Get ready for an intense and highly informative show that has the potential to transform your approach to high-intensity workouts. 

Dr. Craig Marker is a leading kettlebell expert and a psychology professor at Emory University in Atlanta. In this fast-moving show, we blend scientific insights with great practical takeaways about how to make your workouts more effective and less stressful. We are going to talk about Dr. Craig’s landmark article titled HIIT vs HIRT. You’ll learn the drawbacks of the traditional application of High Intensity Interval Training and the over-reliance on the glycolytic (glucose burning) energy system, and the benefits of High-Intensity Repeat Training. This is where you perform brief, explosive efforts and take what Dr. Marker calls “luxurious” rest intervals. 

You’ll also learn about Dr. Marker’s new discovery of what he calls “accidental hypertrophy” where he uses explosive exercise sets to build muscle and reduce body fat in a different manner than the arduous hypertrophy training practiced by bodybuilders. This show is full of great nuggets and fresh insights. You’ll learn why you should emphasize one-legged lower body exercises, and a recommended protocol for a sprint or explosive workout – with work effort duration, recovery interval, number of reps, and frequency of workouts. Pay close attention at the end of the show where Dr. Craig discusses the “pendulum” concept for fitness and longevity. It will help you sort out lots of the confusion and dogma about fasting, autophagy, and the supposed conflict between fitness and longevity that can be elegantly managed with a pendulum approach. 

TIMESTAMPS:

Dr. Marker is going to tell you how to design a high-intensity explosive workout that is best for you. [01:22]

With kettlebell swing, moving it back down to the ground is helpful for explosive jumping. [10:07]

Don’t go too heavy or too quickly with kettlebells. There are many workouts that are harmful. [13:05]

It is so important to learn to do it right with plenty of rest in between. [15:17]

There are potential drawbacks of going and doing these draining depleting workouts. When the glucose is tapped into, it makes you hungrier for glucose. [20:55]

Even though you feel good after one of those heavy-duty training sessions, how you feel isn’t as important as knowing you are building the muscle fibers you need as you grow older. [23:18]

Ammonia toxicity affects the brain’s neurons. [27:21]

An ideally designed HIRT session would consist of a variety of exercises doing 20 seconds on and 40 seconds rest. You want it to be hard. [30:56]

Earlier in the podcast, Dave mentions his goal of dunking the basketball.  What does his preparation look like? [39:15]

What is the one-legged exercise Marker talks about? [42:45]

Accidental hypertrophied condition program is a type of endurance training that builds up lactic acid. [44:10]

We need to go hard to get the most fitness adaptations. What about anti-aging concerns? [53:05]

Think of all of this as a pendulum and think of the stress factors in your life.  It can’t be done the same way all the time. [56:28]

LINKS:

• Brad’s Shopping page
• Dr. Craig Marker
• HIIT vs. HIRT
• Plyometric Shock Training
• Tabata Research
• Pavel Tsatsouline
• Quick and the Dead
• Hypertrophied Conditioning Program.
• Body By Science

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B.Rad Podcast

Brad (1m 22s): Listeners. I’m so excited to introduce you to Dr. Craig Marker. Oh my gosh. I think this guy is a true Sage and this is a health fitness homework assignment for you to listen to this show very carefully. Yes, we are going to get a bit scientific at times. I’m doing my best to pull out actionable insights and, and keep things clear thinking for you. But this is very, very important information about how to design a fitness program appropriately. We also talk about a bunch of other fun stuff like accidental hypertrophy. That’s his quote for a protocol that he stumbled upon recently that is served to transform his physique, build muscle, lose body fat. Brad (2m 8s): A lot of his subjects are succeeding too. So you’re going to get some top secret cutting edge information. That’s really interesting because it, it kind of offers an alternative pathway to the, the hypertrophy protocol that most of the strength training bodybuilding people are familiar with, which are these exhausting long duration workouts, which might not seem that fun or interesting. We also talk about his breakthrough insight. His landmark article that I believe is one of the best things that have come out of the fitness scene in the last couple of decades. And it’s the concept of HIIT versus HIRT. I talk about it a lot on the show. I think I’ve done a breather show of that title, where I talk about Dr. Brad (2m 52s): Marker’s work in detail, and we have a link to the article that you can read for yourself, but generally it’s rethinking these exhaustive long duration, high intensity workouts that seem to frame the centerpiece of the fitness industry in favor of what Dr. Marker calls high intensity repeat training. So in this show, you’re going to get suggestions, the protocol to design an explosive high intensity workout that’s going to give you the best fitness benefits, research proven of any kind of exercise that you can do. It doesn’t take long. You don’t have to do it very often. Dr. Marker talks about going out there three days a week and doing these pretty challenging workouts where you’re putting out a lot of power. Brad (3m 36s): You’re putting a lot of, a lot of explosive effort, but for very short duration and enjoying what Dr. Marker calls luxurious rest intervals. This is going to transform your fitness experience, especially if you are locked into the traditional approach of these exhaustive high glycolytic workouts. And we’ll explain some of these terms as you’re listening. But it’s a fast moving show. You definitely have to listen to this at regular speed or 0.8 to listen to these things and hit, repeat if you get a little bit lost. But I think it’s really valuable information from Dr. Craig Marker psychology professor down in Atlanta, Georgia, and fitness leader. Brad (4m 18s): He’s especially fond of kettlebell. So you get to learn all about some kettlebell protocol. And at the very end, listen carefully as he talks about this pendulum concept, because I think this is another breakthrough I’m going to take credit because I pulled it out of him during the interview, but right up there with his HIIT versus HIRT concept, this concept of the pendulum swinging back and forth between a growth performance building fitness. And then on the other side of the pendulum anti-aging and fasting and cell repair, which has been so confusing, especially when people are loaded up on one side as the end all to healthy living, but it’s going to help you really reconcile the importance of, you know, working your muscles, fueling those muscles with nice, good food and energy and even carbohydrates as I offered in my own personal example. Brad (5m 11s): And then the flip side of engaging in prolonged fasting and all that great autophagy cell repair stuff that we’ve been told is the key to health. So all in all a great show from Dr. Craig Marker. Here we go. Dr. Craig Marker. We are so excited to connect with you because my listeners have heard your name like every second or third show, especially talking about HIIT versus HIRT and all the other great stuff. So thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Marker (5m 36s): Always a pleasure, Brad, it’s great to talk with you. I am humbled that you put my name in any articles, so thank you. Brad (5m 43s): And just before we hit record, you’re telling me about your birthday milestone goals, which are so impressive and it’s such a fun thing to, to shoot for. So let me check in about that, that basketball dunking pull up journey. Where do we stand here, man? Dr. Marker (6m 1s): So yeah, no, I, I just have these sort of challenges that I want to hit and I don’t always have to hit them all together, but usually for milestone birthdays, I try to hit these goals. So 25 pull-ups so like if you go to, I don’t know if we’re a carnival is, or fair, but they often have the Marine station there and you know, the 20, if you can do 25 pull-ups you get a t-shirt. So I always try to be ready to do that. And I love being the, you know, older guy that can’t enlist anyways, and being able to do the 25 pull-ups. So that that’s one of the goals. And I’m always not far from that, that one’s, I’m not bragging. It’s just something that I’ve been kind of close to always can do pull-ups but the other one is dunking a basketball and that one I’m a little ways away from right now. Dr. Marker (6m 49s): It’s been a little while since I’ve, I’ve played basketball. So starting that back up again and doing my jumping type training. So it’d be great to you to give me some good tips on, on your jumping training. Some other ones, like, you know, for some of these certifications that I have, like doing a, you know, two and a half times deadlifts, that’s kind of a goal that I try to hit every once in a while and then oppress with a kettlebell. So just one arm, press of half body weight. So about Brad (7m 22s): A one arm press, from the ground, like a Turkish thing? Dr. Marker (7m 29s): Well, so you’re not starting Turkish, you can clean it to your arm here. You’ve cleaned it up to your shoulder and then you just have to press it. So it’s a 44 kilogram for me, or 90 pounds or so, or 95 pounds or so. So, Brad (7m 46s): So which birthday milestone is approaching next year? Dr. Marker (7m 50s): I, I don’t tell anybody about my birthdays. I, this is kind of something I keep secret, but the 50 is kind of a milestone next year, so, Brad (7m 59s): Okay. So dunkin a basketball at 50, when you’re, you’re under six foot, you’re like in the Allen Iverson height zone, he was listed at 6′ 1″ his whole career and he was probably 5’11 and a half. So that’s a, that’s a big challenge, man. How are you going to do it? Dr. Marker (8m 14s): You know, I think the big thing that I’ve always gone to is kettlebell swings. And you know, that that’s something that I generally train quite a bit and that, that is centric movement. So the downward movement of the kettlebell and reversing that it’s almost, you know, like a jump. I mean, you’re, you’re really in a, kind of a junk position when you do kettlebell swings, so that, that, and sometimes even doing an overspeed centric, so throwing that kettlebell back down, or even hooking a band to it, I don’t do abandoned ones that often, but that overspeed kind of reverses the forest and helps you jump that that’s always worked pretty well for me and it practicing jumping, you know, it’s, it’s, I’m not standing there and just jumping and doing a dunk. Dr. Marker (8m 57s): I get a running start towards. So, you know, practicing the movement. I mean, it’s, you know, the high jump is so technical and, and, you know, dunking a basketball is a bit technical, you know, also stretching my hand, you know, being able to palm a basketball is, you know, it takes a bit of practice. So that’s something that’s, you know, I might lose grip, you know, every third one. So I really want to make sure I have that grip on the basketball, but Brad (9m 21s): Yeah, that could be your best jump. And then the ball’s gone through the gym. I remember when my son and his boys were trying to dunk in high school and they definitely had the hops, but the ball would squirt out. And, and we were filming goofing around filming videos. And I was on the, the eight foot basket, which I am. I have plenty of height to get up and slam the basketball, but the timing is so particular and I’m so impressed. I have so much more respect for the, the dunking basketball players, because you can be up there, but you don’t have everything in sync and you miss the basket. And we see people missing dunks and the announcers laugh and it’s like, look, people, this is a really beautiful sequencing of everything, the arm, the wrist, like you said, the palming. Brad (10m 7s): And then of course the hops, but back to that kettlebell swing. So you’re saying that the, the ecentric part, which is the re moving the kettlebell back down to the ground, that’s particularly helpful for, for explosive jumping? Dr. Marker (10m 22s): Yeah. There’s been a few studies on this as well. The, with advanced volleyball players who already have really good jumping ability, they can, you know, doing kettlebell swings and not really focusing on that overspeed of centric, but they they’re jumping up 2.5 inches if I remember correctly. But, you know, I think the jump, if we go back to like Verkhoshansky shock training, or what became plyometrics, his original, it’s neat to see as old articles because he he’s hand drawn these boxes. They, they would jump off of a box about waist high and then immediately jump as high as possible. Dr. Marker (11m 3s): And kettlebells, that’s kind of, you know, if you’re not landing properly, if you’re, you know, you land with your knees going in or any sort of, you know, not good landing, you can injure yourself. But I think the kettlebell swing accomplishes that because when you go that downward moving movement, you absorb the force of the kettlebell and you have to reverse it just like you’re going to do with Verkhoshansky shock jumps. So I, I kind of liken it to a little bit safer plyometric type training. And you know, that that reversing movement is good for any sort of speed type of activities. So once a person dials in their swing, they can start doing it faster on the downswing that can even kind of throw it back. Dr. Marker (11m 49s): But I would only do that if you’ve got a really good swing, Brad (11m 53s): These things are somewhat advanced where you really have to perfect your technique. And especially the plyometrics to here criticized a lot because it is advanced with high injury risk. And so I like that idea of the kettlebell swing, being more friendly for people that are just wanting to get into this. I love the, the strapped up version and we’ll link to your video where I learned both the importance of, of throwing that thing down and then snapping the hips nicely and letting the, the raise portion be mostly, you know, drive through the lower legs. Cause I was always doing it wrong and probably putting injury risks to my shoulders by thinking that it was an arm motion, but it’s, it’s a nice presentation there, which again, will translate nicely to jumping and lower body strength. Brad (12m 41s): And then the hormonal stimulation of the androgen receptors in the legs from this complex comprehensive lower body move. So if we didn’t properly introduce you, you’re, you’re a big time kettlebell enthusiast and expert, and have worked closely with Pavel and you have the great certifications. And so here’s, here’s one big thumbs up vote for the kettlebell people. Dr. Marker (13m 6s): Yeah. And if I can go back to what you said, it’s not an art, our movement. And I think what happens quite often is people that, gosh, this is going to sound bad, but people often have too light of a kettlebell. And you know, and we’re been told over and over, don’t go. And I think this is good advice. Don’t go too heavy, really too quickly. But for the kettlebell, you know, people will use what stronger. And sometimes they just feel more comfortable with their arms. But if you weigh them down with a little heavier kettlebell, then they, they know they have to use their legs to really pop it up. And, and that’s, you know, again, I think getting an instructor and watching your technique is really important before you go heavy, but sometimes a heavier kettlebell can kind of cure that, wanting the arms to jump into the movement. Brad (13m 54s): Mm, Now I know it’s not so fun with my writs throwing this thing around to figure it out. Dr. Marker (14m 2s): Exactly. Yep. Yep. Brad (14m 4s): Okay. Well, I would like to kind of recap this wonderful groundbreaking article and insight that you offered up, the title of which was HIIT versus HIRT And maybe you can just give the, give the basic explanation. And also, I never asked you this, but like how this, you know, how you, how you stumbled upon this or how this came to be. I wonder if you were like me sitting, sitting in observing the, the fitness industry as a whole and, and thinking that people are by and large exhausting themselves with inappropriately designed workouts and then maybe going from there, because it seems to me that most of fitness is either chronic endurance exercise or these prolonged high high-intensity workouts that are so touted with CrossFit or bootcamp or Spinning, but they seem to go on and on. Brad (14m 58s): And I don’t know how people do it personally, because when I go into some of these things, I’m, I’m fried after 30 minutes because I’m giving it my all, like they’re asking me to, and then we’re at the halfway point in the work and I’m like, this, this don’t make no sense people, unless you guys were all sandbagging except me. I’m ready to walk out of the gym. Okay. I’m turning it over to Craig and, and HIIT versus HIRT. Dr. Marker (15m 17s): I mean, I think there’s kind of two paths where I, I didn’t necessarily stumble upon it. I think there’s been a lot of great people working on this type of issue. You know, one was the original Tabata research. And I was fascinated by it, you know, in that you’d get the same effects as you would from running a 5k or in if in the outcome of running a 5k. And, you know, I looked at it and I would see these Tabata type training and, you know, it’s 20 seconds on 10 seconds off for eight rounds. So four minutes total, and that eighth round is sort of optional. Like if you don’t have power in that seventh round, you’re not doing that eighth round. So it’s like that same thing you need to walk out. Dr. Marker (15m 58s): So these Tabata workouts, I would see articles, and this is where I would get frustrated. But like, you know, I have a 30 minute Tabata and it’s like, there’s no 30 minutes Tabata. Like you said, that’s, it’s just, nobody can do that much power for 30 minutes. Or it would be, you know, something with planks and plank is not a Tabata type of exercise. It’s, you know, you need something that like Tabata had on the bike or a treadmill. And when you’re going 20 seconds on a bike all out, you know, you know, you’re losing everything you’ve got and you know, that 10 second rest isn’t really helping all that much. 20 second plank is nothing like 20 seconds on the bike. Dr. Marker (16m 39s): And at least for me, it isn’t. But so, you know, that was, that was one area that I was really interested in. And the other was with Pavel. Pavel was working on a book, which eventually came out The Quick and the Dead. And we were doing all these research protocols for, and Pavel’s Quick and the Dead is a great read. If anybody wants to read it. It has a lot of parallels to Primal Endurance. So it’s, you know, with Primal Endurance and I’m probably not saying exactly right, but you’re doing things either really slow or really fast. And you’re avoiding that sort of in between. And that’s what Pavel was looking at a it’s really based off of Verkhoshansky did some conditioning program protocols and it was stay out of that glycolytic range. Dr. Marker (17m 24s): And, you know, you can go really fast, but once you get glycolytic, you’ve got to stop rest and then move on. So we were doing all of these different protocols where we’re doing as much lactic work and then rest in between too, you know, so we could do more lactic work. So everything was really powerful and with enough rest in between. And so we, we called these repeat training instead of high intensity interval where, you know, Tabata, if you kind of measure power over time, people can’t, well, maybe some people can, but I certainly can’t keep the power up over that four minutes. Even four minutes is way too much to keep that much power up. Dr. Marker (18m 5s): So the goal was keep the power core throughout all of the intervals. So they’d be repeats. And then, so you’d have to have enough. We called it luxurious rest in between and the luxurious rest intervals makes it repeats. Brad (18m 23s): So just to slow down a little, I think most listeners are familiar with that term, the glycolytic range. That means a, a, an effort that’s burning primarily glucose. And so when we look in exercise physiology and what energy systems are used at various exercise durations, that’s where we have these very important cutoffs that you detail scientifically in the article. But I think we can kind of drift quickly through this, in the talk here. But when you’re talking about really short bursts of explosive power, we’re talking about using and different energy system than the typical glucose burning that we use anywhere from 30 seconds up to what is it? Brad (19m 10s): 30 seconds to two minutes is primarily glucose. And then you start transitioning into a mixture of glucose and fat. And then under 30 seconds is where we’re talking about kind of a different experience to the body, then the depleting effects of going and hitting the, the glucose burning effort over and over. So maybe you can add some more there, and also clarify if I didn’t hit that. Dr. Marker (19m 32s): No, no, I think you explained it quite well. And yeah, even that, that 30 seconds when you’re using the system, like it’s, it’s at its optimal probably between eight and 15 seconds and you start using all the creatine phosphates in your system, all the ATP, the limited ATP already have the creatine phosphate that’s making the ATP quickly and your body starts to say, okay, we’re going to need more energy and started, let’s start ramping this up. So even from 15 to 30, you might still be draining that creatine phosphate system, but the glycolytic is starting to ramp up. It takes a little while for that system to, to ramp up. Dr. Marker (20m 12s): So it’s ramping up slowly and really hits kicks in about 30 seconds or so. So yeah, th there, you know, and with these types of training programs, you’re really trying to hit that the creatine phosphate system, you know, probably 15 second intervals. We can go into even a little bit later more of the science, but Forenza and some others, Marty Gibala have looked at different intervals. And I think, you know, 15 to 20 seconds is that sort of sweet spot where you’re really hitting the electric system and draining it much as possible. And there’s some reasons why we want to drain it. And I think that is, has longevity benefits, but that’s getting too far aside. Dr. Marker (20m 55s): We can get into that stuff later. But Brad (20m 59s): Yeah, I guess the big takeaway here is that for most of fitness enthusiasts, even even serious people who are going to CrossFit five days a week, or going to the, the, the running club and they do a track workout on Tuesday night and tempo workout on Thursday, by and large, there’s a lot of living in this glycolytic workout zone. And maybe you can talk about some of the potential drawbacks of going and doing these draining, depleting workouts several days a week. And at the same time, never really tapping into the, the, the explosive output that you get when you limit your intervals to a much shorter duration than maybe most people are used to. Dr. Marker (21m 47s): Yeah. I mean, I think that one of the biggest is something you’ve mentioned already the, you know, the glucose, it taps into glucose and it’s wanting to use all the body’s glucose and that makes you quite hungry afterwards for glucose. I think, you know, the, Brad (22m 4s): This show is sponsored by Jamba juice. We’re talking to Dr. Craig Marker, but yeah, that’s the big one. Cause most people are out there trying to drop excess body fat. So they’re draining the tank and guess what happens to the brain and the appetite triggers and all those things. When you’re constantly depleting yourself, you are headed from the gym right over to Jamba Juice for the medium scone and the energizing smoothie, which is more calories than you just burned in an extremely grueling one hour long boot camper spinning. Dr. Marker (22m 34s): Yup. Yep. And it feels good too. I mean, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it certainly is somewhat addicting. I mean, that idea that, you know, when you feel crushed at the end of a, and I’ll call this a workout, I usually call these training sessions because I think we should be doing training sessions. We should be training to get better at our movements, but this is a workout. You’ve worked everything out when you’re laying on the ground afterwards, it feels awesome. And like you said, the addictive part, I think this was before we hit record, but the addictive part of some of these endurance sports, you know, it feels really good. And I said this in one of my articles and I didn’t mean to be crass, but I said, I don’t care about your feelings. Dr. Marker (23m 18s): You know, I care about the results and you know, we don’t care how you feel afterwards. We want you to have the best results. And if you’re doing those shorter intervals or as powerful as possible, you’re building those type two muscle fibers that you’re going to need as you age, you know, that’s what we should be doing instead of trying to build a glycolytic system that’s, you know, it’s inefficient, it’s like inefficient car, that’s blowing smoke. It’s kind of polluting our body. There’s a lot of oxidants produced that our robotic system has to clean up. And if we’re in just the glycolytic system all the time, you know, we start to build these oxidants and I think it has a good signaling effect initially. Dr. Marker (24m 3s): But after months of trying to do these things that I think we can start breaking down when we can start having injuries and have some of the things that we’re not trying to do by exercising. Brad (24m 13s): Hm. That’s another good point that out of the gate, if you’ve been sitting on your ass too much during COVID because my gym was closed and I haven’t been working out and now I’m working out again, Hey, anything works and you get that adaptation out of the gate for 30, 60, 90 days. Maybe it’s two years. I have a lot of experience in the endurance scene of, of doing this type of training, that type of training. And I feel fantastic for six months and then I’m, I’m fried for six months after that. So then we want to start to consider a more refined approach. That’s more aligned with improvement, maintaining health, rather than just getting that workout high and listeners keep in mind, Dr. Brad (24m 53s): Craig here in his day, job is in the world of psychology. So I love how you interject some of those ideas into these fitness articles or fitness commentary, because it is a huge driving factor in the decision-making when people are deciding how to work out. And also, I suppose, deciding the programming of what might, what my bootcamp session is going to look like. I want people to get a huge burst of endorphins, so they come back, but again, looking down the road, this is not how the body is designed to work. And we’re looking at breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury. If we lock into that path. Dr. Marker (25m 30s): Yeah, most, most definitely. I think, you know, again, there’s so many individual differences with this and you’re coming from place where you have an aerobic system that, you know, many people would die for and like your aerobic system. So when your glycolytic system is active, it’s producing a lot of lactic lactate, which the aerobic system can use for energy. And the aerobic system cleans up. It’s just when that lactate starts to build up, we’ve got too much of it. Our system gets acidic and that’s, you know, where we start to feel that burn. But for people who have a great aerobic system, you know, the 800 meter people, you know, I’m, I’m, I was never an 800 meter person. Dr. Marker (26m 14s): I was a long distance person, but the 800 meter people who can just go and like have that glycolytic system, but they’re cleaning it up at the same time. That that’s amazing. So there are some people that are meant for that and can have the aerobic system that cleans up the mess afterwards. But I think for most people it’s probably not a good place to start for sure. Brad (26m 35s): Yeah. And I think we are looking to the examples of the elite athletes in many cases for how to design training. I think a lot of coaches are coming from whatever the experience they’ve had or maybe they were top athletes back in their day. And so we’re modeling these genetic freaks by and large where most people, and I think you even mentioned this in the HIIT versus HIRT article that the recreational enthusiasts is going to be vastly more destroyed by doing 10 times, two minutes, full out with 30 seconds rest or some ridiculous notion. That’s not aligned with luxurious rest intervals and is too excessive. But if it’s a van Niekerk training for the Olympics, he’s going to be fine because he’s trying to sprint around a 400 meter track at full speed. Brad (27m 21s): And then the rest of us are going to have all this fallout. And especially I’m concerned about that ammonia toxicity and how that affects the brain neurons. So maybe you could pipe in there about the, you know, the, the various drawbacks besides that we’re gonna have too much Jamba juice after these depleting workouts. Dr. Marker (27m 43s): Yeah. And, and again, it’s too much of a good thing maybe, or maybe ammonia is never a good thing, but you know, when we’re our eighties P is being used. So at deno diphosphate got three phosphate molecules. Whenever we break off a phosphate molecule, we create energy. That’s what the muscles are using for energy. Then we have a deno diphosphate. We have two phosphate molecules when we start breaking off that fast fate that’s when we start getting into a deno monophosphate and we start building up ammonia, and then ammonia is very toxic to the body. So we don’t want too much, we want to clean that up. Dr. Marker (28m 23s): We want to replenish our diphosphate phosphates, put another phosphate on it. We want to replenish that system. So the luxurious rest is cleaning up and building back our ATP and getting rid of the ammonia. So the longer we train in the glycolytic fashion, the more ammonia we build up and the more detrimental effects there is some adaptive part to this though in that when our ATP drains really quickly, we produce a NPK and NPK triggers ourselves to make more mitochondria. There’s a few intermediate steps that I’m kind of skipping over, but, you know, we need, that’s why when we train, we adapt. Dr. Marker (29m 6s): And so sometimes we want that, but too much of it. And then we start to build up toxcity. We start to build up oxidants in the system that start destroying, you know, cellular DNA or other things. So we don’t want too much of it, but we want enough just to signal the process so that we can adapt and move on. Brad (29m 27s): Right. And it seems to me that for most people out there who are just trying to get in shape, maybe manage excess body fat and have some successful results there that toning everything down several notches and saying that, look, if you go to the gym and do, you know, a ten second series of kettlebell swings a few times, you’re good to go and you can leave and, and, and go home. And I think back to that appetite stimulating effects, when you’re doing these shorter duration, maximum explosive efforts using the right energy systems and taking long rest periods in between you’re, you’re going to walk away from that workout in a, in a better state. Dr. Marker (30m 14s): Yeah. I mean, you discussed a lot about fasting and you know, those types of protocols or one meal a day, you know, when I do this type of HIRT type training, I’m not that hungry afterwards. Like I can continue my fast. I often do it fasted for other benefits, you know, fat loss, but also longevity benefits. But, you know, I feel like I’m more energized to continue my fast and ways because I’m, you know, just told the body to burn more fat know, it’s, it’s a nice efficient aerobic system kind of cleaning up. So yeah, no, I definitely, I think it’s even more beneficial to, you know, being fat adapted and these other components. Brad (30m 56s): So can you describe an ideally designed HIRT session? And we can pick the, the desired activity. I always talk about sprinting, like running sprints, if you’re adapted to it. And if you’re not, you can run upstairs or do something that’s low or no impact. You can do it on a bicycle, but talk about the, the parameters, like the work period and the rest intervals and the, and the, the number of reps and so forth. Dr. Marker (31m 26s): Yeah. The, I always feel like I have to qualify some things and I’m going to, I’m going to show you a little picture, but nobody else is going to be able to see it. But so what I’ve got on the screen, I’ve got two different exercises and jump rope, 20 seconds on 40 seconds off. And then the heavy bag, 20 seconds on 40 seconds off. So same intervals, but very different exercises. And there’s in the jump rope, you see eight peaks. So I did eight intervals or that this person did eight intervals of 20 seconds on 40 seconds off. And what you see is let’s sort of lactate threshold line, that’s going through there. Dr. Marker (32m 6s): The person goes up and above the lactate threshold. And, but then comes down during the recovery. So this exercise, the person can fully recover, clean up the lactate system and, you know, and then be ready for the next set. No, most, every set is very similar with that, that cleanup process. The other figure is with the heavy bag. And what we start to see is that accumulation of lactate over time, 20 seconds on after a while, the person is not recovering fully after 40 seconds. So I think it depends. So the, my whole reason for showing this, it depends a little bit on the exercise. Dr. Marker (32m 47s): And if we’re, you know, doing something that’s using smaller muscles, and I say the heavy bag is using, you know, the upper body. We might, we have less muscle mass on the upper body. We’re burning up the system a little bit faster. So I think shorter rest intervals is probably better for something like that. So a heavy bag I think is great, but probably 15 seconds on 45 seconds off something like a sprint, probably, you know, we can go through things faster. We can probably do 15 to 20 seconds. I know like a bike, 15 seconds, I’m exhausted, but a rower like 20 seconds is my optimal point. Dr. Marker (33m 27s): So I, I’m looking at a range between, you know, 13 to 20 seconds on and 37 to 20 or 37 to, or probably 20. I have to add those up about 40 seconds off. So every minute on the minute type of things is what I do quite a bit of. But again, people are starting in different places. Some people might need two to four minutes of rest to really be optimal. I’ve got a base of an aerobic system that can clean up that or that the person I was just showing you had that base of an aerobic system. So for people who are newer, take two to three minutes, the key is, is that exercise is done repeatedly so how much power you have on the first one you should have on the third or fourth or seventh or eight, and I’ll use an accelerometer to measure power. Dr. Marker (34m 23s): So when I do kettlebell swings, I use an accelerometer to make sure my swings have the same power that they did early on. Brad (34m 31s): Right. If you’re doing something timed like sprinting down the athletic field, boy, that’s a really great tracker because if you’re hitting 11 seconds each time, you know, you’re delivering a consistent quality of effort. And then if you come in at 12 or 13, you’re, you’re starting to lose it, which indicates that your, your workout is wrapping up quickly. Or, and I also like to qualify this, if you’re hitting that 11 seconds again, but you’re trying significantly harder. Like if you envision your own personal graph of effort and there’s a spike in it on the fifth or sixth interval, that’s also a good indicator. I think that, you know, that that’s the end of the workout is you want this, this high intensity repeat training where repeat means two things, not only the performance, the accelerometer, but also I guess the, the degree of difficulty. Dr. Marker (35m 21s): Definitely. Yep. And, and the, the idea of the psychological factor, I think you want it to be hard. Like you really need to push on every one of these. There’s just because we are saying, you’re not laying on the floor at the end of these. It doesn’t mean it’s easy that when you’re in those 11 seconds, it’s hard 11 seconds. And I like, to me, it’s perfect because I can do anything for 15 seconds. I can endure any pain for 15 seconds. And it’s just a perfect amount of time psychologically. But when you’re trying to, like you said, when you’re, no, you got 30 minutes of this, your body just starts to sandbag and you might not want to, there’s no way that people can put in all the power, you know, in a 30 minute type training sessions, Brad (36m 4s): Or there’s just this selectivity where, you know, raise your hand if you’re, if you’re a drop-off or a nutrition victim of anything in life. And it’s probably because you weren’t, you know, ideally suited for it. We just met some people on the hiking trail yesterday and the guy had a CrossFit shirt on. I said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m from Sacramento. And, oh, I know that CrossFit place. I, how long have you been going there? And they say, we’ve been going for 12 years, four to five days a week. And I’m like, okay, well, guess what, you’re probably in that one percentile that somehow this wonderful fit couple is able to sustain that type of exercise schedule for so long. But you know, there’s a lot of people with torn up shoulders or, you know, lack of interest anymore because it’s simply too much, especially for their physiology. Brad (36m 51s): This is kind of an aside, I just thought of Craig, but there’s this great trainer, Dave Dolle based in Switzerland, he was an elite athlete. He had the Swiss national record in the hundred meters at 10.16. And he talks about how the, our different neuro-transmitter profiles are neuro-transmitter dominance can affect how we approach workouts and our ability to, for example, repeat maximum intensity. And so you’re talking about this, this range of recovery from 40 seconds off to where other people might need two to four minutes off. And he describes how, you know, he was an explosive high power guy He ran a 10.16 100 meters. But he says, I would go to track meets, Dave talking. Brad (37m 33s): And he would just sleep in the stands until 15 minutes before his race he’d wake up. He jogged down the field a few times, he’d get in the blocks and blast a world-class time. And he says his training partner who had almost the exact same time would have an hour and 20 minute warmup with these stretches. And then these wind sprints and then some more power drills. And it was all due to the different neuro-transmitter makeup. And then he says, he’s in his gym, you know, working with clients. And he says, okay, we’re going to do an assessment today. And I want you to go one minute, all out, as hard as you can. Ready go. And the person’s going, going, going. And then he says stop. And they say, okay, what next? Like, they’re just standing there, you know, breathing a little hard. Brad (38m 15s): And he’s like, was that all out? And the person says, yes, that was as hard as I can go. And then you can look on YouTube. We’ll, we’ll find the link. He’s showing an all-out effort of one minute where he’s doing the battle ropes. And then he’s doing the pulling the, the single barbell up and down, and then he’s collapsed on the ground and a pile of sweat from a one minute workout. And so boy, we have that individual variation. That’s a super important element of how to design a workout. Dr. Marker (38m 41s): Definitely. So, yeah, just as a, another quick example like powerlifters. You see, like, it’s kind of it’s, I, I’m not in the power lifting world, but I, I think it’s amazing watching, but some of them just really need to get psyched out beforehand. You see their trainers, slapping them and hitting them and, and then they go and lift, and then there are others that are just, you know, calm, cool, and, you know, kind of pull it up. And, you know, I, I would imagine something similar to what you’re saying is, you know, this sympathetic nervous system needing to kick in like crazy for these super maximal efforts, Brad (39m 15s): So back to the dunking, Craig, let’s see. Now, if this is a big goal and you want to do it right. In your particular case, what would that look like? I mean, you say practicing jumping, that’s great. You say doing the kettlebells, but over a weeks or a month time, how many times are you going to go out there and, you know, really put in a big effort toward this goal. And then what’s that workout going to look like? Dr. Marker (39m 41s): Yeah. So what I’ve been doing is kind of, it’s kind of a, another section of a overarching umbrella of training. But about three days a week, I’m doing these high intensity repeat type training and I’ll do my shock jumps or kettlebell swings. And then out an hour later, I should go to the basketball court and I’ll, you know, just practice, practice the movement, the jumping and those types of things. So it’s, it’s a bit, you know, there’s, there’s other things that I do in my training, but that’s, that’s the more specific part of it. So three days a week is, you know, really where I’m focused on it and it not three consecutive, it’s three broken up with rest days. Brad (40m 28s): And then how many full-out jumps are you going to take in, in a single workout? And are you watching for a decline in performance or what are your parameters that are allowing you to design the best workout? Dr. Marker (40m 41s): Yeah, definitely. You know, on the basketball courts, I think we said before, the recording, you were talking about high jumps and you’d just get, you know, you, you just want to keep trying. So I do kind of keep a clock, you know, that, you know, I’m gonna just practice basketball and practice my jumps. So I’ll do like five minutes, you know, just shooting around, warming up, then I’ll start jumping lightly. And then I’ve got 10 minutes where, you know, wherever the rebound comes, I might jump and things like that. So I keep that time under control kettlebell swings or the Verkoshanky shocked jumps. I’ve got like a, you know, a set that I’m doing that day and that, that oscillates, you know, I vary the, the amounts daily, but it’s, you know, it’s probably about 25, no, yeah. Dr. Marker (41m 26s): 25 to 40 jumps or, you know, 30 to 80 swings a day, probably a little bit more volume for swings, but yeah, Brad (41m 36s): Every day? Dr. Marker (41m 38s): No, no, no. There’s just those three days.That I do on those three days Brad (41m 41s): And then what about the other days of the week Dr. Marker (41m 44s): Doing a little bit more, you know, strength type training I’m doing just kind of like, yeah, just general strength. I’m doing some, you know, one legged strength training kind of within the 70 to 80% of one rep max range. So that’s a kind of a range that I, I tried to stay in. There’s some great studies by Soviet researchers, Medvedev, you know, not going maximal effort that often in strength training is pretty important. This is getting onto a whole nother topic, but yeah, 60 to 80% range of one rep max is where I’m staying for that. Dr. Marker (42m 27s): I want to go heavy enough. So three to seven reps on, on different things. So I’ll do you know, some squats, some deadlifts I’ll do some presses, kinda some pull-ups some weighted pull ups and those types of things on the weight training days, Brad (42m 45s): You mentioned the one legged, can you describe the importance or benefits of that? Dr. Marker (42m 53s): For the most part, when we jump in, you know, there’s very few stories, sports where we’re jumping, we’re standing, squatting down and jumping. So, you know, just like your approach in the high jump you’re, you’re running, you’re jumping off of one leg whenever we’re walking or running, or we need to be explosive. We’re kind of coming off of one leg. So having that one legged power, the balance, I think helps us, you know, build a proprioception and, and you know, things that we need. So I tried to do a lot of one leg type of exercises. Brad (43m 31s): Yeah. I think I heard you say that or, or you wrote it and it made so much sense. You also might have offered that most of the time when we’re trying to do something powerful with our upper body, we’re doing it with both hands, we’re picking up a heavy rock off the ground. We’re doing a pull up up to the bar. I don’t know. Maybe if you do one-arm pull-ups that, that doesn’t apply. But for most of us we’re doing two arm pull-ups do aren’t picking up heavy stuff. So it makes sense to train with the, with the upper body, with both arms and then, you know, go more to the one leg and stuff when we’re doing lower body. I love it. Dr. Marker (44m 4s): Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I I’ve I’ve forgot. I wrote something like that, but yeah. Brad (44m 10s): So also on our list to talk about before we got into, basically one of my favorite fitness subjects of the last couple of decades was this, this notion of toning things down and going for that maximum output, that high intensity repeat training is this accidental hypertrophy concept. You call it and the great results you’ve had recently. So maybe we can get into the cutting edge here now. Dr. Marker (44m 34s): Yeah. So this started a few years ago. We had this again, when I was working with Pavel on these protocols for Quick and the Dead, we were testing out all kinds of different work intervals, rest intervals, and most everything we did was with kettlebells because he brought kettlebells to the west and made them popular. But we had this one where we had 25 swings and these are heavy swings. So like a 48 kilogram or 106 hundred pound kettlebell swinging at 25 times, your posterior chain is burning. My forearms burned the grip of that, and it’s fight to the end to do 25 swings. Dr. Marker (45m 21s): And so this was the protocol. And then we thought we needed 10 minutes of rest to clean up all of this acid that we burned. So we were just testing out all of these different programs and then, you know, 10 minutes people get bored. They don’t want to sit for 10 minutes. So we said, okay, you can go do some presses in between. And, and, you know, so we, we just had them do some presses. I kind of modified the presses a little bit. There’s I can send you a link to this. There’s an article on teenage son or on YouTube. It’s a hypertrophied conditioning program. And we just have, and do those twenty-five swings every 10 minutes and then presses in between. And we had people like saying, you know, my pants, the waist doesn’t fit anymore. Dr. Marker (46m 5s): My shirts, my shoulders have gotten bigger. And we think it’s a bit of building up this lactic acid, this glycolytic system of, with a lot of power, you know, this is not a, you know, 30 minute burn. This is, you know, you know, less than a minute where you really feel the burn, you know, and it’s like, what sprinters do, or what boxers do or gymnasts do. They’re probably feeling the burn a little bit, but it’s intense. And then it’s shut off. And so, you know, we, we did this, that, that was one program. We did. I started playing with a lot of these other shortening rest intervals, and there was a German, gosh, I’m forgetting the name German swim researcher. Dr. Marker (46m 49s): And what they did was, you know, they want the swimmers to get as fast as possible. So they would sprint and then they’d keep shortening the rest intervals. And so I was trying this out and cause I don’t like waiting 10 minutes either, but so we were doing those 20 seconds on 40 seconds off and kind of shortening the intervals. And when we started measuring that heart rate, when people started getting into that lactic acid zone and starting to build up towards, you know, round 5, 6, 7, 8, and it became a mental struggle to really push through those, but they’re still as powerful. Dr. Marker (47m 29s): So there’s still repeats, but more the mental struggle, the more the lactic acid system built up, they started to build hypertrophy. And so it was kind of this, this idea that, you know, if we let that glycolytic system signal our body and maybe create this, you know, anabolic environment or, you know, we’re a signaling hormones that these type two fibers are getting exhausted. We started to build more type two fibers. And, you know, if we think about bodybuilders, you know, they’re going for the pump and, you know, in the gym, they’re, you know, they’re doing, you know, eight to 15 reps every time and because they want that pump and they want to go to failure. Dr. Marker (48m 9s): So it was just kind of the same thing, but with powerful type movements. And so, you know, we’re, it’s basically the HIRT, the high-intensity repeats, but with a little bit more burn. And so it’s a really mental struggle to finish at the end, Brad (48m 26s): But it’s another path to hypertrophy beyond the one that we’ve been pounded into our heads is the only way to go, which is this again, an exhausting, prolonged workout where you go to failure over and over and over again, it’s the notion that all strength bodybuilders are pretty familiar with. And now we’re talking about, I guess, kind of a, I’m not going to call it a hack or a shortcut, but a, an alternative pathway, which sounds really interesting and fun. Dr. Marker (48m 56s): Yep. Yeah. I mean, if we think of sprinters, I mean there, you know, body composition is, you know, and I know sprinters are also training the gym, but they’re certainly not training necessarily for body composition, but you know, they’re going all out and you know this, you know, and they’re trying to get the fastest performance each time, but you know, they’re having this sort of accidental hypertrophy by, you know, triggering this system, you know, with, with their sprints and, you know, boxers in our sprinting as well, and, you know, in a different way and you know, doing short intervals. So I think it’s not something like that. I had just newly discovered. It was just, you know, kind of playing around with this a little bit and seeing all these changes in the people we tested. Dr. Marker (49m 40s): And then also in, in myself, I just like, you know, I’m not trying to change my body composition, but all of a sudden things Brad (49m 47s): Happening, man, he can’t help it. People he’s got to go get new clothes. Amazing. Tell me about that analogy that Verkoshanky used with the sink filling up with water. Dr. Marker (50m 0s): Yeah. So yeah, Verkoshanky, again is one of the brilliant Soviet scientists, not well known for his conditioning work, but did a lot with that. But he talked about, you know, this sink filling up and when it got to the top, you kind of remove the drain and that’s when you would stop this exercise. So that’s repeat training in a nutshell is we fill it up. We stop before we get too much glycolytic or start spilling water on the floor. I would say that this accidental hypertrophy allows a little water to spill on the floor. And then you, you know, pull the plug and, you know, get enough rest. Dr. Marker (50m 41s): But you’re, you’re allowing, you know, we don’t want to say the glycolytic systems all bad. It does trigger some things. As long as we use this, the system in a certain way, we can, we can use its benefits without getting the negatives. Brad (50m 56s): Yeah. I’d also contend that once in a while, super fantastic. Go knock yourself out, go run a 5k race all out once every two months or whatever, but not three days a week with the crappy time. So again, the sink people is the idea of the muscular discomfort and the, the burn accumulating. And I guess your the recent discussion we just had with the, the, the hard stuff is more like turning the faucet on full blast. So the sink fills up really fast. It spills over everything’s fast, fast, fast. Then you pull the drain and everything’s good. And then in the other example, you’re working really hard for this appropriate duration interval. Brad (51m 38s): Let’s say 13 to 20 seconds, which you mentioned. And so when we get up to that 18, 19, 20, you’re feeling the burn, you’re feeling the burn and whew, there goes the plug. You stop running. You recover fully. And just before we close the section of the discussion, we’ll talk about that disassembling. And deamination that occurs if you decide to sprint for 30 seconds or a minute, or whatever the peppy instructor with the microphone in the front is telling you to do. Dr. Marker (52m 7s): Yeah. That that’s when we start this overflow of water in the sink, that’s when we start to create a lot of oxidants, we, you know, that are just building up and we’re not, they’re not just used for signaling. That’s when the eight amp is becoming, you know, degraded, we’re building up ammonia in the system. And, you know, when ANP is degraded, it’s hard to rebuild that. We need to, you know, have the, the, all the building blocks and different components of just a quick supplement suggestion. You know, like when people have heart attacks, having Ribos and having, you know, one of those building blocks is important because the heart is basically not getting oxygen. Dr. Marker (52m 48s): And then, you know, when it gets flooded with oxygen, it needs to rebuild that, that, so, you know, it’s kind of the same thing that’s happening in a heart attack. We’re, you know, creating this condition. And if we do it too long, it just creates a lot of damage. Brad (53m 6s): Okay. Besides that, it’s really great. So carry on with your extremely grueling longer duration sessions. Hopefully everyone followed. I know we got into a little bit of science, but I think the important takeaways here are, we need to go hard to get them the most fitness adaptations. I know you’re familiar with Dr. Magus book, Body by Science. And the subtitle says, I forget, it’s something like get super fit with 12 minutes working out a week. And then he goes into plenty of research showing that if you do these workouts correctly, just like the one you described with the accidental hypertrophy, where you’re going 103 pound kettlebell swings. Brad (53m 49s): Okay. That sounds pretty challenging. And if, if it’s for you or I it’s 20 pounds or 40 pounds or whatever is, you know, a challenge to the individual, it’s going to rock your world I promise you, people. You are not going to feel deprived of your workout satisfaction. Maybe we should finish up with your interest in anti-aging and the strategies that you’ve discovered with as related to working out and, and some of the other stuff, too, if we go off the, off the workout chart into something else. Dr. Marker (54m 19s): No, I mean, I think we could probably spend a few hours talking about anti-aging and longevity stuff. I know that you’ve, you’re aging backwards. So you, you probably have a lot to say about this to kind of give it in a nutshell. I, I think when we think of our mitochondria, it goes through different processes and it goes through a fission process where it’s splitting into when we need to make more of it. And small mitochondria, you’ve got more of them, but they’re just not as efficient and they don’t work as well. So we also need fusion where they combine and, you know, make bigger ones. Dr. Marker (55m 1s): So AMPK which is something that we create a lot of when we work out intensely, you know, kind of triggers this fusion process. So making more mitochondria. So when I do these HIRT type of training sessions, I want AMPK I want vision. I want to create more mitochondria. I want to break down my body in certain ways, and also like create autophagy and, you know, break down, get rid of the bad cells and those types of things. So in a fasted state, I’ll do these HIRT type training, trying to make my mitochondria more, have more mitochondria, and also get rid of some bad stuff. So I’m super simplifying this. I don’t, I know we don’t have much time left, but I love Brad (55m 42s): To do a whole anti-aging show, but this will, this will tease everybody here. Dr. Marker (55m 46s): So three days a week, I’m doing what I call fusion days with high intensity repeat, and then an infusion days. You know, if we want TOR where TOR is kind of the opposite of AMPK we want muscle growth. We want, you know, the mitochondria to fuse out, you know, and I can eat a little bit differently. I might not eat one meal a day on fusion days, I’ll train, and then I’ll eat. You know, we want a balance of these two processes. You know, I think fasting is great, but if I fast all the time, I also need to build muscles. So as, as I age, you know, I want to have as much type two muscle fiber as possible. Dr. Marker (56m 28s): That’s, you know, a key indicator of, of longevity. So I, you know, I, we want to have a pendulum. And the way that I think of it is if I can make the pendulum swing a little bit further, so fasting, get the autophagy processes, going, create AMPK where I’m building more mitochondria. And then on other days where I’m building muscle and, you know, shutting down that some of those autophagy processes and building, you know, so that’s kind of what I’m doing. I’m doing, you know, different days, you know, with a different goal in mind. So that’s the quick and the dirty version of it. Brad (57m 4s): Oh my gosh, that that’s solid gold Craig. I love it. That’s another breakthrough insight. The pendulum, because personally I’ve been wrestling with all the information that’s blown into my head over the past decade and we often get confused and led down one path or the other thinking that it’s the end all. And I think there’s a kind of been a little bit of a backlash with the incredible popularity of keto and then the super fit female five times a week, CrossFit who already has a six pack thinking that she needs to go and do these fasted workouts and fast afterwards to get the wonderful autophagy benefits. But then we also have to put on a checklist, the number of stress factors in one’s life, especially when we’re talking to a psychologist here, but personally, I’m going to volunteer that when I was deep into keto doing the research for the book and trying to do my crazy ass sprint workouts. Brad (57m 58s): And I wasn’t listening to Dr. Marker yet. So I wasn’t resting enough between intervals, which is another way to blow yourself out, even if you’re not going for, you know, over 30 seconds. And then, you know, restricting my carbohydrate intake in the name of the wonderful benefits of ketosis. I believe that it conspired to throw me out of stress-rest balance, and I needed to swing that pendulum over to the side of slamming some additional bowls of popcorn, a higher carbohydrate intake. You, you talk about fasted workouts. That’s great. And then you talk about a different type of workout where maybe you’re coming home and, and making a beautiful smoothie, like my recovery smoothie that I now go out of my way to hit, as soon as I’m done with my sprint workout in the name of promoting that. Brad (58m 44s): So fision andfusion, that’s a little more scientific than, than Brad Kearns rambling here, but I love that pendulum concept. Dr. Marker (58m 52s): Yeah, the, the tricky part is what I haven’t figured out yet is timing of it. You know, so I will do a longer fast every once in a while, but, you know, should I be in a week in vision or, and then a week infusion, or is it a day in it, you know, those types of things. So I’ve gotten down to, I was doing kind of starting with week of vision, you know, where I do every day, a 24 hour fast one meal a day, and then it became like two or three days. And now I’m kind of down to one day fision in one day fusion, but I’m still trying to figure out the right intervals, you know, is optimal for us. That that I think is going to take some time. Brad (59m 33s): But that’s huge, man, when, when you figure it out, we’ll, we’ll have you back on the show to tell the secret to the planet. I mean, Dr. Attia is deep into this too, and I think has done a lot of effort to figure this stuff out more than anybody doing his quarterly five day fast and measuring everything obsessively and including his ketone values and his glucose on the, on the non-stop continuous glucose monitor for years and years. And yeah, the, the, the jury is still out. I’m going to put in a vote for thinking that if you are hitting a lot of those checkpoints, like the food that Craig does eat after his workout is not junk food from the Winn-Dixie. I think we’re well down the road of optimal. Brad (1h 0m 16s): And maybe there’s not a whole lot more there to discover, especially when we’re talking about longevity and things like that that were anyone who’s in this mix and making an effort is doing pretty well, but it’s always exciting to kind of look and see what’s the best. Maybe our, our psychological state and our appreciation of the journey and satisfaction with workout patterns is also a big factor on the list. I don’t know. What do you think about that? Dr. Marker (1h 0m 42s): It certainly could be. I think that’s, you know, the more we can measure the more variables and like you mentioned, a Peter Attia is, is awesome at measuring things. And I urge everybody to just measure, you know, blood test, if you can, you know, I do a lot of aging tests like with the Horvath clock and different things, just measure to see if what you’re doing works, you know, so I think all those things are important and also sees. It helps you see the long game, you know. That this is just one experiment that I’m doing now, but I’ve got, you know, 25 more years of lots of different experiments to try. So if something’s not working today, you know, I I’m okay with it because I know this is, you know, the long game that that I’m ending for. Brad (1h 1m 27s): So you got 25 more years of experiments. That’ll hit you around 75 and then what’s the following 25. You’re going to sit back and watch TV or something. Dr. Marker (1h 1m 35s): Yeah, I guess I got a lot more years. I just randomly throughout 25, but hopefully be more Brad (1h 1m 40s): After 25 more years, then you’ll have it dialed. Then another 25 will just be human optimization, dunking at age 80 and so forth. Dr. Marker (1h 1m 50s): I’m actually just following you, I’m waiting to see where you set your high jump record and I’m like, okay, so I’ve got a few more years to catch you and then whatever you set I’m at the next stage, I’m going to, I’m going to him for that, Brad (1h 2m 1s): that my friend is like one, one or two years older than me, he says, I’m going after that 90 year old high jump record. And then I know you’re going to bust it, but actually Craig, the, the national record in the high jump for 95 plus is it’s 0.97meters. So those of us who are not familiar with the metric system, that’s less than three feet, meaning that if you can jump into bed, when you’re 95 years old, you will set the national record in the high jump. And I have my sights on that, on that value right there. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Dr. Marker (1h 2m 34s): I love it. That is awesome. Brad (1h 2m 34s): Thank you so much for spending the time. It was a very, a very heavy show with tremendous insights to pull out. I’m going to give you the highest honor and call this a, a 1.0 X show, meaning you have to listen to it at regular speed. Instead of most of the shows that I listened to that are 1.75 speed, because I have so many that I want to listen to, but then when it starts to get deep, you got to slow down, people. So I want to replay, especially that pendulum commentary that lasted what a minute. Go listen to that again, because that I think is really big for people that are deep into this fitness and health optimization. If we can figure out that pendulum, that’s a big deal, keep up the great work. Do you want to give us some ways to connect with you and plugs here at the end of the show Dr. Marker (1h 3m 18s): I’ve got, I’ve got no plugs. Brad (1h 3m 20s): He’s just all about, he’s just all about performance, people. Dr. Marker (1h 3m 23s): On YouTube. You can check out the strength that university or, or search hypertrophy conditioning program. If you want more information about that. Yeah. Brad (1h 3m 31s): And we’ll put links to your videos and the HIIT versus HIRT article and so forth. Keep it up. Thanks Dr. Craig Marker. Thanks for listening everybody. Duh, 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. Brad (1h 4m 13s): You can also download several awesome free eBooks when you subscribe to the email list. 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