(Breather) Happy new year and welcome to the newly renamed, B.rad podcast! 

For the first show of 2021, I’ll be sharing predictions of what’s hot, what’s coming on strong, and how we can sort through all the tips, tricks, confusion, and controversy to take advantage of the absolute most important, most helpful advice for healthy eating, exercise, lifestyle, stress management, relationships, happiness — basically everything! The presentation covers 9 hot topics that I contend are an excellent place to invest time and energy to transform your life. Here is a quick overview of the topics that will be covered over three awesome shows: 

1. Personalized dietary patterns
2. Micro workouts
3. A kinder, gentler approach to fitness
4. Evolved workplace and career dynamics
5. Using discipline, restraint, and selectivity with technology
6. Prioritizing live social interaction and your intimate circle of family and friends
7. Evolving love relationships to the next level 
8. Reprogramming your brain
9. Taking baby steps to achieve your goals 

In Part 1, we will cover the first three items: a personalized approach to diet, the fitness breakthrough of the century that is micro-workouts and rejecting no pain, no gain ethos of the fitness industry for a kinder, gentler approach. 

When it comes to personalizing your approach to healthy eating, it’s important to remember that it’s not so much about science and biohacking, but rather, intuition, testing, and refining. And when it comes to CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring), it’s extremely helpful to examine the impact that lifestyle behaviors have on blood sugar (not just your food choices). Who knows, this could be the catalyst for a majorly effective behavior change, such as walking after meals! Next, it’s time to clean up your diet: get rids of all processed foods, industrial seed oils, sugar, and processed grain products. Then, it’s time to introduce fasting, because when your body is in a fasted state, it is universally (and scientifically) agreed to be the most efficient functioning of your body. 

Robb Wolf said, “If you want to live longer, lift more weights and eat more protein.” Protein has an especially significant thermic effect: an estimated 25 percent of protein calories are allocated to their digestion. Metabolic flexibility also significantly increases the thermic effect of food. Researchers have observed two to three times the rate of diet‑induced thermogenesis in lean people than in obese people.

I think it makes things really simple to realize that skipping a meal, passing on your super antioxidant juice bomb in the morning, giving your digestive system a break and never working out more than 12 hours, pushing the limits once in a while (if you’re metabolically flexible, for an extended fast), and anything related to fasting is going to contribute to health. We talk in detail in Two Meals a Day that you have to be ready for it, otherwise the fast will be too stressful. So, progress gradually, at an intuitive pace, and just wait to eat until you’re hungry, rather than obsessively stuffing your face according to the 24-hour clock of the day.

Another important step in personalizing your diet is learning how to optimize carb intake. We can all agree that processed carbs don’t have a place in a healthy diet, but there are still many nutrient-dense carb sources to enjoy. Especially if you are female, dropping carbs and excess body fat can be a conflict with your primary biological drive, which is reproduction. This explains why women’s bodies hold onto more stored body fat than men’s bodies do, and it’s important to remember that eliminating too many carbs can lead to hormonal issues, like thyroid and adrenal problems. Also, if you’re an athlete, carbs are great for fueling both performance and recovery. My take is that I’ve found it’s best to aim for a targeted increased carb intake around high intensity or long duration workouts (meaning, after performing these workouts).

Now, onto micro workouts, otherwise known as the fitness breakthrough of the century. They contribute to your daily movement quota (increased fat burning, O2 and blood circulation, and cognitive performance) and elevate the platform from which to launch all formal workouts. It also offers a huge cumulative fitness benefit, and also leads to a reduced risk of breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury, compared to full-length workouts and workout protocols. If you want to see me demonstrate some of my favorite movements to do throughout the day, check out my Day in the Life video!

It is truly now the time for a kinder, gentler approach to fitness. It’s about ending “struggle and suffer,” once and for all! The truth is, the fitness industry is a joke, based on flawed assumptions presented in the interest of making money instead of getting you healthy. Endurance, group, gyms are based on twisted business models of attrition / fresh blood and “sell a bunch of memberships and hope people don’t show up!”

Plus, we know now that cardio is a waste of time. Check out my article on my new and improved “jogging routine” or what I call Jogging 2.0 (and see the video here). Quite simply, formal, hour-long workouts are too long and too stressful: they give you a drug-like high (because of endorphins/pain killing sensation) and promote eventual fatigue, hormonal imbalances, immune suppression, and burnout. And remember: Don’t get sore: Dr. Phil Maffetone, Firas Zahabi, and Dr. Craig Marker all have talked about how pushing hard causes cellular damage, ammonia toxicity, and leads to protein synthesis repairing instead of growing/strengthening. 

Thanks for listening, and stay tuned for part 2, which will cover evolved workplace and career dynamics, using discipline, restraint, and selectivity with technology, and the importance of prioritizing live social interaction, as well as your intimate circle of family and friends.

TIMESTAMPS:

Brad is going to give nine important tips for maintaining the best health in the new year. [02:00]

Personalize your dietary pattern. [05:40]

Get good at fasting. [11:35]

How does one optimize carb intake when you are trying to plan your ancestral health diet? [22:12]

Females particularly need to be careful about the desire to lose excess body fat when it comes to counting carbs. [23:19]   
If you feel like crap from a dietary transition or in the midst of a dietary transition, something is flawed with your approach. [28:37]

Micro workouts are the fitness breakthrough of the century. [34:45]

There are many ads encouraging people to exercise where you sweat and get worn out exercising. We don’t think that is the best way.  Some say cardio is a waste of time. [46:40]

You shouldn’t get sore from workouts. [55:04]

LINKS:

• Brad’s Shopping Page
• John Assaraf Podcast
• Dr. Wendy Walsh Podcast
• Dr. John Gray Podcast
• Kara Collier Podcast
• Casey Means Podcast
• Peter Attia Podcast
  Two Meals a Day
• Dr. Tommy Wood Podcast
• Robb Wolf
• The Obesity Code
• The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance
• Ben Greenfield
• Pavel Tsatsouline Kettleball Technique
• Brad’s Morning Routine
• MONKII
• X Three Bar
• You, The Owner’s Manual
• Body by Science
• Cardio Doesn’t Exist
• Don’t Jog. It’s Too Dangerous, Part One
• Don’t Jog. It’s Too Dangerous, Part Two
• Why I Quit Jogging (Brad)
• Run For Your Life, But Not Too Far
• Jogging 2.0 video
• Firas Zahabi
• Breakingmuscle.com

LISTEN:

Powered by RedCircle

Sponsors

Check out each of these companies because they are absolutely awesome or they wouldn’t occupy this revered space. Seriously, Brad won’t sell out to anyone if he doesn’t love the product. Ask anyone.

• Almost Heaven Sauna: Affordable at-home sauna kits for the ultimate relaxation and hormonal boost on demand
• Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece: Mind-blowing, life-changing nut butter blend
• CAR.O.L bike: Cardiovascular optimized logic stationary bike for a highly effective eight-minute workout
• Male Optimization Formula with Organs (MOFO): Optimize testosterone naturally with 100% grassfed animal organ supplement
• Perfect Keto: The cleanest, purest, most potent ketone supplements and snacks
• LetsGetChecked: At-home medical testing with great prices, quick results, and no hassles
• Vuori Activewear: The most comfortable, functional, and fashionable gear, evoking the chill SoCal coastal lifestyle

Donations!

This free podcast offering is a team effort from Brad, Daniel, Siena, Gail, TJ, Vuk, RedCircle, our awesome guests, and our incredibly cool advertising partners. We are now poised and proud to double dip by both soliciting a donation and having you listen to ads! If you wanna cough up a few bucks to salute the show, we really appreciate it and will use the funds wisely for continued excellence. Go big (whatever that means to you…) and we’ll send you a free jar of Brad’s Macadamia Masterpiece as a thank you! Email to alert us! Choose to donate now, later, or never. Either way, we thank you for choosing from the first two options…

B.rad Podcast

Brad (00:00:00):
Hi everyone, and welcome to the newly renamed B rad podcast. I think you will agree. This is going to be a very rad episode because I shall hereby predict the future of health and fitness and how you can transform your life in 2021 and beyond that’s right. I’m going to talk about what’s hot, what’s coming on strong and how you can sort through all of this tips and tricks and advice that you’re bombarded with all the controversy that’s floating around in the diet and exercise and healthy living scene and take advantage of the absolute most important, most helpful advice and strategies for healthy eating, exercise, lifestyle, stress management, relationships, happiness, all that stuff. But on this show, I am going to cover nine super duper fantastically fun, important topics that I think will be great things to focus on as we move into 2021 together and try to optimize our health and our happiness and our peak performance. So here’s a quick list, and then we will cover these in detail. During the show. Number one is personalizing your dietary patterns and food choices. Number two is the fantastic fitness breakthrough of micro workouts. And number three, or you might even call it a two eight because it’s kind of related to micro workouts is in general, a kinder, gentler approach to fitness. Number four is evolved workplace and career dynamics. Changing of the times more people working at home with more flexibility and freedom.

Brad (00:03:11):
That’s a good thing. And it requires some adjustments to our motivation mentality. Number five is this high tech hyper-connected constantly distracted modern world. One of my biggest challenges and pet peeves and favorite discussion topics to really keep driving this point home. It is the importance of exercising, discipline, restraint, selectivity, and proactivity when it comes to our interaction with technology. So number five, technology number six, or it may be even five eight because it’s related, prioritizing live social interaction and your intimate circle of family and friends over this massive digital connections that we nurture and spend a lot of time on that come with more downsides and drawbacks and less supportive of our happiness and living a healthy, balanced lifestyle. So that’s a social interaction, number six. Number seven is bringing your love relationships to the next level. And this has been a popular topic on the podcast episodes, especially the series of shows with John Gray and the series of shows with Dr. Wendy Walsh.

Brad (00:04:23):
So it’s a huge one and it can really make or break your overall health, physical and mental health. When you have a loving partnership, it’s wonderful. John Gray talks about can skyrocket your testosterone. And when it, when you have a dysfunctional relationship, it can trash your hormones, your mental health, increase your stress levels and profoundly shorten your lifespan right up there with the super destructive lifestyle habits like smoking. Okay. Number eight is reprogramming your brain. And I’m super inspired after my interview with best-selling author and brain training expert, John Assaraf. So go listen to that show. And we’re going to talk about some of his insights and some that we’ve heard from other guests as well. And number nine last but not least is taking baby steps to achieve your goals rather than making these big, giant grand plans where you set yourself up for failure, disappointment, being discouraged, giving up. So taking tiny little steps that feel easy and doable and sustainable, and then building momentum, building momentum and looking back a year later or two years later. And now you can call yourself a competent golfer or a morning person Or someone who eats healthy and avoids junk food because you took baby steps that were easy and sustainable. There you go, one through nine.

Brad (00:05:40):
So let’s kick it right in with number one, personalizing your dietary patterns and food choices. And I’m not talking about all the fancy breaking science and things like the ability to, uh, pay a lot of money to test the composition of your intestinal microbiome, or do a bunch of genetic testing and get, uh, spit out a dietary recommendation based on that. I don’t see that as having a huge life-changing potential yet. It’s really exciting to see the continued progress in that area and these things can, of course, help right away. But I’m more talking about, uh, your own intuition and applying trial and error and experimentation and evaluation to your dietary choices. Uh, there is some great technology. I think the continuous glucose monitor is one of my favorite, uh, where you slap the patch on your arm.

Brad (00:06:42):
I did a show with a neutral sense nurse Kara Collier and also another show with levels health. Co-founder Dr. Casey Means they’re both, uh, promoting this continuous glucose monitor technology and software to help you along the way. Uh, but this has been a really great breakthrough. That’s now affordable for everybody. And you can see, uh, not just what your food choices and mealtimes, uh, what effect they have on your blood sugar, but also your lifestyle behaviors. What happens when you get up and walk around the block after a meal, or get enough sleep rather than insufficient sleep, if you’re training to excess and plunging into one of those over-training patterns, how this affects your blood glucose in real time is really helpful to, uh, inspire a behavior change lifestyle modification on the spot. Okay. When it comes to diet and avoiding the controversy and confusion, the important thing is to start with some common ground that we can all agree upon.

Brad (00:07:39):
And I think look no further than ditching these processed modern foods. We call them the big three most offensive foods, and that would be a toxic refined industrial seed oils, processed grains and processed sugars and sweetened beverages. And just cleaning up your diet and getting rid of the processed foods can get you a tremendous amount of the way to your lifespan health span, potential, uh, both longterm and immediately feeling better. Uh, my very first show on the podcast was with Dr. Peter Attia, It remains one of the most downloaded shows of all time, and he gave some great advice at the outset. He says, you know, uh, the best thing you could do is just try to find foods that your great grandmother could have eaten and avoid the foods that didn’t exist. And so, uh, a guy who is at the very cutting edge of health experimentation, and quantification and science, uh, giving that simple insight, uh, goes a long way to helping you relax and realize that if you just get rid of the junk, you’re going to get so far down the road. Attia said it would be 80% of your lifestyle health potential just coming from what you don’t eat.

Brad (00:08:50):
And that helps actually, uh, clear up a lot of controversy and, uh, magical stories from the people who are, for example, promoting a vegan lifestyle, which of course, uh, the people I follow and my personal experience, uh, in strong disagreement with, because you’re eliminating many of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. However, anyone who departs from a starting point of the nasty nutrient deficient processed foods late in standard American diet is going to have a massive, fantastic health awakening. So if you decide to go vegan, instead of go fast food and go frozen food, you’re going to feel great. And it might last for quite some time. There might be a small percentage of people genetically, that can thrive on that diet. Obviously they’re out there. And usually these are the people, uh, banging the loudest drum and trying to sell books and, and develop a following.

Brad (00:09:45):
They feel great, they feel fantastic, but it’s a very high risk approach when you’re ditching the foods that have nourished human evolution for two and a half million years, not to get too controversial, but just offering that simple insight up and going to the number one most rigorous and lengthy scientific study of all time, which is the evolutionary model of human and the hunter gatherer diet that we evolved on. Besides that go ahead and eat whatever you want, but really, uh, cutting out those processed foods is the wonderful universally agreed starting point, uh, to get this right. Another place where we could probably find a lot of common ground and acceptance is that fasting with your body in a fasted state is universally agreed and scientifically validated to be the most efficient functioning of your body is when you’re fasting. That’s when your inflammatory processes, that’s when your immune function that’s when your cell repair, your autophagy is all functioning at a heightened level.

Brad (00:10:44):
So your body works really well in a fasted state. And then of course, since you can’t live your whole life in a fasted state, right, you have to eat and then you go and choose these delicious nutrient dense meals. But for most of us, especially those who are trying to drop excess body fat and have been frustrated by the challenge over time, uh, fasting is going to be a great gateway to that ultimate goal of minimizing your dietary insulin production over a lifetime, or, uh, producing an optimally minimal amount of insulin to get the job done. Dr. Attia as well, as Sisson are touting this point a long time that, uh, the least amount of insulin you can produce over a lifetime to get the job done, to feel great, to perform, to recover. Uh, that’s going to be predictive of health span, longevity, all that great stuff.

Brad (00:11:35):
Now there’s so much nuance around fasting, and we went to great trouble in our new book, Two Meals a Day, as well as all previous books, Mark Sisson and I are trying to emphasize that this is not a simple strategy that you can just all of a sudden wake up tomorrow and start fasting the name of health. Because if you’re not prepared, if you’re not good at burning excess body fat due to long-term high insulin producing diet, fasting is going to be an exercise in a high stress hormone production because your body needs to get its energy somewhere. If it’s not getting the dietary carbohydrates that it’s relied upon for years and decades. So getting good at fasting and doing it right and progressing steadily, uh, from, you know, ditching the, the high carbohydrate foods, maybe switching over to more nutrient dense carbohydrates, because you’re still working on a carbohydrate dependency paradigm, and then slowly but surely, uh, becoming more and more fat adapted to where it’s no problem to skip a meal to wake up in the morning.

Brad (00:12:37):
You feel fantastic. You can do a workout. You can get work done. You can be cognitively focused without relying upon an instant feeding session, and then going through life on this regular pattern of sitting down and eating three meals a day on the clock, because otherwise you’re going to get tired and cranky if you miss a single meal. So getting good at fasting, a great goal for all of us, and it can really help you drop excess body fat. When you switch over from carb dependency, uh, regimented meals to eating more intuitively, skipping meals and letting fat burning come to center stage. Uh, one thing that interests me and Robb Wolf spoke about this, uh, with great authority during our interview is that fasting is not as important and maybe not as beneficial to someone who is already lean, athletic, trying to preform and recover has good blood work, no metabolic risk disease, risk factors in the blood.

Brad (00:13:34):
And so then since we know that fasting is a form of stress, right, you’re starving your cells of energy and triggering a stress response in the body. That’s why the anti-inflammatory immune boosting and cell repair processes get upregulated because your body is placed under stress. An optimal temporary form of stress because we know the next meal’s coming somewhere in the next 24 hours or 48 hours. They’re not too long to where you go into starvation. Uh, but fasting is a form of stress. So as an intense workout, so as jumping into a cold tub, right? So we have all these opportunities for hormetic stressors, hormetic, meaning, uh, brief, uh, natural stressors that have a net positive benefit. Okay. So when we engage in hormesis or bring these hormetic stressors into our life, these, uh, build our health, build our resiliency as opposed to chronic stressors, which of course trash our health.

Brad (00:14:30):
And you can list 20 of those in hectic high stress, modern life. So when it comes to fasting, uh, the people who benefit most are those that are, uh, trying to heal from long-term metabolic damage have difficulty burning, excess body fat has risk factors in their blood tests, such as high triglycerides, low HDL, uh, high inflammatory markers, things like that. And so I’m just kind of giving that caveat out there because it really got into my head because, uh, I’m dabbling in all these kinds of things. And I can reference back when I was first going keto and experimenting with the ketogenic diet and testing my blood, uh, several times a day and mixing these meals and doing my high intensity sprint workouts. I remember a lot of times where I believe the pairing of a high intensity sprint workout, uh, add in the equation of an old guy, trying to do this crazy stuff and trying to fast for extended periods and sitting down to meals that contain little or no carbohydrate.

Brad (00:15:30):
I believe those stress factors stacked up and didn’t really benefit me. And what happened was I’d feel more tired. I’d need a nap in the afternoon. I wouldn’t recover from my workouts as fast as I possibly could. And so there’s where you have this personal experimentation coming into play. I think a great starting point is to say, look, are you happy with your current body composition? And if you wanted to drop excess body fat, then you’re going to look into fasting, uh, and things like that. And if you’re feeling great, and you’re just looking for, uh, anti-aging benefits, uh, athletic performance and recovery benefits, then, uh, we’re just trying to consume a lot of nutrient dense foods, Dr. Tommy Wood. One of my favorite podcast, guests with his, uh, two full length shows and then my full length show analyzing and breaking down all the great insights.

Brad (00:16:18):
He said, uh, he kind of echoed the same notion that Robb Wolf shared. And these are two of the smartest guys in the scene and most accomplished if you haven’t heard of them, but both of them said they want their athletic types to consume a lot of nutrient dense food in the name of health. And that’s going to make you more energetic, more active, recover faster. Robb Wolf said, look, if you want to live longer, lift more weights and eat more protein. What an awesome soundbite from his show. And Dr. Tommy Woods saying the same stuff that they’re looking at, their athletes that they counsel and they’re giving these, uh, dietary reports like breakfast, two eggs and a half an avocado, uh, with a little bit of berries and Tommy Woods, like man, eat a real breakfast, make it six eggs and a full avocado. You’re an athlete. You need that nutrition.

Brad (00:17:05):
And so, uh, let’s, uh, put all that together. And again, striving for your personal best experience. Uh, but not looking at these black and white patterns like fasting is the end all, and the less you can eat the better off you’ll be. If you eat more nutrient dense food, you are likely going to find ways to become more active in everyday life. So it’s not going to impact your body composition, Dr. Jason Fung, his book, The Obesity Code references alot of interesting research that I went over and looked at when he mentioned the studies in his book. But when you consume more nutritious calories, not junk calories, but when you consume more nutritious calories, your body engages in an assortment of ways to burn those calories become more metabolically active, such that, of course, it’s not going to affect your body composition.

Brad (00:17:57):
There’s a concept called the thermic effect of food or diet induced thermogenesis. And this is where around five to 10% of the calories you consume are used to actually digest, absorb, and store those calories. So to, to process the food requires caloric energy and protein has an especially significant thermic effect. It’s believed around 25% of the protein calories you consume, uh, are then devoted to processing and utilizing that protein throughout the body. So in other words, if you consume enough protein or more protein like Robb Wolf recommends, you’re just going to get stronger, uh, be more active, and recover more quickly. And that’s, uh, another vote to get away from this complete nonsense and this complete irrelevance of the calories in calories out model. So I really appreciate Jason Fung’s book for putting the science down, uh, with this often referenced insight that, uh, if you try to eat less food and exercise more, your body’s going to find ways to slow down its metabolic rate throughout the day, and have difficulty dropping excess body fat.

Brad (00:19:09):
And same goes for the other way. If you eat more food, especially more protein, you’re not going to automatically gain more body fat. You’re just going to be more active. Okay. So, uh, figure it out for yourself. Uh, most people find, find a way to get enough protein in, unless they’re on a crazy freak, restrictive diet, like a vegan diet, but most of us have built in appetite sensors, and cravings and things like that, that guide us to consuming an adequate amount of protein. But if you’re trying to go for performance goals, you can probably experiment with, uh, eating additional meals. And if you’re on that low carb pattern, if you’re a keto fan primal paleo for a long time, a lot of times your appetite is regulated. Cause you’re not spiking blood glucose with these high carb meals and flooding the system with insulin.

Brad (00:19:55):
So sometimes it goes beyond, uh, feeling hungry, starving, but just strategically consuming nutritious food. So you can be, uh, more energetic, more active as an athletic person. But back to the very common goal of trying to drop excess body fat fasting can be the centerpiece of that strategy. And I think the practice of when W H E N (when hunger ensues naturally) is a really simple way to kick off this commitment to fasting. So you wake up, you go about your business in the morning and you wait to consume your first meal until you actually experience true, true sensations of hunger. And this is a pretty simple because if you are hungry and you’re walking around at eight in the morning, uh, maybe it’s time to sit for a meal. Now there’s some, uh, circadian influences there where if you’re used to eating at eight in the morning for years and decades, you’re going to be hungry when you wake up eight in the morning, and you can kind of play around with that aspect by doing some deliberate fast for awhile and teaching your body that it doesn’t need food at a particular time of day on the clock.

Brad (00:21:07):
Uh, but then, uh, implementing this strategy gives you that flexibility where you’re not gonna risk overdoing it and making mistakes with fasting because you have that W H E N in your back pocket when hunger ensues naturally, how does that sound make sense? Pretty simple. Okay. Um, it’s also, uh, comforting, I think, to realize that with your body working most optimally in a fasted state, and you accruing all manner of these health benefits when you’re fasted, or if you’re going in for the ketogenic diet and trying to attain that ketogenic state through fasting and through meals that greatly restrict carbohydrates, uh, that’s your best bet. And you don’t have to fool around with these concoctions and going for the expensive antioxidant juice bomb, thinking that you need, uh, this antioxidant boost in your diet. When anything you consume by caloric means is going to pale in comparison to just getting good and banking hours in a fasted state.

Brad (00:22:12):
So in summary apply an intuitive approach here, start with the W H E N strategy. Progress from there and see what your personal goals and how they can align with your food choices by greatly emphasizing fasting, or just trying to eat more nutrient dense food and lift more weights as Robb Wolf says, okay. The other big element of personalizing your dietary strategy these days, especially in the ancestral health scene is how to optimize carb intake. A lot of confusion and controversy around this aspect of it, especially when we’re departing from the ridiculous over of processed carbs that characterize the standard American diet and trying to do things right, trying to do yourself a solid by getting into this primal paleo keto carnivore sort of approach where these processed carbs are eliminated. And then all of a sudden you’re left with, okay, how many of the nutrient dense carbs do I need to function well and thrive and reach and maintain my ideal body composition?

Brad (00:23:19):
Uh, some of the controversy is especially, uh, focused on the, uh, the female demographic because, uh, dropping carbs and dropping excess body fat is at conflict with the female’s primary biological drive, which is to be fit for reproduction. So the female wants to hold on to stored body fat more so than the male where the male getting lean and ripped and showing off that six pack is generally going to contribute to a boost in testosterone and a feeling of more energy and vitality than walking around with a spare tire, walking around with excess weight. But when the females are already trending down into healthy body composition, let’s say under 20% body fat, and there’s a goal to get down to 15 or 12 or whatever to get on the cover of the magazine showing off the female six pack. That’s when you can get into trouble with some of your endocrine function, especially thyroid and adrenal.

Brad (00:24:24):
So that’s something to acknowledge and female optimal health might be reframed from what we see on the magazines anyway, but in general, uh, optimizing that carb intake is of particular concern. If you’re someone like an athletic female, who’s trying to drop body fat when you are probably already healthy as evidenced by your, uh, your fertility. And I don’t care if you’re interested in that or not. We’re talking about, uh, genetics and biology. So, uh, that’s, what’s going on inside the body. And those are going to be the main parameters that are going to affect your decision-making and your results with things like carbohydrate restriction. So a few variables to consider, One is the female who’s attempting overly stressful patterns by restricting carbohydrates when already, uh, possessing reproductive fitness. Number two variable for carbon take is performance and recovery for the athlete. Um, and then there’s another variable, which is sort of a, um, a no man’s land approach where you’re going for this, uh, kenogenic ideal, uh, these vaunted goals of, of being keto.

Brad (00:25:39):
And you’re also trying to maintain a healthy exercise output. And so you’re cutting carbs, not quite enough to enjoy these wonderful benefits of switching over to being a ketone burning machine. Uh, but you’re not getting enough carbs to fuel performance and recovery like you’re used to. This is talked about a lot in Phinney and Volek’s book The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. A great early book on research and some of the most respected research on the ketogenic diet, especially for athletes. And so what happens is you’re in this tug of war state where your muscles and your brain are both competing for the precious fuel sources of whatever glucose you are consuming and also whatever ketones you’re making. And so what happens in this typically in an early transition phase, when you’re trying to, uh, restrict carbs and get into the keto realm is you can experience a decline in both, uh, workout performance and also energy/cognitive function during the day.

Brad (00:26:46):
So your brain is not getting enough energy, nor are your muscles. You feel like crap, and it’s kind of a bummer. So there is sort of a all or nothing approach to the point where if you really want to be adept at keto, you got to keep those carbs down so that your liver will start cranking the ketone production. And you’ll feel wonderfully clear and alert and energetic, uh, in your brain power, even though you’re not consuming carbs and you have to wait and be patient to allow your athletic body to adapt so that the muscles can get better and better at burning fatty acids to the point where they don’t require a lot of glucose or a lot of ketones to fuel most workouts. And that also entails working out properly and avoiding these all too common over-training patterns where you’re doing CrossFit four to five days a week, or you’re putting in 50 miles a week as a runner or hundreds of miles as a bicycle rider and not giving yourself sufficient rest and recover in between these workouts.

Brad (00:27:45):
And you’re not consuming that many carbs. That’s just a big fat recipe for overly stressful lifestyle. So the way to do it correctly is as you’re transitioning over to a ketogenic diet and really working on keeping your carb intake low for all the other wonderful benefits you get from ketone. And, Oh my gosh, we listed those in great detail in the keto reset diet. Uh, the book continues to be one of the best-selling books in the keto world and upon reflection now that the smoke is cleared Mark, and I both agree, it’s a fricking awesome book. So if you want to learn everything about the keto diet and especially how to do it right, and how to progress naturally and properly, uh, to become a ketone burning fat burning beast, uh, grab that book and study it. But we talk about all the benefits of, uh, uh, lower inflammation, better fuel source for the brain, reduce risk of disease.

Brad (00:28:37):
All this kind of stuff is so wonderful, but you have to do it right. So as you progress toward keto we want to tone down our exercise output for a period of time until you transition over there successfully. So as you’re changing your diet, you want to back off on the workout so that you’re not demanding a lot of fuel, uh, for at least a few weeks until you start feeling okay, and feeling energetic at rest. And then you can start upping the exercise output because you’re so good at burning fat and you’re making plenty of ketones for the brain. Uh, so speaking of this keto flu that you often hear about, or the low carb flu, where people say, don’t worry, it’ll get better, stick it out. I know you’re going to feel like crap. Uh, we are Mark and I are strongly, uh, in, in disagreement that this ever has to happen.

Brad (00:29:26):
If you feel like crap from a dietary transition or in the midst of a dietary transition, something is flawed with your approach and we want to correct it immediately so that you don’t have days of foggy brain output or crappy workouts.One thing you can do is put on the brakes, tap the brakes a little bit and, uh, integrate more carbohydrate intake until you, uh, start to feel comfortable dropping it down. So not as quickly of a transition over into the, the keto zone and just looking at all your stress factors in your life, because if you’re living in overly stressful lifestyle, and then you go and try to clean up your diet or cut the carbs in your diet, um, it’s not going to work because the stress factors are still there. And your dietary transition by definition is stressful because you’re depriving your body of the usual fuel source of carbohydrates.

Brad (00:30:17):
So, uh, just common sense here. And then finally, another, uh, relevant factor, which is very common, is insufficient sodium and other electrolytes, but especially sodium. So when you’re cutting those carbs and cutting out processed foods, as we talked about at the outset, you have a concerted need to increase intake of natural, healthy sources of sodium, uh, such as, uh, ancient sea salt, mineral salt, Himalayan, pink, salt, uh, not the iodized salt, but the natural salt that contains, uh, dozens of other awesome, uh, vitamins, minerals, micronutrients. So adding salt, toning down the stress output in life and toning down, uh, the exercise output while you’re transitioning. These are all relevant factors. So, uh, when it comes to, uh, optimizing carbon tape. So this is kind of my summary and my takeaway here to summarize the section. Um, if you’re in that category of wanting to perform and recover optimally and wondering, uh, how many carbs to consume, uh, why don’t you try timing them around your most challenging workouts?

Brad (00:31:26):
And I’m not talking about before. I think that’s kind of nonsense where people say, yeah, take a dose of 20 grams before you go to the gym and you’ll feel so much better. I’ve never had any sense that that’s relevant. Your body should be ready to go and perform a workout beforehand. We know from the faster study that the human can replenish glycogen without consuming many dietary carbs through other assorted means pretty fantastic, phenomenal insight. So this carbo-loading, uh, paradigm that we’ve thought about for decades has now been shattered. And the world of fat-adapted training is upon us. Uh, anyway, um, if you want to target your carb intake after those high intensity or prolonged workouts, that is probably the best strategy to start out with. So that ensures that you, uh, recover and replenish glycogen after these tough workouts, replenish glycogen, the easy way, right?

Brad (00:32:21):
The most efficient and direct way. And, uh, don’t have these, uh, these multiplied stress factors of working out hard and then fasting for hours and putting it altogether and kind of crapping out 36 to 48 hours later, which I’m so familiar with. I love Ben Greenfield’s take on this, the ultimate bio-hacker and author machine of the planet over at Ben Greenfield fitness. And what he does is he, of course, trains very hard. He was a professional obstacle course racer and did a lot of iron man distance racing. And he still keeps in fantastic shape and, uh, has a very big commitment to fitness. And he also banks a lot of hours in a fasted state or a ketogenic state. But at night he says that he dedicates his evenings to celebratory occasions with his young family, his kids and his wife. And they will go and make concoctions in the kitchen.

Brad (00:33:16):
There might be a lot of carbohydrate intake involved, uh, where he’s enjoying himself, he’s smiling. And he’s also ensuring that he recovers from his strenuous workouts that he performed during the day. So it’s kind of the best of both worlds is his argument where he’s getting the autophagy. He’s getting the anti-inflammatory benefits of fasting. He’s giving his digestive system a break and he’s getting plenty of carbs, uh, to wake up the next day and, uh, have his hormones and his glycogen and his athletic output optimize for another workout. And you know, who else responds really well to this carbohydrate optimization? It’s people that train sensibly. Ah, imagine that. So if you’re doing your five CrossFit sessions a week, or you’re doing your crazy long distance endurance miles on the road, or you’re heading into the bootcamp class on Tuesday, Thursday, and the spin class on Monday, Wednesday, Friday with the same peppy high energy instructor, over-caffeinated pushing your body day after day.

Brad (00:34:18):
You’re not going to do well with any dietary strategy, especially a reduction in carbohydrate intake. So train sensibly and, uh, strategically, uh, include your carbohydrate intake. And that’s just number one out of nine on the list. So I think this is going to be a two-part show, uh, but we’ll get through this and keep to the keep to the highlights, but it’s really important to, uh, get those dietary concepts down and be as personalized as possible within the big rules.

Brad (00:34:45):
So number two, micro workouts, I call this the fitness breakthrough of the century and I did a whole show on it. So I’m not going to go into huge detail here. I strongly encourage you to listen to that show But there’s so many benefits of micro workouts and the downside risk that you have when you’re conducting these high intensity, these formal long duration, high intensity workouts that the fitness industry has been framed by for years and decades.

Brad (00:35:14):
Thanks to people making income off of producing this programming. Such as the spin class. Such as the bootcamp or the, the step or the, the straps or the bows or the arrows, or all the things that, uh, have been, uh, sold to the public, uh, with programming centered around it. So you could go and get a slamming one hour workout at the gym, that industry of personal training, where you’re going to pay an expert for their guidance. Of course, you’re going to have to last for an hour, hour and 15 minutes. Otherwise they’re not going to make a requisite fee for taking you through a 20 minute workout. So what we have here is a fitness industry predicated on struggling and suffering and no pain, no gain. Why is this happen besides the, uh, the income potential of people putting in long duration programming?

Brad (00:36:05):
The other reason is because what you get when you push yourself really hard in a long duration, high stress workout is you get this endorphin rush at the end. So you feel fantastic because these powerful pain killing hormones are flowing through your body. And boy, it’s a sense of euphoria, but if you tap into that, drug-like high over and over. What you get is a super reliable, one way ticket to break down, burnout, illness and injury at some point down the road. So as we step away from these flawed patterns of fitness that have been entrenched for years and decades, we welcome to the picture, the beautiful, bright shining star of micro workouts, which as it sounds like are brief bursts of explosive effort that put your body under nice resistance load or elevate your heart rate for a quick period of time to do something that challenges the body.

Brad (00:37:02):
And if you sprinkle these into your everyday life, you accomplish a whole bunch of different objectives that contribute to your overall health and fitness. Number one, when you break from prolonged periods of stillness, staring at a screen or doing what you’re doing to go perform a work effort with your body, you’re contributing to your overall daily movement quota. And in terms of fitness, the emerging science is showing that more important than adhering to a devoted fitness workout regimen, a form of workouts, more important than that is just moving more in everyday life. It’s more important to general health, and it contributes tremendously to your overall requirement to be a fit human being. So walking is the primary way we do that. But then these micro workouts are a wonderful balance to taking that five, 10, 15 minute walk, because you can do a lot in a single minute.

Brad (00:37:55):
So when you take a break from prolonged periods of stillness to perform a micro workout, you’re contributing to your overall daily movement quota, and you’re getting an instant boost in oxygen delivery and blood circulation throughout the body, particularly the brain. So you’re going to enhance your cognitive function when you return to your workplace, your work effort. And you’re also going to get a boost in fat burning and avoid the disturbing metabolic changes that occur from even brief periods of sitting. Uh, research shows that if you sit still for as little as 20 minutes, you experience a noticeable decrease in glucose tolerance and an increase in resistance. Translation means you get kind of a tired foggy. You’re not as sharp cognitively. Your energy drops because you stop burning body fat. And pretty soon if you keep at it for an hour or two hours, however long you sit still, you’re going to be ending up craving sugar, craving, quick energy sugar, because your metabolic function is all thrown off by sitting in the human being is meant to move throughout the day.

Brad (00:39:00):
That’s our genetic expectation for health. This prolonged sitting in a chair is completely foreign to the human experience. So micro workouts sprinkling those in they’re not intimidating because they’re so short in duration. I’ll give you many examples. Uh, after I talked through the benefits, the second one is the cumulative effect of these micro workouts over time elevates the platform from which you launch all other fitness activities and your formal prolonged workouts or your competitive aspirations, right? So if you imagine a one of my examples that you’ll see on the micro workouts, Brad Kearns video on YouTube, is I have a hexagon deadlift bar, uh, placed in the side yard on route from the kitchen garbage can to the trash barrel. So every time I pass by this hexagon, a deadlift bar, it doesn’t have that much weight on it. It’s not a big deal. Uh, my rule is that I stop and do at least one set of deadlifts.

Brad (00:39:56):
So if I’m doing six to eight deadlifts, there’s only 180 or 200 pounds on the bar. It’s not like I need to warm up. It’s not like it’s a big deal that I’m going to write about it in my, in my lovely training journal, but it’s just part of life. And it’s part of my daily routine. I do it without thinking about it. And let’s say, I do, you know, one set an average of one set, maybe four or five days a week. Uh, so in one set, I’m lifting eight times 200 1600 pounds. Times five is 8,000 pounds a week times 52 weeks is 400,000 additional pounds a year, not even counting my workouts. So you can imagine same with the example of my pull up bar. That’s hanging over the closet door. And every time I enter the closet and other times too, right, when I’m doing a particular devoted micro workout, but when these things are sprinkled in over time and I’m lifting my body up into space hundreds or thousands of times a year, all my other fitness activities benefit from that, especially it becomes easier to recover when I do go out there and hit it hard.

Brad (00:41:07):
So that’s the cumulative fitness benefit is just amazing, uh, launching, elevating the platform from which you watch from a workout. So you reduce a risk of injury and breakdown. So what you’re doing here as one fitness expert says, you’re flying under the radar or Pavel Tsatsouline, the noted a strength trainer kettlebell expert says you’re greasing the groove. So you’re keeping your body in fantastic shape without stimulating that fight or flight response that you can so easily overstress. When you get into that typical pattern of working out with a gung-ho trainer or showing up at the CrossFit box four to five days a week, or doing too much in the gym for a workout that lasts too long, overproduces those stress hormones. They stay in the bloodstream too long, and they have a propensity to cause breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury. When you get in that type of workout pattern, but no one can argue that one set of deadlifts or one set of pull-ups in the closet door is going to contribute to over-training or anything of the sort, it’s just going to have a phenomenal benefit without the downside risks that come with formal workouts.

Brad (00:42:16):
Uh, some examples as simple as standing in your, your work cubicle, where you have one square foot of space to use for workouts, and you can drop for a set of 20 deep squats and whoever you are, I don’t care if you’re super fit or a novice. When you get up to 16, 17, 18, 19 reps, you’re going to feel that burn. It’s a challenging effort for your body, even though the effort only lasts for one minute, you can look on my Instagram and I demonstrate the things that I’ve been working hard to progress up to, uh, during my morning routine. And that’s a set of what’s called the hover lunge, uh, followed by a set of the drinking bird. And these are the two hardest single leg maneuvers. It’s kind of like the hover lunge is where you’re just lowering for a squat on one leg.

Brad (00:43:01):
And the drinking bird, as it sounds like is you have one leg straight and the other leg, uh, goes up to parallel to the ground. So like an oil Derrick effect where you’re going up and down on one leg and working on that balance, that mobility, and of course, uh, stimulating the muscles that are loaded during the squat and the deadlift. And again, one of these sets pretty difficult. I’ve had to work toward it for a long time, but the set only takes about one minute. Uh, but boy, if I can get those done a couple of times a day, uh, day after, day after day, without worrying about it, without thinking about it without having it into my training journal, and again, uh, or a new point, uh, without compromising your readiness or your recovery from the formal workouts when you do conduct those.

Brad (00:43:46):
So the ideas are endless. It’s so simple. Uh, I like to favor the brief explosive efforts because that’s a wonderful balance to, uh, the prolonged periods of stillness inactivity. But of course you can also, uh, make a micro workout, a sequence of yoga poses that put your body under a little bit of challenge. If that happens to be more like your goals. Uh, I just interviewed, uh, Dan Vincent, the founder of monkey, M O N K I I. If you check out their website, they have these cool fitness contraptions that hang off the side of a door and it gives you a great chance for a micro workout. Same with the stretch cords. I’ve long been a fan of those. And I’m most excited about the amazing fitness innovation called the X three bar. If you look at xthree.com, inventor John Jaquish podcast guests, and he talks about why this is such an innovation and fitness, because it uses this concept of variable resistance training, where the further you extend, let’s say, if you’re doing a chest press a you’re pulling the strap, you’re stretching the, the very thick elastic band to its maximum.

Brad (00:44:47):
So the most resistance comes at the point where you have maximum force production. The opposite is true for a weight where the resistance is constant. Uh, like my deadlift bar is 200 pounds. However, whatever height it’s that, but lifting it off the ground is the toughest part. And as I extend higher, I have more power, but I’m still constrained by my ability to lift it off the ground. Anything so simple, uh, Dr. Michael Roizien co author of You, the Owner’s Manual, that string of best-selling books that he wrote with Dr. Oz, he’s the chair of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Foundation Wellness cCenter. Uh, he says, look, jump up and down 20 times a day and 20 times a night, and you will have a measurable improvement in bone density over your lifetime. Something especially of concern to senior citizens where, uh, loss of bone density, loss of muscle mass and risk of falling is the number one cause of injury and death in Americans over age 65 is falling.

Brad (00:45:45):
So if you can reduce that risk of falling, you have wonderful benefits and avoiding a lot of pain and suffering, and what’s the big deal. Jump up and down 20 times a day, how many seniors do you know that do that as a rule? Not too many. Why not? It’s not too hard. It doesn’t require a lot of, uh, contraptions or, uh, investment in a gym membership. So I’m encouraging everybody who’s listening to just find something to do to put your body under-load, uh, several times a day. So put micro workouts into the mix right away. No excuses. You can’t say you don’t have enough time. It’s a lot of fun. It’s exciting. You don’t have that sense of dread as you might, when you’re pondering doing a formal long duration workout. If your time schedule is tight on a particular day, or you’re not really fond of suffering at the hands of your trainer and you know Tuesday afternoon he’s going to put you through the mix this way. It’s just much easier. You can do the whole thing with a smile on your face. And that’s my pitch for micro workouts.

Brad (00:46:40):
So I called this one, um, number two A, right? And that is a kinder, gentler approach to fitness and ending this struggle and suffer mentality once and for all. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get all the way through there. There’s so much momentum and there’s so much, uh, programming and marketing messaging, uh, urging and encouraging you to go and torture your body in the name of fitness. Uh, I’m amused to see the internet or TV commercials where, uh, the person is sweating like crazy on their Peloton bike, and then a big smile at the end or a high five with the people that they’re working out with. Like they’ve just accomplished a wonderful goal. And I guess because life is so comfortable and sedentary, there is something to be said for going out there and pushing yourself and challenging your body to perform something that’s really growing.

Brad (00:47:38):
Marathons are pretty popular. Last time I checked ultra marathons triathlons, things like that. And of course, once in a while, or working toward a fantastic goal for the summer that you want to climb the highest peak in your area or do something incredible, uh, go on a long three-day backpacking trip or do that marathon, ultra marathon, triathlon. That’s great, but you have to have a measured and sensible approach. Otherwise you’re going to plunge into these overstress patterns that so many people suffer from and cause so much attrition in the world of fitness. So if you walk through the, the living rooms and office walls of America, you’re going to see lots of finisher, metals, lots of frame numbers, lots of smiling faces with your training crew when you did that marathon back in 2009, or did that amazing hike up to the top of the mountain.

Brad (00:48:30):
But if the approach was overly stressful or in balanced into a normal, reasonable everyday life and all the responsibilities that you have, uh, it’s not going to be sustainable. So this is what we want to do is kind of, uh, keep that stuff in the mix. If it turns you on and you want to put those goals out there, I’m a big fan of, uh, you know, striving for daunting athletic goals. But as a foundation, we want to just have these micro workouts and these simpler, less stressful workouts, uh, as sort of your baseline. And so, um, we’re going to, uh, borrow from, uh, our wonderful, exciting upcoming book called Two Meals a Day, Mark Sisson, and I releasing March, 2021. Uh, we have a section in there where we are talking about a flawed and dated conventional stupidity. These are the maximums that we’ve been honoring, uh, for years and decades.

Brad (00:49:21):
We’re going to reframe those into empowering new truths, uh, in the book we have some diet insights, but I’m going to go stick to fitness here, uh, as we cover this, uh, third insight on the list. Uh, so number one is this notion that some of the advanced thinkers right now are talking about that cardio is actually a waste of time. Dr. Doug McGuff, uh, author of Body by Science has a YouTube presentation called Cardio Doesn’t Exist. I talk about some of these insights in a great video and blog post on Mark’s daily Apple called Don’t Jog. It’s Too Dangerous part one, and Don’t Jog. It’s Too Dangerous. Part two, or you can look on YouTube and type in Brad Kearns jogging 2.0 and find that video we’ll have it in the show notes, of course. But this idea, the concept is that your requirements for cardiovascular fitness are actually quite minimal and can be easily achieved by a mix of simple walking and everyday movement, uh, as well as those structured cardiovascular that are in the proper heart rate of 180 minus your age in beats per minute or below.

Brad (00:50:33):
But also every time you push yourself with a high intensity workout, a challenging workout, you’re getting an amazing cardiovascular training effect because even during the recovery periods, in between your sets of kettlebell swings at the gym or whatever, you’re doing a sprint workout of the track, your heart rate is still elevated vastly above your resting rate, at least double, right. Even though you’re recovering and walking around the track in between, uh, your sprint sessions or in between your jumping drills like I like to do, the whole entire 35 minutes that you’re at the track or whatever you’re doing is a cardiovascular training session. Even though it doesn’t look like that steady state cardio that we’ve been programmed to believe is the end all for fitness. So when you go into a gym and you see the rows and banks of stationary bikes and stair climbing machines and elliptical machines, and people are watching CNN, Oh my gosh, high five and kudos to everyone there for getting up off their couch and doing something good for their body.

Brad (00:51:34):
But if you put it in this context, they might much more greatly benefit from putting their body under resistance load or doing brief bursts of explosive effort with long rest periods in between them to work that top end, to work that explosiveness and get all those anti-aging benefits from the adaptive hormones that flood the bloodstream. When you lift a heavy weight or pull the stretch band to the maximum, or do a sprint. And at the same time, you’re double dipping. You’re getting these awesome cardiovascular benefits. Uh, this is just now coming into a great attention into the forefront of a fitness mindset, but I’m really buying into this. I totally believe it. It makes so much sense. And if you’ll watch me on my video, Why I Quit Jogging, I just had an epiphany this year, 2020 that my daily outing, when I head out into the, uh, the wilderness with my dog, it’s a wonderful part of life.

Brad (00:52:32):
I love getting outdoors, very first thing in the day, rain or shine by the way, because the dog’s always good for it. So I’m not going to complain if it’s snowing or raining or cold or windy or hot or whatever. Uh, I’m still gonna get outdoors commune with nature and get this cardiovascular training session that I could put the nice checkbox in my training diary and say that I’m, you know, cardiovascularly fit. But if you realize that the requirement is so low, uh, look on YouTube for, uh, James O’Keefe’s, uh, Ted talk viral, Ted talk titled Run for Your Life, But Not Too Far and at a slow pace. And what he’s basically saying is that a couple of few hours a week of cardiovascular activity is enough to give you an A plus in cardiovascular fitness and then the rest of it. Then we got to get out the report card and see how well you do with resistance, resistance training, and explosive effort.

Brad (00:53:27):
What’s your competency in sprinting, maybe not sprinting on the ground just yet, but sprinting on a bicycle. Can you do maximum output and put your muscles under maximum load? And there’s so many benefits to be derived from that and get cardiovascular in the background. You get it? Okay. Watch the Jogging 2.0 video. It’s really fun. And in short, what I’m doing instead of that steady state, slow paced cardiovascular session is I’m mixing it up by starting out, jogging a bit to warm up, and then performing a really brief sequence of jumping drills or balancing drills. And of course, these are a little bit strenuous. So then I have to walk it off and recover. And so I’ll walk it off, walk it off. Then I’ll start jogging a little bit. Then I’ll head over to the tree stump or the, the, the Boulder.

Brad (00:54:13):
And I’ll do a sequence of 10 vertical jumps up and down again, a high stress, but very short duration output there requiring me to walk for a few minutes to catch my breath. Cause I don’t want this workout to kill me, right. It’s just my morning, every day outing, but instead of a steady-state jog, I get all these other benefits of balance flexibility, doing the lunges, doing the hover lunges, doing the vertical jumps, doing the balancing drills. And I come back to my car, the dog’s happy, and I’m happy because I have a more broader application of fitness than just plodding along, straight ahead or climbing on the stair machine, the gym. Okay. So, um, let’s also put into this empowering new truths. Number one, cardio is a waste of time. Number two, this a template of a formal hour long workout, which is so common in the gym.

Brad (00:55:04):
Look at the schedule on the whiteboard. It’s a 7:00 AM bootcamp, 8:00 AM spin, class 9:00 AM, uh, doing the magic wands and the kettlebells. An hour is too long. It’s too stressful. You’re stimulating that drug-like endorphin high, but you’re also allowing the stress hormones to flow through the bloodstream for too long of a duration. This will over time, if you do this two, three, four, five, six days a week, promote chronic fatigue, hormonal imbalances, immune suppression, and finally burnout. So collectively Brad Kearns popping off saying if all workouts across the lands across the world were toned down by 33% or something. If the CrossFit template workout was instead of 48 minutes or an hour 10 minutes, it was dialed back to 27 minutes on some of the days and 40 minutes on the other days counting warm-up and cool-down of course, but if the energy output was shorter and more quality and more intense and explosive, we’d all be better off because we’d reduce that risk of chronic overproduction of stress hormones, uh, related to this is the incredible new insight, the empowering new truth that you shouldn’t get sore from workouts.

Brad (00:56:22):
Oh my gosh. Imagine that. Are you shaking your head right now? Like Joe Rogan go look up on YouTube. There’s a clip from Firas Zahabi. He’s a noted MMA trainer and there’s a 10 minute clip of him talking about how he doesn’t want his athletes getting sore at workouts and he’s training world-class MMA fighters. And, uh, Joe Rogan just about had a cow when the guy said this, he’s like, what are you talking about? I get sore every single workout. Are you talking about, uh, just for beginners and Zahabi says, no, I’m talking about world-class athletes, as well as beginners. We don’t want to prompt muscle soreness in a typical workout. Dr. Craig Marker. I talk about him so much on the show. He had that landmark transformative article found at Breakingmuscle.com called HIT versus HRT, uh, trashing the template workout of high intensity interval training, which by definition is exhausting and depleting and kind of recalibrating that to what he calls high intensity repeat training, where you sprint or perform explosive effort for much shorter time than you might think and take much longer rest periods.

Brad (00:57:28):
So you avoid that cellular breakdown that occurs when you’re trying to fuel the fire for maximum output for longer than say, 20 seconds at a time, or for not resting sufficiently in between efforts. And his article, his consultation changed my life because my sprint workout that I’ve been doing devotedly for the last 14 years what I would do because I had such great endurance background. I’m such a tough guy and an ex triathlete. I would go to the track and do my sprints, and I’d go all out and perform a really nice a hundred meter sprint, sometimes 200 meter sprints. And then instead of resting, uh, like a normal person, I would just kind of catch my breath, jog around a little bit and prove my toughness to myself in the empty stadium, by commencing a, another all-out sprint with only, I don’t know, 15, 20 seconds rest in between them.

Brad (00:58:17):
And I do my eight or whatever the template was, or, uh, two times 200 or 6 times 100, whatever the workout was. But so little rest between these maximum efforts that guess what happens 36 to 48 hours later? That’s when you pay the price for this cellular breakdown and this overly stressful workout where you’re trying to perform explosive effort with insufficient rest. And I felt fine during, because I was pumped up, the adrenaline was flowing. I was able to complete the workout. I was able to perform well, even on the, uh, the final, uh, sets of the workout because I was digging deep and going for it because it was such a special, important workout. But then what would happen is, uh, the next day I’d wake up. My calves would be sore to the touch. I’d have to limp around. I couldn’t really do a proper workout for another two to three days due to the prolonged recovery time necessary for doing such a difficult workout.

Brad (00:59:10):
So when I transitioned to allow myself to take what Dr. Marker calls luxurious rest intervals in between these efforts, that’s when things started clicking, I could bounce back much quicker. Of course my sprint performance was better because I had more rest on the fifth, sixth, and seventh effort. And that was a real life changer. So, and also much, much less muscle soreness after. So this goal of not getting sore, Dr. Phil Maffetone has been touting this for a long time. You just do not want to get sore from workouts. Of course, you’re going to get sore if you do something new and foreign. So even the fittest specimens, eh, at the, uh, at the corner of the gym, you take them out water skiing. I don’t care how much weight they can pull in the gym. You’re going to be sore the first day after a water ski session, because you haven’t used those muscles in that manner.

Brad (00:59:57):
And also the ecentric contractions are the ones that promote muscle soreness. So that’s like lowering the weight rather than hoisting the weight, uh, those kinds of things, but it’s also from overdoing it or pushing yourself too hard with insufficient rest, explosive performance, that’s lasting too long. And what happens is the science shows that the protein synthesis that occurs after you exercise, uh, the way that you recover and rebuild and get stronger, your protein synthesis is devoted to repairing damaged muscle tissue rather than the desired effect of a workout, which is to get stronger fitter or bigger in some cases, if you’re going for hypertrophy. So in other words, you have to repair the damage and spend all your energy doing that rather than going toward improvement with a workout that was challenging, but not outside of your capabilities and watch the clip on Rogan. Uh, where Zahabi describes, uh, doing pull-ups every single day and being consistent and working within your, uh, capabilities at every single workout.

Brad (01:00:59):
So you’re able to build and build and build without interruption from the breakdown, uh, the, uh, hormonal trauma, the immune system trauma that comes from these killer workouts that we’re been so fond of for so many years. Um, man, I wish I’d known this when I was a professional triathlete training with the other bad-ass guys where we’d go out to the track and we’d beat ourselves up with these amazing interval workouts. We were so proud of hitting a good time on our 800 meter repeats or our mile repeats. And we were building confidence and feeling so accomplished and successful from doing such a challenging workout, but I’m absolutely positively certain that I left so much effort and potential on the training ground that I could have applied on race day instead. And so boy, if you could just harness that competitive intensity, regulate it, moderate it, leave a little bit in the tank.

Brad (01:01:53):
Every time you work out, that’s when you can become the best you can be and reach your potential when it is time for a competitive excellence, because you’re rested, you’re motivated and you’re strong rather than constantly fighting and battling, um, teetering on the edge of getting sick or broken down. Okay. And, uh, that is a kinder, gentler approach to fitness. And we have just killed. We have crushed those first three objectives on the list of nine, and that makes for a nice show. And I hope this helps. Please leave me your feedback comments podcast@bradventures.com and get ready for the ensuing episodes. We’re going to rock each other’s world as we proceed into the future, uh, honoring these nine tips to make it the best we can be. Thanks bye.

Brad (01:02:46):
Thank you for listening to the show. I love sharing the experience with you and greatly appreciate your support please. Email podcast@bradventures.com with feedback, suggestions and questions for the Q and A shows. Subscribe to our email list of Brad kearns.com for a weekly blast about the published episodes and a wonderful bimonthly newsletter edition with informative articles and practical tips for all aspects of healthy living. You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. And if you could go to the trouble to leave a five or five star review with Apple podcasts or wherever else, you listen to the shows that would be super, incredibly awesome. It helps raise the profile of the B.rad Podcast and attract new listeners. And did you know that you can share a show with a friend or loved one by just hitting a few buttons in your player and firing off a text message? My awesome podcast player called Overcast allows you to actually record a soundbite excerpt from the episode you’re listening to and fire it off with a quick text message. Thank you so much for spreading the word and remember B.rad.

SaveSave