It’s time for more Q&A!

Thank you so much to everyone for writing in—we have a ton of really interesting comments and questions that I can’t wait to work through in today’s episode. I really appreciate all your questions and contributions to this community (if you want to join in, email podcast@bradventures.com), and we thoughtfully read, consider, and answer every single email that comes in. 

In today’s show, we start with a question from listener Brian who wants to see more examples of a “common man” day—what about people who have to get up at 5am and have a desk job? What kind of workouts and lifestyle recommendations do I suggest to those who have to get up at “unnatural” times of the day and have certain lifestyle restrictions based on their circumstances? I also answer questions about optimizing protein intake, tips for keeping your healthy diet affordable, the foods that you can get non-organic when you’re on a budget, the importance of sleep and how sleep deprivation makes everything take 20% longer, how to ensure proper recovery in sprinting, my thoughts on a recent Instagram post from Dr. Andrew Huberman, and more!

TIMESTAMPS:

Brian Fitzsimmons is asking Brad to suggest dealing with circadian rhythms and workouts for people whose daily life doesn’t allow for optimal scheduling. [01:02]

Ray wants to know if he sprints for 10 to 20 seconds, how many times should he do it, and how much should he rest? You should do 4 to 8 sprints of 10 to 20 seconds with a 6 to 1 recovery. [10:58]

Scottsdale Wellness Center is asking about the myth about the notion of too much protein. [13:09]

Mark Miller from Melbourne is asking about the  Zone Two or MAF fitness trend of slowing down. [17:49]

When talking about high intensity training, realize it is not for the novice. [22:58] 

What is the recommended period of luxurious rest intervals when sprinting? The faster you run, the more recovery you need. [32:40]

Mark is asking about the recommendation to engage in some form of resistance training. [36:49]

Brad talks about the dangers of road cycling. [47:07]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• Brad’s Shopping page
• B.rad Whey Protein Isolate Superfuel – The Best Protein on The Planet! Available in Two Delicious Flavors: Vanilla Bean and Cocoa Bean
• NEW: B.rad Superfruits – Organic Freeze-Dried Exotic Fruit Powder! Natural Electrolyte Hydration & Energy Powder
• Carnivore Score Food Ranking Chart
• Why We Sleep
• Deep Work
• Podcast with Dr. Craig Marker
• Podcast with Lion Martinez
• The P.E. Diet
• Born to Walk
• Podcast with Dr. Doug McGuff
• Body by Science

LISTEN:

We appreciate all feedback, and questions for Q&A shows, emailed to podcast@bradventures.com. If you have a moment, please share an episode you like with a quick text message, or leave a review on your podcast app. Thank you!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world-ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple, actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype, hacks, shortcuts, and sciencey talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Brad (00:38):
We have been fed a marketing ruse when it comes to the running boom, and you see the commercials and the aggressive marketing of elevated cushion shoes to put on and head out your door and become a runner and get so fit and healthy, and the reality is

Brad (00:55):
Okay. Okay, it’s time for more q and a. Thank you so much people for writing in. We got a ton of really interesting comments and questions. I can’t wait to work through these, and I really appreciate y’all, y’all writing and contributing to the show and the community. The email address, of course, is podcast@bradventures.com. We thoughtfully read and consider and answer every single email except for random solicitations for consumerism stuff that I’m not interested in then I’m not gonna answer <laugh>, but the questions and the comments always really thought provoking and I think valuable to, uh, the general listening audience. So that’s one of my parameters. If you’re gonna write a question and you’re asking me about how your left knee hurts when you, uh, turn sideways on the basketball court, that might not be a great general audience question. So try to contribute to the q and a shows accordingly, as most people do, and it’s gonna get a little spicy this time once again with Dr.

Brad (02:02):
Huberman whom, I love his podcast content. Uh, I did a show, uh, a while back about the expose scandal that appeared from his personal life, and I got a lot of negative feedback on that. So thank you very much, people for being honest. I’m gonna stay away from his personal life on this one when he comes up in the Q and A. but I do have some thoughts about a recent Instagram post to his, so let’s get into it, starting with Brian Fitzsimmons writing in. Hey, Brad, I love your stuff. I just bought an ice tank. I would love to see some more examples of a common mandate and suggestions when I see these movement specialists and biohackers that make their living off living an optimized life. Many of us out there are doing the best they can to stay healthy, but we might have to wake up at 5:00 AM and commute to some desk job.

Brad (02:51):
Can you do a version of circadian rhythms and workouts for people like myself who have to wake up when it’s unnatural and have other lifestyle circumstances that are not optimized? Um, I, sorry, I can’t wake up with the sunshine without an alarm clock. I think you’d pick up, uh, additional audience, uh, listeners for people that, uh, have an office job and, um, shouldn’t feel like crap when they can’t walk their kids to school every day and engage in a 90-minute morning exercise routine. Okay, man, thank you very much for being honest and pointing out that insight when we’re listening to the world’s leading biohackers, who by definition and, um, as course of their, uh, their role in being public communicators are trying to optimize things. And of course, I put myself in that category. My morning routine was 40 minutes, not 90 <laugh>, but still, I can’t believe that, uh, I completed every single morning for six years without things getting in the way that included, uh, working around airline flights and, and doing things where I had to piece it in.

Brad (04:02):
But most of the time I was able to do it. I doubt I would’ve been able to do that when I was raising my young kids and getting ’em off to school and having different activities and more structured jobs that I’ve had in the past. So, fair point, man, fair point. And at this point in my life, I’m able to devote more time and energy to fitness and lifestyle optimization and getting plenty of sleep and all those things that a lot of times get pinched when we’re in the thick of it. So, first I wanna acknowledge that we are chartered to do the best that we can within the circumstances that we face. So if you’re caring for an elderly person that frequently wakes up in the middle of the night that could affect your workout routine the next day if you didn’t get perfectly ideal optimized sleep and all the other things that get in the way of perfection or optimization.

Brad (04:59):
So my first note is to do the best you can. And then the other one, I really would like all of us to reflect on the level of frivolity that might leak into the picture when we complain about our burdensome routine not giving us the space to exercise or eat healthy, or a lot of times there’s some budget concerns about eating healthy. But if you go onto my website, bradkearns.com and download the Carnivore Scores Food Rankings Chart, print it out, tape it on your refrigerator. It’s a wonderful handy guide that ranks in a tiered system, the most nutrient dense foods on earth. So at a glance, you can see how you’re doing to emphasize the best foods. And the reason I mention it right now is that a nice percentage of the most nutritious foods are extremely inexpensive. So I would argue anyone listening to this show, and that excludes a few billion people who are not in the modernized world, but anyone listening to the show can probably afford to eat extremely well and emphasize many of the most nutritious foods on a very modest food budget.

Brad (06:09):
So I’m talking about the oily cold water fish, which are the highest ranked fish that you can get. And we’re talking about the SMASH category, that’s salmon, mackerel, anchovies, sardines and herring. Many of those are extremely inexpensive in, in canned form, but they give you the most Omega-3 and other nutritional benefits. Um, organ meats are still extremely inexpensive because the demand is so low. So you can purchase liver, even grass fed liver from the health food store, and it’s only a few bucks a pound. It’s cheaper than ground beef, which is also one of the highest ranking foods you can get even grass fed. If you are a member of a big box store, you can go and get a fantastic load of ground bison and organic ground beef for discount prices. And that, uh, starts to flood your, um, your dietary makeup with some really, really nutritious foods.

Brad (07:11):
Same with pastured eggs. Even the most premium eggs, for the, the bang for the buck is outstanding, where you’re spending five or six or seven bucks per dozen instead of two or three or four bucks. But still relatively speaking, um, you’re doing really well. And of course, all the produce and the fresh produce that you can get to, be a dietary centerpiece is by and large, uh, quite affordable, even if you’re navigating toward organic in the areas that you should. And remember this little tidbit when we’re talking about the importance of getting organic produce. If something has a thick inedible skin, you don’t really need to worry about organic. You can peel back that banana and have no problem consuming conventional banana, watermelon, avocado. You get the difference between, let’s say, uh, berries and leafy greens where you’re consuming the skin or consuming the surface of the plant, and it’s difficult to wash off and scrub off the pesticides from the kale or the blueberries.

Brad (08:13):
So those are the ones you wanna prioritize for organic. But in general, back to the content of the question, doing the best you can, you can navigate to extremely healthy diet on a very modest budget. And when it comes to your circadian rhythm and your schedule and the need to get up at 5:00 AM and go to work, let’s really take a close examination at the amount of time you spend interacting with digital device and blowing time with, you know, modern indulgences rather than sticking to lifestyle optimization, for example, going to sleep on time. If you do have to get up at 5:00 AM for work, maybe you’re not gonna be an ardent consumer of Netflix as much as the next person who has the luxury of, of sleeping longer in the morning. And I’m not directing this directly at, at the, Brian who wrote into the show.

Brad (09:04):
But for all of us, when we complain that we don’t have enough time to work out or don’t have enough time to do the right thing. There is some, there’s a pie slice in your daily routine in your weekly routine that is, uh, uh, gobbled up by indulgences and mobile technology and digital technology in general. So we can look closely at that if we’re feeling pressed for time for health optimization. And also the great research about sleep. You’ve heard this many times that if you become sleep deprived, your brain doesn’t work as well. And everything takes 20% longer as one anecdote shared by Dr. Matthew Walker and his bestselling book, Why We Sleep. So if you are staying up late to get more work done, realize that your work is taking 20% longer. Whereby if you just went to sleep on time and got sufficient sleep, you would be able to get the work done so you could go to sleep on time.

Brad (10:00):
So you’re in a vicious cycle. Cal Newport’s new podcast. He’s the author of Deep Work where he talks about, getting into, you know, creating situations where you can really focus and really actualize the highest expression of your work talents by focusing rather than immersing into busy life every single day. And the constant communication and the constant distraction that takes you away from what he calls deep work. And I’m thinking about that myself every single day because the ability to shut off communication and ignore the email inbox and favor of working on a book or a presentation or something that’s really gonna be a special in the special category rather than just extricating from the busy category is important for all of us to consider.

Brad (10:58):
So let’s go back to Ray. And these are questions, I mean comments that come on from YouTube videos. So we like to review those and answer them on the show if appropriate. And this was put up on one of my videos about sprinting. And Ray says, okay, so I should sprint for 10 to 20 seconds, but I wanna ask you how many times should I do it and how much rest should I take in between sprints? I’ve covered this extensively on numerous podcasts, including those dedicated entirely to sprinting. So that basic template that I like to recommend for sprinting for the general audience before we get specific with different goals and people of different particulars. I recommend sprinting for between 10 and 20 seconds. You can go on the low side if you’re doing high impact sprinting on flat ground, and you can go on the higher side if you’re sprinting on things like a stationary bicycle or an exercise machine.

Brad (11:53):
And a great workout is doing four to eight sprints of 10 to 20 seconds with a six to one recovery to work ratio. So if you’re doing a ten second sprint over at the athletic field across the grass or across the track, you’re gonna rest for at least a minute in between each of those sprints. If you’re doing 20 second sprint, you’re gonna rest for two minutes. That’s in a quite extensive amount of rest. It was something that I had to get used to at first ’cause I’m using my endurance athlete mentality and going out there and sprinting across the field and recovering for 10 or 20 or 30 seconds, and I feel fine and I’m tough, and so I do another one. But to get a proper sprint without declining your performance over time due to the accumulation of fatigue, you really want to be luxurious, quote unquote.

Brad (12:39):
That’s from my former podcast guest, Dr. Craig Marker. Take luxurious rest intervals. And this allows you to be truly powerful and explosive on each sprint. And I’m gonna talk on another question a little bit later about taking even more rest when you’re truly trying to excel at sprinting. And that was great insights that came from my former podcast guest and world Record holding Master Sprinter Lion Martinez from Spain. We had a wonderful show where we talked a lot about sprinting.

Brad (13:09):
This comes in from North Scottsdale Chiropractic Wellness Center, <laugh>, so thanks for writing in. And he says, I’m really glad that you asked Ted Naiman, my former podcast guest and a leading expert on all manner of fitness diet. He’s got wonderful physician from the Pacific Northwest. He’s got a great book that he wrote with William Schewfelt called the PE Ratio.

Brad (13:30):
And he says, I’m glad you asked Dr. Ted about the too much protein myth that keeps getting perpetuated amongst not only plant-based eaters like and leaders like Dr. McDougall, but also many of the keto movement figureheads. The notion of too much protein has caused a lot of fear and confusion. Dr. Naiman is one of the only people I’ve heard say it’s virtually impossible to consume too much protein. And this has been a wonderful evolution in recent by recent thought leaders and emerging science where, uh, we were told for a long time that if you overconsume protein, you overstress the kidneys and the liver, you have byproducts like, uh, too much nitrogen and urea, and that’s what stresses the kidneys. And this has all been aggressively refuted and discovered to be unfounded. And one of the things that protects us from over consuming protein is the tremendously high satiety level of dietary protein.

Brad (14:30):
So if you consume four or five or six or seven or eight or 12 eggs for breakfast like Andrew Zaragoza of the Power Project Podcast, you’re gonna feel satisfied. It’s very difficult to overconsume protein by way of eating. OI shouldn’t have eaten in that fourth steak for dinner, or I shouldn’t have had, have had 12 eggs. I should have had only 10 or eight or whatever. You’re gonna feel that tremendous satiety and the brain is gonna shut off the appetite center that triggers you to consume more. And all the hormones that are involved behind the scenes like CCK and ghrelin and the things that trigger hunger and trigger us to overeat on indulgent processed foods will be optimized when you prioritize dietary protein in the diet. And it’s also been shown that, uh, increasing protein intake way beyond the, uh, the modest and unfounded recommendations of the RDA of consuming, you know, what you need to survive.

Brad (15:32):
When we talk about thriving and upping our protein consumption to around a gram per pound of body weight per day, most everyone does just fine. I’m not a physician here talking about the, the, the nitty gritty. But what we see, the observation and a lot of research behind it, that plenty of protein is going to help you thrive and optimize and recover and trigger protein synthesis that, again, is, starts to get compromised as you age. So older active people need extra protein, females need extra protein. Of course, the young growing athlete needs extra protein and the senior citizen needs extra protein. The plant-based vegan vegetarian eater needs extra protein, especially when they’re systematically excluding the best and most assimilated sources of protein in the diet, which come from animal foods. So I guess I should do a little plug for my B.rad Super Fuel Whey protein powder because it gives you a convenient way to boost your daily protein intake without having to sit down and consume an elaborate meal.

Brad (16:36):
Or if you do have a satiety kicking in and you don’t feel like eating four eggs in the morning or four eggs at midday, you can take a nice drink and it’s not so filling or, or, um, uh, you know, burdensome to the digestive system and bump off and optimize your protein intake. And, many experts contend that getting regular doses of protein throughout the day, especially for a active people trying to perform and recover, is the best way. So you don’t need to overwhelm your system with too much protein at once. That might be where some of the contention comes in, that it’s difficult for the body to absorb and assimilate more than I’ve heard 40 grams, I’ve heard 60 grams at a single meal. And again, it’s hard to eat that much because you’re gonna be full.

Brad (17:22):
But if you can like dose it throughout the day, that’s gonna keep you in that nice. It’s called nitrogen balance where you’re not going catabolic and consuming your lean muscle tissue because you’re running short and you’re not overdoing it either, because those, uh, concerns have been unfounded. So there’ the add-on to the nice comment about Dr. Ted Naiman and his information about protein in his book and on our podcast episode. Uh,

Brad (17:49):
Mark Miller writes from down under in Melbourne, he says, Brad, big fan, I listen to every episode. I’m so glad to, uh, learn that people as far away as Australia are listening. That is so cool, and I appreciate all you guys down there. And we have our podcast listening stats, and it turns out that I think somewhere between five and 10% of all listenership of the B.rad podcast is from Australia.

Brad (18:12):
So by population that’s extremely disparate and super awesome, and I give credit down under to the healthiest fittest population, one of the healthiest fittest countries on the planet right there with New Zealand too. So all kinds of cool things going on Down Under including writing into the show. And Mark says, it seems to me that you and Marx Sisson and former podcast guest Peter Attia, are all in heated agreement, Ooh, a new Aussie saying that we can now banter about maybe at your next business meeting with your team. So are we all in heated agreement here? That’s what I thought. Thank you very much. Heated agreement. You guys are all in heated agreement about the benefits of low-level aerobic sessions, whether it’s called MAF or zone two, and Mark’s question is longer, but I’m gonna cut in and some, address some of these as we go along to keep it, keep it flowing.

Brad (19:05):
So definitely, it’s so great to see the tremendous attention heaped upon the hot new fitness trend of zone two cardiovascular exercise since I’ve been talking about this for a few decades. And Dr. Phil Maffetone has been talking about it for a few more decades, and helped me embrace this training principle when I was in the middle of my professional triathlon career and struggling from burnout and over training by pushing my body beyond the aerobic zone too long and thereby compromising my progress. So it’s great to see all the hoopla around Zone Two, but I also wanna point out that Zone One needs a lot more love. And that’s what Mark and I have been really digging into deeply lately as we’ve been writing a book called Born to Walk that’s launching in the fall of 2024. And this is all about the benefits of moving more frequently and everyday life with the centerpiece being walking and also the flawed notions and destruction and unintended consequences of the running boom whereby for most people, running is vastly too stressful and injurious and exhausting, where most people would be better off walking instead of running.

Brad (20:19):
So the elite athletes in every endurance sport for the past 60 years, dating back to Arthur Liddiard in New Zealand and training his world beating distance runners for the past 60 years, the true elite endurance athletes do the vast majority of their training in the zone one or zone two heart rate zones, uh, with a lot of emphasis on zone one. I’ve talked about the great marathoner Eluid Kipchoge doing 82 to 84% of his weekly mileage, which usually is around 130 miles per week. So whatever a hundred miles of his 130 miles per week are at an intensity level that he calls quote, easy or 50% capacity. So that would be falling in zone one, not zone two, or zone one and a half or zone two in that realm. So I get a little irritated when I see people pounding this importance of zone two and thinking that means PAing the very limit of zone two for all their runs.

Brad (21:18):
And a lot of times making a mistake or getting a little bit undisciplined whereby a stated Zone Two workout is really a zone 2.3 or 2.4, 2.5 zone, where you’re drifting above that very comfortable fat max heart rate limit or maximum aerobic function MAF heart rate limit, which as we know from listening to a lot of content, is 180 minus your age and beats per minute. So most of your exercise as an endurance enthusiast and as an overall fitness enthusiast, when you’re doing steady state cardiovascular exercise should be at or below that fat max heart rate. That’s when you’re burning the maximum amount of fat and you’re minimizing glucose burning and stress hormone production and things that result in breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury. Now Mark carries on with this question. It would be very interesting to get your take on Dr. Attias view of VO two max training.

Brad (22:10):
He’s suggesting that you take once a week of four minutes on, four minutes off, six to eight times, which to me seems like a very hard session. Good point, Mark. That’s a very hard session. And I’m gonna talk about how irritated I get when people start spouting these recommendations, like they’re, uh, one size fits all. Uh, I’m sure that you Sisson and Peter Attia all agree that building VO O2 max is important. However, uh, I’ve heard you Brad talk about doing short sprints of 20 seconds compared to his multiple four minute sessions. Well, let me state that this is these are two different workout protocols. So when you’re doing a proper sprint workout and looking for all the benefits that come from sprint workouts, yeah, that’s 10 to 20 seconds of truly explosive near maximum effort. But that’s totally different than a VO two max training session.

Brad (22:58):
And indeed, one of the most popular and scientifically validated VO two max workouts is four times four minutes with four minutes rest. So when you’re going hard for four minutes, when you’re taking it up to the maximum output that you can sustain for four minutes, that means you gotta pace yourself pretty well, ’cause we don’t wanna see you blow it out the first minute and then struggle to finish four minutes. So as you get accustomed to these VO two max type workouts, you realize what you can hold for four minutes and it turns out to be 90 or 92% of your maximum heart rate. Remember, that’s gonna be 20 beats below max. So 90% sounds like a lot, but it’s a plenty of cushion between that. And what you were asked to do if you were truly going flat out for maximum of 30 seconds is all you could handle, or 20 seconds.

Brad (23:46):
So a four by four is a sensible workout protocol. And that four minutes of rest, unlike a high intensity interval training session, which is another different stimulus with different desired adaptations where you’re doing shorter intervals, shorter rest, shorter interval, shorter rest, a VO two max session is, wants you to work up near your maximum oxygen uptake several times. If Peter Attia suggested six to eight times, wow, that is a really gnarly, uh, session. And what I’m going to reflect upon here is that someone who’s in novice or average only average fitness, that is gonna be an extremely daunting session. That’s probably too much to consider, way too much to consider out of the gate when you just really want to focus on building an aerobic conditioning base before you even dream of attempting something like four by four at 92 to 95% of maximum.

Brad (24:47):
So although it’s a good VO two max stimulation, I’m going to, uh, contend that the average person or someone in average to poor physical condition will probably get up to, um, you know, a VO two max effort when they’re, uh, moving from walking to jogging. So we gotta be careful when we’re working that top end zone without a substantial aerobic conditioning base. The good thing about Attia is he is a full on legit athlete, so he knows what he’s talking about. And if he’s recommending VO two max sessions, you wanna be careful, uh, and understand that he’s making the assumption that you have a substantial aerobic base and you can absorb and benefit from such a difficult session. I think he does a fine job at that. But there’s a lot of promoting going on these days where people are like trying to biohack their way to outstanding physical fitness condition and going on Instagram and making a post saying the four by four workout is awesome to build up your VO two max.

Brad (25:46):
But it certainly is not awesome unless you are really quite fit starting out. I would even go so far as to say, Hey, if you wanna dabble in this VO two max stuff, why don’t you warm up on your stationary bike and do a single effort of four minutes at 92 to 95% of maximum and see how that goes, and then cool down and finish the workout maybe the next week or the next month. You’ll go to two, you’ll go to three reps, you’ll go to four reps, but you wanna be careful overdoing it when you’re pushing your body hard. I can name a lot of names here, but I’m just gonna make the general presentation that people who are not real athletes but are more influencers or scientists or whatnot should be really careful recommending high intensity training to the general population.

Brad (26:35):
I just saw a post from Dr. Andrew Huberman who attended the US Olympic trials track and field in Eugene. It was so awesome to see him post with his 35,000 commenters and, and sharing his experience with the audience because anything that promotes the wonderful sport of track and field is so helpful for these athletes who are generally still toiling an obscurity in comparison to the major sports. We’re now seeing some really great ratings on the track and field broadcast, where over a million, million and a half, probably 2 million people, uh, are watching those great Olympic trials broadcast with my former podcast guests and favorite announcer, Otto Bolden, uh, entertaining them and educating them tremendously. So it was awesome to see huberman, uh, hanging out in Eugene in person and mixing with the athletes. But on his post, he said how he’s been a long time, uh, long distance runner, and he said that, um, his, his weekly regimen includes three runs a week, one 60 to 90 minutes long distance, another run that’s faster of, uh, 45 minutes, and then also a sprint run.

Brad (27:38):
So, whew, that is a pretty amazing and daunting week to sustain week in, week out if he actually does it, or he is just maybe mentioning his best week, and someone with that, a very, very impressive level of muscle mass. So he is a truly powerful looking human with a lot of bulk and clearly from some of his shows with, uh, strength training experts like Dr. Andy Galpin. He spends a lot of time in the gym getting strong and arguably even super strong. So, uh, if he’s out there doing that much distance running, I’m pretty surprised and impressed, but the post goes on to recommend running to everyone because it’s such a wonderful sport and it’s really good for your, your DNA and your, your mental health and all that stuff. But he says, if you start out soon, you will get to a, uh, rhythm of doing two to four runs per week, uh, for 20 to 45 minutes.

Brad (28:31):
And even that, I would take several backpedaling steps and say that for the vast majority of fitness enthusiasts, even people who are reasonably fit, medium to medium fit, but from novice up to medium, um, that’s quite daunting. And the truth of it is, and I can validate this by science, which Dr. Huberman loves so much, the truth of it is when you check what your pace is at Fat Max heart rate, that should be where the vast majority of your steady state cardiovascular exercise is conducted at, at, or being low fat max heart rate. And for most people, that is going to translate to a brisk walk, or a medium walk, not a run. Remember that the human running gate switches from walking to jogging at 14 minute pace per mile. So if you can keep your heart rate at 130, if you’re 50 years old, or 140 if you’re 40 years old, or 150 if you’re 30 years old, 180 minus age, if you can keep your heart rate at Fat Max heart rate and break into a jog, by all means go and enjoy the wonderful sport of jogging and aerobic conditioning.

Brad (29:40):
But if you are actually monitoring your heart rate, which is very, very important for all level of athletes, novice, medium, and of course, elite athletes, um, we gotta look at that pace. And I’ll most likely bet vast sums of money that it’s gonna be a walk for most people, Huberman, if he’s out there for 90 minutes running every week, a long run at that level of muscle mass, I’m also gonna challenge him to wonder if he’s able to hold 14 minute pace per mile or better for 90 minutes at his body mass. And if he’s not, then he’s exceeding his aerobic maximum routinely. And that is a recipe for overuse injury breakdown, burnout, illness, and carbohydrate dependency, not, not saying this directly anymore, but when you exceed your aerobic max routinely, it is by definition an overly stressful and ineffective and endurance training program.

Brad (30:36):
And all those great athletes that we watched in the Olympic trials are honoring this edict whereby the vast majority of their endurance training is conducted at heart rates in zone one or zone two, where they’re below their fat max heart rate. For Grant Fisher, the great champion and possibly now becoming the deserving of contention for the greatest American distance runner of all time, right up there with Galen Rupp and some of the other, uh, old time heroes, but he just, uh, excelled tremendously at the Olympic trials, and he’s an actual medal contender in the long distance events in the Paris Olympics, which is sensational. So a easy long distance run for him might be six minute per mile pace at high altitude for two hours because of his tremendous aerobic conditioning. But if you take that relatively speaking to your own fitness abilities, that is very likely going to be a medium to brisk walk for one hour instead of two at low elevation instead of high elevation.

Brad (31:40):
But you’re getting the same straining training stimulus, just like Grant Fisher as he prepares to get faster and faster and fitter and fitter. So I wanna back off from throwing out these unsubstantiated recommendations like, Hey, pretty soon you should get to running two to four times a week at 20 to 45 minutes. It’s disingenuous, it’s inaccurate, it’s proven to be inaccurate by the performances of the elite athletes in every sport. And it’s so tragic and disgraceful. And this is the essence of the content of the first half of our book Born to Run, that we have been fed a marketing ruse when it comes to the running boom. And you see the commercials and the aggressive marketing of elevated cushion shoes to put on and head out your door and become a runner and get so fit and healthy. And the reality is, there’s been a lot of there’s been a lot of, uh, fallout and unintended negative consequences from asking people to run when they really should be walking.

Brad (32:40):
Woo. Now we get to the commentary about sprinting and the luxurious rest intervals where I talked about, sprinting for 10 to 20 seconds with a six to one recovery to rest ratio. I got a random comment, uh, several months back on my Instagram, um, from someone who wrote, Brad, uh, I see your post about six to one recovery. That’s not enough rest. You need way more rest in between sprints. Resting one minute per 10 meters sprinted is a more accurate recommendation. And I’m like, who’s this clown? Guess who it was? That’s right. The world record holder, amazing master sprinter who broke the record last year in the male 45 and over Division Lion Martinez of Sweden. He ran a 10.72 and a 22 low in the 200 meters. So he is borderline world class at the age of 45.

Brad (33:41):
He was trying to qualify for the Swedish National Championship Finals for all the fastest sprinters in the country. And here’s a 45-year-old lining up in the blocks. It was so great to talk to him and get him on my podcast. I greatly appreciated his comment. And when you’re talking about true sprinting and delivering that explosive effort, that is fueled by pure ATP in the muscle cell, which is the definition of a true sprint. So anything longer than around 20 seconds is not really a true sprint. You are not able, the human is not able to sustain maximum output for actually longer than around seven or eight seconds. So the pure a TP fuel that’s contained in the muscle cell only lasts for seven to eight seconds, then you have to kick into a different energy pathway to sustain a maximum effort.

Brad (34:34):
And a TP needs quite a long time to rejuvenate. So you can get this maximum explosive performance, but you need many minutes to recover. I think ATP recovers halfway in a handful of minutes. So like the power lifters will rest three minutes between, uh, taking a maximum effort rep. But if you wanna get full recovery, you’re talking about 5, 7, 10 minutes. And so Lion’s idea when I’m out there sprinting, even for 30 or 40 or 50 meters, is to take these incredibly long recovery intervals so that I can truly learn how to be an explosive sprinter. And this research is strongly validated going back decades to the great Charlie Francis, who was one of the greatest sprint coaches of all time, the late Charlie Francis. And he was inspired by the East German sprint training methods from the sixties and seventies when they dominated, uh, world athletic track and field.

Brad (35:28):
Yes, they were all doping, but they were also highly trained and well coached. And you can read about some of the sprint workout protocols of the Great East German sprinters and also Charlie’s athletes that he worked with in the Olympics. And now Lion honoring this sprint protocol when he is coaching a lot of elite masters athletes himself and performing his way in Sweden, where you’re truly sprinting when you deliver that maximum mal output and then rest for long periods of time before delivering only a handful of reps. It’s not the body and the anaerobic system and the central nervous system does not respond to volume when you’re trying to become a good sprinter or explosive jumper or anything that’s truly explosive power lifting, doing maximum hoisting, maximum weights off the ground. So what you need is true quality of performance and then extensive rest.

Brad (36:18):
Back to my template recommendation for doing 10 to 20 second sprints and sprinting with a six to one recovery to work ratio. I’m still gonna recommend that for you as you dabble and explore the wonderful world of sprinting and maybe don’t have the tremendous capacity and the explosiveness yet to warrant the more extensive rest periods. So it’s almost like the faster you run, the more recovery you need, which makes a lot of sense. Also, the, you know, the heavier you lift and so forth.

Brad (36:49):
And now we’re gonna go to, here’s Mark continuing with his long question and, and new topic. So I’m jumping back over to Mark and he says, I’m also keen to hear your views on strength training recommendations from my reading of Dr. Ortiz’s book Outlive. It seems there’s a lot of common ground on this aspect. Indeed, the general, u recommendation to engage in some form of resistance training, strength training, putting your body under resistance load on a regular basis is widely agreed to be one of the most foundational elements of total body functional fitness as well as longevity. So we need to do whatever we can to preserve muscle mass and muscle strength throughout life. In contrast, what we see with the accelerated aging process that has become the norm today, is the condition of sarcopenia. And that is the age related loss of muscle mass. When you see senior citizens in the nursing home and they have pencil thin legs, and all that muscle mass has disappeared due to lack of use and also due to aging and, the less ability for muscle protein synthesis. So we need to get seniors moving, especially and backing up from there to whatever age group you are in, uh, maintaining muscle strength and thereby in tandem muscle mass is possibly the top priority.

Brad (38:18):
Of course, you wanna maintain your aerobic conditioning too by moving and walking around. So that’s a key priority. But when you’re, uh, getting into the gym and doing strength training, it’s also important to note, interesting to note that you’re also building your aerobic, your cardiovascular system. So when you park your car in the parking lot and get out that door and walk to the gym, your cardiovascular workout is started and your heart rate elevates to whatever double resting rate. As you walk to the front desk, grab your towel and, and beep your pass. And then when you go into the machines and do a brief explosive effort, let’s say a single set of 12 reps, your heart rate’s spiking up to quite high into the anaerobic zone, and then you’re gonna rest for a minute or two or whatever, and you’re sitting on the bench and you’re looking at your text messages, which apparently is an expected practice in the gym these days.

Brad (39:12):
Sometimes I get a little chap when I see a guy sitting on the bench that I’m gonna use next the machine, and he’s playing with his machine and I say, do you mind if I use your equipment? And he’s like, oh, you know, I have a couple more sets. Well, WTF, can you text over there and I can sneak in a set, and then you could come back when you’re ready. And that way nobody will be, uh, put out. But, the text messages and the use of the machine seemed to go hand in hand. Just my little insight from spending more time in the gym lately. Anyway, back to the general recommendation to put your body under resistance load. I loved my podcast with Dr. Doug McGuff and his Big Five workout because it’s so simple, it’s doable, it’s safe, and it’s sustainable for the vast majority of fitness enthusiasts ranging from novice to expert.

Brad (40:02):
And he talks in detail and his book, Body by Science, about these five key, uh, full body exercises using machines in the gym. So it’s very safe for everyone. It’s not like you have to all of a sudden walk under, you know, hoist a deadlift bar or put a squat bar on your back and, um, you know, in indulge in that, uh, high risk exercise if you’re not comfortable with it. But anyone can sit into a machine where the body is braced and then perform these five template exercises that work all the major muscle groups of the body. And the big five protocol entails the chest press, the overhead press, the lat pull down the seated row, and finally the leg press. And you can find those machines at virtually any gym that has a bank of machines. And you go through the workout by doing a single set to failure of each of the five exercises.

Brad (41:02):
So the whole thing only takes about 12 minutes. He wants you to do them at a very slow pace to maximize what’s called time under tension. So when you’re doing the chest press, if you’re watching me on YouTube, I’m moving my arms slowly back and forth and under control, rather than doing rushing or letting the weight drop back down. You want to control the weight all the way through the range of motion. And it turns out to be pretty difficult to do a single set to failure of these five exercises where all the muscles are worked in your body. And he recommends doing it on a cadence of only once per week. And, referencing extensive research in the book saying that if you try to do a proper strength gaining session like the big five more than once a week, you have a chance of getting tired and, not optimizing muscle strength over time.

Brad (41:57):
So that’s really interesting that you don’t have to do strength training with great volume. You just want to get in there and do a really high quality workout, ideally feeling great before you start, or picking a different day to put your muscles under a strong resistance load. And of course, there’s so many other things that you can do in the gym to hone your fitness and help you progress toward your competitive goals in the activities and sports that you like. So another day might be dedicated to doing balance, mobility, flexibility exercises, things with stretch tubes and one legged drills that will compliment the core strength protocol of the big five. And of course, that’s just one idea, but I really love it because it’s so simple and doable. What I don’t like is when people start to get, throw a bunch of additional complexity in to the average recreational enthusiast that’s maybe thinking about getting better about strength training, but easily intimidated when you hear that you gotta go to the gym three times a week and you do an overload and you do buys and tries one day and back in chest the other day.

Brad (43:01):
And remember, you gotta combine the muscle groups and do these super sets. When you’re done pushing the bench press, you gotta come over and do a complimentary bicep curl. And that’s the way to strength train, and that’s the best. I’m gonna back up seven steps really fast. Um, like the, uh, the epic line from the movie Arthur when, John Gilgood come over came over to Liza Minnelli’s house and he asked her father to kindly to, to, for him and his undershirt, to kindly take three steps backwards so he could enter the dwelling, uh, precious memories from the, the, the, the classic movie from 1979 Arthur. Anyway, if you don’t get that reference, that’s all right, man. You can always watch it and watch the remake with Russell Brand, which was also awesome. Okay. I don’t appreciate making these aggressive recommendations to the general audience.

Brad (43:55):
So I wanna strongly encourage you to put your muscles under resistance load one way or another on a regular basis, a couple times a week would be great, lasted between 10 and 30 minutes. I have a simple device that you can buy on Amazon for 50 bucks called stretch cords, C-O-R-D-Z, and they hang from a, a doorknob or hang from a pull up bar. And you can do a full upper body workout in a few minutes, really 3, 4, 5 or seven minutes that will rock your world and get those muscles working toward failure, near failure, and providing an excellent training stimulation to avoid the slippery downward slope of sarcopenia and keep that muscle mass and muscle strength on your body. And when it comes to your lower body, doing the great recommended workouts like hexagonal bar deadlift or squats, of course requires a much higher degree of initial competency outta the gate because you’re hoisting a weighted bar through space.

Brad (44:55):
But you can start slowly under the guidance of a trained professional and start to become competent at things like the HEX bar deadlift. That would probably be the number one recommendation exercise. ’cause it is pretty safe when you’re standing inside the hexagon and the weight is on your side, and you can become good at deadlifting and getting those leg muscles under load. The leg muscles would be by far the most important muscles to preserve that strength, because of course, this is where you get your balance and all your anti-aging and hormonal benefits. There’s a lot of androgen receptors in the leg muscles. And so you’ll help optimize your testosterone and other adaptive hormones when you get good at putting your legs under resistance load. And of course, for seniors, keeping those legs strong will help you skate free of the single, the number one cause of demise and death in seniors over age 65 is falling and falling related causes.

Brad (45:51):
So people aren’t dying from falls, but what happens is they fall, they break a hip, they’re bedridden for a while, they don’t have the strength to get out and rehab and get strong again. So they waste away and they die from pneumonia because they were stuck in bed for eight weeks after breaking their hips. So falls are a very major concern for the population over age 65, and those falls are coming due to loss of balance, mobility, and pure strength in the legs. So your balance is not gonna improve tremendously when you get strong at deadlifting. But then when you do balance oriented exercises like anything doing one legged on a platform, I saw my personal trainer working with my 87-year-old mother, and he had her doing a lot of single leg exercises working on her balance, and then going over to the leg press machine and getting stronger muscles from which to balance on. So for the older population, you wanna stay strong and you wanna, of course, hone balance, flexibility, mobility. Okay? So please do not feel intimidated by the elaborate and prolonged recommendations of strength training experts that this is the best way to strength training anything works wonderfully when you put your muscles under resistance load.

Brad (47:07):
Finally, the last comment from Mark Miller down under Melbourne. He says, Brad, great Facebook pace, uh, Facebook post today about doing the Ironman. I wondered if you’d ever done the epic race on the big island in Kailua Kona. And so now I know. I agree with everything you say, especially the piece about road cycling. It’s definitely become more dangerous in the last five to 10 years due to the proliferation of mobile device usage and the size and shape of vehicles, SUVs, pickup trucks, and so forth.

Brad (47:40):
So, yep, cycling is even dangerous down under and everywhere else on the planet where the bicycle shares the road with the vehicle. So for anyone who, listen, I know I spent a lot of my life out there on the roads and had great passion and enjoyment for road cycling, but I contend today, now that it’s too dangerous to consider for most people. And I strongly urge you, if you are absolutely desperately committed to competing in triathlons or, or bicycling or love long distance bicycling, go out of your way to seek the absolute most possible safe route that you can. That might mean getting in your car and driving somewhere every time. If you have a bike trail, like the wonderful bike trail that exists in, uh, the town of Sacramento, California, it’s the longest continuous, unbroken urban bicycle trail in America. And you can now ride with new recent developments and connections.

Brad (48:36):
You can ride for some, 50 plus miles without seeing a stoplight or a vehicle. So in other words, you can do a hundred mile ride without any automobile danger. So wherever you are, whatever situation you’re faced with, if it’s too dangerous to ride outdoor, ride indoors, ride on a mountain bike on the trails, it’s a wonderful sport. It’ll get you the same physical condition as you, your training on the on the road bicycle does with vastly less risk of coming to your demise by interaction with a vehicle. And there’s so many people in my longtime tight-knit triathlon community and cycling community that have come to misfortune. It’s absolutely tragic to learn of this news. It’s spreads across the community, and there’s another person severely injured, paralyzed, or killed by interactions on road bicycle with car. And if you’re still on the fence and wondering if I don’t know what I’m talking about, or having a knee-jerk rationalization, one guy told me when I looked him in the eye and said, I really recommend that you don’t ride around here and urban Los Angeles, it’s too dangerous.

Brad (49:40):
And he said, oh, well, I have an app on my smartphone and it connects to this little device on my bike, and it tells me when a car’s approaching from behind. So it’s, it’s completely safe. Like, yeah, really. Okay. One thing I would say about that is if you are insisting on biking out there on the road, invest in a rear view mirror that you can mount on your helmet. So I have a helmet mount and a handlebar mount rear view mirror, so I can look without turning my head, I can see what’s behind me when I’m riding on the road. And yes, I do ride a little bit, uh, my mountain bike on the road, getting to my destination like the running track. So it’s, you know, 10 minutes here, 15 minutes here, and I go out of my way to create a route that’s on secondary streets rather than riding on major thoroughfares where the cars are whizzing by.

Brad (50:32):
Much, much safer, obviously. So you can pick and choose and mitigate your risk of riding on the road. Or I would also urge you to just, uh, forget about it. And while you’re at it, why don’t you make a list of the 15 most dangerous things that you do in daily life, and it’s going to start with road cycling. And number 2, 3, 4, and five are so far distant from road cycling that it’s not even worth talking about, unless of course, your hobbies are based jumping, skydiving, um, riding motorcycles on the freeway at a hundred miles per hour or other such things. But road cycling is glaring, number one. And if you’re a parent and you’re raising a family and you’re responsible for the wellbeing of others, oh my gosh, I would further reflect because a lot of people in the triathlon population are high performing, uh, executives that are, uh, attracted to this, you know, challenging sport to balance the sedentary aspects of life and the cognitive demand of their jobs.

Brad (51:35):
They wanna bust out and enjoy these three sports. And it’s so great to see, uh, the ongoing popularity of endurance and ultra endurance sports. But when it comes to that element of road cycling, oh my goodness, it just doesn’t seem to make sense when, what’s the second most dangerous thing? It could be driving a car, which is a thousand times safer than riding a bike. Ask anybody who’s had an interaction with a car or a bike, the bike usually or almost always loses, right? So, that’s my little soapbox for the dangers of road cycling and rethinking the entire premise of getting out there and pedaling. Or if you insist getting in your car and driving out to the farmlands and, uh, getting it done. When you have very little interaction with cars or taking a mountain bike, you can even ride a mountain bike on the road, which gives you another additional measure of safety because you have the fatter tires, the ability to bail out quickly into the bushes or off to the embankment that you don’t have with a narrow, skinny tire road bike, much less likely to fall by hitting a pothole or an obstacle because of the narrow tires and the faster speeds of the road bike.

Brad (52:45):
So please mitigate the risk or think about doing a different exercise entirely and what a big finish, covering all those questions from Mark Miller, we have many more, uh, questions to go, but I’ll leave those for additional Q and A podcasts. Thank you so much for listening, watching, watching, and go ahead and gimme your feedback podcast@bradventures.com. Brad, why are you so down on road cycling? It’s great. It’s awesome. It’s really safe. I live in San Francisco, New York City. Fill in the blank. Chicago, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Okay, we’ll get into it. <laugh>, any and all feedback is welcome. Thank you.

Brad (53:25):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email, podcast@bradventures.com and visit bradkearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.