The foremost health authority, the contrarian, and voice of reason is spouting this level of misinformation, so I think it deserves the acronym: A-Y-F-K-M.

Dr. Layne Norton, internet health influencer and self-titled Truth Seeker and debunker, has delivered the single worst piece of fitness advice imaginable. There is no more potentially destructive message to convey besides telling people to push through fatigue, crappy workouts, and poor movement patterns. So inspired by the Debunker himself, I’m going after you.

Layne Norton has a PhD in nutritional sciences, a background as a champion powerlifter and bodybuilder, and is known for debunking fitness misinformation and pseudoscience. But recently, he posted one of his many deadlift clips with the message that training is like investing in the stock market. He even detailed a week of “moving crappy,” “moving really crappy,” and being “happy” about grinding it out anyway.

Here’s what you will learn from this episode:

• Why pushing through fatigue and poor form is a recipe for injury, burnout, and attrition
• The flaws with the dated no pain, no gain mentality that simply won’t die
• Exercise physiology insights: ATP, lactate, glycolysis, and aerobic energy systems
• Why the anaerobic system requires extensive rest and recovery, not grinding through bad workouts
• Technical failure versus pushing to failure, and why form matters most
• Interesting science-based insights on the power of performing theatrics before a peak performance effort and why lighter weight and excellent form are the real win
• Deadlifting dangers, proper technique, and why novices should get expert guidance

Finally, you will hear about what you should do when experiencing symptoms of suboptimal recovery and the value of applying an intuitive approach—especially when it comes to times that you “just don’t feel like it” and what that feeling can signify (hint: it has to do with your emotions and your central nervous system).

TIMESTAMPS:

Dr. Layne Nortron is known for debunking some of the science that is out there telling us what is good to eat. [01:03]

Brad confronts one of Layne’s posts about training and recovery.  Layne treats training like investing. [04:39]

Elites manage their energy very carefully every single day, week, month of training. [10:02]

ATP, the source for immediate explosive efforts lasting from zero to seven seconds, becomes completely exhausted after seven seconds [14:33]

Working through crappy form and feeling horrible during your warmup is in direct opposition to how the anaerobic system develops. [20:59]

Doug McGuff has come up with the Big Five Workout strategy, which you do only once a week that keeps you strong. [31:47]

If you attempt to work through crappy form and low scores on the readiness-to-train scale, you are training the central nervous system to fire less explosively and teaching your brain to be able to left ledds weight. [35:38]

Pavel Tsatsouline explains why he doesn’t see the point of training to muscular failure. [38:37]

Six sets of three is the same as three sets of six, but you get less tired. [40:45]

Brad critiques Layne’s analogy of exercising is like the stock market. [43:56]

Performing theatrics before a peak performance effort actually does help prime the centtral nervous system for peak performance. [45:41]

You want to preserve a straight and elongated spine with eveything you do in the gym. [50:06]

Deadlifting is a random exercise and potentially dangerous. If you’re novice, get that trusted expert for one-on-one instruction before you even try. [58:19]

Beware of internet blather from influencers. [01:01:21]

Always take what your body gives you each day and nothing more. [01:02:06]

LINKS:

• Brad Kearns.com
• BradNutrition.com
• B.rad Whey Protein Superfuel – The Best Protein on The Planet!
• Brad’s Shopping Page
• BornToWalkBook.com
• B.rad Podcast – All Episodes
• Peluva Five-Toe Minimalist Shoes
• Mike Scannell Podcast
• The Complete Guide to Running
• Shelby Houlihan Podcast
• Body by Science
• Big Five Workout
• Podcast with Doug McGuff
• Pavel Tsatsouline

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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast – where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life. I’m Brad Kearns, NY Times bestselling author, world #1 ranked masters age 60-plus high jumper, and former #3 world-ranked professional triathlete. You’ll learn how to stay fit, strong and powerful as you age; transform your diet to lose body fat and increase energy; sort through hype and misinformation to make simple, sustainable lifestyle changes; and broaden your perspective beyond a fit body to experience healthy relationships, nonstop personal growth, and ultimately a happy, healthy, long life. Let’s explore beyond shortcuts, hacks, and crushing competition to laugh, have fun, appreciate the journey, and not take ourselves too seriously. It’s time to B.rad!

Brad (00:00:51):
The foremost health authority, the contrarian, the voice of reason is spouting this level of misinformation. I think it deserves the acronym, A-Y-F-K-M,

Brad (00:01:03):
Dr. Layne Norton, internet health influencer and self-titled Truth Seeker and debunker has delivered the single worst piece of fitness advice imaginable. And this goes for all levels of enthusiasts, from novice to elite. There is no more potentially destructive message to convey besides telling people to push through fatigue, crappy workouts, and poor movement patterns. This is a recipe for injury, exhaustion, burnout, and actually attrition from the fitness ranks. It’s the flawed and dated, no pain, no gain mentality that simply won’t die even though we’ve known better for years and decades. So inspired by the Debunker himself, I’m going after you. Layne Norton, you’ve probably heard of this guy. He’s a grand personality who puts out controversial and spicy content with high theatrics always to his 1 million Instagram followers. He just started his own podcasts and he’s been a guest on many major podcasts like Huberman and Joe Rogan. He holds a PhD in nutritional sciences and has a background as a champion powerlifter and bodybuilder. He is known for his work in debunking fitness, miss misinformation and pseudoscience, and promoting evidence-based practices in fitness and nutrition.

Brad (00:02:30):
You might recall recently I criticized Layne for defending the heavily processed high protein David Bar, and if you didn’t see that show, he did his usual science. Show me the science mating call against critique coming from another popular internet influencer named Gary Brecka. And Brecka did a post critiquing the various heavily processed ingredients in the bar. It was not a great look for Dr. Layne, and it was very disappointing to me. I thought it lowered his credibility significantly, especially when he started his defense of this heavily processed bar by saying, full disclosure, I’m an investor. And then he went to town picking apart Brecka’s argument and his semantics, uh, while stating that, uh, there’s no direct evidence that these colorings and agents and heavily processed carbs and fat and protein that’s in the bar should actually be something that you recommend to eat. Yeah, uh, this full disclosure thing where someone says, full disclosure, I’m an investor.

Brad (00:03:38):
Now I’m gonna start defending the product or service or thing that we’re talking about. I’ve had enough of that. So you’re gonna be biased if you are, uh, a party. So just say you’re biased and let everyone, uh, kind of absorb that rather than thinking that you got a free pass to now go and defend something just ’cause you told somebody that you’re an investor. Anyway, I should also say that I appreciate a lot or perhaps even most of Dr. Layne’s commentary and his knowledge base, his athletic background especially. So blending athletic and science, uh, means a lot to me. People who are walking their talk. I appreciate people who are willing to speak their truth and call out anyone who he feels is off base. And so, uh, now I’m doing the same. Thank you so much for the inspiration Layne. By the way, I should mention, whenever I throw down on the internet, I always take the first step of going directly to the source.

Brad (00:04:39):
Try to do that in life too. So my first effort was a direct message to Layne to ask him about his comments, to challenge him on those comments. Didn’t get an answer. So anyway, here we go. He recently posted, whew, what something that I guess was intended to be inspirational or who knows what encouraging but it was stupid, dead wrong, unsubstantiated by his precious science that he pulls, holds his torch for, and worst of all, potentially deeply harmful to an impressionable audience. Let’s take a look at one of his many, many deadlift posts on Instagram. So, here we go. At the start of the clip, I’m gonna talk about his theatrics, which are ever present in his post too. You’ll be surprised that I’m gonna say thumbs up there for the most part, but here he goes lifting up a massive load of 600 and something pounds.

Brad (00:05:47):
The the form makes me cringe. I’m gonna talk about that shortly also. But the thing that caused the alarm bells to ring for me as a former elite professional triathlete, training at the highest level of endurance sport and learning the hard way what happens when you overtrain and push through and doggedly unleash your competitive intensity day after day, workout after workout, a recipe for absolute disaster at the elite level as well as the recreational level as I said at the outset. This is what caused the alarm bells to go for me, quote from the post. Sometimes with training, you just have to ride the wave. Sometimes you’re surfing and sometimes you’re wiping out. Okay, that’s true in surfing. I’m not sure how this relates to other forms of training. Back to the quote, this week was mostly wiping out. My training was really crap a few weeks ago, but last week it started to improve.

Brad (00:06:46):
Then this week it regressed again. It’s likely that I was under recovered, and while last week I started to come back, it was probably not enough recovery. That’s just how it goes sometimes. Indeed, that is just how it goes sometimes. And if the message ended there and we could all take that back for reflection, that might be nice. But no, here we go. But I’ve learned to not get too invested in individual training days or weeks because performance can fluctuate so much sometimes for no apparent reason. Coming from the science aficionado, I would challenge that too. There’s always a reason. And the reason is almost always over training or de training. When you have poor performances out there at a typical workout, there’s gonna be two reasons, right? Uh, there’s, there’s no mystery. It’s over training or de training. De training. Obviously you just got back from your three week vacation on the beach where you didn’t exercise and your first workout’s a little slow, or you took the off season in the winter.

Brad (00:07:51):
But mostly for especially the high level type, a highly driven, goal oriented performers, the reason that performance fluctuates is the fluctuation in recovery and readiness to train. So, back to Layne’s quote, I try to treat training like investing. I’m going to keep investing whether the market is up or down because over time the market makes money. I’m going to keep training hard and assume that over time I will make progress and I have made so much progress in the last three years. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much when I have bad weeks, but I’m going to keep investing regardless of how up or down things are. <laugh>, This is absolutely the most nonsensical analogy. It’s a rookie comment when it comes to sophisticated athletic training, and it’s straight up stupid. Your body is not the stock market. The analogy makes absolutely no sense.

Brad (00:08:56):
It has no scientific foundation of all people who should know that it would be Dr. Layne Norton. And it’s also terrible advice. So the foremost health authority, the contrarian, the voice of reason is spouting this level of misinformation. I think it deserves the acronym. A-Y-F-K-M. Are you fricking kidding me? Let’s go down with some more quotes, some details from the post. So Layne says, lift highlights from this week, deadlift, 675 pounds moved. Okay, squat F 5 55, moved crappy bench 3 25, moving really crappy. Uh, number four, light day of deadlifts. Six, 10 times three reps moving decent light day of squats, 5 0 5 times three, moving. Okay. I felt horrible warming up this day, but ended up grinding it out and performing. Okay. So I’m happy about that. And I would have to ask, why. Why are you happy about ignoring warning signs from the central nervous system that you’re fatigued or undercovered?

Brad (00:10:02):
Finally, uh, belt squats, five 90 times eight reps moving like Dukey. So here’s the deal. There are zero occasions of the world’s truly elite athletes, Olympic athlete, professional athletes behaving or thinking in this manner. Elites manage their energy very carefully every single day, week, month of training. They don’t make analogies about investing in the stock market. Grant Fisher, right now, the greatest USA distance runner on his way to becoming the greatest of all time with shattering two world records earlier this year, crushing it at Grand Slam track for the big payoffs that he hasn’t received yet. And, getting those two bronze medals in the Olympic distance running for the first time in decades for a USA runner cracking through the East African dominance that has occurred for perhaps the last 40 years. So a guy at the very top of his game, a very elite performer, and you could hear my podcast with his coah Mike Scannell, my old friend from Professional Duathlon Racing Days, where Mike talks about sitting down with Grant before the 2024 Paris Olympics around Thanksgiving time of 2023.

Brad (00:11:17):
So what was that, eight or nine months out from the Olympics? They plotted a strategy day by day by day, and stuck to that program all the way up to Olympic preparation, including what to do the day after the first race to rest and recover for the next race. Coming up. A week later, they act, in fact, took off and fled to high altitude training camp to return to get that altitude boost. So everything was very, very carefully correlated and orchestrated. And amazingly, Mike reports that grant basically nailed the schedule for eight months straight. Now, that might not be very common for an elite athlete, ’cause elite athletes get injured. Elite athletes get upper respiratory illnesses from traveling around the world and racing hard. So they have to adjust on the fly often. But the point I’m making is that the schedule was so carefully prepared with the buildup weeks, the build, build and then a recovery week or whatever.

Brad (00:12:21):
However it was organized, recovery days, recovery weeks, everything was so carefully organized so that he could continue to progress Grant Fisher, to peak form at the Olympics. There is, promise you none of those days had in the notation today is your day to move crappy and run eight miles instead of three, because I said so. No, it’s absolutely the opposite of that. This kind of crap is along the same lines as Elon Musk, saying shit like his famous quote that no one will ever accomplish great things in business, uh, unless you work 100 hours a week. What a bunch of nonsense, again, to spout to an impressionable audience. Very disappointing. And, I’m wondering, like, as the world’s richest man, richest in what? Because this is a guy that, uh, actually blanked on the names of a couple of his 14 children in public in an interview or something.

Brad (00:13:22):
Yes, 14. Okay. Furthermore, back to these insights about treating your training schedule, like investing the experience in the endurance world versus the power lifting, the strength training, the explosive anaerobic training world is that this is exercise physiology insights. Um, when it comes to anaerobic and power developing correctly, the anaerobic system responds to low volume, low frequency, and high intensity. That means you need a lot of rest and recovery in order to fire those muscles at maximum explosive power as you are doing in the sport of power lifting, perhaps the most explosive and short-term energy production sport. There is the Olympic a hundred meter runners are going for less than 10 seconds, and the amount of time required to raise the bar from the ground to success position is between zero and seven or eight seconds. So it’s a pure ATP pure explosive energy in the muscle cell, which then is completely exhausted.

Brad (00:14:33):
So ATP, the source for immediate explosive efforts lasting from zero to seven seconds, becomes completely exhausted after seven seconds. That’s when the body has to transition into the next energy zone, which is called the ATP lactate pathway. So you’re using, uh, recycled lactic acid for energy, and that’s why you get the burning sensation in the muscles. It’s actually hydrogen ions as a byproduct of using the very quick energy source lactate to supply all out efforts lasting between seven and 30 seconds. And just while I’m on the subject, I’ll take you through the other energy pathways. So we have for brief all out explosive performance, zero to seven seconds, the ATP creatine phosphate pathway. Then we transition over, for example, if we’re running, uh, a 200 meter race that’s lasting 20 seconds and change, we have the ATP stored in the muscle cell that supplies zero to seven seconds.

Brad (00:15:35):
And then from seven to 30 seconds, we’re tapping into the lactate pathway. That’s when the burning starts. It starts at around 22.5 seconds according to Lion Martinez. That’s why he suggests doing intervals of around 22.5 seconds. So you don’t get that burning sensation. And the additional recovery and strain, uh, uh, correlated with trying to sprint for longer than around 20 seconds. Uh, then up and around 30 seconds, you transition over to anaerobic glycolysis. So that is burning sugar without oxygen. That would be the predominant energy source for, let’s say a 400 meter runner or even up into, uh, a longer effort, like 800 meters would be, uh, a good portion of anaerobic sugar burning. And then the other piece, after you get up around two minutes, you’re gonna have to transition into the aerobic system, which is burning, uh, either sugar or fatty acids with oxygen.

Brad (00:16:36):
So you have aerobic glycolysis fall after anaerobic glycolysis. Uh, if you wanna go further, you’re gonna have to shift into using oxygen. And then finally, for pure endurance efforts, you’re relying greater and greater percentage on fatty acids. The longer aerobic fatty acid metabolism, the longer the effort is. So if you’re going for a, a marathon or a long distance bike ride, you’re burning, you’re actually burning at fat max heart rate. The maximum fat calories burn per minute, you’re actually burning around 50 50 fat and glucose. That’s a little known insight where people talk in the refrain of, I’m doing a fat burning workout thinking erroneously that they’re burning entirely fat or almost all fat. But when we talk about fat max heart rate, that’s the 180 minus your age figure that I’ve talked about so much and written about so extensively, especially in our recent book, Born to Walk. At that heart rate, you are still burning around half and half, depending on your fitness level.

Brad (00:17:40):
There’s some variation, but you’re still burning a significant amount of sugar, but you’re burning the most fat calories per minute. And if you were to speed up going faster and faster, you’re burning more glucose. And so let’s back it up a little bit and take you through the entire exercise physiology lesson of the various energy systems. First, zero to seven seconds. ATP creatine phosphate, seven to 30 seconds is the ATP lactate pathway. Above 30 seconds is anaerobic glycolysis, that’s burning sugar without oxygen. And then up around two minutes and beyond up to two hours or 20 hours, uh, you’re using the aerobic system for aerobic glycolysis or aerobic fatty acid metabolism. Okay, why did I mention all this in the middle of the Layne Norton rant? Because I was talking about the recovery necessary to perform brief explosive all out efforts such as heavy duty power lifting when you use that ATP creatine phosphate system up.

Brad (00:18:47):
So if you were to do a seven second sprint or a single rep, or a set of, let’s say a few reps of deadlifting and pretty much exhausting the ATP creatine phosphate pathway, it takes around two minutes to regenerate ATP halfway. So in a two minute rest period sitting on the bench after you wasted the bar, you’re gonna get to 50% capacity, which in certain workouts is enough time to ask you to go and sprint again. So if I’m doing one of my favorite track workouts, like three times, three times 60 meters, so nine efforts of 60 meters, I’m gonna rest around two minutes in between each one, take a longer break after a set of three. But at that two minute mark, I’m only 50% regenerated with ATP creatine phosphate. So if I were at a track meet and did an all out race of 60 meters or a hundred meters, and then someone asked me to race again two minutes later, I would not be near my peak potential because my ATP has not recovered to do another brief maximum explosive effort around seven to eight minutes, it is believed.

Brad (00:20:02):
I just read this from Earl Fee’s, Complete Guide to Running, wonderful book written by the now 90 plus masters track and field legend, who has many world records at 400 meters, including the 90 plus mark. I believe he’s still running about a minute and a half around the track at age 90. Absolutely, uh, uh, fantastic. But also a, a great book where he mentioned referencing exercise physiology texts that around seven or eight minutes, you completely regenerate ATP. So if you were doing something like a set of all out sprints like the Olympic athletes do in preparation, and this began back in the eighties in East Germany, where the athletes were dominating world competition with very novel training strategies that entailed extremely long rest periods in between brief explosive all out sprint efforts of, let’s say 80 meters, a hundred meters, 120 meters, things like that.

Brad (00:20:59):
So the anaerobic system needs a boat load of rest to perform and fire those muscles properly. And it also needs a boat load of recovery in between strenuous explosive workouts. I’ve talked a lot on the show about how I am still trying to pro gram my thick brain to reject that endurance mentality of sucking it up and suffering and doing more reps in the name of getting fitter or faster, and instead having these leisurely recovery periods during my sprint efforts in the workout, and then also, uh, extensive recovery in the pattern of a week or a month where I’m not out at the track messing around every day. I’m doing it a maximum of twice a week. Uh, many times it’s only once a week or it’s twice every 10 days or something. So the concept of going into the gym and loading up the bar with massive amounts of weights in a truly explosive anaerobic workout and working through crappy form and feeling horrible during your warmup is in direct opposition to how the anaerobic system develops, and especially the central nervous system that you’re training to fire those muscles more powerfully and or recruit more muscle fiber so that you can lift heavier and heavier and heavier weights, uh, per the goal of a power lifter.

Brad (00:22:32):
Or you can sprint faster for a hundred meters per the goal of a sprinter. A lot of this stuff is obvious to most fitness enthusiasts. <laugh> Usain Bolt is not out there running 50 sprints a day to break world records at a hundred meters. He’s doing these sophisticated workout protocols that started back in East Germany where they will do, let’s say, a couple, few reps of all out 80 meters with seven or eight minutes of put around in between these efforts. Now, when we go over to the endurance side, we also know from exercise physiology that the aerobic system responds to high volume, high frequency, and low intensity. So the Grant Fishers of the world, if he revealed the training log, if I called up Mike Scannell and said, Hey, send me that log from November to Paris Olympics double bronze medal performances.

Brad (00:23:28):
He’s out there working it most every single day, typically running over 100 miles per week in training. A lot of times they run twice a day. The double threshold training strategy has now come into popularity where the athletes will actually do two pretty difficult, uh, high intensity workouts in a single day, performed at anaerobic threshold, but breaking up that workload so that each workout is not the brutal killer sessions that, uh, athletes might have done in the past one day a week where they can now mix it up, get whatever six or eight hours rest and work at the threshold for a longer, longer total duration of time. So it’s the aerobic, it’s the endurance athletes that actually often have to be found riding the wave to quote Layne back at the start of his post. They’re the ones riding the wave right on the edge of doing too much and plunging into over training patterns because the obligation of volume is so high.

Brad (00:24:34):
Now if it’s to perform correctly, like with an elite athlete or a recreational enthusiast doing the vast majority of their endurance training at or below Fat max heart rate, you can also protect against the common pattern of overtraining by being sensible with your training intensity and emphasizing fatty acids with mitochondria, with oxygen, much easier to recover from than those brief, explosive energy systems that a detailed, which requires so much time and energy to rest and re regenerate, especially from things like muscle damage from the impact trauma, post exercise, muscle soreness after sprinting and so forth, taken me, ah, many years to be able to wake up the morning after a sprint workout and not feel sore. So it was a multi-year process for better or for worse to finally say, Hey, I’m at a pretty decent platform now where I can go out there and throw down.

Brad (00:25:32):
For example, this morning I did 10 times, 100 meters, uh, leaving on the one minute. So if my a hundred meters are taking, uh, whatever, 15 or 16 seconds, then I’m walking for the other 45 and then jumping back in, uh, that would be a workout that would make me sore in previous years. But, uh, I feel fine after that these days. So big difference between an explosive, powerful anaerobic athlete and an endurance athlete. If I catch an endurance athlete saying training is like investing, you gotta go put in the work every single day, I’m gonna nod my head more easily saying, yep, you gotta put in the work and you gotta put in the work at the proper volume and intensity, and you have to always have that intuitive component in there. Pease review my wonderful two hour in-person podcasts with, uh, Olympic track and field athlete Shelby Houlahan, American record holder in the 1500 meters, where she talked about her intuitive approach that she gets up every day, heads out the door, and usually runs around eight miles, usually at around an eight minute pace, I think she said.

Brad (00:26:37):
But that’s just kind of like the everyday person getting up and walking down the driveway to check the mailbox or taking the dog for a stroll around the block. That’s how easy and routine it is for Shelby Houlihan even to perform what would be by any, uh, outside measure. A pretty impressive workout up at high altitude Flagstaff Arizona run an eight miles at seven 30 pace or whatever’s going on, but to her, she’s so well within her capacity that it is sort of akin to doing dollar cost investing where you’re just writing a check for a hundred dollars out of every paycheck and sticking it in your mutual fund. So the analogy works for endurance athletes training sensibly, and it’s absolutely ridiculous to put that in there, uh, along with the commentary about moving crappy and feeling horrible, warming up, but happy that you continue to push through the workout.

Brad (00:27:32):
This, again, is a recipe for breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury that so many recreational enthusiasts suffer from due to the fitness industry’s flawed and dated No pain, no gain programming. Okay, this reminds me of a popular high school sprint coach named Tony Holler and his promotion of a philosophy or mantra called Feed the Cats. And he has been very successful coaching high school athletes, especially where you’re looking at a population that you want to bring into competitive difficult sports like track and field, and actually enjoy the experience so that don’t just do a couple years of high school and bomb out, which is so common in a lot of high school sports, including the endurance sports. So his Feed the Cat’s motto suggests that he wants to train his sprinters like the apex predator, the African lion. And as I detail in the book, Born to Walk, the species appropriate lifestyle for the lion is to sleep for around 20 hours every single day.

Brad (00:28:41):
Then the lion wakes up around sunset and launches a brief, explosive, ferocious, all-out attack as the apex predator going after whatever they want for dinner. And if they succeed and feast, they’re known to sleep for up to 24 hours after a nice successful hunt. Or if they fail, they’ll go back to sleep for another 20 hours. The lion has a hard time dissipating heat, that’s why it sleeps throughout the day. But that is the true anaerobic, explosive, powerful athlete. And the analogy to the high school athlete is you don’t wanna get the high school track and field out enthusiasts out there suffering and doing these brutal interval sessions that coaches have programmed for so long. I am gonna even mention my son Jack here, who had an amazing introductory year in high school track and field as a sophomore. He turned out to be the fastest guy on the team, the anchorman for the four by four relay.

Brad (00:29:38):
So they kind of put him into a situation with a lot of pressure as a new athlete to track and field, and then a lot of super hard training and cranking out tons of intervals week after week and running the 400 every single weekend, maybe twice, I think it was like 18 times over the course of the year. And guess what he did in 11th and 12th grade? That’s right. He played on the basketball team only because his single year of track and field burned him out pretty well due to an extreme training regimen as well as the grueling meets. So Tony Holler has his athletes focus on really short distance sprint training with extensive rest in between them. They time them and compete in training. So it’s fun and they have measurable goals to go after, but they’re not with their tongues hanging out on their hands and knees at the side of the track puking because they just did another set of a four by 400, three by 300, two by 200, or all the nonsense that a lot of low level programs, high school and even college are still doing and getting people burnt out, injured and sick.

Brad (00:30:46):
Okay? So Tony Holler’s, athletes have a lot of fun. They get tons of rest. They peak for the big meets at the end of the year. They have great success, and I really appreciate his communication of that program, especially as it relates to high school sprinters. We can talk to the Olympians and maybe they think that you’re gonna have to put in a little more work and have a little more, uh, suffering in the name of breaking through to get those marginal improvements to go from Olympic semi-final to final or what have you. But Feed the Cats. Okay. So, let’s put Feed the Cats into your mindset if you are performing, uh, explosive anaerobic efforts such as strength training, such as, uh, sprinting. Uh, I’ve also talked a lot about, uh, Dr. Doug McGuff bestselling book written with John Little as well called Body by Science and their promotion of the Big Five Workout.

Brad (00:31:47):
You can Google that and see a demonstration on YouTube, or you can listen to my podcast with Dr. McGuff from several years ago. But their very research proven protocol is in the name of simply Increasing strength. So up in your plates in the major benchmark exercises, they contend that going to the gym and doing the big five workout once a week is the optimal frequency to gain strength in the muscle. And the big five is simply five simple safe machines that anyone can do. You don’t have to be hoisting around free weights like Layne Norton and dancing around. Before you pick up the bar, you simply do overhead press, chest press, lap pull down, bench press, and leg press. So collectively, those five exercises work all the major muscle groups of the upper and lower body if you’re watching on video.

Brad (00:32:47):
So we have the overhead press, which is getting the shoulders in the back. We have the familiar bench press, which is getting the pecs as well as the back. We have the seated row. I might’ve called it something incorrectly when I mentioned the five. The seated row is when you’re grabbing the bar and pulling back. So that’s great for the back. Then we have the lap pull down. So you’re grabbing the bar above you and pulling down, emphasizing the lap muscles. And then of course, the leg press where you’re pushing against the platform in the machine. It’s similar to a squat, but much, much safer. So you sit in the sort of recumbent bicycle position, push on the big platform, and that is getting your quads, your glutes, your hamstrings, everything a wonderful and very safe exercise. Many longevity experts contend that’s the single most important and beneficial exercise for seniors to tackle when they are in the gym doing strength training.

Brad (00:33:41):
Because you are strengthening your legs and protecting against falling, you’ve gotta preserve that muscle mass and muscle strength. That’s a very safe way to push against a platform with your back anchored into the chair for safety rather than having to hoist a bar and potentially, challenge the back, especially if you have bad form. More on that shortly. Uh, but that’s the dub McGuff big five protocol. And so if there’s a lot of research showing that just going to the gym and doing those five exercises for a single set performed in a very slow pattern. So you want to have time under tension. So when you’re doing like an overhead press, you’re counting 1, 2, 3, 4, very deliberate, both up and down, which makes it more difficult, right? But you’re doing a single set to failure or near failure of each exercise with minimal rest in between moving over to the other station.

Brad (00:34:33):
So literally, the workout takes 12 to 15 minutes to complete, and you’re only doing it once a week. So with a investment of time of 12 to 15 minutes per week, you can get your muscles throughout your body stronger. That speaks to the sensitivity of the anaerobic system, responding to, again, high intensity, low frequency, low volume. One set is enough. And the research goes on to say they had people doing, trying the protocol twice a week, and it wasn’t as successful because of setbacks, muscle soreness. You are using fewer plates when you come back on Thursday after doing it Saturday. And I’ve been trying to adhere to the big five philosophy for probably three or four or five years now. And I don’t nearly knock it out 52 times a year, but it is my pattern to go in there and try to knock out a big five on a regular basis, but never, ever more frequently than once a week.

Brad (00:35:38):
I might have tried that a couple, few times, and you just notice that you’re not knocking it outta the park as you might have that first time. So even if I’m doing the big five, maybe two times per month, or 1.7 times per month, or 2.3 in, in better periods, like maybe in the winter when I’m doing fewer other types of workouts, I’m still getting stronger or maintaining my strength, I should say over time, which is, uh, it’s a, it’s a remarkable insight to come back like a month later and do the workout that you haven’t done in an entire month and be as good or better than before. But that’s how the anaerobic system works. In contrast, if you attempt to work through crappy form and low scores on the readiness to train scale, you are training, literally training the central nervous system to fire less explosively and teaching your brain to be able to lift less weight.

Brad (00:36:39):
Or in the case of sprinting, you are teaching your brain to run more slowly. In endurance we have a nice checkpoint to make sure that you’re not over training. It’s called the math test, maximum aerobic function test, where you run on a fixed course such as eight laps around a track at a fixed heart rate, correlating with your fat max heart rate of 180 minus your age, and then you time yourself to gauge the efficiency and the progress of the aerobic system over time. And in a strength training explosive efforts, we have something similar, which could be the plates that you’re using on the various workouts in the Big five protocol. If you start putting up worse numbers in your math test or, uh, fewer plates in the big five workout after whatever many months or years of devotion to it, you are gonna get an idiot award.

Brad (00:37:34):
And maybe you can get a Sharpie pen at the front desk of your gym and write a big giant eye on your forehead because you are training your body to get weaker and go slower. Let’s set things straight now. How about we consult with a true expert named Pavel Tsatsouline. He had an Epic four hour podcast with Huberman. He’s one of the most respected strength training experts in the world, pretty much the western father of kettlebell training. So he kind of popularized Kettlebells, uh, in the west, bringing them from his native, uh, Soviet Union, and I have a great clip from him on Huberman. This is at hour three of the four hour podcast which I highly recommend, uh, listening, watching to the whole thing if you’re into strength training and getting some real advice rather than crappy internet advice from influencers who, uh, mainly spend their time debunking other crappy internet advice. Ironic, let’s go to Pavel and set things straight. So here’s this clip.

Huberman (00:38:37):
Do you recommend actually avoiding training to muscular failure?

Pavel (00:38:42):
Absolutely. There’s really no reason for that. If you are doing that with single joint bodybuilding exercises like curls, it probably does not make, doesn’t matter. And if you’re doing it for bodybuilding, but I still don’t see the point, because every rep closer to failure, that is going to increase the exponentially recovery time. So you’re not going to get quite as much, yeah, you might get more muscle gain from that particular last rep, but your recovery is gonna be increased so much. And also as you start training to failure, you also, you are converting more of your fibers to towards slower, towards slower types. So on the other hand, if you don’t train to failure, you don’t. So there’s an interesting Spanish study when they found that when athlete’s trained to failure, again, they’re some of the myosin and type two X fast fibers, they converted to two A.

Pavel (00:39:39):
So they, they became slower probably because now it’s an endurance event when you’re training for as many reps as possible. It’s really an endurance event. On the other hand, the athletes that trained with half the maximum possible repetitions, they did not experience that decline, which goes back several decades to an AR Olympic champion, scientist, head coach, incredible, incredible person. He said there’s a big difference between six sets of three and three sets of six because, and you think like, this sounds like the most obvious thing to say, but the fact is you build just as much strength with six sets of three as three sets of six, you get a lot less tired, you get to practice for three extra sets and you can train sooner. So that’s, uh, that’s fundamental. So pushing to failure. Also, the other thing is about the control of your technique towards the last traps. There’s no control left, but imagine that you always have that perfect technique, so you grease that pathway, that becomes a reflex.

Brad (00:40:45):
Okay? I think you get his point, even though he got into a little detail with the, uh, training protocols. Some great points like six sets of three is the same as three sets of six, but you get less tired. That is the true way to train the anaerobic system and protect the central nervous system from learning to be weaker or slower. And this is another obvious insight. Failure? He was talking about, uh, doing your set, uh, before stopping before failure in order to recover faster and get similar strength gains. I mentioned Doug McGuff protocol is going to muscular failure possible because they’re only in there for 12 minutes a week where Paval is, uh, working with the greatest coaches and strength athletes in the world, and they’re spending many, many hours, sometimes many hours a day. So I appreciate both those points.

Brad (00:41:41):
And uh, also it’s great to know that you have permission to do your strength training sets to, uh, below failure rather than needing to go to failure, especially if you’re sort of a reluctant, uh, strength trainer, maybe someone who’s a novice, a senior citizen who is you know, not coming from a high fitness platform, go ahead and go to near failure and you’re getting very similar gains over time. Now, the obvious insight is that failure’s a protective mechanism against injury. That’s why the brain tells the muscles to fail. If my 88-year-old mother who’s a gym enthusiast at her new residence where they have a nice gym, if she were to go in there and try to deadlift the 405 pound hex deadlift bar that her grandson just finished lifting <laugh>, she’s gonna immediately fail so that she doesn’t pull her wrist off of her arm or torch the entire muscle group of the posterior side of her body.

Brad (00:42:51):
You get it? So failure is a message from the brain, like, dude, don’t even freaking try 405 pounds. You’ll know right away and not be able to lift the weight off the ground. So if you’re goofing around in the gym feeling horrible during warmups, have a low score in that all important readiness-to-train category, that means you maybe don’t feel like it that day. You’re dragging, your mentality is off a little bit, your warmups off a little bit and you report moving crappy or quote, moving real crappy. You’re teaching the brain and muscles to move crappy. You are ingraining those habit patterns. It’s the same as a golfer who’s on the driving range with a terrible swing hitting the bucket of 80 balls with that crappy swing. They are training the brain and muscles to repeat crappiness. Same with swimmers who are hammering those interval workouts with poor technique and poor stroke mechanics focused on going faster to arrive when you’re supposed to.

Brad (00:43:56):
And by doing so by in your haste to, to go fast, you’re rushing through the water with poor technique. Now, as I mentioned briefly in the bio, and you can see on Layne’s bios, he’s won some apparently some pretty big titles in power lifting and bodybuilding. So my skinny ass might be outta line criticizing him, but I’m still gonna stand by. The overall message is that you never, ever push through fatigue or poor form. And training is absolutely not like investing when the market is down in training, you cash in your chips and you sit on the sidelines. Here’s some little bit more quotes and then I’m gonna go on to a couple other topics relating to Layne’s post. So he continues at the end of the initial post quote, so the market was down this week, but I’ll keep investing in trust that things will work out in the long run.

Brad (00:44:48):
What’s cool is to look at a bad week now was basically a really good week two years ago. Of course he means the numbers that he put on the bar, but again, I’m not clapping for that insight. I don’t think that’s cool at all. Uh, just ’cause you’re fitter and have a shitty week of training that represented good a couple of years ago is completely irrelevant except I suppose to the ego where you can say, boy, I felt like crap and I still deadlifted 675 pounds, which is impressive by the way. Okay, well, I don’t like that I didn’t perform well, it’s still way better than my low weeks from years past. Again, the only way he can get away from get off saying this is he’s talking about weight, end result rather than honoring the process. Just like a bad week in the market now would be record breaking a few years ago.

Brad (00:45:41):
God, that market analogy won’t go away. So keep investing when it doesn’t feel like things are working, because that’s when you get the biggest return on your investment in the long run. So this guy is pounding into our head day after day with every post that we have to be rigorously attached to science and reject all other blather that is not referenced by study after study, including Gary Brecka pointing out that the David Bar is filled with process ingredients and now he’s telling a million people that it’s okay to quote move crappy because it’s like a long-term stock market play. Okay, I think you got my position on this and hopefully important takeaway. I mentioned his theatrics when he steps up to the bar. And what’s interesting there is that as it in it is indeed scientifically validated, that performing these theatrics before a peak performance effort, especially explosive high intensity brief duration effort, actually does help prime the central nervous system for peak performance.

Brad (00:46:42):
And it spikes dopamine and adrenaline. You’ll see the sprinters jumping up and down, uh, right before they enter the blocks for a hundred meter race, especially Noah Lyles is very good at that. It does seem like he’s showboating, but he’s actually the highest trained athlete there. He goes in the yellow doing his jumping jacks and just exploding off the track and priming the central nervous system for peak performance. So a thumbs up for those theatrics to a certain extent. Now you can see some more guys getting into the blocks. They’re all honoring this highly validated insight that you gotta get jacked up and pumped up and spiking dopamine before you take off out of the blocks. Carsten Warhol, the great Norwegian 400 meter hurdle world record, he takes it even a step further where he starts slapping his body aggressively, right before he gets in the blocks to kind of, you know, the old slapping of the face to wake up. He takes it to town and he’s busting world records and winning Olympic gold medals. So, let’s check him out here in lane seven, slapping those thighs, telling them to wake up and get ready to perform and fire with maximum explosiveness.

Crowd (00:47:59):
What’s next?

Brad (00:48:02):
Might as well get the crowd into it also.

Crowd (00:48:05):
Open up.

Brad (00:48:13):
Here’s some scientific quote, analyzing Warhol’s behaviors. Those slaps are meant to stimulate blood flow and create a sense of readiness. Some athletes, like Warhol, use slapping as a way to manage pre-race jitters and channel their energy. Okay, uh, that said, with the thumbs up, I also have a quick tip for Layne that maybe you might wanna tone down those theatrics a little bit in a public gym, not worry so much about spiking dopamine and adrenaline so frequently since he posts quite frequently, always with the performance before lifting the bar off the ground, and instead perform workouts where you’re working with lighter weight to the point that you’re actually feeling good moving with good form rather than crappy form. I know we oftentimes get obsessed with results, especially the endurance scene, everyone timing their pace per mile. And I guess the akin in the gym is looking at the number of plates on the bar and counting up those numbers.

Brad (00:49:18):
So maybe some more workouts without all the hormone spiking and saving those for two peak performance efforts rather than your routine trip to the gym. Furthermore, when working with lighter weight, it’s much easier to exhibit the excellent form that is super important with very dangerous, potentially dangerous lifts like the deadlift, the squat, and of course the Olympic lifts. When I saw his form, I cringed because it looks to me as a lay person, like crappy form you are not supposed to challenge the shoulders in the back in the manner that he’s doing, was my understanding from basic deadlift and strength training skills.

Brad (00:50:06):
And furthermore, just about every athletic movement that you’re doing as I learn from experts like Dr. Kelly Starrett, author of Becoming a Supple Leopard, you wanna preserve a straight and elongated spine with virtually everything you do in the gym and all other athletic movements. So if you can imagine a basketball player in a defensive stance, the sprinter coming out of the blocks and getting up into that 45 degree position, or a runner running at full speed with that straight and elongated spine, curving the spine and putting those discs under pressure while hoisting a heavy weight from the ground has always been talked about as a recipe for a disaster or increased exposure to the spine as well as the shoulders coming out of their safe lowered and retracted position. So just like with good posture, you want your shoulders back and down rather than hunched forward and high. Okay? Uh, so when I see Layne lowering down on the bar and seeing that back arch, especially under the load of 675 pounds, the thoracic spine is taking some of that load. Let me show you a clip of excellent dead lift technique,

Speaker 5 (00:51:22):
Tight back and tight.

Brad (00:51:25):
That is how I learned this oil derrick type of technique where the load is managed by the legs and the upper body, the back, the shoulders, everything is locked into place, and in fact, you are tensing up your glutes and your traps in your upper back to form a solid stable base. Of course, you’re also bracing in the, in the core area to make sure that you have that stable platform that oil derrick from which to lift the deadlift bar. So, I was a little concerned about that, about Layne’s form and whether he is showing not only shitty advice in writing, but also crappy form. So I talked to some of my trusted experts, accomplished lifters technique experts, trainers, and to my surprise, they weren’t as concerned as I was. Mark Bell says former world champion level powerlifter host of the Power project podcast and extreme expert in powerlifting, uh, especially deadlift form.

Brad (00:52:32):
He says, look, the thoracic spine can take a lot of load. So going from neutral to slightly rounded is still borderline still in the safety zone, especially when you’re well-trained. Obviously Layne is, I don’t think he’s gonna blow out his thoracic spine on his next Instagram post, but I certainly would not want a novice seeing Layne’s form compare and contrast to the guy who looks like the oil derrick. I’m sorry, I’m not going to, uh, argue my way out as a novice. That Layne is safer than this dude. Boom, nice and clean, boom, full range

Speaker 5 (00:53:12):
Of motion every single time.

Brad (00:53:14):
Okay, Brian McAndrew, whole dude’s Instagram account, very accomplished. Powerlifter, my longtime colleague with Primal Blueprint. He says A bit of bend in the spine is fine, especially what’s in the, when it’s in the thoracic thoracic spine up by the shoulders, but it’s not necessarily what you’d teach someone who’s learning. Okay? So if you’re trying to lift that much weight, of which I have no fricking clue what that’s like, and have no expertise talking about 675 pound deadlifts, uh, maybe you have to do some maneuvering and recruit some thoracic spine and bring those shoulders down and away from their safe and retracted position. But I’m gonna call that position very vulnerable and I’m gonna lean on one of my favorite experts, the noted Los Angeles trainer named Jeff Page. He’s worked with a lot of major league baseball players and Malibu celebrities. He was a featured part of the Primal Fitness Coach certification videos that we filmed in his private gym in Los Angeles.

Brad (00:54:15):
And when you go do a workout with him, you’re not getting your butt kicked and leaning in a pool of sweat because he’s focusing so much on impeccable form and learning things like mobility and safety and warmup exercises that the whole experience is really what it should be when you have a guided workout with a trainer. But he makes a very concerted effort to keep your joints and muscles in safe positions. And he, uh, he explains that the shoulder is simply not meant to operate in the manner that we often do, which is bringing it forward from the spine hunched up and over. And it is a big invitation for injury risk because the shoulder is vulnerable when it’s not in that straight and elongated spinal alignment. This is especially true for non-elite level enthusiasts who might be checking out stuff on Instagram. Jeff even has when you’re bench pressing, lying on the bench where you have much less risk of problems, but still plenty of risk if you’re trying to lift heavy weights with the bench press.

Brad (00:55:17):
He wants his clients to pinch their shoulder blades together on the bench. And then when you’re grabbing the bar, you’re kind of acting like the deadlift guy that looks like an oil derrick. You’re very much machine-like with minimal moving parts, emphasizing the pecs rather than bringing the shoulders out of their safe position in a struggle to hoist the bar. And raise your hand if you know any bench press enthusiasts who have sustained medium or severe shoulder injuries from bench pressing. I will raise my hand. I was just talking to my friend Dr. Stevie the other day talking about how his bench press career ended. I think he, his final best lift was 296 pounds. And when he was trying 300, something uh, popped, tore, got damaged and that was the end of it. So you want those shoulders in a safe position for virtually everything you’re doing in the gym. And I have another clip of a guy talking about just that. This is the men’s health personal trainer showing how this athlete reaching down to

Trainer (00:56:23):
Lift this weight. You want everything nice and tight or your core needs to be hugely involved in this lift. Again, you want to protect your lower back. So he’s got that nice core position and now lift that weight right up, squeezes his glutes at the top. Note that you’re gonna see a lot of people overextend. Show them what that looks like, Brett, you don’t wanna do that. You wanna stay nice and smooth, just squeeze your gluts at the top, stand up in a good position. That’s a deadlift. Put it right back down, Brett .Also, he comes down, he sets that bar. We’re not doing touch and go deadlifts. We’re trying to teach you a nice fundamental deadlift that you can use to lift heavy weight. This is the kind of exercise you can get a lot out of it if you’re just doing 1, 2, 3 rep sets. ’cause you can go real heavy, build that power on your backside, build a lot of strength. There you have it.

Brad (00:57:09):
Okay, uh, the shoulders, were barely moving offline. Remember that the deadlift is called the most functional exercise because it challenges a whole bunch of major muscle groups of the upper and lower body. But mainly we want the hamstrings, quads, glutes, lats, and back muscles lifting the bar. It does challenge the smaller muscles like your grip strength and obviously your thoracic spine when the thoracic spine or the shoulders move off of their safe and protected positions. So, finally, there were some funny comments on the Layne video about people worried that he’s wearing ballet slippers or those special strength training slippers. Kind of like just wearing socks, but gripping on the wood and he’s dropping 675 pounds, what seems to be millimeters away from his exposed toes. Man, again, don’t try this at home. And so if we wanna say don’t try this at home on our Instagram posts, maybe we shouldn’t post them on a public forum like Instagram, watch the bar drop <laugh>.

Brad (00:58:19):
Oh my goodness. Very funny, Quotes in the comments like, uh, that was pretty close to hamburger meat for those toes, man and so forth. I remember dropping, uh, like a, a quat glass jar of orange juice on my toe when I was a kid and broke my toe from, what would that be? A two pound glass dropping a couple feet from the refrigerator shelf down to my toe. So 675 pounds onto your toe. Yes, hamburger meat is interesting comment. All right, here are my takeaways from the show here just to get you focused and have a nice inspirational and helpful, sensible advice for how to train. First deadlifting is a random exercise and potentially dangerous. If you’re novice, get that trusted expert for one-on-one instruction before you even try. Start conservatively. Remember Mark Bell says, the sport of power lifting is kind of dumb ’cause it’s random and arbitrary.

Brad (00:59:18):
Especially when we’re talking about the fascination with one rep maximum by the Jim Bros. You don’t ever have to explore what is your one rep maximum. Why don’t you set a goal for doing a eight rep maximum weight? In other words, measure yourself and measure your progress and measure your peak performance by what weight can you lift eight times? And don’t mess around with anything heavier than that, okay? When you’re working. The other great insight that I got from Jeff Page is to, you don’t have to go to full failure like Pavel Tsatouline reminds us. I also don’t want you to go past what’s called technical failure. So as you’re performing reps of an exercise and you notice that due to fatigue, your form becomes compromise, that is your point of technical failure when you can no longer exhibit perfect, crisp, precise technique. This also goes for things like sprinting, where if you feel a little strain in your lower back after the fifth rep and your stride feels a little choppy, less powerful, that is the point of technical failure.

Brad (01:00:29):
Another simple example is when you see people standing and doing bicep curls and you wanna preserve that straight and elongated spine and stable core while you’re doing the bicep curl because after all it’s called a bicep curl. But as you get toward the end, you see a lot of people kind of moving a little bit, arching their back and engaging the entire torso to help lift the dumbbell that is beyond the point of technical failure, where you might make it nice and tight much safer. Even if some strength training expert wants to disagree and say, no, the torso’s allowed to rock a little bit ’cause that engages this or that muscle. No, if you’re doing bicep curls, I wanna see you standing ramrod straight core, nice and braced, and working with emphasis on everything nice and tight, elbow into the body, all that kind of thing.

Brad (01:01:21):
So that’s number one when it comes to strength training in the gym. Number two, beware of internet blather from influencers. Layne is working hard to protect us from this kind of BS and diet, fitness and biohacking claims that are not steeped in science. I appreciate that about him. So much and will continue to listen to his great show, especially now that he has his own new podcast. I’m even giving him a plug for his fricking podcast. However, now we have to do a little bit of protective and filtering from his content. And maybe it was just a one-off piece where he’s a hard training guy, hard driving guy, and he wanted to share with the world that, uh, he has workouts where he moves crappy and he stays the course and compares it to investing. But not, not on my watch. I have to challenge that.

Brad (01:02:06):
Sorry, man. Same with defending the crappy ingredients in the David Protein bar and arguing for the flawed concept that you even need a protein in an energy bar. Finally, when you have symptoms of suboptimal recovery, the best move is always to take what your body gives you each day and nothing more. You must apply an intuitive approach, even to the most rigorous and strict programming and scheduling, such as working out with a team environment. And when you don’t feel like it, this is an important sign from the emotions and the central nervous system. So we have to value that in my upcoming podcast with 400 meter world record Masters 50 plus female, Christie Matthews. She says, we need to know when to give ourselves grace. And so remember that when you’re out there doing a workout, contemplating a workout, give yourself a little grace, give yourself a break.

Brad (01:03:07):
And if you’re not feeling it or you’ve reached technical failure, it’s okay to pull the plug and go home, especially if you’re doing explosive anaerobic workout. And of course, also for the endurance folks that need to get extra miles in, in the name of fitness and peak performance doesn’t always work out that way. It is time once and for all to reject the flawed and dated macho. No pain, no gain message, or the comparison that training is like investing. What do you think? Uh, have you had wonderful successes pushing through workouts where you feel crappy? Maybe you’ll share them with me on email and I’ll talk about it at a Q and A show. Maybe you can raise your hand and say, yeah, I blew out some joints or connective tissue from pushing too hard or exhibiting poor form and not getting that technique instruction that would’ve been optimal.

Brad (01:03:55):
So, let me know in the comments of the video. I’ll address those. Or you can email directly to podcast@bradventures.com. Thank you so much for listening or watching, the first recording in my new studio that I’ve been building with a lot of fun and challenge over the past few weeks. Uh, what do you think? Let me know. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email, podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.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.