I'm telling you, like I've had athletes uh working with, you know, for example, being the ski team or you know, NHL hockey players or what have you. And, you know, we've got the aura. We've got this really cool sensor system that's called Plantiga. It's a little IMU sensor that goes in the shoe of uh of uh whatever footwear, skate up, sneaker or whatever, monitors your movement patterns just like an aura ring. So think about uh plantiga is the aura ring of movement patterns. We use it for how we do all of our rehabs. You know, it's how we yeah, we monitor every step, your gate, your movement patterns. So we're triangulating your sleep, your resting heart rate, HRV, uh, your training, and your movement. And so I spent an entire career synthesizing this for other people and helping them make better decisions. But I firmly believe you leave it to me. You don't worry about your stuff. I'm your coach. It will come into your program because I don't want them fixated on it.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

But you'll pull the data off their foot. I pull it off their foot. So you'll know their HRV off their foot?

SPEAKER_01 56:35

No, no, because we get access to their aura ring data, for example. So we'll get their aura from so eight heart, you know, sleep and and heart rate are coming from aura.

SPEAKER_02 56:42

Okay. Movements coming from the insole. But are they in the aura all day or just when it goes to the street? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

Typically all day. Well, I mean, the the um the primary place we're using it is uh bedtime. Right. Okay. Yeah. So uh, but the circle back on this is we're uh we call it orthometria, but it's this idea that we're in a society now where people are so obsessed with monitoring themselves and you become you become fixated on it. Yeah, that's me. Yeah. So I I've kind of detached from that personally. I think that um, you know, I I try to monitor by how I feel, and uh, you know, it's uh it's how I'm um how I'm sometimes it dictates how you feel. Sometimes it dictates, you know. I'll tell you a funny story. I used to work with the Olympic speed skating team in in Canada, and I can remember back in the day, we this was right when uh these uh sensor systems were starting to become available so an athlete could see them. Prior to this, they would record on a heart rate monitor and we would do the analysis, they would never see their data. And so I can remember sitting there at a World Cup event and we were there with a speed skater who was sitting there with his head down, and I said, What's what's going on? He's like, Wow, I looked at my HRV, it's it's plummeted. I mean, I'm I'm I can't race today. You know, you could see his psychology completely defeated. Right. You know, I was like, dude, you're fine. Get up and race, you're good. You know, that's that's the problem, right? So we we over-index on the self-monitoring, it starts to dictate how you feel. I think that can be a real problem. Yeah, and so I'm a big believer in trying to create patterns and trends. I think the uh biannual assessments, so I try to get in every six months to get blood work done. Uh, try to obviously get um, you know, where I can, good sort of objective data about the base health markers of what's happening. Um, you know, I think an aura ring can be super valuable, especially if you're going in through times of stress where you want to catch when you're sort of starting to become a little afraid, right? You know, I think that can be very useful.

SPEAKER_02 58:41

Well, for the so the aura ring, I will wear it to go to sleep. I wear it every night. Yep. I wear this all day. Yeah, right. And then I have the sleep eight mattress that monitors my sleep. Yeah, right. Yeah. And I just posted this the other day on my social media. I got so pissed off. They all three gave me different readings. I know. And I was like, how, how is this possible? Why? I think maybe twice in two years or three years of doing this has they all matched up. I know. And it's just so frustrating. And then my HRV, I mean, I'm a guy that's been getting up at three o'clock in the morning for 30 years. So I'm hoping that's why my HRV sucks. Right, right. But I don't know how to get my HRV to be to go up. Is that more rest?

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Uh, well, you know, to be to be direct. So the first thing is um, you know, having tested thousands of athletes, I mean, I've been using HRV for 25, 30 years on athletes. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you right now that people set points for what's normal for you. Um, there is just no way to say that there's a specific range. I've had, so I don't know if you look at those. Uh, one of the values we use from our HRV is a value called RMSSD. And so it's uh I'll I'll keep it simple. Most people sit between maybe 70 and 90, right? That's like kind of separate.

SPEAKER_02 59:48

That's incredible compared to me.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

Well, I've had elite athletes, like really high-level young, healthy elite athletes that have been as low as 10 to 15. Yeah, that's my that's my age. And I've had them as high as 120 to 130 as a normal separate.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

It's just different for everybody. And we your whole vibe is it's different for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:08

You got it. And and you know, honestly, with I'm thinking about this uh this one athlete where it was sort of like that 10 to 15 range. Uh-huh. You know, we we were we were sh surprised. Like that's not on that's not common, but we worked, we that individual got saw a cardiologist, they got worked up, they evaluated everything else, and was like, just kind of where he sits. Now, with that said, uh, I've also worked with people in our demographic who have started to notice HRV being low relatively speaking or changing over time. And one of the most potent ways we've been able to increase that is through the low-end aerobic work, the zone two work. So, especially stuff that gets you in the pool.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Uh, one of the things I love too, uh, this is another one that's kind of another hack, um, deep water plunging. Like, so if you're in a deep water, a deep end of a pool and you're able to submerge yourself down, you get the hydrostatic pressure of the water, the water pushes on your system and forces all the fluids back to your heart and your lungs. Um, it can be a really way to a powerful way to drive parasymthetic activity. So it's one um one tool along with aerobic work that can help drive somebody who's got a base, uh, kind of a low level of HRV, uh, can help drive it upwards.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:19

So you go to how deep?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:21

Um, you know, a typical pool may maybe is like eight to ten feet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

And try to stay down as long as you can.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:25

Yeah, you stay down there for a couple big breaths. Yeah, I kind of think about, I call it depth plunges. So drive down, sit on the bottom of the floor for, you know, uh, you know, five to, you know, don't sit so long that you can't regain your breath, but maybe it's five seconds, ten seconds, bring yourself back up big breath, back down.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:42

What about bringing a kettlebell down there and holding it? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:45

Or you grab like a little pool, uh like the pool black blocks.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

You you're you're giving me something now that I'm going to become obsessed with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:51

Give it a shot. See what it does.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

I do everything every day. Like now I'm going to try to hold my breath underwater. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:57

Now, to be really specific, you don't need to, let's say, hold it's not the the stimulus isn't the breath holding. Uh-huh. The stimulus is the pressure of the water. So you're better off to be in there, let's say, and do, I'm going to give you an example. Let's say your limit for holding your breath is 50 seconds. You're better off to hold your breath down there for 10 or 15 seconds and come up and do it multiple times. Okay. So you can get a total accumulation of, let's say, a few minutes. Is it similar to a hyperbaric chamber? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think I think it might be.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

But they get hyperbaric chambers very expensive and two hours.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

Uh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

I mean, it's it's but you've seen HRVs get better from doing that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

Yeah, well, cool. Water emergency, what it does. I mean, it's in a lot of times people will do this uh, you know, for uh uh um uh the parasympathetic drive that you get from being in water. Um, you know, and again, it's not to just make sure making sure that you know, uh I'm clear about this. It's not being down there for two minutes. It's actually just having the pressure the water. So I what I do with an athlete is if you know, let's say illustrative example, I know you can hold your breath for 50 seconds. Um, we'll do a 10 second, you know, plunge back up, breath, plunge, 10 seconds, back up, plunge. Reminder, you're trying to keep the stress low. So you're not bringing yourself to stress state. So you're not coming up going, no, no, no, no. You gotta get in a rhythm of it. Okay. Gotta then you gotta let the water do its work. How many for a minute, two minutes? Yeah, we usually might do something like what's one whole set. We might do um 10 to 20 reps and do it twice, three times, no, total with a couple minutes rest in between.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:38

That's my thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:38

Yeah, yeah. It's uh, you know, so I a common one I used to do for athletes who were rehabbing is um we would do aerobic-based work in the pool. You know, and a lot of people are crappy swimmers, but you know, you do some uh aerobic work where you can stay sort of low intensity combined with the the depth water, you know, the deep water uh, you know, plunge, which is it's really, really uh prophylactic. I mean, they get out, they feel good. That would be our Wednesday recovery day.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:05

Oh, yeah, you know, I remember that extra it's Wednesday's recovery day.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:08

Wednesday's recovery day. Yeah, you got your build in the week, right? To down to your Wednesday recovery regen day. Uh great way. And so, you know, again, from the standpoint of an equal one, I've seen that be a big driver of helping increase an individual's HRV. Uh, but don't overstress about it. I mean, that's that's why I always say it's like you're, you know, you could have somebody sitting at 130, you could have them low as low as 10. Most people are 60 to 90, you know, and and and really what it's about doing is trying to find what your change is and what your signal is. And uh I think that's one of those things that you know it's probably why it's good to have a coach.

VO2 Max Longevity Testing Cascade Health

SPEAKER_02 1:04:42

My current obsession actually is VO2 Max.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

Right on.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:45

Right. So I got it tested a couple years ago and I was at a 36. And I was like, oh, I gotta, and then I got it tested again after exercising a lot, and it was at a 36. So I was like, I'm gonna work on this. So I got it in a matter of months to a 41. Right on. Okay. So I went on vacation, but I still exercised your vacation. I saw it drop to 39, 38, 37. I got back, and and and then it's been a back to 36. And then today, today it's a 35. And I'm like, what gifts? Unless this is what's monitored. I did it the right the first time. The first time, you know what I mean? I did the whole thing, the whole whatever thing. Yeah, yeah. But now I'm going by because it matched the whoop.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:28

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:28

And I'm hoping that the whoop was just wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:31

You are probably uh, you know, as I say, level of confidence, you know. I would, I would, uh, I would trust uh, I would trust your trust your original test, you know. Yeah, no, I should go.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

My doctor, uh, my doctor has uh is putting the um the uh the uh my guy, the VO2 max machine in her office now. Okay, right on. So I want to get it tested versus just looking at this thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

Yeah, I mean that's you know, in in our space where you know obviously longevity. Space is a brand new area of opportunity. It's a brand new area of opportunity for us in the Phoenix area as well. So we're actually opening a little thing in Scottsdale. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:09

That's the reason you're here, right? You're running that joint already.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:12

Well, you know, it's been a phenomenal, phenomenal journey because uh, you know, here I am, a muscle physiology resistance training guy in Calgary, working with athletes and helping them with knee injuries. And uh, you know, our research starts to point to the benefits of using this to improve people's lifespan. And lo and behold, we get to make the connection points for uh a longevity-based clinic. Are you moving here? Uh, we're like me personally, I won't personally be moving here, but uh, you know, I am on sabbatical next year for a full year, so I plan to be down quite a bit. Um, but the idea of being able to have VO2 max, muscle power, we call them functional longevity diagnostics, but they're all the things that predict your lifespan.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:52

Yeah, no, I saw the building you're going into. It's freaking phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:55

Pairing it with some imaging, pairing it with our ability to look at blood biome, like a really nice panel, yeah, genetics.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:00

Wait, well you say you're on sabbatical. I mean, you can just you're you're a professor at the University of Calgary. You can just leave for a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:05

We we have every five years the ability to go on research scholarship leave. So if we're doing work that's related to our research program, which this very much is, because I we're trying to understand my research is trying to understand the early signal for power loss in middle-aged individuals. So we can find people who are losing quick, quicker than they should, and be able to intervene and and and combat that through exercise.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:27

So you're leaving for a year to work on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

You got it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:30

Maybe some of that here.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:31

Exactly. Yep. Some of the work that we're doing here with Dr. Simon and Simon Med and being able to curate a better understanding of how our musculature changes, you know, like which muscle groups decrease the most in relation to our power and our strength. There's a lot of unanswered unanswered questions. So the ability to sort of, you know, do this in conjunction is a cool opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

Is the are you at the is at the University of Calgary? University of Calgary. Is that is that does that mean is it Jordan Peterson part of that?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:55

Ah, you he was at the University of Toronto. Oh yeah, he lives here too. Yeah, I know he's definitely. I thought you know that guy. Oh, I know. He, you know, I've never I've never met him, but uh obviously he he raised uh how much that surfaces now, but Jordan Peterson took a real stand at the University of Toronto, uh a controversial stand against his use of language in the classroom. And uh specifically he was asked to um use language that obviously um he felt strongly about. So he took a very, I will call it personal value-based philosophical stand, which is primarily in Canada, what caused all the media there to sort of bring attention to it, right? Was was this was this debate, societal debate. Uh, but um, you know, looking at his arc through being able to take a crisis, uh I'm sure personally I again, I don't know the details, I don't know him personally, I don't know what the whole um uh in-depth scenario would have been, but I would just imagine that personally it must have been a hell of a crisis, you know, where you're like, oh my god, I I've now I've locked my feet in on something. And to see how an individual battles through crisis and comes out on the other side and reinvents themselves. I'm always I'm always amazed by that.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:09

Yeah, he's still melts on it. His daughter lives here too, and she has a huge following too. Yeah, yeah. Hey man, well, thanks for coming on my podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:16

Are you kidding? This has been a great opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:18

And and your nuke, the clinic that's opening up. What's the name of it?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:22

Uh, so we're Cascade Health.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:24

Cascade Health.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:24

Yeah, and we're we're in part partnership with uh Simon Med.

unknown 1:09:28

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

And so I just got my whole uh body scan.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

You got it, yeah. So, you know, our our value prop's gonna be pretty pretty straightforward. You come in for imaging and then we lot unlock opportunities to better understand your health. Yeah, it's fantastic. Being able to, you know, move into and and again individualized.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:43

So now that I'm going through Simon Med to get full body, so eventually you'll look at my rep my you'll look at my full body. You'll be are you part of it now?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:50

Yeah, yeah. We will. I mean, the way the the angle that I take on it is we have a really cool technology that lets us look at all your muscle and tendon health.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

So this is something that with MRI imaging now has become much, much more accessible where we can actually see the muscle and the tendon.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:06

So yeah, we'll we'll be working on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:08

Hey, wait, I gotta tell you a quick story.

The Whoop Wrist Pain Twist

SPEAKER_02 1:10:10

So I've been wearing the whoop for I'm gonna say three years now. Okay, and I'll say the last year and a half, my wrist has been starting to hurt. And I thought, I mean, it's starting to hurt a lot. And I thought I'm I'm my form is wrong, or I've I've done something wrong and injured my wrist. Um, to the point where like I even at night, like I'd wake up, it was my wrist hurt. Right. Like I would sleep with a weighted blanket, and I'd when I moved the blanket, ah, my wrist hurt. And I finally it was getting worse. I was doing bench press in the morning, I do bench, and I thought maybe it was the bar, you know. Like so I started doing just dumbbells, and it would still hurt. I do push-ups in the morning, and it would hurt. It got so bad last night that when I went to the doctor's office today, I went to the PT person. I said the PT person, I go, Can you look at my wrist? Can you examine my wrist? So she's she goes, Take off your whoop. And as I'm getting ready to take off my whoop, a trainer walks by and goes, I bet it's your whoop. I'm like, no way. I take off my whoop. It's my whoop, and now it's on this arm. You can see the marking for my whoop. This wrist doesn't hurt at all anymore. It was freaking killing me. Wow. And I don't know what that is, if that's uh carpal tunnel, if that's whatever, but it was like it was a big problem for like a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:19

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

And in one day, it's been I just moved over here and I'm fine. Unreal. Yeah, Google that, check that out. I'm gonna do it. This is another research idea. Look at it up on the sabbatical. I'm gonna put it on my research list. Anyway, thanks for being my podcast, brother. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show.