My eye-opening conversation with this radical thinker continues, and we focus on an interesting subject, the future of athletic peak performance.
Back when Phil was working on his book, 1:59, he wrote about Eluid Kipchoge, and we start by discussing him and his Nike partnership, and why it is that Phil advises athletes to be careful when committing to sponsors. In Phil’s mind, Kipchoge has not peaked yet as he is only 34 years old, so he poses the question: “What is going to be the nudge for Kipchoge?” for him to reach 1:59. Phil imagines that running barefoot would be the key to pushing him under the 2 hour mark, based off the fact that Kipchoge grew up running barefoot. This is what led him to develop the “spring mechanism” – when your (bare) foot hits the ground, the foot absorbs that gravitational energy, which is stored mostly in the tendons of the foot and the leg, and the body is then able to take that energy and convert it into mechanical energy.
“A bio-mechanical balancing act” is the term Phil has coined to describe athletes who deal with a huge amount of wear and tear on their muscles during training – even the people who train properly. The joints, bones, ligaments, and soft issue are all affected, but it is the muscles that bear the most weight (pun intended!) and therefore, need to recover. Phil uses the analogy of a race-car: if you never fine tune your engine, you simply won’t run as well. Similarly, he has always worked to help athletes balance their muscles, sometimes literally up until the moments before they started running – it’s that important.
As Phil explains, a lot can be learned by simply evaluating someone’s gait and posture – if you look at someone’s gait, and you see any irregularity, then you know it’s from muscle imbalance. The next step is to identify the cause of that imbalance, after which Phil will use biofeedback to correct it. When it comes to selecting the right practitioner for you, Phil suggests going with someone who’s experienced with working with athletes and understands how diet affects the muscles. At the end of the day, he says, “I don’t care how you fix muscle imbalance as long as you actually correct it” and advises asking around and doing your research to figure out who does muscle testing.
When it comes to marathons, “People are slowing down, and they have been for decades,” Phil comments. This is obviously tied to a general increase in excess body fat, and Phil emphasizes that diet actually comes before training, as it greatly affects it. The bottom line is, “You cannot run away from a bad diet.”
Should we rethink the premise of certain endurance goals that have endured? Is it a young person’s game that begins to become unhealthy once we hit a certain age? Not at all, says Phil. Age is not the factor – it is the health and fitness level of the individual that matters most, but of course, there are always outliers in any field.
We examine the boundaries of intense workouts – how do you know when you’ve pushed it too far? – and Phil explains what muscle soreness signifies, as well as what you need to do in order to steer clear of pain, fatigue, and soreness. We then wrap up with why you need to prioritize warming up (it’s equal in importance to getting adequate protein!) and why you need to avoid synthetic vitamins. Regardless of how fit you are, your athletic goals, or age, you will surely benefit from this informative episode thanks to Phil’s amazing advice and truly extensive knowledge of the human body.
TIMESTAMPS:
Years ago, Dr. Maffetone predicted athletes breaking the 2 hour marathon record. [04:28]
Phil asks how much are you going to let your sponsors dictate your public appearances? [07:31]
Eliud Kipchoge grew up running barefoot. How does performance change with shoes? [11:00]
The wear and tear on the body primarily comes for the muscles. [14:06]
If you look at someone’s gait and posture and see irregularity, it is because there’s muscle imbalance. [17:11]
If there is muscle imbalance, what kind of practitioner does one want? [19:08]
As a whole, except for the elite athletes, people running marathons are slowing down due to excess body fat. [21:04]
Do we need to rethink our goals as we advance in years? [26:22]
What about the explosive sports? [30:39]
If you were a jock back in the day, are there some modifications that you would make to the training approach on account of being 50 or 60? [33:53]
Having a great aerobics system is a requirement. [36:31]
No pain, no gain? [41:37]
How do you evaluate the intensity of a workout? [43:21]
When you get sore, the muscle is weaker. [47:10]
What you want to do is avoid pain, fatigue, and soreness. Here’s how. [51:55]
You can train the brain to contract more muscle fibers. [54:59]
People who put on a lot of bulk are not necessarily stronger. [58:32]
Warming up before doing these exercises is important as well is getting enough protein.. [01:05:16]
Synthetic vitamins can hurt. If your vitamin D is not at a good level, there’s no way you can perform, even if you do everything else right. [01:07:10]
LINKS:
- Dr. Phil Maffetone
- 159 Book
- Eliud Kipchoge
- Tim Noakes
- Robert DeCastella
- Priscilla Welch
- Linford Christie
- The Weakness Window
- Pocket Hercules
QUOTES:
- “You cannot run away from a bad diet.” (Tim Noakes)
- “When you get sore, the muscle is weaker.” (Maffetone)
LISTEN:
Get Over Yourself Podcast
Brad: 00:00:00 Welcome to the get over yourself podcast. This is author an athlete, Brad Kearns, discovering ways to be healthy, fit and happy in hectic, high stress modern life. So let’s slow down and take a deep breath. Take a cold plunge and expertly balanced that competitive intensity with an appreciation of the journey. That’s the theme of the show. Here we go.
Brad: 00:04:28 That’s what Phil’s all about. So in this show he gets into some interesting tips and tricks where you can challenge yourself with high intensity fitness efforts but not compromise your health and breakdown that happens so easily when you do these overly stressful high intensity workouts. So short burst, things like that. He has a concept called slow weights. Uh, I did a show called micro workouts, same kind of concept where you do these really brief bouts of uh, strength, explosive strength, and then go about your busy day without trashing your body and asking for prolonged recovery. So let’s hear from the pioneer in endurance training. More wonderful insights. I think you’ll love his meandering style where we’re just cruising through the conversation, but listen carefully because he comes up with these kind of a one line or sometimes, and it’s a brilliant insight that really leads to a wonderful breakthroughs for yourself when you consider this stuff and implement it and be willing to expand your mind and go off the beaten path with some of these insights. Dr Phil Maffetone enjoy, this amazing phenomenon has been taking place in the marathon scene that you predicted. A while back, you actually published a book called “159” about the, the amazing, possibly a distant dream of an athlete breaking two hours for the marathon, which if you calculate the running pace as an insane pace per mile, that any jogger can associate, just shake their head because a, we’re talking about 439, 438 per mile and now, uh, Eliud Kipchoge uh, one of the greatest distance runners who’s ever seen on Earth. And the definitely the best marathoner is knocking on the door. He just did a two oh one 39 in Berlin in a middle of 2018. What do you think Phil?
Phil: 00:06:21 Uh, no surprise. Kipchopge was, uh, one of the candidates I listed in my book. Um, at the time when I was writing the book, uh, he had, um, he had won some Big 5K races. He was a great middle distance runner. I mean, I think when he was 18, he, you know, he won, uh, the world championships and beat um, the Moroccan who was, you know, who had run sub eight minutes for two miles. And so, and then I think he, he, he ran his first marathon. Maybe by the time I was finishing the book. I don’t, I don’t remember. But he had run, um, and one the Hamburg Marathon in Germany and, and was, you know, ran 205 or something. And I just, and that was really irrelevant. Although having a positive marathon, uh, as your first event is, is very helpful cause it’s such an experience based race. But the fact that he was such a great 5K runner and then he moved up intelligently to the marathon, made him a 159 candidate in my book, literally. Um, and so this is no surprise, uh, I’m a little concerned about him being abused, uh, because he participated in that, uh, Nike stunt, uh, whenever that was last year or whenever, um, where, you know, they, they had this really, it was just a stupid event. Um, it was a stunt and it was, uh, it was a marketing campaign.
Brad: 00:08:18 Yeah. They tried to organize an unofficial attempt at breaking two hours by having the athletes to run around, uh, automobile race track with pacers and all these things that are illegal and inauthentic to an actual race. And at that point, he ran just over two hours, two hours and 36 seconds or something. So it was all a documented and a branded by Nike. So, uh, the, your runners, you know,
Phil: 00:08:45 and, but, but it continues because he’s, you know, this is, this is a problem that I’ve always, um, talked about with the athletes I work with because there was a stress and a, how much are you gonna let your sponsors dictate how many public appearances can, can a person make around the world in the course of a year? Well, um, if you’re, you know, if you’re sponsored by a company and they’re paying you money, they want you to appear in as many places around. They don’t care how much you travel. Um, and, and that wears athletes down and I’m seeing it happen with Kipchoge and, um, um, hopefully, uh, you know, he’s, he’s gonna, uh, recover from that. Uh, and, and of course, you know, breaking the world record in Berlin, uh, just a couple of months ago has gotten back on the circuit. Um, most likely. And, um, hopefully, you know, he’ll, he’ll be around a few more years because at, at a, I don’t know how old he is, is he 32?
Brad: 00:09:53 Yes. 33, something like that.
Phil: 00:09:55 Yeah. So he, he, in my eyes, he has not reached his marathon peak yet. And so at this stage and this countdown to 159, like, you know, back in the fifties when Bannister was trying to break four minutes, um, we get closer and closer and now we’re not talking about big leaps anymore. We’re talking about a nudge. Uh, what’s going to nudge your runner to 150? Now? What’s going to nudge Kipchogeor, or others? Uh, there’s, there’s probably a number of marathoners who are capable if, if they have the right nudge, what’s gonna? What’s gonna be the nudge for Kipchoge? I think one thing which will never happen, um, unless he loses his contract with Nike is that if he just ran the next marathon barefoot, it could nudge him to 159.
Brad: 00:11:00 Well, if you’re running on a paved road, I mean, your, your argument is that the, there’s less weight on the foot, which is a massive performance variable. There’s charts. You can find them on the Internet where if you switch from training shoes to racing flats, you can save 11 minutes off your marathon time due to the six less ounces on each foot. But I’m wondering like the, the, the, uh, the traction on a paved road, is that going to be compromised by barefoot versus a, a shoe with a rubber grip on it?
Phil: 00:11:34 I don’t think so. Uh, the, the bigger question is, can he physically do it after all these years of running in shoes? He, no doubt grew up running barefoot. Uh, he ran to school and you know, those kids didn’t, you know, their families didn’t have money. And so a lot of them didn’t have shoes and got their first shoes when they, you know, won a local race. Um, because the, the shoe companies are all there handing out shoes. Um, and so, you know, can he revert back to barefoot running? I don’t know that he runs barefoot at all. He may or he may not, but the barefoot running he did, uh, enabled him to run longer and longer distances, barefoot and it, and they build him as a young, a young person to develop that, that spring mechanism, which is really one of the amazing things in the human body where you, you hit the ground and then your, your foot takes the gravitational energy from hitting the ground and it absorbs that energy into the foot and the, and the leg.
Phil: 00:12:50 It’s stored in the, in the tendons in particular. And then the body is able to take that energy and convert it to mechanical energy. Much like sunlight comes to Earth, it’s, it, it goes through photosynthesis and humans eat, uh, those plants or the animals that eat the plants. And that energy is continually converted, uh, in our bodies when we’re talking about fat burning and sugar burning. Um, so in this case, it’s gravitational energy that is converted to mechanical energy to propel an athlete to move forward. Now when you, when you become proficient at running barefoot as a young child, when you eventually put shoes on, you’re still pretty, pretty good at that propulsion. Um, butI I think it’s enough of a, of a, of a, a benefit that someone like Kipchoge could be with again, with the right day like he had in Berlin this year, um, could be propelled to a 159:59.
Phil: 00:14:07 Um, and there’s, you know, they’re, in my book, I talked about all kinds of things that runners could do, but, but they were still running, you know, three a two, two oh four, two or I don’t remember. Uh, there were still several minutes away. And to get several minutes off a world marathoner’s time, uh, would require a lot of different things. Well, it’s still requires a lot of different things potentially, but it’ll, it’ll only take one or two of them. And the shoe issue is one. The other is, um, a biomechanical balancing act, I call it, whereby athletes in the course of training have a tremendous amount of wear and tear. Even the ones that train properly. And you know, you go out and run, run for two hours on your long Sunday run. That’s a lot of wear and tear. You feel it the next day, you feel it by the end of your run, but certainly by the next day you feel like you’ve run for two hours.
Phil: 00:15:15 Why do you feel it? Well that’s because of the wear and tear on the body and primarily that comes from the muscles. The joints are affected, the bones, the ligaments tend, you know, all the soft tissue. But the muscles are what are affected the most. And it’s the muscles that have to recover and bring you back to a, uh, a good feeling Monday morning or Tuesday morning when you, when you, you know, after you take a day off or whatever. And this wear and tear builds up. And having worked with athletes for a long, long time, one of the things I always did was in addition to all the training and nutrition dietary stuff was to help them, ah, balance their muscles right up until race day, right up until the gun goes off. Literally. Sometimes I’m working on these muscles to fine tune them. Um, it, it’s like a race car, you know, I mean if you, if you don’t tune up the race cars engine, it’s not gonna run as well.
Phil: 00:16:23 And for years that, you know, race cars were just, you know, people just had cars and they went to the track and when then they started realizing, hey, if we, uh, if we tune this up so that the air flow is better, or the, the, you know, the wheels are turning in a particular way, we could take minutes off, you know, a 500 mile race. Um, and I don’t think that has happened yet in sports. There are a number of people who, number of professionals who do that, but uh, for the most part it’s, it’s not being done. So I think that’s another thing that could be mentioned because it improves body. Uh, it improves running economy. It can improve running economy significantly.
Brad: 00:17:11 Are you talking about a typical massage therapy, deep tissue treatment or athletic massage? Are there other modalities that are?
Phil: 00:17:20 No, I’m talking about evaluating. This is very individual. So we need to evaluate the individual’s gait and posture. And then, you know, when you look at someone’s gait and you see some irregularity, um, it’s because there’s muscle imbalance and, uh, assessing muscle imbalance you can do by visually observing the gait. Getting an idea of this is the gluteus medius muscle that’s causing that excess tilt to the left more than to the ride. And then a posture, um, is another part of that. And then, uh, physically evaluating the muscles, uh, with manual muscle testing. And then when you determine the, the cause of muscle and balance, you can then use biofeedback to correct it. And it’s, it’s, it’s not, we’re not talking about having to lift weights to get stronger. We’re talking about a neurological phenomenon where, um, muscles in, in the process of wear and tear muscles, uh, develop imbalance and an imbalance, uh, state is two or more muscles where one is too loose and one is too tight. And that affects the joints. It affects the posture and affects the gait. And over the course of a marathon, it affects running economies significantly because running at the same pace as an example with muscle on balance couldn’t raise your heart rate five or six beats and obviously over a marathon that’s, that’s going to be quite traumatic.
Brad: 00:19:08 So if we want to go look for a certain type of practitioner that can help us with the muscle balance, is this sort of a ART person or what kind of things do you support the people out there doing this kind of work?
Phil: 00:19:24 Um, good question. Um, there are a lot of, uh, practitioners who use manual muscle testing as one of their assessment tools and it’s one of their assessment tools because you have to have the whole package, you have to do a good history, you have to know, uh, what questions to ask. You have to evaluate the diet because that affects muscles. Uh, you have to be able to look at the gate, you have to understand sports, et cetera, et cetera. And then, um, once you assess an imbalance, how you correct it may be related to what your level of what your area of expertise is, but it really doesn’t matter. I don’t care how you fix muscle and balance as long as you actually correct it. And so it’s the assessment that’s really important and a lot of it is asking around, um, who does, um, muscle testing in their office. And, um, and that’s, that’s a good starting point.
Brad: 00:20:34 Then of course we have all the dietary improvements we can make. And then with the, uh, emphasis on aerobic training and avoiding those overly stressful workouts or the pattern of overly stressful workouts. I think we’ll start if we’re talking to the general audience about how to improve their time, not that they’re worried about breaking two hours, but you can honor these lessons that the, uh, the elite runners are showing us the elite athletes in every sport about how to do it right.
Phil: 00:21:04 Correct. And you know, the, the elite athletes that the lead pack, um, they’re the only ones improving everyone else from a, from a sports standpoint. So all the other marathoners are slowing down. Now, not everyone, but you know, there are, there are age group, uh, records being broken. Um, people, you know, in their short span of, of, you know, getting into the marathon, we’ll run a personal best, but as a whole, um, people are slowing down and they have been for, for decades and it’s, it’s really sad. It’s, it’s correlated with the increase in excess body fat coincidentally, which is no surprise.
Brad: 00:21:57 Well, there’s also increased participation, uh, in these, in these marathon events, unlike the old days where only serious runners would dream of, of running 26 miles and now you’d go to LA Marathon. And if you’re, if you’re not entered in it, you’ll get funny looks at the Palate studio or going to the a, the nearby Whole Foods market. So I guess it’s a positive that people are, are going out and uh, and getting onto the starting line rather than seeing a smaller field, but definitely running vastly slower. The average participant or even the, even the number of people that are breaking three hours has declined over time, even as the fields have gotten a much bigger.
Phil: 00:22:40 Hmm. It, it’s, it’s true that it’s great to see, uh, participation, um, you know, continually improve, continually going up. But it’s not why people have slowed down. Because when you look at the statistics, when you look at the data, the new participation factors is considered in, in that assessment. And, um, not, not counting those new folks coming in and walking a marathon for example, or, or jogging and walking and jogging and walking. Um, that has been factored into this issue of people getting slower. It’s not just in marathons, it’s, it’s the statistics are including , I think, including five and 10, k five or maybe, maybe 5K, 10K half marathons and marathons. If you look at the, the, the, the data. Um, but this, this, you know, this was evident for me in the 80s, um, by looking at, um, bye by taking a good history. Patient would come in a, I would do a long history. Ah, or you’ve been, you’ve been running 10Ks. How long, how long you’ve been running? Uh, five years. Okay. Uh, when was your last PR? Oh, three years ago. Um, that was a typical response and, um, and I, I, I hadn’t seen that in the 70s. It, it just, you know, was, was evident. And then, and then correlating with the overfat pandemic was, was a clear observation as well. And now the data of all that stuff is quite clear.
Brad: 00:24:33 So what’s going on? Are the training methods inferior or is it mostly the diet aspect?
Phil: 00:24:40 I, I think, uh, it’s a combination of both. Um, although it’s, it’s, you know, what’s more primary? Well, the Diet is more primary to the training. So what you do with your diet affects your training. You cannot, as Tim Noakes says, run away from a bad diet.
Brad: 00:25:02 Um, you can’t outrun a bad diet. I love it.
Phil: 00:25:05 Yeah. You. So, you know, growing up in the, in the running boom, you could everybody, you know, I’d be at a par, you know, I mean I was at new and practice or I actually went to parties because I thought, well, I got to get to know people and I go to these, um, you know, running parties. And, um, they, they’d see me watching the meet, they’d say, Oh, oh, you’re, you’re the guy that doesn’t want people to eat sugar. I said, well, yeah, it’s cause it’s not healthy all I’m going to, I’m going to run it off tomorrow. I’m gonna run an extra mile. And I’d say, well, you’re going to run an extra mile, you’re going to burn more sugar calories, but you’re not going to burn anymore fat calories. And then they’d walk away and, you know, I’d, I’d make another enemy. It wasn’t good for meeting women.
Brad: 00:26:05 Oh, you have to. Any good date ends with a, a treat at the dessert shop, I guess.
Phil: 00:26:11 Yeah.
Brad: 00:26:13 Uh, sounds like we’re, um, onto a, another show in, in the sports realm. Are you okay on your time, Phil?
Phil: 00:26:21 I’m okay.
Brad: 00:26:22 Okay, good. I have some questions for ya. Uh, for some, some common themes that the, the Primal Endurance listeners, readers are, are weighing in on. And one of them, uh, especially of particular interest to me is as we get advancing in our years, uh, do we need to rethink the basic premise of these endurance goals that are so popular, uh, especially the, the landmark distances of the marathon and the Ironman if you happen to be a triathlete. And is this sort of, uh, is this a young person’s game and then starts to become inherently unhealthy because we’re over 40 or over 50 or over 60. What do you think about that?
Phil: 00:27:10 I don’t think the age is the factor. I think the health and fitness of the person is the factor. Um, and in fact, the, in, uh, in endurance sports, you know, even 5K, 10K, half marathon, marathon, triathlon, um, and especially the ultra events, um, young people need to be careful because they’re the ones vulnerable to get hurt because of their age. And as we get into the, you know, later twenties, into our thirties, like earlier I said Kipchoge was, you know, just not quite at his prime yet at age 30, two 33, I think. I think for a pro marathoner, um, you could be running your best because your abilities at age 36, 37, 38, 39, that’s where you’re hitting your peak. Um, you know, it was, it was no surprise to see de Castella, um, and, uh, I may, I may have this reversed, uh, win a gold medal in the marathon at age 39 and then turn around and break the world record in the marathon at age 40.
Phil: 00:28:41 Um, I work with Priscilla Welsh who at age 42, one the New York City Marathon Women’s division. I’m not, not a surprise, you know, the media, you know, they say, well, how do we, how does she do that? And I said, well, why wouldn’t she be able to do that at age 42? And of course, that doesn’t make a good quote. So they go on this, somebody else, you know, and they print in the paper was a freak of nature in that example. Right? But we’re, we’re endurance animals and we, you know, in a sense, um, different parts of our, um, physiology, uh, progress and, and hit peaks, not, not a tight not a sharp peak, but a long peak. So Kipchoge may be at a peak now, but he, he could still improve until he’s 40. He chooses to do that and people are in the same boat, but that doesn’t mean when you hit 40 or you’re over the hill and, uh, you can’t race anymore. If you’re healthy, you can still race. And depending on when you start your marathon training, you could be running up personal best at age 60. Um, is it healthy? It could be healthy. And, uh, unfortunately a lot of people don’t do it in a healthy way. They, they develop, uh, you know, their knee breaks down. Uh, they get exhausted, their heart stops. There’s some serious problems that people are creating for themselves and um, they’re all preventable things that, that are, are simply a poor health and a lack of proper fitness.
Brad: 00:30:39 So we can be healthy pursuits if you do it correctly. And we’ve seen the proof that the, the, uh, the, the aging endurance athletes getting up there to 40, Mark Allen won Hawaii at 38 in his fastest time. And so many great examples, not all of them, freaks of nature, just people that have had a sensible approach and built on their, their previous success and training. But what about in the explosive sports? Phil, we don’t see too many examples of, of people carrying on. I know, uh, Linford Christie won the hundred meter gold medal, so he was the fastest human in the world at the age of 34, which was way older than the typical sprinter in their mid twenties. And we see some guys carrying on and the NFL and the NBA as they get up to 40, still showing that explosiveness, but it doesn’t seem as common. Is there something physiological that’s we’re, we’re going to lose it a little more, uh, pronounced when we’re getting up after age 30 or some younger or benchmark?
Phil: 00:31:40 Sure. They’re there. There are, there are aging factors in, in sprinting. Uh, and the people you mentioned are, uh, what we call outliers. They’re, they’re not, they’re not, you know, the norm. If you look at a bunch of athletes and, and where do they peak in their sprinting ability? Um, most of them, uh, you know, a\end you know, in the, in the mid, uh, mid, mid twenties, maybe, I don’t know what the data looks like these days, but, uh, you’ll see a few people who are in the late twenties, and you’ll see some people who were in the 30s. Um, and, uh, they’re just outliers and, uh, they are, uh, maintaining their fitness quite well. Without a doubt. Uh, we all get slower. You know, we all start losing muscle by age 30. That’s our peak of our muscle mass. And no matter what we do, we start losing some of that and we start losing the neuromuscular, uh, ability at that age.
Phil: 00:32:50 So we don’t sprint as well, but what we have is the ability to be as fast as our peers at age 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 as we were when we were 18 and 20 years of age. And the nice thing about that is we have this thing called masters track and field where we, we don’t have to compete, you know, old folks like us don’t have to compete against 20 year olds. We compete against people in our age group and that makes it, that makes a lot of fun. And, um, and, and that can be a healthy thing as well. So I, I think there’s just, there’s so many opportunities for people to participate in physical activities, um, that, that they want to participate, that they enjoy participating in.
Brad: 00:33:53 So if you’re an old time, uh, jock back in your day, like, like you were a track star in college and you want to get back into it or continue, uh, competing in some way, shape or form. Uh, are there some modifications that you would make to the training approach on account of being 50 or 60 or whatever?
Speaker 6: 00:34:18 Um, not a lot, but yes. Um, uh, it, if, if you’re gonna, you know, if you’re, if you want to compete in the 60, um, age group for example, or the 70 age group, um, you’ve gotta be a little careful because you’re a little more fragile. Um, you’ve got to make sure you recover well. That’s really a big, big component. Um, you can’t go to the track with a bunch of masters track athletes who are in their forties, which is often what happens. Uh, I’ve heard that so many times. Oh yeah, I work out with the masters. Oh, how old are they? Well, if most of them in their forties, some are in their fifties and you’re in and you’re 65. Um, so you’ve got to individualize it. Um, I think a lot of, you know, we talk about sprinting a lot of benefits. Um, first of all, you still have to build in their aerobic base and then you put your sprinting ability on top of that and doing high intensity interval training is how you do that.
Phil: 00:35:26 And you can do that on a track or you can do it on the road. And there’s a lot of, um, there’s a lot of, uh, little tricks that are low stress quickly to recover from workouts like a running at race pace for seven seconds. Uh, and then walking for, you know, until you’re recovered, which might might be 30 seconds or a minute, um, and doing that twice a week. Uh, you know, we, we, so in, in, in, in this kind of world where we’re, we’re trying to do quick things, whether it’s tennis and racketball, um, swimming, you know, short, short distance swimming, um, uh, even golf. Um, you know, you’ve got explosive activities and we need to be careful because when we’re, when we’re 60 and 70 and we’re swinging a golf club, we’re more vulnerable to little imbalances, those muscle imbalances as an example.
Phil: 00:36:31 Then we, then we ran, we don’t recover as well, so we, we need to be careful. But, um, having a great aerobics system is, is a requirement. And then, uh, recovering is important and the, the, the human body has the ability to run across the street when it starts to lightning outside. And we’re, you know, we’re w w there’s nowhere we can hide. Uh, we can’t go in a building, so we have to run across the street to go into a building. Well, everyone can do that. Everyone who can walk will be able to, to do that, um, and varying paces. But we have this autonomic nervous system that goes into fight flight mode. And when it does, we can do amazing feats. We have amazing strengths. And so we already have that sprinting ability. We can, we can get that, that, that serves, that seems to be so far away from us on the tennis court, um, easier than you think. But we have to have the foundation, that aerobics system and then we have to, uh, we have to perform those, those feats, um, in, in, in the course of, uh, of training. But we also have to recover. And in, in people once, once you get to 50 and above, you’re recovering because their muscles, because of the neuro muscular, um, slightly less, uh, uh, proficiency, our recovery takes longer and we have to, we have to let the body recover. And if we don’t, we get in trouble.
Brad: 00:38:22 What kind of parameters do you recommend to assess whether the, the subject is recovered and ready for another explosive workout?
Phil: 00:38:32 Of people who are experienced and honest with themselves can use, um,
Brad: 00:38:41 Okay, wait, experience and honest wait
Phil: 00:38:44 Both things at once. What a package, um, can use, you know, how do you feel in the morning when you wake up? If you wake up and you just, you know, you touch the flower and you’re a man, your joints are like, Whoa, what’s going on? That’s not what it’s all about. And so, um, if you’re feeling that way, you’re not, you’re not recovered and you’re not going to recover that day, most likely. Um, what I still like to see people do, um, even track and field athletes, even tennis, put whoever you are, if, if, if your goal is to measure something that is indicative of improved health and improved fitness, the, the, the whole package. Do an MAF test because if you’re getting slower on your, your walk, your ride, your jog at a sub MAF heart rate, however you want to do this MAF test.
Phil: 00:39:51 If you’re getting slower, there is a problem. Now you, you do slow down over the years, over the decades. Um, but I’m talking about in a relatively short period of time. If you, if you’re going out, if you’re, if you’re 65 years old, you go out and you, you can jog at your, um, MAF heart rate and you can jog at, uh, a 930 pace. Um, and then all of a sudden you notice, oh, hey, um, I’m now at 10 minute pace. That’s a problem. That’s a red flag. And you’ve got to stop and say, Hey, what am I doing wrong? Because that should not happen,
Brad: 00:40:34 Right. It’s either overstress over training or you’re sitting on your butt too much and, and declining fitness. But the latter one is so improbable to the listening audience and the people that are devoted to fitness, it’s almost always that we’re over the edge with some component of life that’s not promoting good recovery.
Phil: 00:40:54 Yeah. We, we, we have a world of people who are either overtrained or under-trained and there, there are too few of us in the middle and, and that’s really sad. Um, and the overtrained people are, are no better off than the under-trained people.
Brad: 00:41:13 Well, look at the heart, the heart disease risk factors and the, the increase incidence of Afib with the, the longterm devoted athletes. It’s almost like a race between the, the, uh, the junk food chump and video gaming person next door. You guys are both blasts in your hearts and in, uh, into, into illness and disease.
Phil: 00:41:37 Yeah. I, I, I wrote a paper with a sociologist a few years ago on the sociology, I forgot what it’s called. It’s the sociology of no pain, no gain, basically showing that no pain, no gain is a concept that began many, many years ago with Benjamin Franklin actually. And, and not in the sports world, but the sports world has adopted it as, as, as you know, their own mantra. And, and if you look at the conditions like that cardiac problem and depression and, uh, the physical injuries, we see about the same prevalence in, in the physically active people as we do the inactive people. So, um,
Brad: 00:42:25 well that’s fair. So, so the person who threw out there back in the, in the waiting room and is sitting next to you and you’re wearing your sweatsuit and holding your back and they’re holding their back and they did it by picking up a two pound bag of flour and you did it by doing your fifth crossfit workout in the same week.
Phil: 00:42:41 Yup. Well, they, they intended to pick up the two pounds as they were reaching for it their back went out. Yeah. I mean, I mean, look at, you know, and I noticed that in, in, um, in practice early on. And, um, I talked about it often and people would say you’re crazy and if you just, if you just talk to clinicians, um, who, who look at these things, they, they know that. And, and then in recent years, um, we started seeing studies that talked about this and I referenced some of them in that article that is on my website
Brad: 00:43:21 now. You also mentioned, uh, you don’t want people to be sore after their strength training sessions. And I’m personally having a hard time with that here at age 53 and trying to go hit my hexagon old dead lift bar on a regular basis or do other fun stuff in the gym. I’m not super consistent where I’m going in there three times a week for an hour. I’m trying to be more intuitive and do these brief explosive workouts. But I’m often finding that a muscle soreness come up the next day because whether my approach is flawed or it’s just a function of, uh, needing, needing to tone down the intensity of the workout. I don’t know.
Phil: 00:44:03 A good question. Um, this is, uh, this is a big problem. We have very serious epidemic of weakness throughout the world. And I’m not just talking about people who are couch potatoes, I’m talking about runners, for example, endurance, endurance athletes. Um, and um, and most people know when they’re weak. Uh, but if you want to evaluate it, there’s a couple of ways of doing it. One is you can get a grip strength, um, device where you squeeze a hand grip reflects, um, body strength. So you can get, uh, a this, these little grip devices that measure how much power you’re able to, to grip. And, um, um, and a lot of people, uh, you know that, that that shows that they’re, they’re very weak. The other ways to do a jump test, a standing jump tests where you, um, you’re barefoot, you reach up, uh, you’re flatfooted your reach up. Um, you’ve gotta have a high ceiling to do this. You reach up, you mark the wall, put a piece of tape on it, whatever. And then you have somebody standing on a chair watching to see how much higher you are able to jump above that mark. And it’s amazing how, you know, most, most endurance athletes can’t even get over 12 inches.
Brad: 00:45:42 So you don’t need a high ceiling after all.
Phil: 00:45:44 Well maybe.
Brad: 00:45:47 Okay, so 12 inches. Do you have some benchmarks from, uh, from research that are, uh, you know, basic objective, a exceptional, any, any numbers out there? I know we have the, the MBA guys where we’re talking about their 36 inch vertical leap and so forth.
Phil: 00:46:04 Um, I have a lot of data on nine yes. But it’s best to look at, you know, what happens to say a runner as they age, what happens to a runner? Well Kipchoge okay. Um, when he was running 5,000 meters and, and, and, and winning, um, I bet his jump height was, was close to, to 25, 30 inches.
Brad: 00:46:36 That’s so funny. Cause the, the marathon is long been the dumping ground for the endurance athletes that didn’t have enough speed to be competitive at 5 and 10 K and now we’re looking at the guy who’s going to shatter the records and win the gold medals. It has this explosive power in his body as well as the ability to handle, uh, the endurance regimen, which probably, uh, you know, Wade van Niekerk probably couldn’t do that well as a marathoner. The guy who just broke the world record in the 400 meters. So at some point you’re going to sacrifice your explosiveness is going to be difficult to train into a marathon person.
Phil: 00:47:10 But that’s true. Yes. When I saw a Kipchoge five k history, I knew he was potentially, ah, a great marathoner in the making if he could just hold on to enough of that, um, strength that that is lower body strength. And so, um, uh, so fast forward to, to, um, the gym, your workout, your muscle soreness that you develop. When we get sore, the muscle gets weaker. And the, the tr, you know, now we, we have to look at tradition. What does tradition dictate and in weight lifting circles in strength training circles, um, tradition dictates that we work out hard. We fatigued the muscle, which means we get sore and, um, and then the muscle recovers and it takes 24 hours. Actually, it takes 72 hours in many cases, um, to recover. And, and, and I, I wrote a, an article called “The Weakness Window.” That period of time, that 24 to 72 hour period after you do strength training is a window of weakness.
Phil: 00:48:32 Your muscles are weak because, uh, you worked out to the point of fatigue and the muscles got sore and that soreness now that whole physiology has to be adapted to, and that’s what recovery is all about. And so during that period, what are you going to do physically, whatever you do physically, if you’re going to play golf or if you’re going to go for a run, uh, you’re vulnerable to get injured because your muscles are weak cause you, you did this workout that caused them to weaken. So the answer to the problem is, how can we build strength without getting weak muscles? These windows a weakness twice a week, you know, I mean that, that’s a problem. Uh, it’s also a problem because that approach to strength training also builds muscle bulk. And the last thing you want as an endurance runner is more muscle bulk. Because your, your running economy will get trashed. You were talking about ounces before in shoes. You know, you put on a pound or two, a muscle mass, which is not difficult to do in a strength training program. What does that gonna do to your 10K your, your marathon time? It’s going to, it’s going to trash it.
Phil: 00:49:55 All right. Some people are running store because they’re in addition to the excess body fat and all the problems that that creates. There’s additional weight there as well.
Brad: 00:50:05 I mean some people want to put on bulk and put on size and have different goals or aesthetic goals or what have you. But I think the, the concern there is, um, this, this continued soreness, uh, it’s, it’s not pleasant. It’s not enjoyable. And we also have this muscle weakness. So are there some modifications? I know that people talk about doing the, the positive aspect of the lift only where you lift the weight up and then drop it so you’re not getting those ecentric contractions that lead to muscle soreness?
Phil: 00:50:38 No, I, I think, I think first you have to have some clear goals. What do you want to do? If you want to look really cool, if that’s your goal, you want to look like you’re a weightlifter.
New Speaker: 00:50:51 Well that’s my job, Phil. I, I’d have to know, okay, wait, while we’re just doing a podcast, no one’s no one’s seeing us. All right? And we can, we can,
Phil: 00:51:00 Um, uh, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s one thing and that’s a problem, uh, because you, if you do it right, you’re still gonna look cool. You’re not gonna look as cool cause you’re not going to build these big muscles. And when I early in my practice, somehow I know how it happened. I got one bodybuilder, I helped him. He referred a few body builders, they referred a few body, but all of a sudden they had all these bodybuilders in my, in my clinic. And I really, I really didn’t like it because they were willing, that was the ultimate sport that would be more than willing to sacrifice their health and fitness just to look better. And that’s not what I was all about. And so I didn’t, and I ended up dismissing all of them because it was, it was painful for me to work with them.
Speaker 6: 00:51:55 So if we want to be, uh, if we want to have big muscles, um, you know, that’s another discussion. And in most cases, that’s not what people want. If you want to look cool, you could, you can still accrue. So what you want to do is avoid the pain. You want to avoid the fatigue, you want to avoid the soreness. And you can do that by lifting in, in short, um, by lifting. And you can do this with one lift. You could do one lift that will give your entire body additional strength what a deal and not get weak and not get sore and be able to run the next day, be able to lift the next day, be able to lift later in the day if you want. And you do that, uh, with a, uh, a deadlift or a squat where you’re gonna lift the weight and you’re going to squat and, and you do, you do it so that you’re able to do five or six squats without getting excessively fatigued. And that amount of weight is about 80% of your one time lift your one time. So you can lift a hundred pounds one time. That’s, you can only do it once cause it’s so much weight for your body. Okay. Now you want to take 80 pounds. You should be able to lift that 80 pounds five or six times without much stress.
Brad: 00:53:48 Oh, and then that no soreness the following day. So pick, if you do that,
Phil: 00:53:52 there’s no soreness the following day. You’re not stressing your muscles. You don’t require more than a minute or two of recovery literally. And here’s the bonus. You get strong. W think about Olympic weightlifters. Are they big, bulky people?
Brad: 00:54:14 Only in the heavyweight division.
Phil: 00:54:16 Only in the heavyweight division. Yeah. They don’t want to move up to the next, uh, to the next level because there’s more competition there. They want to stay slimmer. They want to stay leaner.
Brad: 00:54:29 Yeah. Google, uh, Google Pocket Hercules the greatest weight and lift or pound for pound of all time. And he was a, he looked like a little gymnast, but he was a lifting as a function of his, his light body weight. He was a very small man and Naim Süleymanoğlu was one of his names. Different countries kidnapped him and changed his name so he could represent them in the next Olympics. So it was like Bulgaria and Turkey, but his nickname was Pocket Hercules cause he was a Pocket Hercules.
Phil: 00:54:59 Yeah. And, and all these stories you hear about, you know, mothers who, who, who, you know, they’re there, their child is under the car and stuck in the mother lifts the car. I mean, how, how does that happen? It goes back to the autonomic nervous system we talked about earlier is that we all have this capability, but how do we translate that to getting stronger without getting sore? And the goal in that kind of a workout and, and this is, this is tied in with biofeedback. When I mentioned biofeedback before, this is how I help athletes get stronger by balancing their muscles. What what we’re trying to do is get the brain to contract more muscle fibers within the muscle. When we lift a weight, we lift a certain, we can track a certain amount of muscle fibers. The more we can track, the more weight we live, but we never contract 100% of those fibers.
Phil: 00:56:03 So if we can tease the brain to gradually enlist more and more fibers to contract in a lift, we’ll automatically get stronger and you can make somebody stronger and you know in two minutes by doing biofeedback on a particular muscle by this is how we treat stroke patients and brain injured people is we train the brain to contract more muscle fibers and it’s not, it’s not that hard to do. And in strength training, if you do it by your, you’re 80% of your one time max lift, you’re going to be in the ballpark and then it only takes one lift. So if you, if you only want to do squats, how long does it take to lift a certain amount of weight? Lift it up, do six squats, put it down and walk away. That’s your workout. Well, I have something called slow weight. Slow weights is you’ve got, you’ve got a bar bell over there in your living room or in your bedroom or in your kitchen, wherever, and it’s sitting there on the floor. And whenever you have a moment as you’re walking by, you pick it up and you do six repeats of whatever, squat.
Phil: 00:57:32 And over the course of a day, maybe you do that three, four, five times, six times over the course of a week. Maybe you do a 20, 25 30, 40 50 times man, you’re going to get, you’re gonna get strong. And if you’re not used to lifting, you’re gonna, you’re not going to bulk up, but you’re going to, you’re going to look like you can look cool.
Brad: 00:57:58 Oh. And because you’re only doing one set at a time, you’re not going to get this completely, this full fatigue scene like you do coming out of hour crossfit, if you’re exactly right. Okay. And so, uh, even yeah,
Phil: 00:58:13 Yet you’re getting, and yet you’re getting stronger. And what happens is as you do this over the weeks and you get stronger, you get to your s your six reps and you say, wow, this is, this is too easy. You don’t add reps, you add weight.
Brad: 00:58:31 Mm.
Phil: 00:58:32 So this is different from the traditional go to the gym, do 12 reps to 13. C’Mon. You can do one more. You can get to 15. That’s trashing your body. You don’t need to do that. And in some sports you do. And you know, if you’re, if you’re a linebacker, if you’re, you know, if you’re on the basketball team and you’re your 110 pounds, it’s going to be really difficult to survive. So you’re going to have to put on some weight. But for most people, uh, they don’t need to do that. They need to get stronger though. And you know, the funny thing is people who put on a lot of bulk are not necessarily stronger. Those those bodybuilders I was talking about, they’re all weak. Um, big muscle is not necessarily strong and a small muscle is not necessarily we, you know, we, we’ve all seen the skinny guy, um, you know, beat up the, the big um, muscle guy in, in martial arts or whatever. You know, strength is not, um, dependent on muscle size is dependent on how many fibers you can track. And that’s a function of how many fibers you can track, which is a function of the brain,
Brad: 00:59:56 Right. So the opposite example of, of your description where you’re recruiting more fibers to, to lift the way to, to get your nervous system functioning more optimally and doing, doing the best it can with existing muscle. Uh, the hypertrophy workout where you tear apart your muscles, you get really sore, you go for a prolonged workout till you’re depleting all the glycogen and walk out of there exhausted and then refuel with the giant protein smoothies with plenty of sugar and other crap in there. That’s when you blow up. And get these huge muscles, which we mistakenly believe, uh, is more and more strength that the bigger size muscle.
Phil: 01:00:39 Yup. And it’s just not true that the bigger muscle is stronger and [inaudible]. But, but the problem is that we have created an environment that is a horror show. And when, when you injure yourself and you go to a physical therapist and they do some tests and they say, you know, you’re, you’re pretty weak, or you’re a runner and you want to run a better marathon and you get evaluated and you can’t jump more than 11 inches, you’re pretty weak. Okay. Um, what is that person gonna do? They’re gonna look at the gym environment. They’re going to see these big macho people sweating, looking in the mirror at themselves, lifting weights, men and women, and they’re not going to do it. And if you’re, if you’re not a physically active person to begin with, and you break your hip at age 55 and the therapist says your muscles are very weak, you have to get stronger though otherwise you’re going to have another, um, fracture. Uh, where are you going to go? You’re not going to go to the gym and you’re not going to go into that environment. Uh, and so the result is that we, we have this severe epidemic of weak people. Um, many of them are active people, many of which are endurance athletes, but, um,
Brad: 01:02:15 not naming any names, but many of you are athletes. No offense.
Phil: 01:02:23 Yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s It’s a reason we could make a good argument to say that the reason for slower times over the decades is because of a trend of weakness that has also occurred. Um, um, you know, that that could be a good theory. It can be a solid theory. But the point is we want to individualize it and we want to know, um, do you have excess muscle weakness? And if you’re trying to run a better 10K or a better trail race, you, by doing nothing else, uh, getting stronger is gonna help immensely. And, and do you know, do the, to the standing. Uh, I know that some gyms have equipment where you can stand on a mat and it’ll time how long you were in the air. And list. Those are great. Um, but you could do it at home.
Phil: 01:03:31 Um, and if you, if you can’t jump, you know more than I don’t. It depends on your age and all kinds of things. But you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you can’t get well over 12 inches, you need to get stronger. And even if you can, if you can get to 15, you can still get stronger and it’ll reflect in better jumping ability and then you know, you’re getting stronger and that should translate into better race times and, and not only better race times, but better health number one and better fitness. Number two,
Brad: 01:04:07 What a great goal to pair with improving your maximum aerobic function test! So you have that aerobic efficiency where you run around the track. I like to go eight laps, Phil and peg my heart rate at my, uh, maximum aerobic heart rate and then then time myself and then to try to improve vertical jump. As you know, I’m a enthusiast of the high jumps. So I have the, the graphic reminder there of what pegs the bar at and then each passing year, I’m not getting any younger. Hopefully the bar is not, is not lowering at a faster rate than my age is increasing and it’s, it’s possible to, to unwind a lot of these things that we consider to be aging just with, I mean, I’m, I’m going to make some modifications to my training schedule to, uh, eliminate those incidences of muscle soreness and go by my dead lift bar more frequently during the day and do a, you know, [inaudible] yeah. I do about six reps. So if I can do that three, four, five, six times a day, oh my gosh, that’s going to add up to be a tremendous improvement in strength over a very short time without that repercussion of the, the breakdown burnout from these exhausting workouts.
Phil: 01:05:17 Yep. Without a doubt. And, and you know, you, you wanna use, um, intelligence in, in that approach. You wanna um, you know, not get out of bed and go pick up your bar. You want to have, have been moving around a while so that you’re warmed up or we’re doing a warmup, uh, an active warmup. Um, uh, if you’re not eating enough protein, for example, uh, it’s going to be really difficult to get stronger. Um, you know, if you’re, if you’re a Vegan, it’s not going to be easy. Uh, I can guarantee that.
Brad: 01:05:52 So no offense, again, uh, you know, Vegan endurance athlete and get out there and lift that dead lift bar, man, and go eat some eggs afterward.
Phil: 01:06:02 Yeah.
Brad: 01:06:03 Hey Phil, I appreciate you spending the time. What a great show. So many wonderful insights. And I know you’re doing some, some cool things over there at the website cause so can you give a plug for the new products? Uh, the, the naturally sourced vitamins as opposed to the, the, the, the, uh, the mechanized crap that we see at the big box stores and how to get some,
Phil: 01:06:24 uh, sure work. You know, we’re always putting out new articles every week. Uh, we’ve got some, some, uh, bigger projects, um, uh, shortly, um, coming out ebooks and stuff. We have a new line of dietary supplements made from Real, uh, real food, real products that are not dangerous. Um, um, on multiple vitamin, mineral product. Uh, the B vitamins, all active B vitamins, which I don’t think there’s a product like that in the market. Um, right now. Um, natural vitamin C, you know, the synthetic vitamin C, um, it’s well known that they can impair endurance along with, uh, the high dose vitamin E. Um,
Brad: 01:07:10 but, but wait, when we, when we buy vitamins at the big bucks store, everyone says, well, it can’t hurt.
Phil: 01:07:17 They can hurt, you know, they can hurt actually, the dangers of synthetic vitamins. This, there’s a severe problem today with, with, I have an article I, it’s coming out in the next week or two. Um, and it has to do with, um, synthetic folic acid, folic acid being the synthetic version of Foley as, as it’s found in the active form, which we use in our B complex, but Foley, when it gets into the skin and is exposed to the light is a cancer causing cancer, promoting substance. And, um, of course everyone listening, uh, to the show most likely cause that to exercise and um, exposing folic acid to sunlight. Uh, even if it’s early in the day or late in the day, even artificial light will do and it converts that chemical into something really bad. Um, so the, um, the synthetic, uh, vitamins are found in all processed foods cause they’re, they’re um, uh, they’re fortified, they’re found in, in energy bars cause they’re fortified with this junk, all these junk vitamins and they’re dangerous. We also have a vitamin D product, which has vitamin K , the two forms of vitaminK , which you need to make vitamin D work, man, talk about an epidemic. The vitamin D deficiency is, it’s just a problem that is rampant. And the relationship between Vitamin D and physical performance is really, really powerful. And if your vitamin D is not at a good level, there’s no way you can perform, even if you do everything else right.
Brad: 01:09:20 Well, we also have some difference of opinion from what the doctor says is a good level. And what Phil Maffetone says, I remember proudly a reporting, some blood values to you and I, I got my vitamin D up to 55, which is way off, uh, the, you know, way above the normal or what your doctor’s looking for. And you, you, um, you wanted to see me even higher than that. So when the, when the patient comes back from their, their annual physical and everything looks normal, but vitamin D is down there, eh, at at 31 or something. Um, where do you stand on that and why is there a disparate opinion from, um, the, the, the normal blood values that are touted as healthy?
Phil: 01:10:02 Well, there’s a lag between the scientific evidence and the, the recommended levels that you, you have in the, in the labs. And so the labs, uh, wanna make sure you’re, you’re not going to be, you know, you’re not going to develop, um, you know, disease. Um, it’s like, you know, the amount of vitamin C we should eat. Well, uh, you know, they base it on developing scurvy. Well, we don’t just want to want to avoid scurvy. We, we want to have enough nutrients to be healthy and vitamin D is, is, is no different. If we look at what prevents skin cancer, how much Reitman d do we need to prevent skin cancer? There are, there are studies about that and those numbers are well into the 60s. So I kind of use that as my minimum. I like to have that vitamin D in the 60s. And um, um, there’s still, there’s still people walking around in the US those are the, the numbers we’re using, um, who, who are down in the, and even down, uh, you know, at 12 and 13. And, uh, quite often their doctors don’t even say anything because they don’t know what to say. But this is a serious problem. This is a very, very serious problem.
Brad: 01:11:30 Now we have an increased cancer risks to, uh, from reading the vitamin D solution. Dr. Michael Holick, especially the reproductive cancers. And I think one of the stats was that, uh, people of African descent have a 84% increased rate of reproductive cancer and that’s because they’re particularly harmed by the, uh, the inability to manufacture vitamin D from sunlight being that they’re living in a disparate latitude from ancestral equatorial ancestry.
Phil: 01:11:59 Oh, it’s that in the, in the scan, the darker the scan, the more sunlight we need to get adequate vitamin D. And, and by the way, it should be obvious, but I need to mention it. We get our vitamin D from the sun. That’s our best and most primary source of Vitamin D. Um, we don’t get it from junk food. It’s, it’s fortified in junk food. Um, it’s nice to get vitamin D in supplemental form from an animal source, vitamin D from animal foods. Um, there seems to be a genetic requirement for both the, the food source, the best one being from animals and the sunlight. But primarily we get our vitamin D from sunlight. And if you, if you, uh, uh, have a low vitamin D and you decide you’re going to, you know, get a nice tan without burning of course. Uh, and then, you know, a few months later you get your vitamin D check and hasn’t budged, then you’ve got a problem and you’ve got to figure that out. Or you got to find a doctor who can help you figure it out because sometimes, um, to get going, get your levels to a, uh, a level where the, the sun can now kind of take over. You might have to get an injection of 50,000 or more units of vitamin, vitamin D because you are so deficient, your body’s resistant against, against it. And we see that this is, this is common and people who were over fat because increased body fat prevents vitamin D utilization, um, from the sun. So this is not, not unusual.
Brad: 01:13:48 Whew! More information it Phil maffetone.com you can get your vitamin D. I love the newsletter too. So sign up for the newsletter. You get something. It seems like once a week, some really thoughtful articles. Not just blather and marketing marketing fodder, but really, uh, informative standalone pieces. So you’re doing a great job there, Phil. We appreciate you so much and thanks for spending time on the show Phil maffetone.com go check it out people.
Phil: 01:14:17 Thank you Brad. I appreciate it.
Brad: 01:14:20 Thank you for listening to the show. We would love your feedback at getoveryourselfpodcast@gmail.com and we would also love if you could leave a rating and a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. I know it’s a hassle. You have to go to desktop, iTunes, click on the tab that says ratings and reviews and then click to rate the show anywhere from five to five stars. And it really helps spread the word so more people can find the show and get over themselves because they need to. Thanks for doing it.
