How I Modified My Fitness Routine To Avoid Burnout and Promote Longevity

This show was inspired by a very thoughtful question from a college-aged listener named Justin who wanted to know what my current training regimen is like, and if I believe zone two training is really necessary, if VO2 max workouts are really necessary, and if I think he should just take up a sprinting regimen (since the sprinters seem to look the best and be the healthiest)?

Thanks, Justin, for teeing me up—I thought his questions would make an interesting show and update on my current fitness routine, and in this show, I explain everything I am doing and why. You will hear my number 1 recommendation (extricating yourself from that extreme exhausting endurance training program so that you have some energy to pursue fitness goals and longevity properly), why I believe aging gracefully depends far more on maintaining explosive power than grinding out long cardio sessions, and why your 400-meter time might be one of the most telling longevity markers. I explain how aging affects the anaerobic system and why preserving fast-twitch muscle fibers is critical for staying strong and functional—especially as we get older.

I challenge popular ideas around zone two and VO₂ max training, and make the case for true sprinting (not HIIT or steady-state cardio) as the most efficient and powerful intervention for fitness, fat loss, and longevity. I walk through my exact training regimen, from my morning mobility routine to high jump drills, strength sessions, and sprint workouts—highlighting how I structure my week around short, explosive efforts, long rest periods, and intuitive decision-making rather than weekly mileage.

Whether you’re 21 like Justin or well into your 60s, this episode offers practical insights for anyone looking to train smarter, avoid burnout, and build lifelong athleticism.

TIMESTAMPS:

The first step is to extricate yourself from that extreme exhausting endurance training program so that you have some energy to pursue fitness goals and longevity properly. [01:01]

Looking at Brad’s current training regimen, we learn the benefits of maintaining that anaerobic conditioning, that explosive power in terms of longevity and a well-balanced regimen. [05:49]

The Cactus to Clouds hike is an example of Brad’s performance of a 15-hour hike after he had no endurance training to prepare. [09:03]

The experts are now strongly concurring that preserving functional muscle strength and power and explosiveness and muscle mass is the single key to longevity. [12:41]

The fast twitch muscle fibers decline much more quickly and significantly than the type one endurance fibers. [15:01]

Falling is a huge risk factor as we age. It is very important to remain strong. [18:58]

Brad has switched from a lifelong endurance emphasis to recalibrating his mentality to appreciate stress and rest. [19:56]

If you drift beyond the fat max heart rate, you are inviting the opposite of your desired benefits from exercise. [24:56]

Kipchoge practices at about 83% of his weekly mileage in zone one. [27:15]

Now that Brad has hit the 60-year-old mark, how does he train? Brad’s morning exercise pattern has changed a bit over the years, since he also has to prepare for his sprint workouts. [29:13]

Go barefoot as often as possible to regain the best foot functionality. [31:54]

Through trial and error, Brad has discovered that a high-intensity day followed by two easy days in a row, really works for him. [40:02]

It’s not about burning calories through strenuous exercise, but rather fat reduction is about hormone optimization. [44:12]

The sprint workout always begins with extensive warmup and preparatory drills. [46:44]

Strength training is when you calculate 85% of your best time. You don’t want to overdo it just to make it, you really want to feel it and feel like you’re working hard. [54:52]

In the high jump practice, Brad does a variety of drills. [01:01:36]

After your tough workout you can bring back your parasympathetic system by lying down, resting, elevating your feet, and doing some nasal breathing. [01:03:22]

In the book, Body by Science, there is listed the Big Five exercise protocol. They are the Chest Press, Overhead Press, the Lat-Pull-down, the Seated row, and the Leg Press. [01:05:16]

The ways Brad uses CORDZ vary and there is little chance for muscle soreness compared to lifting weights. [01:09:38]

Keep your exercise things in plain sight around to entice you and remind you to take a few minutes to use them. [01:10:32]

Rest and recovery days was the third step to Brad’s routine. This includes two full days after high intensity sprinting or high jumping sessions. [01:13:42]

Sometimes the tendons fool you when they become inflamed. [01:17:49]

Try to build a habit of blocking out a time of day for your training. [01:21:25]

Brad’s diet is focused on meat and fruit. [ 01:23:10]

De-emphasize your devotion to steady-state cardio. [01:26:18]

LINKS:

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

Brad (00:00:51):
Don’t kid yourself now and think that increasing your weekly mileage is contributing to aging gracefully. It’s just absolutely not.

Brad (00:01:01):
Brad, what is your current athletic training regimen like? This show was inspired by a very thoughtful question from a college-aged listener named Justin, and he said, Brad, I’d like to know what your current training regimen is like. You know, all I care about now is fitness for longevity. Hey, that’s great. You’re looking at that at age 21, huh? I don’t care about competing. I just wanna live a long time. Is zone two training really necessary? Are VO two max workouts really necessary? Should I just take up a sprinting regimen? What’s your training like? I think this would make, I think this would make for a great show. The sprinters do seem to look the best and be the healthiest. Is this what I should try to do? Thank you Justin, for teeing me up. And yes, indeed, the sprinters do look the best. They are universally ripped and athletic.

Brad (00:01:54):
They’re not overloaded with muscle like you might see on Instagram with the blown up influencers or fitness bodybuilder type guys trying to look good in tight clothes. They look like supreme athletes that rule the earth as the fastest and highest jumping, greatest performing. You know, I love, uh, track and field athletes so much, but really they exhibit full body functional fitness in support of longevity, in contrast to the endurance scene where by and large, most recreational endurance athletes are overdoing it. They’re immersed into a pattern of recurring breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury. This is what we talk about in detail in our book, Born to Walk, the Broken Promises of the Running Broom and how you can slow down and get healthy one step at a time. So the first step if you’re listening, is to extricate from that extreme exhausting endurance training program so that you have some energy to pursue fitness goals and longevity properly.

Brad (00:03:00):
I think one of the greatest longevity markers is one’s time in the 400 meter run, because this is a very short duration event that requires a lot of anaerobic fitness. That is the powerful, explosive, fast twitch muscle fibers as opposed to what it seems to be the majority of fitness regimens are emphasizing these days, which is steady state cardiovascular training with the emphasis on the aerobic system, and oftentimes tipping over into being overly stressful aerobic exercise. So when we track one’s time in the 400 meters, of course I’m biased ’cause that’s my favorite event and I’m obsessed with it. But it really is a great marker of overall full body functional fitness, including showing some power and explosiveness. And of course you need some decent endurance and aerobic competency in order to continue around the track for an entire lap all out, unlike let’s say the a hundred meters, which is a pure explosiveness event.

Brad (00:04:03):
And a lot of times you can be, uh, fitness deficient and still be fast and explosive due to your background, your genetics, so forth. Same with being super strong in the gym and you’re putting up good numbers in power lifting or whatever the ratings that you’re, uh, measuring for how much weight you can hoist off the ground or off your chest. And that’s wonderful and that’s certainly a very high score in comparison to someone who is completely unfit. But as you see from a lot of the content that Mark Bell has produced in recent years he was a lifelong power lifter. That’s great. He was competing at the world level setting records and he was, I believe, 335 pounds, a big fat guy as he calls himself. And now he has lost a hundred pounds and kept it off for years and years and did the extraordinary achievement of completing the Boston Marathon a couple years ago, probably the only former world record level powerlifter to be able to run 26 miles.

Brad (00:05:04):
And I really am fascinated with all the great performances by these so-called hybrid athletes these days where you see people performing amazing feats of strength as well as extreme endurance. However, look around, do you see a lot of hybrid athletes in the older age groups? Yeah, didn’t think so. So this stuff seems like a young person’s game where you can mix and match and train for endurance as well as power and explosiveness. And I think we can take the inspiration from the hybrid athletes and try to develop broad-based fitness competency, but maybe not to that extreme where the training seems so ridiculous to be able to, for example, deadlift 400 pounds and then go run a marathon afterward. Right?

Brad (00:05:49):
Okay. So let’s get to business here and talk about what my current training regimen is like with further commentary about the benefits of maintaining that anaerobic conditioning, that explosive power in terms of longevity and well-balanced. It’s also important to realize that anyone who has some athletic competency in the anaerobic system is going to have a decent aerobic function as well, because the aerobic system feeds the anaerobic system. So even a power lifter or a pure sprinter who competes in the a hundred meters or 200 meters, these people are still going to practice and working on their skills and technique for an hour or maybe even two hours. And that requires the activation of the aerobic system for the entire duration. Same with a soccer player or a basketball player. If you sign up for adult league basketball and you have a game on Tuesday night and you drive to the parking lot, as soon as you get outta your car and start walking to the gym, your aerobic system is activated, your heart rate is probably double your resting heart rate for the whole time.

Brad (00:06:59):
Even when you’re doing some easy dynamic stretching warmup or some dribbling drills or shooting around your heart’s beating, you’re nourishing the aerobic system. And it does not have to be steady state cardiovascular exercise to develop a strong aerobic cardiovascular system, as well as those activities that can benefit even more broadly by bringing in anaerobic competency. Two of my favorite examples in the major sports soccer players and basketball players, they have tremendous endurance to be able to play that many games in a season, to be able to play a soccer game virtually, nonstop for two 45 minute periods. Or the basketball players where there’s plenty of stops and starts, but they’re so powerful and explosive. Jumping up to dunk the basketballer block a shot and jogging up and down the court. I saw an amazing Instagram post recently about the great NCAA basketball team, University of Houston, this year’s runner up in March Madness Final Four.

Brad (00:08:00):
These guys had an average mile time of five minutes and 19 seconds, the fastest guy being around 5:0 7 and all of them coming in, they had the video of them doing a fitness test one day for basketball practice, lean, ripped, super fit guys that can hoop like crazy and run a five 19 mile on average. Absolutely stunning. And I think this is an extreme example of probably the fittest college basketball team and even perhaps fitter than any pro basketball team of all time. That’s how amazing these guys are. But it shows how their basketball training, their lifelong basketball training made them into incredible aerobic athletes. I guarantee you, they weren’t out there running 30 miles a week trying to improve their mile time. They’re just training and preparing for March Madness and getting into fantastic shape. I will reference my own performance on the Cactus to Clouds hike that I’ve talked about a couple times and put up pictures on social media.

Brad (00:09:03):
This wonderful bucket list item in Palm Springs, California. The Cactus to Clouds Trail is widely regarded as the single most difficult hiking trail in the United States as measured by sustained vertical gain. So you start in the valley floor of Palm Springs and you hike up 8,400 feet elevation gain in the first 9.3 miles, the entire hike all the way to the top of Mount San Jacinto, pretty much the top of southern California amazing 360 degree view. The whole hike is 22 miles with some 11,000 feet of elevation game. It took us 15 hours and I accomplished the hike. I survived the hike on zero endurance training. Nothing. I did not do any preparation hikes of any significance besides what, a half an hour, an hour here and there. I did not go for weeks on end trying to increase my mileage, but I was working just fine for 15 hours with a heck of a lot of food too.

Brad (00:10:03):
A lot more food than my super extreme endurance hiking partner, Dr. Steven, but I made it and I referenced my good, great sprinting conditioning for the year to allow me to perform even a very, very extreme endurance feat. Okay, so there’s the plug for including anaerobic training in your fitness regimen, especially if you are looking to set fitness goals that are directly aligned with and supportive of longevity. It’s kind of funny for me to look back now as I’ve, uh, escaped from the bubble, the paradigm of being a lifelong endurance athlete and how much of my training time in my life was spent doing steady state cardiovascular exercise. Of course, it made me fit, it gave me the centerpiece of my training for my career as a professional triathlete. But really it is in many ways in conflict with longevity.

Brad (00:11:06):
And you can easily tiptoe over into accelerated aging due to the extreme nature of many steady state cardiovascular training sessions. Now, since I’ve been retired from the circuit and not pursuing extreme endurance goals, all that exercise that I have accomplished in recent decades, I believe has been supportive of my health. But I still have to acknowledge that the endurance exercise going out there and pedaling my bicycle and having a good time for two hours on the mountain bike on the weekend, or jogging for 30 minutes or 45 minutes at a nice slow aerobic pace, certainly that contributed to my fitness, did not compromise my health and longevity because it was not strenuous. However, this is such a narrow, tiny sliver of fitness, and that’s the part that I’m really having the epiphany about. Now, it’s sort of like not to offend any endurance athletes out there, but so what big deal?

Brad (00:12:05):
You can go pedal your bicycle at a slow pace for two hours. Yes, pat yourself on the back. That’s so much better than the average American who gets winded and huffing and puffing after jogging for a couple minutes down the road or pedaling their bike for 10 or 15 minutes. So what if you want to pursue longevity? If you want to delay aging in a graceful manner, you have to go out there and attack the anaerobic system and put up numbers and challenges and get those muscles performing to near maximum effort on a regular basis for, again, very short duration efforts.

Brad (00:12:41):
And we’re gonna talk about the difference between HIIT training, high intensity interval training and true sprinting and true explosive effort. ’cause I think a lot of people screw this up where you can read articles on the internet or magazine or books about how great HIIT training is. HIIT training is, but by and large, I believe that it’s done in an inappropriate and often overly stressful and exhaustive manner. So you don’t need to go to the spinning class and do 10 sprints of 30 seconds with only 30 seconds rest period between because that’s going to wear you out. And if you do that three times a week, or if you combine that morning spinning session, and then Wednesday morning you’re going to the bootcamp class where you’re doing 10 step ups with the barbell in hand and doing the curls and moving sideways and doing this and doing that, and your heart rate is getting up there high into the anaerobic zone without that much rest, and then you gotta do it again, and then you gotta do it again. It can easily drift into an overly stressful workout pattern rather than building true power and explosiveness with brief high intensity efforts such as performing a set of exercise machines to near failure, resting a bit, going to another machine and doing 12 reps or whatever it takes to get you to near failure.

Brad (00:13:59):
Why is this so important? Well, I mean, the experts are now strongly concurring that preserving functional muscle strength and power and explosiveness and muscle mass is the single key to longevity. The greatest intervention to the risks of aging and demise comes from remaining strong and powerful and functional. And yes, cardiovascular, uh, fitness does have a big contribution there. But again, if you’re able to be strong and powerful with your muscles, guess what that means? You’re training, that means you’re active and that means your cardiovascular system is pretty decent. But of course there is some protocol for making sure that you engage in increased all forms of general everyday movement that comes with walking. And if you do enjoy endurance activities, sure pedaling your bicycle or rowing machine or whatever you’re doing, but not to the detriment of the high intensity performance.

Brad (00:15:01):
And a lot of people are just overdoing it with the endurance training. Alright, here’s the other thing about preserving anaerobic fitness. The type two muscle fibers, the anaerobic explosive, fast twitch muscle fibers, uh, decline much more quickly and significantly than the type one endurance fibers. So it’s easier to maintain endurance competency, aerobic competency as you age than it is to remain strong, explosive, and powerful. I just saw a research item contending that 99% of people never sprint again after around age 40 seems totally reasonable and believable. I don’t know too many people that are out there sprinting <laugh>. When I go to the high school track, I’m usually by myself or looking at a bunch of young kids doing it. I just competed in a junior college track meet. So there was about a dozen different junior colleges around Southern California gracefully.

Brad (00:16:03):
Thankfully the race director allowed me to enter, and I was getting all these props from the crowd for participating. Like, Hey, man, you’re looking good out there. I’m like, why are you singling me out? How could you tell I was a master’s athlete? Don’t I fit in with all these JC kids? Okay, maybe not with the slightly graying hair, but it was amusing to participate alongside them and also a little bit exasperating to realize like, doesn’t anyone else want to keep competing against these junior college kids besides me? I guess not. Now, you don’t have to compete, but you do want to make a concerted effort to maintain that anaerobic system. What more incentive do we need except to realize that the number one cause of demise and death in Americans over age 65 is falling and related adverse health consequences. In Peter Attias book out, The Outlive, he states research that 38% of Americans who fall and break a hip over age 65 are dead within a year.

Brad (00:17:10):
That’s scary statistic. Why does that happen? It’s not that the fall was so bad that they died from the fall, but they fall and break a hip, and then they’re bedridden, and then they get weaker and weaker, and they can easily succumb to some other condition associated with the weakening, unfit body, such as catching pneumonia and not being strong enough to cough it out of the lungs. And coming to your, coming to your demise that started with that fall and the broken hip now preventing falling. What is that essentially all about? Essentially, it is a single rep max effort with off balance body weight, right? You’re going to stumble, you’re going to take a crazy step, and you’re either going to catch your, catch yourself with incredibly powerful and balanced quadricep firing and loading the whole body onto that quad and regaining your balance or you’re gonna eat it.

Brad (00:18:06):
I have huge compliments to my brother. Age 73, we were moving my mother out of her lifelong home and all this furniture and loading everything into the truck, and he was backing in with a heavy couch backing up, backing up down the driveway to try to load it into the truck. And there was a pile of storage blankets on the driveway right in his path. He didn’t see him. So he’s holding a heavy couch, he hits the blankets, let’s go with the couch. That was fine. And he spun and did a pirouette with a couple crazy sidesteps, and then caught his balance and lived to tell about it. And I’m like right there. That could have been a fork in the road for a 73-year-old who was working on a hip replacement, by the way. But instead, he caught himself and was off to shoot another low golf round in the weeks and months ahead.

Brad (00:18:58):
But when something like that happens and you’re in your seventies, boy, that could really be changing the course of your whole future. But he had enough power, anaerobic power and, uh, explosive strength to catch his crazy off balance body weight and continue with the rest of the move. <laugh>, good job, Wally. Okay. So falling that huge, huge risk factor, what can we do about it? Is to remain strong. Sorry, your walk around the park is not going to help prevent falling very much. And in fact, what’s gonna happen is as the years go by, if that’s all you do, you’re just gonna be walking slower and with less balance, less competency. Again, way, way better than just sitting your butt on your couch or on your wheelchair and doing nothing. But we have this urgent need to mix the aerobic competency with strength, power, and performance.

Brad (00:19:56):
So, without too much lead in, let’s go to the question at hand. What’s your current training regimen like? Hopefully you can pull some insights about how I have now switched from a lifelong endurance emphasis, really in the past five years, starting in 2020 when I participated in a master’s track meet for the first time in probably decades. And I had such a great time, I performed better than expectation. It got me fired up to go out there and try to become a high jumper and a sprinter. So with that in mind, I’ve had to engage in a very difficult recalibration of my lifelong mentality as an endurance athlete. And instead, I now have to appreciate the process of building power explosiveness and fast twitch muscle fiber competency, which essentially is an exercise in stress and rest, and putting up really explosive, high powerful, challenging high intensity workouts and coupling that with a lot of rest as opposed to the endurance mentality, which is grind away, grind away.

Brad (00:21:05):
We know that all endurance endurance athletes in every sport are obsessed with how much weekly mileage or weekly hours they are accumulating that mindset and those behavior patterns have no place in building the anaerobic power and explosiveness competency. In fact, if you think about it, the aerobic system responds to low intensity, high frequency, and high volume, and the anaerobic system is quite the opposite. It responds to less frequency, really high intensity and low volume. So I’ve had to flip flop my lifelong approach to athletic training. And the tough part has been, you know, deciding how to rest and recover and restore myself before I come back and do another explosive powerful sprint workout. And I was scolded by my good friend, uh, a sprinting mentor and advisor and world champion in masters track and field in her own right, former podcast guest, Cynthia Monteleon.

Brad (00:22:10):
You can find her on Instagram fast over 40. She has great content about the benefits of sprinting and, I sent her my training logs where I describe my workouts and what times I did for the reps. And then it’ll say, uh, Thursday rest day, easy bike ride to Farmer’s Market for an hour. And she’ll say, what is this? That’s not a rest day for a sprinter. That’s a workout, that’s an hour long bike ride. What are you doing? You have to rest, you have to really rest, not peddle your bicycle around town. And I’m like, okay, fair point, fair point. The the muscles, the tendons, the connective tissue really need to rest when they’ve been traumatized with explosive ballistic exercises like sprinting on flat ground or doing especially the high jump, which is so jarring for the body.

Brad (00:22:59):
And so that part I am working on and recalibrating carefully. Now, I should explain if you go at a slow enough pace moving at getting out there, is definitely restorativetive. It’s not impacting my recovery from sprinting or anything else. So if I want to get out there and pedal really, really slowly, get some fresh air, get outta the house, get the blood flowing through the lower extremities, I’m going to say that that is just fine. But it’s certainly not going to help me become a faster sprinter. It might support recovery a bit, but again, it’s like the bread and butter for the endurance athlete is to get out there and put in more mileage. And now I’m kind of rejecting that, and I am indeed taking a lot of days where, besides my first morning exercise regimen that I’ll describe shortly, I don’t do much at all.

Brad (00:23:51):
I just rest and I sit or I stand at my standup desk or my recording studio here where I’m standing up and I don’t need to obsessively work the body every single day. Like a lot of endurance mindset is okay. So the endurance mentality overall, I’m gonna say is old and faded and outdated. And really the only rationale for engaging in steady-state cardiovascular exercise, I suppose, is to prepare for an event of a similar nature. So if you’re one of those 53,000 people record number of finishers in the New York City marathon in 2024, yes, they need to get out there and they need to work it. And they need to, they need to simulate the experience that they’re facing on race day in training. So they’re gonna go out there and they’re gonna do their long runs and try to bump it up to 20 miles, and they’re going to week in, week out, put in some runs that are lasting for a long duration to prepare, uh, the legs, the body, the cardiovascular system for what they’re gonna face on race day.

Brad (00:24:56):
But that is not a great reason or rationale to engage in a significant amount of steady state cardiovascular exercise. And when you drift beyond that fat max heart rate that I talk about so much on the show, guess what? Now you are inviting the opposite of your desired benefits from exercise. That’s right. You are, are going to experience accelerated aging from the breakdown, burnout, illness and injury, the endocrine and hormone problems that are associated with extreme steady state endurance cardiovascular exercise. Furthermore, the more energy you put into bumping up your weekly mileage in preparation for the marathon, the less energy you have for the most beneficial exercises known to mankind and to the aging process, which are resistance training and sprinting. So if you’re too tired from all your mileage to go look at a weight or pick it up or to move quickly, whether it’s sprinting on flat ground or perhaps sprinting on stationary bike or on a rowing machine or upstairs, that’s when we have a huge issue to discuss and ask you look straight in the mirror and say, why am I doing this?

Brad (00:26:16):
Because it’s definitely not for health or anti-aging, and I can talk trash air because that was my life when I was a professional triathlete. What am I doing this for? I’m doing it for the glory and the attention and the prize money and the sponsors. I was doing it for my competitive outlet and it was my career. And so I was not concerned in the slightest with longevity from ages 20 to 30. I was mainly concerned with improving my time at the Olympic distance course from one hour 47 to an hour 46. ’cause that meant, for example, a tenfold increase in income and notoriety and all that great stuff when you’re deeply, deeply into an extreme athletic pursuit. So don’t kid yourself now and think that increasing your weekly mileage is contributing to aging gracefully. It’s just absolutely not. And we talk about this with tremendous amount of scientific reference and end notes for you to review in the book.

Brad (00:27:15):
Born to Walk, Born to Walk book.com. Yeah, it’s gonna be a wake up call, especially if you’re an endurance athlete. Now, here’s another thing. In support of this argument of backing off and not pushing yourself too hard. The world’s elite athletes in every endurance sport do a lot of training that is way under the radar. It’s well within their capacity, such that they’re not tempting this constant breakdown and exhaustion and overeating and increased laziness throughout the day that we see in a lot of recreational athletes. I’ve talked about the great Kenyan marathoner, the greatest marathoner of all time, Eluidp Kipchoge, two time Olympic gold medalist. He’s the man that broke two hours in that special event a few years ago, an hour 59 for a marathon. Yeah, that’s moving pretty good. 4:34 pace per mile. Well, he engages in 83% of his weekly mileage is performed in zone one.

Brad (00:28:11):
So the very, very comfortable heart rate zone where it’s a highly conversational, conversational pace and minimally stressful, and only around 9% in zone two and 7% in zone three, the fast pace interval stuff that he does. And you can see him on YouTube doing these incredibly awesome workouts like Kipchoge eight times, 1000 in two minutes, 45 seconds in high altitude, just amazing cardiovascular system and a very impressive, uh, high intensity workout. But for him, it’s just kind of revving up the engine a little bit. It’s not a brutal session that’s putting him on his hands and knees, you know, afterward. And so we can definitely take a page from the practices of the elite athletes and work well within our own personal relative capacity. I also like the insight in the New York Times article, keeping up with the Ingebrigstens about the world’s greatest middle distance runner, Jakob Ingebrigsten, where he relates that he rarely exceeds 88% of his capacity and training.

Brad (00:29:13):
There was a great press conference before he broke the world record at 2000 meters last year, one of the greatest records in track and field, and he shattered it, one of the greatest performances we’ve seen in decades at middle distance. And they said, do you think you’re ready to break the world record? And he says, I don’t really know. I’ll find out during the race, because I never pushed myself that hard in training. Love that. Okay, so now I’m going to get to my daily training patterns, as a freshly minted 60-year-old here. And it always starts. First thing with my morning exercise session. I did an entire online multimedia educational course called Developing the Ultimate Morning Exercise Routine. You can see that bradkearns.com and get all kinds of ideas and guidance and inspiration for starting your day with some form of deliberate sequential exercise movements.

Brad (00:30:06):
And it has been just a life-changing decision to try to start out doing this way back in 2017. So now we’re coming up on eight years where virtually every single day, I can’t even think of days that I’ve missed. I know I had a streak going of six years and oh yes, that’s right. I got the global pandemic illness twice and was in bed sleeping for six days straight at one point. So I haven’t done it every single day, but pretty much every well and waking day, I immediately hit the deck and start into my morning exercise sequence. Now, the template pattern has changed over the years. I did the exact same thing for about five or six years. It ended up to last around 40 minutes with all the add-ons. And now I’ve backed off and my sequences are only around 17 minutes now, and they’re not quite as strenuous as that 40 minute template.

Brad (00:30:58):
Why? Because I, as I mentioned earlier, my sprint workouts are so difficult that I really do need more building in of rest and recovery. And so today my morning exercise session is emphasizing things like foot foot functionality. I have some flowing yoga poses. I have some good dynamic stretches, some static stretches, and then ending with a couple difficult things with the mini bands and the exercise straps. But the idea here is to get outta bed and get your joints and muscles and connective tissue warmed up and ready to go doing some, in my case these so-called prehab or rehab exercises where I’m working on the difficult spots in my body that have been injury prone like my Achilles tendons or my hip flexors. And so those are, uh, deliberate exercises into the slot because they’re areas that I want to work on.

Brad (00:31:54):
You can see on the PELUVA YouTube channel, I have some videos up there about foot mobility exercises. Hey, everything starts with the feet. Everything, all forms of more complex kinetic chain activity and fitness and active lifestyle activity starts with the feet. That’s why we’re so excited to promote Barefoot Living and the ultimate barefoot inspired shoe from PELUVA because we need to get our foot functionality back into a good standing and a lifetime of wearing elevated, restrictive, heavily cushioned shoes has destroyed our feet and led to widespread atrophy, dysfunction, and pain. The American Podiatric Association contends that 83 percent of Americans complain of chronic foot pain today. Can you believe that? So you’re unusual, you’re an outlier if you don’t complain of chronic foot pain. It is so prevalent and so routine and entrenched in society that Medicare for those international listeners, Medicare is the United States healthcare system, the governmental healthcare system for seniors.

Brad (00:33:05):
Over age 65, you qualify for Medicare and you get free healthcare. Medicare covers two pairs of orthopedic shoes, by prescription every year, and one pair of special insert orthotics. So in other words the assumption is that as you age, you’re going to need special shoes designed for your terribly dysfunctional feet. Yes, indeed. There’s a better way than just following along and letting your feet get destroyed from years and decades wearing the shoes. And that is to regain foot functionality by going barefoot as often as possible, for example, around the home, and then wearing the most functional minimalist shoes, which, at PELUVA we have the five individual toe slots to give a true barefoot experience. And of course, I’m not telling you to put on your PELUVAs and go out there and do your sprint workouts or run your New York City marathon because it takes a lot of adaptability, and you have to do that carefully.

Brad (00:34:05):
We have a beautiful 88-page book called The Definitive Guide to a Barefoot and Minimalist Shoe Lifestyle that you can download for free PELUVA.com. And it will give you step-by-step guidance, how to progress safely and gradually toward more barefoot competency and being able to use your PELUVAs for more and more everyday activity and even fitness activity. So I’ve been adapting for a long time, obviously been wearing these shoes, so I can do quite a bit including extreme heights like Cactus to Clouds in my minimalist shoes and get a much better ground feel and proprioception than I might get in a sturdy hiking boot. So in other words, my footing and my safety is vastly better when I’m in a more barefoot, adaptable shoe. Okay, little plug there as I was talking about foot functionality in my morning routine. So I got some foot mobility, I got some yoga, I got dynamic stretching.

Brad (00:35:06):
Then I pick up the mini bands and I do 120 count of what’s called the monster walk or the donkey kick. And these are tough. So I do it every single day. I’m proud to say, because it is no joke. And by the end, I’m huffing and puffing, and I need a little, ah, at the end of that, I switch from those to what’s called banded mountain climbers. So it’s a very thin, long exercise band. And I strap it to a fixed point such as a post right at the bottom of the staircase, whatever, or a beam or something. And then I hook my forefoot in there and then assume the plank position on the ground. And then with the both feet pulling against the band, I will drive my knees to my chest and do a series of mountain climbing.

Brad (00:35:57):
It’s sort of like striding while in a plank position on the ground. And, boy, does that one work, those hip flexors and core to the point where I’m really pushing, it’s like a sprint that I do every morning when I get my count up to 40 of those banded mountain climbers. So most of the morning routine is pretty easy, but I finish with a bang, and then I know that I’m off to my busy day, which might include rolling right into a workout, or it might include a rest recovery day. And that’s what my choices are. Now, I’m gonna go through each one. So one of ’em is to do a proper high intensity training session, high degree of difficulty, either a sprint workout or a high jump practice session. Another option is to do a strength training session, a dedicated strength training session without the running, without the sprinting component.

Brad (00:36:51):
And that would probably be once a week where I’m going to the gym and doing the big five and other exercises, I’ll talk about what they are. Or doing my home session where I have a lot of contraptions and a great setup here, by the way, for very inexpensive budget investment, to have a fantastic strength training session for with the emphasis on upper body, and maybe those will be combined with some gentle or medium, uh, low impact sprint drill. So I might do my strength session and then take one jog around the block, under a mile, maybe it’s, you know, a, a total of a, a half a mile, three quarters of a mile where I’m doing sprint drills and walking, but it’s not strenuous like it might be when it’s time for my high intensity workout day. And then the third option, so I’m doing a sprint workout, a strength training session, or a rest and recovery day.

Brad (00:37:45):
And now that could entail doing nothing beyond my initial morning routine that takes around 18 minutes or something like an easy 20 minute bicycle pedal with Cynthia’s voice echoing in my head not to actually engage in a training session when it’s supposed to be a rest and recovery day for a sprinter. So what you’re seeing here with my description is very much a peak and valley type training system. Unlike, quite unlike what I did when I was an endurance athlete, where we’re pretty much going out there going to work every day, especially when it was my profession and training from, you know, three hours on an easy day up to seven or eight hours on a hard day. So instead, I have these low lows where it’s rest and relaxing, and of course, walking maybe that easy pedaling that I mentioned, or it’s stuff that’s really, really tough and pushing my body to the maximum such as heading out to the track and doing some of these interval workouts that are preparing me for masters track and field competition.

Brad (00:38:54):
It is nothing at all like getting out the door and grinding out your five miles every day in the name of health, fitness, peak Performance and Longevity. That simply is a flawed and dated approach. And in fact, I don’t do any dedicated workouts, dedicated endurance workouts anymore at all. I barely even jog. So my outings that I described will be a mix of medium or maybe getting it to be high difficulty drills followed by walking recovery, and then another medium or, uh, difficult drill followed by walk in recovery. Maybe there’s a tiny bit of jogging, like I’ll jog 10 or 15 seconds into the next drill, and then I’ll launch into the A skips or the B skips or whatever I’m doing. But the days of just hitting out the door and jogging are gone forever. And again, might I remind you that my endurance is still quite competent enough to be able to do a 15 hour occasional brutal hike without having any devotion to steady-state exercise?

Brad (00:40:02):
Here’s another interesting thing that I’ve discovered through trial and error, is that the pattern that works for me, possibly relevant mainly to people around my age group, and maybe not to the young college age listener that posed the first question to kick off the show. But I found that, uh, a high intensity day followed by two easy days in a row, really works great for me. One reason is because you tend to bottom out at 48 hours after an explosive high intensity training session rather than the next morning. In other words, the next morning, a lot of times you’re still inflamed. You might still have somes stress mechanisms activated to where you feel okay, but then a day later you often feel worse. There’s research on delayed onset muscle soreness showing that soreness peaks at 48 hours, not 12, not 24, but 48 hours is when you really feel the full brunt of the muscle training that you did at the gym that made you sore, or the sprint training that perhaps traumatized the tendons.

Brad (00:41:11):
And I’m gonna wake up and my Achilles is gonna be a tiny bit tight the next day, but then two days later, even more beat up. And I’m talking about my most recent track meet where I had a wonderful experience of setting the PR in the 400 meters. I ran a 62nd at the age of 60. It’s been an obsession, a goal for many, many years. It was a big breakthrough because I was stuck running between 1 0 2 and 1 0 5 for now about six years. Uh, all the races I did were pretty much in that range, and I ain’t getting any younger. So I was wondering like, dang, I think I’m getting fitter. I’m putting in some good workouts. My injuries are at bay. When am I gonna get that breakthrough? Or is it not in the cards? And so that was great to see that clock at one minute, zero zero, and now the only thing left to do is dip under my age, and I can’t wait to report that back at another show.

Brad (00:42:04):
But definitely taking that extra rest and that pattern of one hard day followed by two easy days, has, uh, really worked well for me. Uh, most people like to think in terms of a week, what’s your week like? Well, you know what, the body doesn’t know nothing about weeks. And so we are applying an arbitrary block of time that we use in society to organize our work weeks and our weekends or whatever, and we’re trying to apply that to the dynamic process of fitness. So I encourage you not to think in patterns of a week and how many exercises, how many times should I swim in a week? The triathletes want to know how many times should I bike, how many times should I do this? Uh, let’s open up the perspective a little bit and just pursue uninterrupted fitness progress over the calendar year or some type of bigger frame period.

Brad (00:42:59):
A lot of people like to think of perhaps a goal event. So my next track meet is in a month, and all I’m worried about is getting healthy and energetic and improving my conditioning over the next month. So I don’t care what day of the week it is or how much I’ve accomplished this week compared to last week. That’s important. When I stumble into, for example, a pattern that works for me of a high intensity day, followed by two easy days, followed by high intensity pretty soon, that doesn’t always add up to seven, right? So I’m, I’m bumping into the next week, and you get what I’m saying here. So let that stuff go. And, um, I would say even if you’re not competitive and not looking toward your next race or trying to beat your time, um, I think this protocol could be a really great suggestion, especially in the older age groups when you’re looking for fitness breakthrough, anti-aging benefits and losing excess body fat, to realize that, um, pursuing some higher highs and perhaps, lower lows and getting rid of that in-between stuff is going to be the best hormonal signaling for fat reduction.

Brad (00:44:12):
The genetic signaling for dropping excess body fat from sprinting is profound, and it’s vastly superior to workouts lasting six times or 10 times as long we know from emerging research, in the area called the Compensation Theory of exercise, that steady-state endurance training generally leads to the genetic signaling for fat storage, muscle loss, and increased appetite. <laugh> brutal. And we detailed this tremendously in born to walk because it’s kind of counterintuitive. Wait, what do you mean when I run eight miles, I’m burning 687 calories? Oh, yeah, you’re also going to Jamba Juice after and getting a medium smoothie and a breakfast scone, which is 700 calories. So you just negated all those calories that you burned during running very easily. It’s a little depressing if you look at the internet calculators and realize that that brutal hour long gym class at bootcamp with the toughest teacher only burns around six or 700 calories, and you are definitely going to chip away at that over the course of the day with reaching for the candy bowl a couple more times, or having the entire pint of ice cream 12 hours later rather than the scoop that you thought about.

Brad (00:45:23):
So it’s not about burning calories through strenuous exercise, but rather fat reduction is about hormone optimization, especially sending the genetic signals to drop excess body fat. Why does sprinting work so well? Even short duration sprinting is because the penalty for carrying excess body fat while sprinting, especially on flat ground, high-impact is so severe that your body will adapt to the training stimulus by shedding excess body fat and concurrently, building or maintaining muscle mass. So sprinting gets you ripped while endurance training keeps you soft and overeating, again, not just me popping off on a podcast episode here, but strongly validated by science and not to mention practical example. So there was a notable research from the Cape Town South Africa Marathon where they discovered that 30% of the participants were outside of the healthy BMI range (body mass index). So you have these people on the starting line about to run 26 miles, so extremely fit and well-prepared, well-trained people, but 30% of them are over fat.

Brad (00:46:44):
So something is not adding up when it comes to the collective approach to endurance training. So I gave you the three choices. I was either gonna do a sprint workout, a strength training session, or a rest or recovery day, and now I’m going to detail what each of those three days look like. The sprint workout always begins with extensive warmup and preparatory drills. So I’m going on and on about all the wonderful benefits of sprinting, the genetic signaling for fat reduction. It gets you ripped, but it’s also a high risk fitness endeavor because when you perform, explosive high intensity movements, you have to have precise technique. And when you’re talking about high impacts such as sprinting on flat ground, you’re talking about a high injury risk and increased trauma to the tendons of connective tissue requires a lot of buildup time to become competent.

Brad (00:47:39):
That’s why anything I say about sprinting, I’m talking about my sprinting on flat ground. But you can definitely get similar benefits when you’re sprinting on stationary bike or rowing machine or up a hill or upstairs, or things that are lesser impact. In fact, when I had my Achilles surgery and then another Achilles injury where I couldn’t do high impact sprinting, I still sprinted with the high knee form where I’m barely moving forward, but I’m driving my knees up really high and taking aggressive, powerful stride. And it was just as difficult, just as strenuous as my regular sprints, but with very little impact trauma and no pain to the injured areas. So I was able to keep in shape by just doing high knee sprint drills. Same thing for sprinting upstairs is a great workout, great fitness stimulation. It does have some impact and some benefit on bone density, but I would love to have you progress over time carefully to one day running sprints on flat ground, because when you become competent at that, that’s when you get the best genetic signaling for fat loss.

Brad (00:48:48):
And you also get the benefits for bone density and making your connective tissue stronger and more resilient. So, my sprint workouts start with, uh, 10 minute easy pedaling to the track, and then I will do two laps of medium to high degree of difficulty sprinting and running technique drills. You can see all kinds of content on the PELUVA YouTube channel where I show you the beginner drills, intermediate and advanced drills. And these things are pretty strenuous. So I’m really breathing hard when I do 20 seconds of a skips or 20 seconds of fasting lanes or whatever the other drills I’m doing. So I have to take walk recovery. So I’m making my way around the track very slowly. I’m probably taking eight minutes to do a half a mile, two laps. So it’s, it’s like if there was some really slow jogger next to me or fast walker, we’d be at the same speed because I’m doing these powerful explosive drills and then I’m walking it off and then I’m doing another drill.

Brad (00:49:50):
But by the time I do those two laps, I’m feeling very warm and loose and mobile. And then the next thing I’ll do is a set of eight times 40 meters of wind-sprints on the grass, on the grass field inside the track, lower impact than the track surface. And those will be a quick burst of energy going for around 40 meters, jogging for between the 40 yard line and the other 40 yard line. So that’s a 20 meter jog and then into another explosive 40 meters. And these are probably up around 88% of capacity. So I’m moving fast, I’m working hard, but again, they’re only 40 meters. So this is this term wind-sprint refers to accelerating up to, uh, high speed or near full speed, and then immediately decelerating so that it’s not really strenuous and you’re not, you know, really taxed, but you are revving up that engine.

Brad (00:50:42):
And so the purpose of this eight times 40 meters is to really discern how my joints, connective tissue, muscles, and overall energy level is so that I can give myself permission to move into the main set of juicy high intensity sprint workouts. But on occasion my right hamstring is not feeling great, or my left Achilles or something’s acting up during the 40 meter wind sprints. And that will be my signal to just curtail the workout right there. It’s already still an impressive workout with two laps of drills and eight times 40 meter wind sprints, but I don’t wanna attempt injury if I’m not feeling great. So I have to give the thumbs up after the eight times 40 meters before I jump into and I’m gonna make this really simple and describe three different types of sprint workouts. Bear with me if you think this is a little sciencey or too sophisticated, but I think it’s really important to understand, um, the different types of sprint workouts and the energy systems they’re prioritizing and how they can benefit you overall to become a more competent sprinter and also encourage you to dabble in them ’cause they’re all fun and challenging and interesting.

Brad (00:51:55):
But the three types of workouts, we’ll call them: number one is developing pure speed. So you’re going really fast short distance. The other one we call speed endurance, that’s a term bantered about in track and field where you’re doing a set, a familiar set of reps at around 85% of your maximum capacity or your best time in competition. And, but you’re, you’re working hard and so you’re doing, uh, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever the protocol counts for. I’ll give you a couple of my favorite. And then finally the third category, is called race model. And that is kind of, uh, practicing or preparing for a race where you’re going 92 to 95% of maximum effort. So just under race pace, you’re getting plenty of rest, but you’re giving a really high quality challenging effort. I guess my fourth category would be practicing for the event of high jump.

Brad (00:52:53):
And again, that’s very jarring. It’s very high impact. You’re running on a curve. You’re incurring some trauma to your tendons, connective tissue. So those workouts will beat you up pretty good even though they’re not strenuous and tongue hanging out like some of these sprint sessions. So a good simple pure speed session would be something like three times, three times 70 meters. So you’re doing a set of three times 70 meters. Of course you’re resting extensively in between the 70 meter, nearly full speed sprint, and then you’re taking a break in between each set that’s even longer. So the emphasis here is on plenty of rest, substantial rest, such that all nine of your 70 meter efforts will be really powerful and explosive delivered with excellent technique. So three times, three times 70, I take plenty of rest and great sprinters like Lion Martinez world record holder in the men’s 45 and over a hundred meter dash.

Brad (00:53:54):
He ran 10.79. Absolutely stunning time for a middle-aged man. Good enough to qualify for the Swedish National Championship Competition at age 45. He’s a world champion. He’s been on my podcast talking about sprinting in detail and he likes to recommend taking a one-minute rest per 10 meters sprinted. So even a simple 70 meter sprint, not even a whole football field would warrant seven minutes of rest. Now, I don’t take that much ’cause I’m not as powerful as Lion and another true sprinter where they’re pumping out so much energy. So I’m probably taking two to three minutes rest in between each of my 70 meter efforts, but it does feel leisurely. So when I return to the starting line after a leisurely walk back to where I started, I feel refreshed, energized, and ready to bust another one for 70 meters. So that’s a pure speed session.

Brad (00:54:52):
And then when we talk about speed endurance, so we’re gonna calculate 85% of your best time the way you do this trick, get out your calculator. Let’s say my best time in the 400 meters is 60 seconds, which it is now for argument’s sake and for ease of calculation. Oh my gosh. Okay, so we’re gonna go 60 divided by 0.85 on the calculator, 60 divided by 0.85. If your best time in the 400 meters right now is around 90 seconds, you would do 90 divided by 0.85. So when I do 60 divided by 0.85, I get 71 seconds, a minute, 11. So that would be a speed endurance pace for me to run at that pace for a 400 meter effort. And one of my favorite and toughest workouts is four by 400. So I’m gonna try to do four times, 400 meters.

Brad (00:55:49):
That’s one lap around the track, extensive walking and rest period after. So I’m pretty much gonna walk an entire lap that will take me another four minutes. So it’s four times 400 with four minutes rest. Trying to come in there around 85% of my best time. Sometimes I have some attrition there where the first one might be 71, the second one might be 72, then it might be 74, 75. You don’t want to kill yourself just to make the same finishing time in each one. You really want to feel it and feel like you’re working hard. But again, no need to go ragged or go into the well during a training session. So one of my speed endurance workouts is four by 400 with a 400 meter walk of around four minutes. I’ll also do a 400 breakdown. That means 400, 300, 200 and 100. Uh, the times getting a little faster on each, uh, interval because I’m going for a shorter duration.

Brad (00:56:46):
So the 400 might be at one 11, and then the 300 might be at a slightly faster pace. Same with the 200 might be at, uh, a 66 pace instead of a 71 pace. Uh, but again, everything’s under control. Still a high degree of difficulty. There’s no comparison to doing a cool scent like this versus heading out the door and shuffling down the road for yet another five-mile run that’s making minor incremental impact on your fitness or longevity. This stuff is the real deal. That’s why it’s fun and challenging. Then the way you wanna kind of assess your workload here, one of the ways is you can count the total number of meters that you sprinted, so if you do four by four, that’s a 1600 meters, that’s a mile worth of hard work. The breakdown that I mentioned, 4, 3, 2, 1, that’s a thousand meters of hard work.

Brad (00:57:41):
Sometimes I’ll do four by 200, four by one 50, so that’s a total of 1400 meters of hard work. And then over time you can kind of rank these workouts where typically you do between 1,002 thousand meters of hard work, whatever it is. I’m not saying that you need to stack this over time to now you can do 2000 meters, 3000 meters, 4,000 meters. That’s not how sprinting works. Instead, you want to have the emphasis on getting faster. So the pure speed workout of three times, three times 70 meters, I’m not aspiring to take that up to 80 meters or 90 meters, nor am I trying to do 12 and then 15 and then 20. That’s a completely ridiculous notion that is back in that flawed and dated endurance mentality. Instead, what I’m looking for over time is to go faster for those 70 meter efforts, get it.

Brad (00:58:34):
Same with doing the speed endurance workouts, uh, with a little bit better time split when I come in for that 400 meters. So again, the rest is good, but it’s not extensive and leisurely and luxurious. As my former podcast guest, Dr. Craig Marco, would say that we reserve for the pure speed sessions. So we have speed endurance with good rest. And then the third category of workout, is called race model. And that’s where you’re doing this race prep and really checking on your times and calculating how is this reflect my approach to the next race? So my favorite race model workout, where we’re working at around 95% of capacity. And that’s an interesting notion because in the race, you really want to think in your mind that you’re going, you know, 97, 98% not a hundred, because the difference between 98 and a hundred, when you tell an athlete to gimme a hundred percent, that’s when they start to get tense and sloppy because they’re trying too hard.

Brad (00:59:34):
So, if you watch the Olympics or watch Grand Slam track on YouTube that just happened, look at the faces of these athletes when they’re coming down the home stretch, giving their absolute maximum effort, their faces, their arm swing, their fingers, their hands, they still look relaxed and under control because that is the way to generate the maximum force production. And muscle tension and tightness and strain in other areas of the body actually makes you slower. So, I’m going near all out efforts for these four by 200 meters. I’m trying to hit, you know, 29 to 30 seconds for each one. I’m taking some really good rest, maybe three minutes, maybe more in between each effort, but then I can see if I comfortably made it 29 seconds on my set of four by 200, I know what I feel like in the race when I go out at that pace and try to hang on.

Brad (01:00:31):
And in fact, my last 400, my best result that I reported running 60 second. I went out there in 29 flat, which is near maximum, but I still have a little bit left. And I was able to come home in 31.8 for a total time of 60.8. But boy, that second 200 is tough in the race because I’m not going slow when I go out there halfway at 95% effort. Okay? This workout is probably not relevant to a ton of people because taking it up to 95% and running on flat ground can bring a lot of injury risks. Even after many years, I’m still finding a way to tweak something or get something that doesn’t feel great the next day. But over time, if you’re careful, you can keep increasing your speed and staying under control. And again, if you have any concerns or hesitation, take this whole model and this whole mentality over to the stationary bike and kick some butt on that stuff until you eventually try to sprinkle in some wind sprints.

Brad (01:01:36):
Now, if it’s a high jump practice, I’ll do a variety of drills. I’ve also shown these on YouTube. There’s a video called Brad Kearns Complete High Jump Technique Instruction. And I tried to give back to the sport I love so much, talking about the great performances and, and technique of the world’s greatest high jumpers. So I show a lot of footage from the top guys and break it down. And, it’s gotten great, uh, feedback and, uh, lots of views. So a lot of high jumpers out there appreciating the nuances of the sport and the physics involved. And it’s such an amazing challenge. I think it’s the number one most technique precise sport there is in track and field. And so a high jump practice will be like circle drills, three step drills some pure jumping bounding drills on the grass.

Brad (01:02:21):
And then I’ll take perhaps 12 to 15 full jumps at full speed. Maybe do some sprints if I’m feeling good after that, and that will be enough. And I don’t do that very often, unfortunately. I’d love to practice high jump three times a week, but in this age category, just trying to stay healthy and hit my checkpoints and some of my, uh, technique suggestions, but I can’t do it with much frequency. And of course, since it’s such an explosive event, we’re not talking about, again, getting better at doing, now I’m up to 20 jumps per practice. I used to do 12, no. Another ridiculous notion. What you wanna do is be powerful, strong, and explosive. And certainly anything over a dozen, you’re starting to invite cumulative fatigue and degraded performance. And on that note, it’s interesting to realize that when you’re performing, anaerobic explosive, high intensity training in a fatigue state, whether it’s the brain or the muscles, you are literally training your body to go slower or operate less powerfully.

Brad (01:03:22):
So there is never any occasion where you’re going to practice sprinting in a fatigued state, or you’re actually getting yourself worse and slower. That covers my sprint workouts on those days of my training. And of course, after I’ll bike 10 minutes home and I’ll engage in positional parasympathetic breathing, that great technique suggested by my friend and former podcast guest, Dr. Janine Kraus, functional medicine physician. And this is after a high intensity challenging workout. You kind of wanna get back to homeostasis quickly. You want to regulate your sympathetic nervous system because you’ve been in that sympathetic dominant fight or flight state, which is desirable. That’s what we want when it’s time for peak performance. But just after, just like, after we finish our presentation in the boardroom, we wanna calm down, we wanna chill out. And so she advocates lying on the ground with your feet elevated and engaging in a bit of nasal diaphragmatic breathing.

Brad (01:04:23):
So just laying down, relaxing, closing your eyes, elevating your feet after a tough workout, and doing some nasal breathing will bring you back, help bring you back to a parasympathetic system, kicking in the rest and digest the recovery aspects, kicking in and, and mellowing you out rather than, for example, going home and you’re still high on stress hormones and adrenaline, and now you’re choosing to vacuum your entire house and wash the windows while you’re at it. You might have the energy to do so, but you wanna make a concerted effort to downregulate your nervous system after that high intensity session, all in the name of recovering better, right? Okay. So in the, strength training category, I’ll either do something in my home environment, like I mentioned earlier, or I will head to the gym and utilize the great equipment there.

Brad (01:05:16):
And I really, I don’t get to the gym enough, just busy, whatever excuses I have to make. But I love going there because I feel like once I walk in the door, I’m there to get stuff done. I know people are there to socialize too, and that’s wonderful and fantastic, and I do enjoy bumping into people and talking to them. But I feel like I’m put myself in an environment to succeed where I’m not gonna go there and open up a book in the corner and read and get distracted. So it’s kind of like a natural way to motivate. You see these machines around, it’s like, what am I doing here? Oh, yes, that’s right. I have to put the pin in and go to work. So I love the big five exercise protocol advocated by Dr. Doug McGuff and John Little in their fantastic book Body by Science, still a bestseller like 15 years after it was published.

Brad (01:06:03):
And they have great researcher in there suggesting that this simple protocol of doing five full body functional movements on the machines at the gym, a very safe protocol for anybody. You don’t have to learn how to do complex technique with free weights. But doing these five machines just once a week, a single set to failure with nice, slow controlled movement is enough to continually get stronger without interruption. And in fact, some of the research they cite in the book saying, if you do it more frequently than that, you invite the possibility for regression and injury. So you really only have to put your muscles under extreme resistance load once a week. And the whole workout is only five exercises, a single set of each. So it takes around 15 minutes and you’re out of there and you’ve got it, you’ve got it down.

Brad (01:06:59):
It’s a great protocol for many, many people, unless you’re trying to get really serious and sophisticated and have other strength training goals. Okay, fine, go do all that other stuff. But I really like to simplify this stuff ’cause I think a lot of people get intimidated by the complexity conveyed in the strength training scene in the bro science scene. So the machines that are comprised, the big five are the chest press, the overhead press. And I want you to envision the muscle groups of the upper body as I mentioned these and how they’re all covered. The chest press, the overhead press, the lat pull down the seated row and the leg press. So chest, we got our pecs mainly. We’re also engaging the abs a lot on that. The overhead press is for the shoulders. That’s the deltoids. The lat pull down is, is of course the lats on the side of the body.

Brad (01:07:51):
The seated row is for the back muscles, and the leg press is for comprehensive lower body. That would be the glutes, the hamstrings, and the quads. So I do the big five when I’m there at the gym. Again, no more than once a week. And I actually don’t even make it once a week. But I’ve been doing this for years and it’s a really wonderful protocol. And I do see myself improving my strength even with minimal, or minimal duration and minimal frequency over there in the gym hoisting heavy weights around. I’ll also do other leg machines to add on, for example, the adductor abductor machine, leg extensions hamstring machine, uh, stomach crunch machine. I like the TRX straps. I don’t know that many things to do with them. I know people do a whole workout or a whole class, but I mainly do assisted pistol squats where I’m going down and squatting on one leg and pulling back up with the help of the TRX bar.

Brad (01:08:43):
I’ll grab a kettlebell and do some single leg Romanian deadlifts. I’ll do some pogo jumps. That’s also part of my tendon strengthening protocol. Calf weighted calf raises on a slant board. The reverse hyper machine, which is that really unusual machine that helps for back strengthening. So anyway, just going to the gym, uh, utilizing the unique equipment they have there, as opposed to my other option, which is to do it strength training session at home. And boy, I love doing that too. In fact, sometimes I motivate myself to get down to business at home by saying, why don’t I just knock this out at home so I don’t have to get in the car or get on my bike and go over to the gym ’cause I’m pressed for time or whatever. And I’m gonna say, one of the most cost effective and amazing fitness tools you can get are the stretch cords, C-O-R-D-Z.

Brad (01:09:38):
Go to brad kearns.com, go to the shopping page, and it’ll show, Brad’s Amazon recommendations. And you can go shop for my favorite fitness equipment and add it to your Amazon shopping cart. And you’ll see the cords C-O-R-D-Z on there. These things hang from a suspended, like hang off a pull up bar, or they can attach to a doorknob. And then you close the door to get a secure attachment. And then you pull these two lengths of stretch tubing with handles on the end. And you can do a complete, very, very challenging upper body workout in a matter of minutes. I mean, this will really rock your world. You have no idea. And it, it is just fantastic workout. Very, very safe because you’re not working with actual weight where you have that the eccentric contractions that can cause muscle soreness.

Brad (01:10:32):
It’s just stretch tubing. So very little potential for muscle soreness compared to hoisting around heavy weights. But the movements I do with this, I start with what’s called the wood chopper, where I’m pulling the cord across my body, thereby isolating on the abdominal muscles in both directions. It’s sort of like a simulated golf swing where I start with the handles up high like a backswing and then down, bring ’em down across my body to the opposite knee. Then I do the lat pull where my upper body is bent. I’m bent at the hips at a 90 degree angle, and it’s sort of a simulated swim stroke, which is where I first became exposed to this product because the swimmers use it ’cause it’s a great isolation for the lats to simulate swimming. Then I do what’s called sort of a standing row where I grab the cords in front of me and pull back and pinch my shoulder blades together, getting the handles as far back as I can.

Brad (01:11:22):
Then I turn around and face away from the attachment point and do a traditional chest press where the cords are at the side of my body. And then pushing forward like I’m lifting the bar off my chest. You can also do bicep curls, and by that time, your world is rocked. I also have various other contraptions in the home, and interestingly in plain visual view and behavior, psychologists contend that this is a huge deal for adherence to healthy habits is I need to see these stretch cords hanging down from the pull-up bar in my office and see them frequently. I’m gonna take a glance if you’re watching on video, I’m gonna wave high to the stretch cords right here off camera. But when they’re right there hanging around in my face all the time, that is, gives you much greater propensity to pick those up when the time comes.

Brad (01:12:16):
And you can do a mini session where you do one of those workouts I mentioned over the course of your busy day, just to get the blood flowing and get that micro workout effect. I also have a hex bar in the backyard. I’ve been trying to get into it. Everyone says it’s, you know, the single best piece of gym equipment for full body functional fitness, anti-aging longevity. When you grab the bar,when you grab the handles, which are on your sides, that’s called the hexagonal deadlift bar. It’s shaped like a hexagon. It’s a, uh, unique piece of gym equipment, which is much, much safer than doing a traditional deadlift with a barbell. But I still tend to get a little tweaks here and there. So I have to proceed very cautiously because I’ve had some back strains and other areas of the body hips.

Brad (01:13:01):
But again, I’m trying to make a better effort to at least do a little bit of hex bar exercises being that it’s right here in my yard. I can also do, uh, a simulated reverse hyper when I lay on top of the storage bin outside and my legs hang over the, the side of it, and then I’ll raise my legs to parallel to my body, my legs being suspended in the air. So that’s a good, uh, stimulation for the back. Anything you can do in your home environment to get creative and, purchase these very inexpensive gym tools like the mini bands I mentioned. You can get a lot of work done in a small space on a small budget.

Brad (01:13:42):
Then the third category, as I mentioned, is rest recovery days. And noticing that cumulative cumulative fatigue on day two more so than day one. So I like to have these bottoming out periods where I don’t have a lot of pressure. I don’t have a lot of challenging workouts ahead for two full days after a high intensity sprinting or high jumping session. And again, I’m not even adhering to that over time. ’cause a lot of things get in the way such as travel or such as minor injury or whatever it is. But at best I need two days break in between my high intensity workouts. So on the best, best case scenario, you might see me over a week’s time or over two weeks time doing a sprint workout, a couple easy, easy days or perhaps strength training session, and then only then another sprint or jumping session. These are great times to really discern your overall state of fatigue, recovery readiness to train. And oftentimes on these days, I’ll feel more tired than on those energetic, busy days where I knocked out an awesome workout and then I went into doing a bunch of productive work or traveling or doing errands.

Brad (01:14:54):
Sometimes these days I’m feeling pretty dragged because of the accumulating, uh, fatigue over the time period after the workout. And I’ll need an, uh, extra longer nap and I’ll wake up and kind of just relax and spend more time on the screen rather than busting around doing more household chores. So those two easy days after a high intensity, very high degree of difficulty session. This is a good example and a good vote for the intuitive approach to training. And I don’t care how much tech is out there, again, you’re talking to an old timer that was raised on almost no tech for training, and I’m still appreciating tremendously the power and the value of an intuitive approach to training. So no matter how many experts are in your corner and how much tech you have on your body or on your screen, there remains an extremely important element, which is your general intuitive sense of what you should do with your body on a day-to-day basis.

Brad (01:16:00):
And when I go out there and do those sprint and high jumping sessions, I am always chomping at the bit and can’t wait to do it. I don’t second guess my motivation or anything else because I’ve allowed my body to recover and prepare properly. And I think what happens when people get into fixed regimented scheduling is they’re dragging their body through the, uh, through the paces, even though it’s not naturally meant to be. And a lot of times our ego and our over analytical brain gets into the mix saying, gee, I haven’t done a swim workout in four days. I’m gonna lose all my fitness. That’s the triathlete talking. If I don’t get in the water today, even though I have a sore left shoulder and a little tickle in my throat. And that’s when the ridiculousness comes in and you get into these destructive patterns of over exercising.

Brad (01:16:55):
So, I’m not saying that motivation is always easy, but hopefully you really enjoy and love what you do and you’ve created a system and a pattern of workouts that you look forward to both, you know, psychologically as well as physically like your body and mind are in alignment. Like, let’s get over to the gym and have some fun and kick some butt, and I want you to care about nothing else as much as that cultivate a close relationship with your body, uh, that natural sense that we all have, that built in sense of stress, rest balance that we often ignore or we often have that mean voice on our shoulder saying, come on, you woosk, get out there. You haven’t worked out in two days. Sometimes your not sometimes always your body and your intuitive sense knows what’s best. And then we get in our own way, we become our own worst enemy.

Brad (01:17:49):
Now there’s my plug for being intuitive, but then we have another kind of different category of challenge and that is really carefully and accurately assessing your readiness to train in terms of injury prevention. And I’m still a work in progress. I’m still learning on this one. Maybe you can write into the show and gimme some tips because, I now understand the great quote from my surgeon that fixed my Achilles tendon. Dr. Katie Alto said, the tendons fool you when they become inflamed. And what that means is sometimes I’m a little beat up, but by the time I pedal over to the track and do my two laps of drills and my eight times 40 meters, I’m feeling warm. I’m feeling pumped up, I’m excited. I love being at the track. I relish the challenge, the opportunity, even if there’s a little suffering involved, it makes me feel alive.

Brad (01:18:39):
It’s fun. I have precise goals that I’m going for, so I’m checking my stopwatch. But maybe that little bulky, Achilles talking to me, or, uh, left hip flexor voice should have been appreciated a little more. Because when the tendons become inflamed, everything feels fine until later, that’s when you learn just how hammered and how traumatized, you are. For example, the last meet, my Achilles felt a little hot out there. It wasn’t perfect. I was warming up fine. I was just tiny bit of thing. And of course I went and did the 400 meters, set a new PR also ran the a hundred meters soon after that, and then went over to the high jump and did that and everything felt okay. And then the next day and the day following my Achilles was pretty hammered back.

Brad (01:19:34):
I am over to physical therapy to get the exercise protocols and looking at some extensive rest and restrengthening. So, when you feel those little tweaks, we wanna respect those and pay attention to them, especially as we get into the, uh, older age groups. And as we wrap up here, um, I want you to know that all this talk about sprinting, this is sprint talk. This is not high intensity interval training. That’s a whole nother category of athletic training. So sprinting is brief, explosive, powerful efforts near all out. This is not a workout. These are not workouts where your form and your performance degrades over the course of the workout. Like many HIIT workouts, who can forget those brutal spinning classes where we pretend we’re in the tour to France and we do 10 sprints of 30 seconds, and then we hear another song and then we finish with 10 more sprints.

Brad (01:20:25):
And the instructor’s like, come on, you got this. Get to the top of the hill, help your teammates, you know, all that stuff. And then you’re pretty cooked at the end. That’s high intensity interval training. As I said, many people overdo it there, but that’s a different category. So sprinting is powerful, explosive, very short duration, long rest periods, and you don’t wanna feel beat up and cooked at the end of these workouts. That means you did it, in an inappropriate manner. And boy, if there’s a void that you can slide into your fitness program right now, I would vote for true sprinting sessions where you’re working that top, top and by far the greatest return on investment of any type of training, especially if there’s a void there and you’re a really big a bicycle rider right now, or gym goer, and you put yourself through the paces every day because you really care about your exercise and your fitness, but you never once are huffing and puffing to near maximum.

Brad (01:21:25):
Okay, there’s the vote for sprinting. Put another couple finishing touches on here. I will also reference that my workouts always happen in the morning, always. So I do my morning routine and then I’m up and off to the track or off to the gym or whatever. That is a great time for habit forming and prioritization. Luckily I’ve created the, uh, lifestyle circumstances where I can block out most mornings when I, when I need to, right? Not always. But the key factor here is to have, uh, a rock solid schedule and prioritization skills so that you get it done when it’s time to get it done. So if you’re a lunchtime exerciser, you know that on Tuesdays and Thursdays you’re leaving the office and you’re busting over you time for that 12:45 class start or whatever it is. I don’t want the days to get away from you where you work out.

Brad (01:22:23):
Usually when you have a free spot in your schedule that’s not as effective, that’s gonna really be a slippery slope to poor compliance over time. So set up things where you can’t spin out of it. Maybe it’s that you finish work and before you get home you stop off at the gym and you do your workout. And I also talked about the importance of creating a winning environment at home with things in your visual area that are fun and appealing and remind you and are available to do brief or medium or longer duration workouts. I’ve talked so much about diet in other shows and, uh, in recent times I’ve been talking about my, it’s now been going on for two and a half years, my experiment to consume more calories, uh, more carbs, not engage in any more fasting or time restricted feeding.

Brad (01:23:10):
Certainly not in any of the restrictive dietary categories like ketogenic diet, but instead striving for this full cellular energy status at all times with my new mantra for the rest of my life. Being recover, perform, recover. So all the stuff I’ve written about and talked about for years is still highly valid and highly effective. So implementing a strategic type of dietary, uh, pattern like the keto diet or primal paleo or time restricted feeding or whatever it is to get away from the unfettered access to indulgent foods and energy toxicity of eating too much food and not burning enough calories off, those will all be effective. But in my category, I’m entirely focused on performing and recovering. So I want all my stress capacity directed toward workout rather than any type of restrictive diet that will activate stress mechanisms. And I’ve become really simple and streamlined these days with the emphasis on meat and fruit.

Brad (01:24:11):
Also in my sincere interest in performance, I realize that my experiment to just inhale food all the time. I’m toning that down a little bit now and then to where I might skip a meal here or there. Especially if we’re running around busy and I needed to drop a few pounds of body fat to be a better high jumper and better 400 meter runner. But, it really didn’t affect my health or longevity. So depending on the specificity of your goals, there’s always areas to tweak and experiment with. And of course, sleep. Everything starts with, uh, the emphasis and the prioritization of sleep. I’ve talked a lot about that, and especially my increased need for sleep and my pattern very reliably with very little variation is get to sleep around 10:20 to 10:40 PM lights out.

Brad (01:25:01):
And I wake up around 7:20 to 7:40. Oops, those of you good at math can realize that’s nine hours. That is my sweet spot. That is what I require to be at my best. And on top of that, on most days, I’m taking usually a pretty short 20 minute nap, almost always. So I’m very, I guess you would say regimented. I can’t help it. I really can’t stay up longer than that. I feel horrible if I’m, if I’m drifting beyond that for whatever reason. And I, I certainly can’t wake up earlier than that, or I feel horrible again. So pretty sensitive, pretty fragile. I know everybody has different opinions on this, and some people say that there’s, you know, big genetic influences here. But I think when you prioritize sleep and you have good wind down rituals at night and you don’t force yourself to get up with a blaring alarm, you’re gonna find your way to a good evening sleep chunk that will allow you to wake up feeling refreshed and energized for a busy, energetic day. And if you wake up not quite feeling refreshed and energized, we need to go back and take a look at your evening patterns to make sure that you’re not overstimulating yourself and interfering and, and skimping on sleep. So in conclusion, whatever your starting point right now,

Brad (01:26:18):
Oh, I think that most people I interact with are out there well-meaning, and they’re putting in the time they’re going to the gym and they’re climbing that stair climber or they’re pedaling the bike or they’re on the treadmill, they’re checking a box in the name of fitness. And I strongly urge you, congratulate you, but I strongly urge you to sprinkle in that high intensity stuff and de-emphasize your devotion to steady state cardiovascular exercise knowing that it’s just a tiny sliver of fitness. And there are vastly more benefits to be had when you engage in regular resistance exercise for your muscles such as that big five workout or anything near it, same with the cord session that I mentioned. And then get into the wonderful world of brief, explosive all out sprints. Absolute magic. When you can get that body and push it to near maximum effort for short duration, that’s when you get all the adaptive hormones, the anti-aging benefits, and you feel refreshed, energized, and energetic for the rest of the day, rather than a little cooked and hungry as might happen when you’re doing those extreme high intensity workouts, high intensity interval training sessions or prolonged endurance sessions.

Brad (01:27:35):
Thank you so much for listening, watching. I know that’s a lot of info to digest. Hopefully it’s helpful. And look forward to hearing your comments at podcast@bradventures.com. Email podcast@bradventures.com. Thank you so much for listening, watching.

Brad (01:27:51):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.radpodcast. 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.

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