I welcome my old friend, and longtime audio mentor Brock Armstrong, host of the Get Fit Guy podcast and co-creator of an innovative weight loss coaching course at weighless.life.
Brock, the pride of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, has had a wild ride through life as a former professional ballet dancer turned heavy smoking band roadie, turned extreme endurance athlete, and recently has modified his approach to fitness to emphasize general fitness, functionality, and longevity. He is an enlightened dude who reports walking over to the gym for a planned session of heavy lifting, and then following an urge to bail on the gym and instead taking a 7-kilometer walk. Ever do anything similar? Why or why not? This podcast will get you pondering the deeper questions of life, health, fitness, and getting over yourself en route to ambitious peak performance goals.
Ah, the beauty of podcasts where you get real insights and authentic conversation that extend far off the pages of a book or a magazine article.ย We attempt to steer the discussion to the interests of endurance athletes at times, for the show was syndicated for the Primal Blueprint endurance podcast. But hang on for a wild ride, because we take you where health and fitness podcasts have never gone before with no punches pulled. We ask you to ponder the elephant in the room question: Should you keep pursuing your competitive athletic goals? What about your career? Do you have an exit strategy? Are your identity and self-esteem intertwined with what you do?
We get super deep talking about thoughts and energy fields influencing cellular function, how an intuitive approach to training trumps biohacking and biotechnology (or at least enhances the effectiveness of tech tracking), how fat loss is best achieved through mindset instead of calorie burning and calorie counting, and how to make recovery the central element of your fitness pursuits, and how an energizing morning routine (check on my morning routine video on YouTube and you can also see my step-by-step breakdown of cold therapy here) will help you build focus and discipline in all areas of life, and much more. Enjoy listening to wild times with my man Brock!
TIMESTAMPS:
Brock discusses his professional ballet career and why ballet can be considered an endurance sport [7:45].
The importance of having an exit strategy for anything in life [15:00].
Brad shares a story about the origins of the ancient Olympics [20:50].
Athletes are finding that sleep is almost half of their training [25:55].
The knowledge you gain through tracking biometrics is beneficial and empowering [28:30].
Sometimes (healthy) vanity can be a good measurement of fitness [41:00].
The importance of getting over yourself and going with the flow (whether youโre an athlete or not) [45:00].
The purpose of Brockโs Weighless program being a 1 year-long commitment [52:00].
Why Brad started fasting in the mornings again [55:45].
โActive couch potato syndromeโ and what the endurance community needs to watch out for [1:01:30].
Should you really load up on calories post-workout? [1:10:45].
LINKS:
- BradBeat
- Brad Kearns Chest Freezer Cold Therapy
- Brad Kearns Morning Routine
- Brock Armstrong
- Get Fit Guy Podcast
- Weighless Coaching Program
- Whoop
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad: 00:00:00 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author and athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high-stress, modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balance that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.
Brad: 00:04:04 Oh, I’m pleased to introduce my main man, Brock Armstrong, long time co worker on the primal scene. He was the guy who mastered our podcast for many years and did so for many other prominent shows in the ancestral health space. So what a great role for him to be on the ground floor of all this incredible content coming out from, uh, places like Ben Greenfield show, Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof show. And meanwhile, slowly but surely Brock Armstrong’s knowledge base and perspective and experience built and built until he becomes one of the greatest guys to talk to and get deep into the philosophical aspects of pursuing your fitness goals while you balance health with your fitness ambitions. Very difficult thing to do. So this show kind of winds through various different topics. Uh, Brock has an interesting uh, fat reduction program going where they’re going away from the mechanics, the logistics and trying to get into the mindset aspects that cause a lot of people to uh, get stuck and fall off track when they’re trying to drop excess body fat. So I think you’re really going to enjoy this guy. He has a really interesting background. He used to be a professional ballet dancer. He was a roadie for a rock band, so he was living the less than optimum healthy lifestyle for many years. And then coming full circle to getting deep into the endurance scene and the ultra endurance scene. So lots of perspective, lots of interesting commentary as we wind through our conversation coming to you from beautiful Vancouver, Canada, Brock’s home. Meanwhile, I’m down here in Lake Tahoe, so we hit it up over Skype. Enjoy.
Brad: 00:05:51 It’s the Brock Armstrong show, one of our favorite, one of our most prolific guests. I don’t know how many times you’ve been on this primal blueprint podcast mans
Brock: 00:06:03 so many times it’s off awesome. But it hasn’t been a while to be honest.
Brad: 00:06:08 Um, so first things first. Um, do I have my, my a game going cause you are, you are a former sound engineer and go to resource for all things audio. I’ve carefully orchestrated my studio to give the best quality sound, the best equipment. Of course you’re bringing your a game. I can see you on the Skype video with the, the latest greatest technology. I’m aspiring to assure
Brock: 00:06:31 SM seven B right here, the broadcast broadcasters’ microphone of choice.
Brad: 00:06:38 Upgrade, baby upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. Okay. So, uh, the, the, um, my, uh, my enjoyment of speaking with Brock, everyone is that we get to cover a variety of disparate topics that all contribute to peak performance. But, uh, you and I both have been on this journey where we, uh, we’re deep into the endurance training scene or the athletic training scene and realizing that, uh, it’s not the end all that you can compromise your health and pursuit of fitness and, uh, you know, need to think critically and expand our horizons, try new things. Uh, just in case listeners aren’t familiar, I want to get a brief overview of how you kind of transitioned from, uh, you know, ballet to endurance and then being to strong guy in the gym and like where things are now with your, your fitness pursuits and some of the, the latest insights you’ve had.
Brock: 00:07:32 Yeah, sure. I mean, at the boat, the time that Brad was on the, the professional triathletes circuit, I was on the professional ballet circuit doing, um, really what could be very much considered endurance sports. Like we get out there and we’d get like the 15 to 20 minute break at intermission. But other than that, it’s two hours or more of go go, go lifting women over your head, running about kicking your legs around, jumping real high, all that stuff. So it’s a, it has been a lifelong endeavor. This endurance sports in quotation marks, in air quotes. I’m air quoting away here. Um, so yeah, I think when, when were you on the circuit? It was like 80
Brad: 00:08:17 I have no recollection of that. I’m sorry. It was so long ago. It was 86 to 94. Oh, here it is written on my wall. Yeah. And it’s, I don’t think anyone fully appreciates if they’re out, unless they’re in the performing arts. Just what a, a grueling and demanding, uh, you know, pursuit. This is, I’m good friends with Dave Koz the jazz saxophonist who tours around the world and is, you know, one of the leading, uh, uh, you know, sax players and you watch him on stage rocking out for two hours straight and dude is a fitness specimen. He’s just blowing that horn and dancing around and Oh my gosh, a ballet performance or you know, you, you see the, the people are rushing to switch clothes backstage and breathing hard and swigging some water. It’s kind of like a, you know, MMA or something.
Brock: 00:09:11 It is, that’s a interesting comparison. But it kinda is, the wrestling is a little more, um, perhaps a little more choreographed. Maybe not. I’m not sure about if how much of MMA lines up with the old, um, uh, what was that? What was the wrestling called back in the day of the WWF, the Felix stampede wrestling and stuff. Yeah. I don’t think the MMA is quite as choreographed, but um, but yeah, I it really like I was in a band for a number of years after I left the ballet and I played accordion and just putting a fricking accordion on like weighed 27 pounds I think. So I had 27 pounds strapped to my chest and then like dancing and running around the stage often balancing a beer on top of the accordion as well.
Brad: 00:09:55 Um, that was your signature move there. The beer on top?
Brock: 00:09:58 It was, it was, it was awesome. I could actually like take sips if the beer was full enough, I could take sips by just like leaning back. But um, yeah that’s, that’s a whole other life lifetime. But definitely this contributed to this lifelong endurance, well, Lifelong to a certain point. Cause as you, as you were asking earlier, I did in the last couple of years, I’ve transitioned away from the iron man and the, even the Olympic distance, I did one Olympic distance triathlon last year and that was, it did a couple of 10 Ks and really have moved away from the endurance type stuff. And I’m concentrating much more on strength, agility, mobility and that type of thing. And sure, that probably has something to do with the fact that I’m sneaking up on 50, I’m turning 48 this year. So it’s a, I’m starting to move into that part of my life where really considering things like bone density and strength and mobility and not having any of those limitations. But I also, it’s a real mindset thing. Like I just have lost interest in doing anything for too long at a time. It’s just, and, and it’s something that I kind of fought for a while too. It’s like, come on, you’re an endurance guy. What’s going on? Like you can run for more than 20 minutes, but I just don’t want to.
Brad: 00:11:17 Yeah. I mean, uh, I’m, I’m realizing just how huge of a factor the brain is when you talk about any athletic goals but especially endurance. And I feel like if you have that passion and that desire to, uh, sign up for iron distance race or a marathon or an ultra and you’re training, training, training, but you’re, you’re, you know, you’re, you’re so driven by this, um, this finish line, you’re going to get two thirds of the way there just from the will of the mind. And if you lose even the tiniest fraction of that all mentality, um, the whole sport becomes a struggle. And I experienced that at the end of my career where, um, I remember, you know, this was my final race, Brock, as a Wildflower Triathlon, famous a half Ironman race in California and I was in second place, cam white off was off the front.
Brad: 00:12:09 He won the race many times. I was in second place for 69 miles of the 70 mile, 70.3. And then you go down a steep downhill and you finish. And some dude who was never in my sight. I look back, you know, over and over some someone was out of sight, which means what a third of a mile behind me at the knees. And all of a sudden I heard these footsteps and this guy was sprinting full speed down a steep Hill, just hammering his quads in the name of claiming second place instead of third. And I saw him come in and I’m like, he was a young kid, I’d never heard of them. And I’m like, you go, you go homie, go for it. And I didn’t give him a smack on the ass. I mean as to really go man. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I did not give chase, uh, for the first time in my life, uh, as, as a competitor in either running or triathlon.
Brad: 00:12:57 And you know, that was the moment when I crossed that finish line through my bloody shoes in the garbage can and I was done. I know it just happened in a snap cause you know, um, that what is, would have that reactive mode in your brain. Uh, something was, you know, something was off for me and it was like, God dang it. Well, who is this guy? And I’m not going downhill that steep. Uh, but I, that’s a, that’s a, an analogy for, you know, a professional athlete, you know, being all in or not. But I think even for the casual competitor, if life’s getting too stressful or something’s feeling kind of off base or uncomfortable about your training patterns, it’s really something to pay attention to instead of just keep your head down and go, go, go. Because you already paid the $84 to sign up for the ultra two, two months from now.
Brock: 00:13:42 Or because you’re quote unquote a runner like Brock Armstrong, lay it down. I mean, I was going to interrupt you when you said that. Like when you said you tried to force through it because you have your, a lot of your identity wrapped up in your scene. And I remember, uh, you know, deciding to retire and talking with my favorite training partner at the time, Don Weaver, uh, the late Don Weaver, one of the legends of Northern Cal triathlon. And I said, yeah, I’m done. I’m just not feeling it anymore. And he goes, Oh, no, you don’t understand. You can’t quit Brad because your identity is wrapped up in the sport. It’s who you are. And so I like stood up in the kitchen. I remember the conversation. I’m like, you know, I’ll show you I’m quitting this mofo because I want to prove to you that I’m more of a person than just this triathlete guy. It was kind of like a defiant stance that kind of spurred me to do what I needed to do. Um, I don’t think this is the greatest conversation thread for, uh, a fervent endurance podcast listener, but we have to be real here. And you know, we got to put the, uh, the, the elephant in the corner, bring it to the center of the room and say, Hey, what’s your, what’s your purpose? How’s it going? How’s the alignment with you know, your values? And your happiness and all that.
Brock: 00:14:56 Yeah, I mean the, we’re certainly not encouraging anybody or trying to tell anybody they’re wrong for wanting to do that stuff. There is a point though, like you said, that it doesn’t align with your lifestyle. It doesn’t align with or there might be, there doesn’t have to be. This isn’t like isn’t, isn’t inevitable for everybody who does these kinds of things. But you know, everything I look at these days, this is sort of my new approach to, to coaching and to my own life is there needs to be the possibility of an exit strategy. Maybe whether you’re taking on a new diet, a new law, there needs to be a way for you to stop doing that particular thing at some point without your entire identity. Health, um, weight loss, that’s a huge one for a lot of people. They start doing marathons because they want to lose weight and then they can’t stop doing marathons because that’s the only way that they’re managing their weight. Well, that’s not like where’s your exit strategy there? And I think this whole conversation that we’re having is, has to do with that as well. Just making sure that at some point you can pivot to a new interest, to a new alignment, to just a new philosophy without sacrificing your happiness, your health, your wellbeing, your longevity, all of that stuff. And both of you and I have both done, done a few pivots over the last number of years and, and I think both of us have done okay with managing our, our abilities. But it does take some forethought and it definitely takes some flexibility as well.
Brad: 00:16:35 Yeah. Same with anything where, um, you want to be open to new ideas to think, think critically and escape from that terrible danger of forming a fixed and rigid beliefs where you, you brush off things that might be good for you. It might be a nurturing to your, um, your, your life experience. And I was just thinking about this the other day, cause, um, uh, you know, this carnivore diet thing, Brock, I, I’ll ask you what you think about it, but to me it’s an extremely compelling story and the case is made so wonderfully. I just had Paul Saladino on my Get Over Yourself podcast and the guy has an answer for everything. It’s very thoughtful and reasonable. He brings in, you know, the counterpoint and he says, I’m always trying to look over my shoulder at the counterpoint so I don’t sound like a dummy.
Brad: 00:17:23 And here’s the argument. And when it’s laid out, you’re like, dang, this stuff makes sense. But you know, the starting point was, gee, that’s so ridiculous. These people are going to drop dead of a heart attack. You know, people are so rigid. And then, you know, into the, uh, endurance training and, and varying your, your competitive schedule to, uh, try for, you know, uh, obstacle course racing instead of triathlons and in particular calendar year. You know, these things are possibly wonderful growth experiences. But, uh, we see a lot of narrowness. Uh, as we get more, you know, clicky and deeper immersed with our personality, inextricable from, uh, the, you know, our position on the, uh, the, the Tuesday night running club or whatever.
Brock: 00:18:09 Well, the thing that I find really hilarious about anybody who argues for one particular diet or one particular exercise or one particular anything is looking at the history of humans and not even the history. Just looking at humans in general right now, we’ve got humans in the coldest regions of the world. We have humans in the hottest regions of the world. We have humans that live mostly off of whale blubber. We have humans that live mostly off of beautiful mangoes and fruits and things that grow in tropical areas. We have become the apex predator on this planet, not through our inability to, to be diverse and live places and eat different diets and, and vary our lifestyles. We’ve become the apex predator and the, the dominant species on this planet because we are so flexible, we are able to not just survive but flourish in many different ways with many different diets, with many different climates and customs and religious beliefs.
Brock: 00:19:11 And skin colors and foot sizes and everything. It’s really, it’s such a, a narrow-minded way to, to think of us humans that are really quite spectacular species and our ability to to be so varied and, and flourish so well in so many different ways. To think of that in this blink of an eye that we’ve been on this planet like the, let’s say the last 10,000 years, like 10,000 years in the, in the life of the universe is like a second. It’s, it’s really a second in the, in the evolutionary history of, of the everything that there is, how can we possibly have the hubris to think that we know exactly what you should be doing or exactly how the universe was created or exactly how the body works when we have only been here for an instant. Like it’s when you sort of put it in, in a context like that, everything that we believe to be true can just sort of be, you just shake your head and think, well, I mean we all we can do is our best guess and what happens to fit us now because the, the universe is so unknown and so, so vast that we’re, we’re kidding ourselves if we think that this religion is right or this diet is perfect or that’s the only exercise program, it’s so much more complicated and yet so much more simple than that.
Brad: 00:20:37 far out, man.
Brock: 00:20:39 We’re getting deep on the pod. I’m going to do what I was exploding brains out here.
Brad: 00:20:45 A related point to, uh, you know, blip of time on the planet. It just occurred to me, it was a fascinating insight that I learned from a college class on the ancient Greek Olympics taught by one of the world’s leading authorities, Dr. David Young at UC Santa Barbara years ago. And he advanced this incredible argument where, you know, he explained the ancient Olympics ran for around a thousand years, 800 to a thousand years. I got an a in the class when, I’m sorry, I don’t have the exact thing on my mind 30 years later, but you know, this thing became a centerpiece of Greek ancient society, right? It was every four years and the very best athletes competed for their village and the winners prize, when you won the ancient Olympics, you got the, um, uh, the wreath on your head. And you also got massive amounts of olive oil, which you can then export and make a fortune.
Brad: 00:21:36 So the champion athletes of ancient times were among the richest people in society. They had lives that they lived like Kings, they had servants, they had, uh, you know, the, the, the, the females feeding them grapes in their mouth and rubbing, rubbing them in the massage, uh, you know, thing and that the, the, the bass. And they had excellent, you know, physical care and in tremendous preparation for, you know, the featured events in the Olympics. So the professor said, you know, 800 years is a long ass time to compete in something. And he, uh, speculated that these guys got pretty darn good. To the extent that their performances back when these naked dudes running around the ancient Hippodrome in Greece uh, could stack up reasonably well, uh, with today’s athletic specimens. And it’s such a ridiculous notion to think these, these old timers were, you know, drop in a, um, you know, a 19 point something in the 200 meters and we have to adjust for all the technology and the increased global population.
Brad: 00:22:35 But you know, when you, when you have that long of a run, some good things are gonna happen. You’re gonna, you’re gonna find some amazing specimens and turn into good performances. But I guess to your point, like we’ve been at this for such a short amount of time and in the ancestral health movement, it really took off, you know, 10 years ago, I guess you could give credit to Boyd Eaton and Warren Cordain coming up with the papers and the books around the, the, uh, the 2000 mark. Uh, but that’s a pretty short time to reflect, reflect on, you know, this grain-based diet that had, had a run of 10,000 years since Egypt started growing wheat was a disaster for human health. And so, you know, we’ve made leaps and bounds progress, but we better remain open minded at this point to someone stepping up and saying, Hey, check out this carnivore diet thing. It’s kinda crazy. But, Oh boy. Uh, you know, there’s a lot of, uh, there’s a lot of breakthroughs ahead to same with athletic training where, you know, whatever we’re doing now, I feel like I’m rambling here, but this is a big one I want to hit you with too. And I feel like the performance breakthroughs in endurance sports in the future, in the next 20, 30 years or whatever, if we’re going to see world records broken, I feel like it’s going to be this extreme fluctuation of stress and rest unlike anything we see today. So we’re going to have the leading marathoner trying to get under two hours and they’re going to run, you know, there are 140 mile week or whatever they’re doing or they’re going to run 75 miles in three days and then they’re going to go get induced into a, a, a diabetic coma and assault tank for the next 48 hours and then they’re going to wake up and they’re going to jog for two or three days and stretch and do something and then they’re going to go blast and all out marathon training session and they’re going to progress in this stair-step manner.
Brad: 00:24:24 That’s nothing. I think we’re too afraid to do it now. That’s kind of my speculation is like what’s this obsession with weekly mileage and all this nonstop application of stress when there might be a whole nother portal to access for peak performance.
Brock: 00:24:38 Yeah. I’ve been thinking about this a lot too and I don’t, I don’t know about the diabetic coma being going into but, but definitely some sort of increased, and I hate to, I hate using the word biohack cause it’s just one of those words that’s been really overused. And I think most of us think of it as being a way to cheat or something. So in a think of it in another way, but some sort of way to enhance the, the recovery because we know that sleep is where the magic really happens. So how can we make, how can we make that sleep even more meaningful? And maybe that’s not in duration. Maybe that’s just in, in, I don’t know, sleeping at different altitude, something we haven’t quite discovered yet or somebody who’s working on the fringes of science or whatever. But yeah, I think you’re right.
Brock: 00:25:28 I think we were starting to see more and more that athletes like Roger Federer is owning up to the fact that if he doesn’t get 11 or 12 hours of sleep every day, something’s wrong.
Brad: 00:25:39 Serious.
Brock: 00:25:40 He actually,
Brad: 00:25:42 beautiful.
Brock: 00:25:42 saying that who did us that if he doesn’t, um, he doesn’t get a good night’s sleep. It’s the difference between a 30 point and a 15 point night. And um, there’s all kinds of athletes that are actually admitting this now that the, that sleep is like half of their training to a certain extent. And, and I actually quote you in a upcoming get fit guy episode. Actually by the time this podcast comes out, it’ll be an older get fit guy episode where you said during your professional triathlete career, you were asleep half of the half of your life. And so I think the, the knowledge and we’ve, we have acknowledged that that is a significant factor. Now we just need to figure out how to, how to change the, the climate and also figure out how to maximize that in a, whether it’s a diabetic coma or whether it’s some sort of hyperbaric chamber you’re sleeping in. Maybe Michael Jackson had it right with his, was it a crystal hyperbaric chamber or something he slept in?
Brock: 00:26:47 And who knows. But it’s a, it’s an interesting point. And, and it’s something that we haven’t really examined in the last, I don’t know, 30 or 40 years. It’s just been more and more and more specific training, specific training. How can we train harder? How can we train more instead of how can we recover harder? How can we recover more?
Brad: 00:27:06 That’s right. I mean, go get a stack of magazines from 1980 to today and compile the topics of all the articles and they’re probably 90%, uh, training load strategies and then the lip service. It’s such a ridiculous, you know, the lip service paid to recovery is, is just that, Oh, it’s an important to recover too. And Oh, here’s some great intervals you can try. And it’s now cool to see like recoveries coming to the forefront with Kelly Starrett at Brian McKinsey, Joel Jamieson, Craig marker. These leading a fitness authorities are putting recovery as the central, uh, you know, the hub of the wheel. And then, Oh yeah, so there’s training out here. You’ve got to do some workouts. Here’s your diet, here’s your, uh, rehabilitative flexibility mobility stuff. And that’s a huge breakthrough that, boy, I wish, you know, had I known this stuff or had a heightened awareness of this stuff when I was an athlete, it would’ve been, um, you know, transformative because we were constantly battling up against a brick wall of excessive stress and we didn’t, you know, we didn’t know any better, but you had to just keep, keep your toe right on that red line of about to fall apart at all times because you were training so hard.
Brock: 00:28:16 Yeah. Have you seen, there’s a new device called the WHOOP, the W. H. O. O. P.? I have one and I, I tried it out for a month or so. It actually, you wear it 24 hours a day. It tracks your sleep, it tracks your exercise, it tracks your heart rate, your skin temperature, your um, what else? Your HRV, just like tons of different biometrics and then it gives you a recovery score every day based on how much you slept, how much deep sleep you got, how much exercise and stuff you, you got the day before, what your HRV was while you were asleep. I think does it a minute the it uses the HRV score from a minute before you woke up. So it’s actually measuring like, cause you know we can manipulate the hell out of our HRV. This is one of the, one of the things that I’ve been sort of um, talking about for awhile, but I finally have some real evidence that I, if you sit down and concentrate on it, I can, I can make my HRV like shoot up into the hundreds or I can make it like bottom out into the, into the forties depending on how I’m breathing. I actually started, I sneezed and then started choking while I was doing my HRV the other day and I got a 160.
Brad: 00:29:28 160 what? HRV score?
Brock: 00:29:30 Yeah, 160 milliseconds or MS. yeah, the ms R squared thing. My doodle thing. But yeah, like a score that I’ve never, like I usually if I get to like close to a hundred I’m like really excited. But by sneezing and then choking it made my heart do some crazy beats obviously because I’m breathing funny and it went into a real fight or flight sort of situation. And, and so my HRV reading at that moment was through the roof. So I took that knowledge and I’ve started changing my, my breathing during that minute and realizing that I can actually like score a lot high higher if I change my breathing pattern during it and stuff. So, so the idea of, of measuring, as soon as you wake up or before you do anything is still like that’s still the best time. But this WHOOP thing takes it even a step further and does it while you’re still asleep. Like just before it. It’s measuring it the whole time, but then it grabs that score that goes back in time. Like your, it realizes you’re awake, goes back a minute, uses that HRV as your, as your recovery score, which who knows, we may find that that’s not optimal, but theoretically that seems like a pretty good idea.
Brock: 00:30:44 But in any case, the whole idea of this WHOOP device is exactly what, what you were talking about being able to apply that idea of are you getting enough rest by tracking all of those biometrics and feeding it into a machine and whether they’ve gotten it right or not, it’s really cool that there are like this is got to have like millions of dollars of investment at this point into this device. So some people are taking it seriously enough that they’re developing this kind of stuff. So I see this, this idea is just going to pick up more and more steam. I think over the next 10 years, hopefully less.
Brad: 00:31:19 Wow. Um, you know, I’ve recently become a re-devoted to HRV monitoring. I did it for three years straight. Uh, and then I sort of kind of got away with it because, um, I thought that my, uh, to quote Kelly Starrett desire to train was much more indicative and, uh, a better metric. In other words, just the subjective thing. And some of the HRV scores kind of fooled me where I’d have a high score, but I kind of feel trapped and so it didn’t align with my workout decisions. I overrided my, my numbers. Uh, but then, uh, Joel Jamieson explained something to me that was a really enlightening, that helped me realize just how valuable they, the HRV score is. And he said, when you get an abnormally high score, that could be an indication that the parasympathetic function is, you know, dominating because you trust yourself so much.
Brad: 00:32:17 You’ve, you’ve had such a stressful period of time that you’re fighting really hard to recover. So we’ve always been told like, the higher the better. If you have a high HRV score, that means you’re rested and ready to train. And that’s not always necessarily true. So this baseline, this is establishment of a normal range of values. Uh, that’s to, to, to set up and then when you see, uh, anomalies, like low, of course, means you’re in a um, uh, a sympathetic dominant, uh, repetitive metronomic heartbeat, a sign of overstress but also too high is an indication that you still need to rest to bring it back to normal. That was a, that was kind of a mind blowing one.
Brock: 00:32:58 Yeah, there are certainly, there are a lot more caveats to the, to the HRV, um, factor then than I think we were aware of previously. And, and that’s great that we’re starting to realize that because it’s kind of like everything, when we discovered cholesterol for example, it was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. We can measure cholesterol, we can save lives with this. This is amazing. Nobody is going to have cardiovascular disease. Nobody’s going to have heart attacks or strokes anymore. We know what cholesterol is. Well, that didn’t pan out over time we started to realize that it has more to do with lipid density and the size of those lipids and Oh yeah. Then there’s this whole inflammation factor and now it’s like, Oh my God, we can’t measure inflammation. This is amazing. Nobody’s going to have cardiovascular disease anymore. Nobody’s going to have already attacks and strokes.
Brock: 00:33:44 I’m sure that’s going to have the same thing and HRV is is no different. I think we, I think the original discovery for HRV was based on premature babies like they actually were using it to measure the health of babies who are born like severely prematurely. That was the first application of it. Then it started to branch out. It’s probably like 20 years of nothing going on. Then it started to be applied to this idea of recovery or our nervous system health and we can only grow our knowledge from there. This is, we’re at a at a magical time where things are actually, my speaking of cholesterol like that was back in the fifties I think maybe the 30s that cholesterol was discovered, so things were moving a little slower back then. I think now it’s, instead of being like 30 years, it’s going to be three years or four years to to really find and fine tune those things. So, so I think the, uh, the fact that you’re, you’ve got the Brad beat, is that what it’s,
Brad: 00:34:42 it’s called Oh, product POG. This episode is sponsored by the Brad Beat HRV. Yeah, no, you,
Brock: 00:34:48 that was organic
Brad: 00:34:50 Sweetwater health, uh, designed this for me. They, they’re the technology people and it was pretty fun to like get an app on the app store. You have to go through like FBI and level background checks so they don’t have any sleazy apps on there. So yeah, bits up there, the Brad beat and you have to get the Bluetooth a wireless strap. But I think, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s good to stay connected and have some, have some values in there to go back and look at patterns, I think.
Brock: 00:35:17 Exactly. Yeah. That wasn’t what I was going to say was the more people who are using things like the Brad Beat and the Sweetwater and and even the, I’ve got an Apple watch and it does it and the WHOOP and stuff. The more data that we collect and the more that really smart people can pour over that data, the quicker we’re going to get to the point where we can really start to use numbers properly. It’s kind of like genetic testing like back 10 years ago it was so expensive to when or yeah, I guess 10 or15 years ago is so expensive to get your, your genes tested that nobody did it. Now the price has come down to the point where there’s like squads of the population that have now had these genetic tests and so our understanding of which genes are actually meaningful and how they interact with the other ones is growing.
New Speaker: 00:36:02 exponentially and we’re actually starting to to have some meaningful data beyond just, you probably have blue eyes and blonde hair and runny earwax.
Brock: 00:36:13 Like now we fly to things like I, I had my, I ran my raw data through a thing called fitness genes not that long ago and I found out that I have the gene that correlates to a slower ability to flush lactate, which totally makes sense, which means that I’m taking longer rest breaks when I go to the gym and I do some heavy lifting. I used to be one of those guys that kind of laughed at the, everybody who was sitting around playing on their phone in between sets. I was like back and forth doing like, I’m not doing crashing yourself. Like what? Sit around at the gym. That’s for chumps now I’m totally like the guy who was walking around the gym. I’m not sitting around playing on my phone, but I am taking longer rest breaks because my genes are actually like telling me that, but when I first got my tests back in, whenever that was 2012 from 23 and me, it told me that my ancestors were from Eastern Europe supervised. That’s how I seek Ukrainian. That’s that. I knew that, but now it’s like getting a lot more meaningful. And I think the same thing is going to happen with HRV and all those other things that we’re, now that we’ve got more people adopting it, we can actually start to make some real meaningful, um, realizations around it.
Brad: 00:37:26 Yeah, I mean, back, back then I thought I only had two kids and now with all this genetic testing, like, you know, people are calling me every week. I got kids everywhere, man joke. People joke this joke, I make joke for Brock, but when I took my, uh, DNA fit test, uh, this profound revelation came that, um, I was 54%, 56% strength, power, muscle composition and only 40, uh, 48%, sorry, 56 and 44. I was predominantly interesting math. Yeah. And so, you know, I was a, um, a lifelong endurance athlete, right. And so I was literally out there, um, fighting against my genetic makeup to achieve the training patterns of my peers on the pro circuit who were very likely, uh, predominantly endurance people because of the preselectivity to excel at. And during sports. And so, um, had I known that I could have just like you say, you didn’t want to be that guy that’s fighting against your genes. If you have slow lactate clearance, you’ve got to honor that and design the workouts accordingly. So I would have taken more rest time and had more confidence taking that rest time rather than that insecurity feeling where, you know, I’d have to call up Sisson, my coach at the time and say, ah, you know, I’m only riding my bicycle, you know, 150 miles a week. Everyone else is doing 300. And he’d say, it’s okay. It’s okay. Just kick their ass on that one day a week when you go long and go hard. And that’s your measurement point, not the volume and the, the day in day out because there’s so many genetic variables there and a boy, you know, having this, having this data to empower you to go make the good decisions.
Brad: 00:39:14 Uh, and in my. case, you know, toning down now, no, no more jokes, uh, you know, to make those good decisions. Boy, that’s, that’s fun. Now I want to ask you like the, uh, the wrap up question of this section. It was like, you’re, you’re on the forefront of technology. People are sending you shit all the time to try out, probably.
Brock: 00:39:32 got a JOOVV in the mail yesterday.
Brad: 00:39:34 Oh, I want one of those. Uh, but where, where does that, um, you know, where do you value that, uh, desire to train element in the mix with all the tech?
Brock: 00:39:47 You know, I um, I’ve come full circle on the, on the tech, uh, as some.
Brad: 00:39:54 Oh, you have the full circle app.? That one’s really cool.
Brock: 00:39:56 Yeah, it’s amazing.
Brad: 00:39:58 It’s really come full circle. Sorry guys.
Brock: 00:40:01 You know, being a, being a child of the 80s and, and coming through all that time of the no pain, no gain and, and stuff. And then working with people like Ben Greenfield and Dave Asprey and, and I actually spent a lot of time at the biohacking lab on Vancouver Island. I went whole hog into all the technology and devices and stuff. And I’ve basically come out the other end with a really healthy respect for the fact that hard work, well and not necessarily hard work. Smart work is going to get you the majority of the way there. It’s only once you’ve gotten to that point that any of that technology will really make a meaningful difference. Like sure, you can use it and sure it can, it can aid and some of them are a lot more meaningful than others, that’s for sure. But in the end, none of them are. If you’re sitting on the couch eating Bon Bons, do you guys call them bond bonds in America? I always say those exist now you say SA [inaudible] if you’re sitting on the, on your derrire eating Bon Bons and then shining a jubilate at your knee or your face or whatever balls, whatever. You’re sure. Actually, yeah, I guess that’s one of the uses. Isn’t that just testosterone?
Brad: 00:41:21 Yeah. I have the handheld, uh, pulse of derm red light therapy and um, it’s helps with cellular rejuvenation. So that’s one of the applications is right down the pants. Fun stuff. Another, another biohack tip from the experts here.
Brock: 00:41:36 But in any case, that was sort of my, my takeaway is really like when people started looking at me and asking me like, Oh man, you look really good. What are you doing? It wasn’t when I was spending time in the cryotherapy tank and going in the sea back in the infrared sauna, it was when I started hitting the gym just three times a week and lifting heavy, doing a five by five kind of protocol. That’s when people start going to do, you’re looking really good and not that it’s all about that vanity thing, but I think that’s a good measurement to use sometimes when people actually start to notice that you’re looking more fit or have a glow about you or whatever you want to call it. I think, um, in my experience anyway, that was what made the bigger difference than all the devices.
Brad: 00:42:23 Yeah. Man. That uh, that positive energy emanating is a real thing. And so when you have, for example, um, you know, productive training environments and supportive training partners, um, it, you know, it changes the whole experience. And this has now been proven to be so on a cellular level. So when you walk into a party and it seems dull and drab, um, it’s because you’re, you’re, you know, getting that vibe from, uh, a Dolan drag party. And if you walk into a room, you know, shining with brightness and enthusiasm and glowing because you are living a healthy fit lifestyle, you’re going to give that gift of, of energy through the airwaves and into the cells of the other people’s body. This is from a reading biology of belief by Bruce Lipton and also Deepak Chopra’s, uh, great works like Ageless Body, Timeless Mind where we’re just literally swirling masses of atoms that we have.
Brad: 00:43:18 Uh, yours is called Brock Armstrong. Mine’s called Brad Kearns. Uh, but when you realize the importance of just your energetic state, your vibrational state on the day, and how that, you know, can, can overlay all this, uh, high tech and this structured, organized life that we live. Um, I, you know, I, I realize even back when I was an athlete that if I was happy in general, everyday life, I would make good training decisions. I would have more energy to train, I would enjoy it further. And I would have this ideal competitive mindset where where I wasn’t so stuck on myself and I wasn’t that, you know, that dour serious, intense competitor that we’ve been programmed to think is useful. Instead, I might’ve been the, the happy silly guy waking up in the morning and making jokes and hiding someone’s a transition towel for a few minutes to get them stressed and then return it to them with a signed MOUs, Sharpie pen in the corner.
Brad: 00:44:13 And just funny stuff like that. But that was my ideal competitive disposition cause I was in the moment enjoying everything and ready to turn on the engine and, and race to the death if, if, if need be. Uh, but you know, coming from the happiness point, instead of coming from this serious driven type A type of mindset that we’ve been programmed to think is the secret to success, we’ve got to start, you know, dispelling these, um, these, these flawed notions and loosen up a little bit. That’s why I called my podcast, get over yourself is that that was the number one thing I had to learn as an athlete, as a serious athlete who was racing for the mortgage payment and the grocery payment and all those things. They, the more I could, you know, relax and just, you know, go with the flow and compete with releasing my attachment of my self esteem to the outcome. That was the ideal competitive disposition
Brock: 00:45:05 and the ideal noncompetitive disposition to [inaudible]. It’s the, it’s the ideal disposition to approach life. And to your point of, of the way that, um, you show up in the world, there’ve been all kinds of studies to bring this back to the HRV, that groups of people when they’re, when they’re exposed to each other, the HRV sinks up. But when we ride a horse, for example, the, the rider and the horses, HRV syncope, like there’s, there’s a lot more to our presence and our company and, and our effect on each other than just what we say to each other and how we look at each other and what outfit we’re wearing and stuff. There are things that we don’t understand at this point, but we have evidence that they happen. And, and I think that’s, it’s an amazing thing and it’s definitely something we shouldn’t discount. Like you just know sometimes that you like somebody as soon as you meet them. And I, that has a lot more to do with that weird feeling that you get rather than how they’re, what their business card says or how nice their tie is or whatever. It’s like it’s in a.
Brad: 00:46:12 Welcome to the dating show with Brock Armstrong.. But I mean, we, we have a, you know, like the book blink had some interesting insights and going with your gut feelings and how important those are and how valid and relevant they are when we’re trying to get everything down on paper. Um, there’s a, you know, there’s another, um, there’s another level of kind of awareness that’s hard to quantify, but it’s, it’s super powerful. And I, I guess trying to take the conversation back to an athlete and getting some valuable training insights, um, when something felt off about my, you know, intended workout, let’s say it didn’t feel like doing it one day or I, you know, visualize myself running the planned 12 mile route and it seemed, you know, arduous and Oh my gosh, I gotta go up that steep hill and then I’m still not done. I have to run two more miles down the train Trek, you know, my mind would be in a negative state. And that was a powerful, you know, intuitive sense that I needed to recalibrate and, uh, you know, pick a different, uh, door number three when I was trying to be the best I could be as an athlete or in my example of retirement, you know, the, the signs came from, you know, the heavens above opened up and dropped this rookie pro triathlete full on a steep Hill to pass me by to say, Hey dude, you’re done. And I’m, it’s time to, you know, time to honor these, uh, these insights. So I think every day we have a chance to, uh, become a more, you know, aware person and more conscious person and enjoy things better and succeed rather than struggle.
Brock: 00:47:43 Absolutely. Just the other day I was on my way to the gym and I was walking to the gym and I got to the gym and I kept right on walking and I went on a lovely seven kilometer walk instead of going to the gym because that felt more right when I got to the, to the gym, I looked at it and it was like, that doesn’t, that doesn’t appeal to me. That doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. And who knows what would have happened? Maybe I would’ve felt fine, maybe I wouldn’t have. But just having that ability to honor your own feelings and recognize your own feelings in terms of, of your, your state in that moment or in that day is, is so valuable and in so many ways, not just from a training standpoint, but from a happiness standpoint, from a, from a health standpoint, from um, like avoiding illness, just being happy to,
Brad: 00:48:35 well, speaking of feelings, um, my feelings are a little hurt right now cause I, um, it seems like I’ve put on some excess body fat, Brock, and I, and I want to loose it. So now I’m like [inaudible] I’ve been, I’ve been writing about this and coaching people for years and it’s like, wow, man, I’ve been, I’ve been having so much fun with my different dietary experiments from strict Keto and a lot of fasting and then going to increase caloric intake, including super nutritious green smoothies every morning instead of fasting. And, you know, comparing and contrasting my workout performance and my recovery. These are my biggest goals. And, um, you know, I didn’t have a body fat concern ever in my life, but now, uh, once I’m past 50, we know that, you know, the accumulation of even a bit of visceral fat, that would be the belly fat.
Brad: 00:49:23 The spare tire, uh, for both males and females can be a slippery slope downward because if you accumulate a bit of this, uh, this inflammatory, it’s an organ of its own. The, the abdominal fat, the visceral fat it release is inflammatory chemicals called cytokines into the bloodstream. And those lead to, uh, those promote hormone imbalances and the accumulation of more excess body fat. So we’re trying to fight this battle to keep, um, keep the spare tire at bay as we get into the older decades. And it’s a huge deal because you’re going to have momentum in either the positive direction or the negative one. So if I want to watch myself and bring that six pack back into clear focus, um, what do I do, man? How do I, um, how do I do it? I know you’ve got a program coming up and everything where it’s holistic.
Brock: 00:50:15 Yeah. Well, the, the first thing I want to say is I, I love your spirit of, of um, investigativeness. IYou’re trying out different, different diets. Trying the, the smoothies and being able to just experiment on yourself is so important. Cause I think sometimes, well not even sometimes we’ve spent the last 60 years, there was just an article that came out the other day that was talking about um, the obesity epidemic and sort of the new take on it. And, and it was saying things like for the last 60 years we’ve been trying to solve the problem the exact same way. And basically it’s that, that idea that I think Einstein quote that gets bastardized all the time about trying to save, solve the problem by or yeah, trying to solve the problem by doing the same thing that you’ve done all along or the, Oh, what is it?
Brock: 00:51:11 The, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different outcome. Basically that’s, that’s what’s been going on for the last six years in terms of doing different diets. And they’re basically all the same thing. Just reduce the calories and whether it’s WeightWatchers or or whatever where you’re getting a point system or a calorie system and, and it’s clearly not working, but we’re not willing to do a lot of um, experimenting on ourselves. So I applaud the idea that you’re doing these experiments and then watching to see what’s what’s happening and then being willing to pivot on that as well. And that’s something that we talk about a lot and thank you for queuing this up so nicely in a program that myself and Monica Renagel better known as the nutrition diva. We run a program called Weigh Less and and its at weighless.life.
Brock: 00:51:59 And the approach that we take in that program is a year long program and this is something that people go, what? That’s crazy. I don’t have a whole year. The reason that it’s a whole year is that even though I’m a fitness coach, there is no exercise program. Even though Monica is a, is a registered dietician, there is no meal plan. Everything that we do in the weighless program is to address our lifestyle, our mindsets, our habits, our habitats, everything around us that has really contributed to the, to the predisposition for us to always be eating, always be sitting on the couch, always being stuck in the things that have created this problem in the first place. So what we do is we spend this entire year, week by week dissecting different parts of our lives, different parts of our mindset, different parts of our habits to figure out how we can change those and become, and this is sort of our, our catchy little phrase, instead of losing weight to becoming somebody who weighs less because we all know people who just seem to effortlessly never gain any weight and, and just skip through, live their life without counting calories and stuff.
Brock: 00:53:16 And then there, there are so many people who spend their lives counting calories and in and out and always concentrating and obsessing over what they’re eating and which, which exercise program they’re on. And they still gain weight. So there’s, there’s something to be learned from those people who, who are effortlessly weighing less. And I always look at my, my grandmother is a good example of a lot of the practices that sort of play into into that. And she’s one of those people that not only because she was 101 when she died, but if you ever asked her how many calories she ate per day or how many minutes per week she exercised, she’d look at you and probably say, Oh, you stupid child. What are you talking about? But um, but anyway, that’s, that’s really the approach that, that I think a lot of us forget about.
Brock: 00:54:05 And this ties into what I was talking about earlier about having an exit strategy to like a lot of us sign up for like CrossFit five days a week and sure you will lose weight and you will put on some, some muscle and you may feel really good. But if that’s your only strategy, what happens when you lose interest in CrossFit? What happens when you get injured? What happens when, when something in your life changes? So you can’t go to CrossFit five times a week or what have you do adopt the carnivore diet, but eventually you get tired of eating. These are you, you do develop some sort of, I don’t know, like there’s been been reports of people on the carnivore diet who’ve actually developed allergies to things like eggs and things along the way. And what if that happens and you can’t follow that diet anymore? Do you have another way? Is there another answer to your weight loss problem that you can fall back on or you, you sort of strapped into, into this one idea or this one mode?
Brad: 00:55:03 Hmm. Wow. Yeah. So you have a, um, a kind of a war between, um, getting, getting too locked in and then getting disrupted by an outside force. Like, my gym was closed this morning for construction, so I didn’t do a workout. You know, that, that example. And then on the other hand, like if you’re, if you have no limitations placed on you in life and everything’s a choice WHEW! You can fall into a pattern of, uh, decision fatigue and diminishing willpower. And I, you know, identified this myself. I mean, I’m, I’m actually telling the truth. I’m not just making this up for podcast fodder, but I realized, geez man, I look like I’ve gotten to be a little fatty boy now from my past experience. And so the first thing I did was I just plugged in a, this is now two months ago, I said, you know what?
Brad: 00:55:57 I’m going to go back to morning fasting, not because it’s, you know, the perfect strategy for me and my peak performance and my workouts are because I, I want to upregulate autophagy or whatever. The main reason was to just establish a rule and a guideline in my life so that I could have some constraints and standards to respect and respect myself enough to actually, you know, commit to it every day. And it was kinda been miniature cool experience to go, Oh, you know, this is, this goes in the category of my often discussed morning cold plunge and the morning cold plunge is a great hormonal boost. And there’s all this science to support that. You get a norepinephrine spike of 200 to 300% you get increased oxygen delivery and blood circulation throughout the body. And all this is wonderful. But the main benefit for me is that I can say to you and everyone listening that I go downstairs every morning after doing my morning leg routine and I jump in this freezing cold tub of water without a second thought.
Brad: 00:56:55 And so I’m becoming a more resilient, focused and disciplined person. And it occurs to me that applying some of these strategies to your dietary habits can be attacking the cause. Finally, instead of the symptoms of like, Hey, why don’t you cut carbs from a 100 to 50 not that that’s not a great idea. Or a hundred to 70 a hundred to 80 like yeah. Doesn’t have to be drastic. Right, right. Or just, you know, something going back to the cause whereby when you check in with that person in 60 days, they’re going to say, Hey Brock, thanks for the suggestion. I’m still doing it. Rather than, Oh sorry, I forgot your name and what did you say? What did you say to me? You know, we just drift away from stuff unless we’re, we’re in a more resilient mindset where we’re, we’re going to walk our talk.
Brock: 00:57:40 Well, one of the things I really find interesting this when you talk about doing your cold plunge in the morning and doing your, your mobility work and stuff, one of the big mindsets that we, we try to flip in people in the weight loss program is to to engage that idea that you are looking after yourself, that you’re actually focusing on your body. Like there are study after study where um, they took maids at a hotel, huge hotel chain. Half of them got activity trackers, the other half didn’t. At the end of this study or halfway through the study, they started telling, they started reporting to the, the ones with the activity trackers, how many kilometers or miles or whatever they were actually walking during the day. They didn’t change anything about their, their practice or their Workday or anything like that. But that group, the half that was told that they were doing this extraordinary amount of miles per day started to lose more weight.
Brock: 00:58:40 Boom. Just like that because they were, they had been told that they were doing something healthy for themselves, that their job was actually contributing to their health and their wellbeing so that it spilled into other parts of their life. They didn’t change their job at all, but they may have started eating a little bit better. They may have started, um, doing some, some mobility routines at home to keep their ability up so he didn’t get hurt or anything. They started to just treat themselves with more, more care and think of themselves as a more healthy individual. Now I think in your case, by doing that mobility thing in the morning, by doing your cold plunge in the morning, you are setting yourself up to have a healthier, more active, more healthful day than if you didn’t do that stuff. If you’ve stumbled out of bed, grabbed a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee and a cigarette and grumpily drove off to your day job, you’re not setting yourself up with this mindset for the rest of the day that I am a healthy individual worthy of some self care and, and uh, able to do something like go for a walk at lunch or stand up more often at my desk.
Brock: 00:59:48 In fact, you set yourself up for the opposite. So even small changes like that, and this is another part of the, the Weighless program putting those kinds of practices into place, even though parking on the other side of the parking lot, when you go to pick up your groceries, that in and of itself burns what another 15 calories. Sure it’s, that’s insignificant. But that kind of practice implemented throughout your day, throughout your week, throughout your month has a cascading effect and it has an effect that just compounds on, on top of each other. And I think it’s really easy to just discount those sorts of things. Like I’m not going to take the stairs at work. That’s what difference is that going to make. It’s like the, the people who say like, I’m going to start running three times a week and then you come to them six months later and say, how’s that running three times a week thing going in?
Brock: 01:00:38 They’re like, Oh, I haven’t, I haven’t been able to do it. And like, well, why don’t you try just running once a week and they’re like once a week. That’s nothing. That’s what’s that going to do? It’s like, well, so you’d rather do nothing than thank you. See they’re three or nothing. I think we need to remind ourselves that it’s a more cumulative or of effort and that goes beyond the actual calories burned in quotation marks. Cause I’m not a big calories in, calories out kind of guy, but at a certain point you have to acknowledge that that is a, that’s part of our psyche. But, um, but yeah, I mean just, uh, flipping that switch every morning to remind yourself that you are a healthy individual and you’re starting to, you’re gonna take care of yourself. Starting right now is a, it’s a meaningful change that a lot of us forget about.
Brad: 01:01:24 Well, it occurs to me that, uh, the endurance community especially has to watch out for that, uh, switch flipping the other direction. Your friend, our friend across the water across the Strait of San Juan de Fuca, Katy Bowman over there in Washington, you’re in Vancouver almost or almost on the ferry. Uh, she calls it the lazy athlete mentality and this is an identified, um, a condition. It’s an actual, the actual scientific term is the active couch potato syndrome whereby people that have a devotion to a daily workout, let’s say they go to the gym every day for an hour, or they’re running, they’re 40 miles a week. Uh, they give themselves a free pass to lead an inactive lifestyle featuring prolonged periods of stillness. And they have shown to have similar risk factors to sedentary folks. So, in other words, that seven hours a week or whatever you devote to your awesome training regimen, when you compare that to 168 hours in a week and a lot of downtime and lazy ass time, um, it’s not looking too good versus the person who parks at the far end of the parking lot or takes their dog out for a walk morning and night, like a proper dog owner should and so on down the line
Brock: 01:02:38 spoken like a good dog owner.
Brad: 01:02:41 And so I wonder if that’s a, you know, having, having a program that’s not based on caloric expenditure or caloric minimization through the diet, uh, now you’re getting into, you know, I guess creating healthy habit patterns whereby, you know, taking, taking a walk with the dog is just an automatic and downstream. If you multiply that by, you know, a hundred or the other examples that you used, it is going to create a leaner physique because you’re going to be more calorically, uh, efficient with your metabolism. Right?
Brock: 01:03:14 Yeah. Well, and there’s even adding to that, the, the sedentary athlete problem is a lot of, a lot of there are running groups that are based on going for brunch. And I understand that feeling like it’s a lovely social activity to do, but why do you need to go and have a double frappe mochachino latte milkshake after you’re done? How does that make your, your social time with this group of runners more important or more rewarding? And I think when people actually start to question that and actually flip that switch in their brain, they, they actually have that moment of yeah, you’re right, that really isn’t adding to the, to it. And it’s actually undoing some things. We just have these ideas and, and I know the Primal Blueprint talks about it all the time, the conventional wisdom not being so wise after all. But we do have a lot of real hammered home built in reinforced ideas about, well, I went for a an hour long run so I can afford to sit on the couch and I can have the, the Bon Bons and all of that kind of stuff.
Brock: 01:04:37 And I, and that’s a whole different different thing. But I think making some small changes in our habits, in our mindsets and, and questioning those sorts of things, like just because at your office there are donuts in the kitchen, doesn’t mean you have to have one. It doesn’t, it doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, that if you, if you do and you’re not a bad person, if you don’t, it’s, there’s a lot more ways to look at this, these kinds of practices and, and hopefully we’re making some differences and just spreading the word. We like to call it the dieter’s mindset where we’re actually breaking the dieters mindset because it clearly is not working for us. So we need to, we need to find a, a different way to address this. So, so if, if anybody’s interested, that wasn’t a huge long sales pitch. I hope. I hope that was interesting to people as well as being a bit of a, a sales pitch, but go over to Weighless (Brad’s pretending to fall asleep). Thanks Brad. I go over to Weighless.life. And, uh, we’ll be doing a webinar at, uh, later in June that you can attend and find out more, um, can read about it on, on the website. And if you get there really soon, you may even be able to do our free 70 course. That’s, that’s up there, which is the mindset reset.
Brad: 01:05:53 Well, speaking of that example of the running club meeting for brunch, uh, I got trip you out with this one that Dude Spellings said on a recent podcast interview and, uh, you know, referencing the amazing conclusions from the faster study, he proposed that perhaps the best way to recover from a long grueling endurance training session would be to fast if you’re fat adapted. So imagine what’s going on. We’ve always been told that slamming the calories as soon as we get home was the path to recovery. But we now know from the faster study that you can restock glycogen very gracefully, uh, without even consuming, uh, a significant amount of dietary carbs through other means. Gluconeogenesis through the splitting of the, uh, triglyceride molecule into the, uh, the glycerol parts. And that turning into a stored glycogen. And so when you think about the, the, uh, scientifically validated insight that your body works better when it’s in a fasted state, you have heightened, uh, immune function, you have enhanced fat metabolism, you have enhanced cellular repair autophagy and you have uh, uh, a great reduction in inflammation, which is exactly the state you’re in when you come in from a hundred mile bike ride.
Brad: 01:07:07 It’s a mind blowing insight to me to be thinking just like we talked about earlier in the future, that maybe people will go out and slam a, you know, a a multi hour endurance training session and then come home and drink water in the name of recovering faster. It kind of may take a little bit of the fun away, but to get some balance point here where we’re not doing this for the free pass of slamming, stuffing our faces with junk. Uh, that could be a growth experience for the athlete.
Brock: 01:07:37 Well, I, I know you were knee deep or neck deep probably in, in writing when I sent it to you, but I sent you that study recently that they actually were giving ketone drinks to a two cyclists for as a recovery drink, not as a fuel and how those, the cyclists that were given a ketone drink as a recovery beverage fared way better in their subsequent workouts and in their recovery time and their muscle soreness, everything. Then the ones that were given the carbohydrate drinks or the more sort of standard Gatorade ones, which plays into the idea that was where my mind went. The first in the first place was well how about fasting then cause what better way to kick off ketone production than too fast? And it costs a lot less than the, I think those bottles of ketone drinks are like $30 a bottle or something.
Brock: 01:08:26 Like these athletes were getting $90 worth of ketone drink after their workouts. So not something that we are going to apply in our lives anyway, but there’s a very cheap I E free freeway to produce ketones. And that’s, that’s fascinating. So, so yeah, I think there’s, there’s definitely something to be said for speeding the recovery that way.
Brad: 01:08:47 Oh, gee, I, I, I didn’t see that, uh, article. I don’t think, I don’t know if I wrote you back. Like, thanks dude. Good stuff. But, um, I think you wrote back, I’m checking out, finish my book, leave me alone. Oh my gosh. I was being disciplined. How nice to know that I actually had a filter. Uh, but I use the real ketones. That’s the, the powder drink. It’s not, it’s not terribly expensive, but I think it’s a really valuable tool to consume before, during, and after my sprint workouts because I’m all of a sudden burning a cleaner fuel source.
Brad: 01:09:20 No, I don’t need the calories to do a brief sprint workout. But the idea specially drinking it after is that you’re in this, uh, lower inflammatory, uh, you know, better, better fuel source than glucose and thereby theoretically, uh, speeding your recovery rate, even as you burn through, uh, you can, you burn through the product and then you eventually go back to a future meal or maybe even a fasting period. But boy, now we’re getting some super high tech strategies here, here at the end. I, I like that.
Brock: 01:09:51 Well and even getting a little more simple here, like most of the studies that a lot of our fueling strategies have been based on over the last 20 year, 30 years have been have been predisposed for presupposing that we are going to crush another workout right away or later.
Brad: 01:10:07 AWW. I forgot about that part too.
Brock: 01:10:09 So, so a lot of that refueling was based on the idea that you’re going to do another workout right away or you’re going to do workout the next morning or something like that. But why don’t what if we combine the ideas that we’re probably not going to crush another workout later today and that’s not eating immediately after an especially not slamming a whole bunch of junk and carbohydrate right after actually makes our recovery a little better. How about we just eat like we normally would eat? How’s that for a mindblower? How about you just go and have your workout and then have breakfast when you want to have breakfast or you have, do your workout and then have lunch at your normal time or eat when you’re actually hungry and, and not get obsessed about needing to replace and replenish and count the amount of calories that you expended and, and replace every single one of those. Because you know what, most of us are not going to the Olympics athletes, okay. To air a little bit on this side of just, it’s good enough. And in a lot of ways, like given what we’ve just been talking about, it’s probably better than good enough. It might actually be better than what we’ve been doing over the last 30 years,
Brad: 01:11:20 Ladies and gentlemen, the swirling mass of atoms known as Brock Armstrong, trying to Weighless and just be that swirling massive Adams. Thank you so much for spending the time. I like the, uh, the program. Um, I’m considering signing up for a year. That’s a long time, but like, you know, life change, take some, take some commitment. So thanks for putting out good stuff. And uh, talking through all sorts of interesting topics on this show. We’ll of course have to have you back to to pick it up again.
Brock: 01:11:51 All right. Yeah, and we really did a, we went everywhere. I can’t even track where we started from. This is great. Hopefully everybody got some, some good information and you can find me. If you want to find me, I’m at Brock armstrong.com and again the programs@weighless.life, not.com. We decided to go with one of those expensive domains. So way last.life. I think it costs an extra 15 bucks or something a year for that. So we’re breaking the bank just to be catchy
Brad: 01:12:19 and listened to the get fit guide podcast. Nice tight shows that you can budget your time and get some really cool insights. So keep, keep doing what you’re doing there too.
Brock: 01:12:29 Thanks Brad.
Brad: 01:12:30 Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars and it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves cause they need to. Thanks for doing it.
