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[Music]
welcome to the huberman lab guest Series
where I and an expert guest discuss
science and science-based tools for
everyday life
I'm Andrew huberman and I'm our
professor of neurobiology and
Ophthalmology at Stanford School of
Medicine today's episode is the third in
the sixth episode series on fitness
exercise and performance today's episode
is all about endurance and fat loss that
is the specific protocols required to
achieve the four different kinds of
endurance and how to maximize fat loss
Dr Andy Galpin great to be back
today we're going to talk about
endurance and I'm very interested in
this conversation because I like many
other people strive to get a certain
amount of cardiovascular work in each
week
maybe a long-ish jog maybe a swim ride
the bike Etc
but when I think about the word
endurance the idea that almost
immediately comes to mind is about doing
something for a long period of time
repeatedly but I have a feeling that
there are other ways to trigger this
adaptation that we call the endurance
adaptation so I'm excited to learn about
that I'm also excited to learn about the
fuel systems
in the body that allow for endurance and
other modes of repeated activity so in
order to kick things off I'd love for
you to frame the conversation by telling
us
what is endurance and are there indeed a
large variety of ways to induce what we
call this endurance adaptation sure the
way I want to start actually here is is
calling back to some of the things we
talked about our previous conversations
which are really people exercise for
three reasons number one you want to
feel better
number two you want to look a certain
way and then number three you want to be
able to do that for a long time right so
you need the way that we say it in
sports is look good feel good play good
right so I want some sort of
functionality to be able to perform a
certain way whatever that is for you you
want to be able to look a certain way
that whatever that matters for you and
then you want to be able to do that for
a long time so when it comes to
endurance we have a bunch of misnomers
here which is the same thing with the
strength training and resistance
exercise side where we wanted to dispel
this myth that
I lift weights only because I I want to
gain muscle or play a sport and I want
to do cardio because I want to leave
their loose fat or for long Health sake
and just like we smashed that myth from
the strength training side I want to
smash it from the endurance training
side there are so many other reasons
that you want to perform endurance
training
regardless of your goal right whether it
is longevity whether it is performance
or whether it is Aesthetics and so we're
gonna I want to cover all those reasons
uh exactly what to do Protocols of
course and why those things are working
that way in general though the quick
answer
is really endurance comes down to two
independent factors Factor number one is
fatigue management and then Factor
number two is fueling and that's all it
really comes down to so all the
different types of training are going to
reach a limitation which are either
again your ability to deal with some
sort of fatigue and that's generally a
fatigue signal the other one is
managing some sort of restriction of
energy input and a lot of the spoiler
here is a lot of the times people think
it's a fueling issue and really it's a
fatigue management issue or the opposite
and to have a complete Health Spectrum
regardless of whether you're a high
performance athlete like I typically
deal with or general public you need to
be able to do both manage fatigue as
well as understand fuel storage so
that's really what we're going to get
into today fantastic I can't wait before
we dive in I'm going to ask you what I
often ask people who are expert in their
respective fields which is is there any
non-obvious tool or mechanism or tool
end mechanism that can allow people to
access better endurance you know when I
think about training for endurance again
I think about trying to run longer and
longer each week yeah or Swim further
and further and so on but I do wonder
whether or not there are other forms of
training that can amplify the endurance
adaptation
that I or most people perhaps don't
think of as endurance sure the way I
want to answer this is if we look back
and think about how we've answered that
question with power and strength in
force production it is really about how
much can you produce
maximally once
what you're asking now is how can I
repeat that same quality of performance
if that's the case endurance really
comes down to your ability to maintain
proper mechanics
that's going like the biggest way we can
and increase your endurance
exponentially very quickly is mechanical
and this is starting with breathing and
so we need to be breathing properly we
need to have proper posture and
positions and then we need to be moving
well efficiency is going to Trump Force
always
for endurance
the other side of the equation is not
that you can have a little bit of leaks
in your mechanics and still squat well
or jump high and be fine because you
don't have to suffer those consequences
repeatedly right that's going to drain
you over time so the quickest way to
improve endurance is to improve
mechanics and the mechanical thing I
would go after first is your breathing
techniques your pattern your entire
approach as well as your posture and
then from there the third one would be
your movement technique is it possible
to describe the best way to breathe when
doing an endurance training or is it far
more complex than that and if it is far
more complex than that then certainly we
can get into it during today's episode
yeah it is both of those I will give you
a quick answer though a lot of the times
you can
kind of Hit the cheat code which is
nasal breathing there's plenty of times
when you don't want to nasal breathe you
don't need your nasal breathe but just
again is that like a one tool that is a
for a pretty General answer if you can
do that a lot of the times that will fix
breathing mechanics just by default and
we can maybe talk about why that is
later but that would be my sort of one
sentence bullet point answer immediately
of how to get in the right positions the
second one would be simply looking at
your posture right so whether you're on
a bike or you're doing a lift or you're
running if you're literally uh hunched
over and your ribs are touching your
femur or getting closer and closer like
tends to happen on a bike or an air
assault thing for somebody I've seen
recently this morning I was on the
assault bike um doing a Sprint and I
asked Andy Dr Galpin to critique my form
and anything else he wanted to critique
so that I could improve and he did
comment on my rather c-shaped posture
correct um encouraging me to be more
upright which I should probably do now
as well and he also cued me to the fact
that during a one minute Sprint there is
something that is quote unquote magic
that happens right about the 42nd Mark
and I use that as a
um as a milestone uh to look for and
indeed something does happen at the 42nd
it's into a one minute Sprint where all
of a sudden it it does seem to get much
easier for reasons I don't understand
maybe you can to tell it that but it
certainly had nothing to do with my
posture my posture needs Improvement
thank you well yeah so
um breathing mechanics and breathing
strategies uh people tend to be over
breathing early on and this is going to
lead to problems later so having a more
strategic breathing pattern and approach
is again a very quick solution I know
that we're going to dive very deep into
the mechanisms of Energy and Metabolism
and endurance today but as long as we're
having a discussion about these um
briefs or tidbits of how to improve
endurance are there any other ways to
improve endurance that that are of
relatively short time investment even if
they require a lot of um energy
sure the classic Paradigm you're going
to find here is steady state long
duration
posed up against what a lot of folks
will now call higher intensity interval
training specifically and there's a lot
of misconceptions here the quick answer
is you need to be doing both and there's
probably a bunch of stuff in between
that you should be practicing if you
honestly want to maximize those three
factories we talked about at the
beginning you need to be training across
this full spectrum just like I told you
to train across the full spectrum of
your lifting we want to be doing the
same thing here so are there independent
special factors that can happen with the
shorter time length higher intensity
stuff absolutely there's also magic that
happens on the other end of that
Spectrum so it's very important that
people don't just choose one side
because what tends to happen is people
either go with the oh I'm going to do 30
or 45 minutes of steady state stuff
that's it or I'm gonna do the opposite
which I'm going to leave that stuff on
the table not do it because I only want
to do high intensity intervals because I
can get it done in five minutes so
there's Magic on both sides of the
equation we want to get into all that
but just to answer your question
directly
there's a whole bunch of of things you
can do
um in under one minute that are
convenient to do and there's a wonderful
set of papers out of a couple
Laboratories in Canada that that
championed this idea that's called
exercise snacks so there's a bunch of
there's a series of studies that have
been done here that are really
interesting and they've looked at a
couple of things that are noteworthy one
of them is a 20-second bout of all out
work and this is actually done in
workers in an office and so what they
have them do is run upstairs and I
believe it was about 60 steps is what it
took them something along the order of
20 seconds exactly and they repeated
that about once every four hours
so really it's you go to work you get
you know put your coffee and your bag
down whatever you run up a flight of
stairs 20 seconds later then you go
right back to work at lunch and before
you go home you sort of repeat it there
and if you repeat that that's multiple
times a week you're going to do that I
think they in one of the interventions
it was three times a week
for six weeks 18 total times you did
that
and what you'll see is a noticeable
Improvement this is statistically
significant improvements in
cardiorespiratory Fitness specifically
VO2 max as well as a number of cognitive
benefits work productivity
Etc that can happen in as little as 20
seconds you don't have to go to the gym
you don't have to shower you don't have
to do anything like that just find the
stairs run up and down them a few times
now you may have noticed um you actually
sort of caught me yesterday I did that
right here right I was just I we had a
little bit of a break I was feeling an
energy lull I ran up the stairs three or
four times felt a lot better so that can
actually also help they ran another
study where they looked at that
following a giant high glycemic index
meal and what they saw and then they
took insulin measures and a whole bunch
of
um other biological markers Associated
that you want to pay attention to the
high glycemic index meal and they looked
at those immediately an hour three hours
six hours as opposed and it was very
clear that same intervention was able to
improve post-planned yell glucose
control insulin and a whole bunch of
other factors in addition to that so if
you are the sort of type who's like wow
I'm in an office all day maybe also had
a giant high glycemic index meal not the
best approach but a little bit of
mitigation there can just be running up
a flight of stairs or doing something
like that for as little as 20 seconds so
there's a lot of magic and power and
maximal exertion
if one does not have access to a flight
of stairs at work could they do jumping
jacks absolutely I mean you could do
anything you really wanted it's not the
mode of exercise that matters here it is
simply the exertion you just get up as
hard as you can you could do burpees you
could do any number of things you could
Sprint down your road down the hallway
back and forth the mode is is just uh
something that was easy for the
scientists to control and X number of
steps people could do it you're not
going to fall hurt yourself things like
that just to remind me it's once every
four hours one minute of all 20 seconds
oh 20 seconds excuse me uh 20 seconds of
essentially all out exertion yep while
remaining safe not going so fast up the
stairs or doing jumping jacks certainly
not down the stairs
up the stairs please
um escalators don't count well I suppose
they count if they're uh you know if
you're if you're moving uh if you're not
remaining on the same steps
um in fact in an airport recently I saw
somebody walking against the oh there
you go the conveyor yeah while talking
on the phone while waiting for their
flight to take off and I thought it's
genius right it looked a little awkward
who cares yeah but it was I have looked
awkward in every airport I've been in
for the last 15 years for those exact
reasons doing wild stuff like that yeah
well nothing's more Awkward than not
being able to walk to the end of the
terminal simply because one isn't
familiar with walking that far carrying
a couple of suitcases there you go yeah
that's the the other fit test the
suitcase carrier yeah I'm in the airport
I love this so once every four hours 20
seconds so maybe once when arriving to
work once four hours in and then four
hours most people probably work
somewhere you know eight plus or minus
two hours now one thing I actually
really want to make clear because your
audience is so incredible
um
they tend to be really excited about
these protocols and they follow them
exactly as written that's not exactly
how science works so it doesn't
necessarily have to be every four hours
it's in half three three times a day it
doesn't have to be 20 seconds they
literally built that protocol because it
was so they're trying to replicate a
real life scenario maybe you're in an
office building you're generally there
for eight hours Let's see if you did one
every sort of so if you want to do it
four times a week great if you can do it
only 10 seconds amazing you're probably
going to get the same benefits those are
not the details to pay attention to the
detail to pay attention to is every so
often multiple times a day
try to get your heart rate up really
quickly it doesn't require sweating
doesn't require anything else there's no
warm-up associated with it again you
need a minute break in between meetings
or whatever and you can Sprint up them I
do this all the time in my house when
you you know have those days when you're
on like seven straight hours of zooms
Etc you can get out of 20 seconds I run
to my garage which is over there I hop
on the the airbike and I will just smash
out 30 seconds as fast as I can and then
walk right back in
love it yeah
I'm gonna start yeah just also you can
just put one of those things which I do
also just put one in your office
and hop over right over there you know
the whole entire thing now literally
takes 23 seconds before we begin I'd
like to emphasize that this podcast is
separate from my teaching and research
roles at Stanford it is also separate
from Dr Andy galpin's teaching and
research roles at Cal State Fullerton it
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tell me about endurance what is
endurance how do I get more endurance
and how does it work
when we think about endurance I would
like to open up the conversation to
include more things than people
generally do when they hear the word
endurance so if we just think about what
you typically ask your body to do or
would like to ask your body to do and we
just walk through them
it's going to be things like this number
one I want to have energy throughout the
day that's actually a form of endurance
great I don't want to have these lulls
and fatigue and I want to feel fantastic
as I move throughout my activities of
daily living whatever those may be work
exercise
enjoyment paying attention focus all
that stuff great that's one thing
another thing you want to ask your body
to do is I want to be able to repeat
some small effort in a muscle group and
not and feel great about that this is
what we generally call muscular
endurance so this is something like I
want to be able to walk up those 10
flights of steps and my quads aren't
burning at the end of it right or it
even gives me energy another thing
you'll want to ask your body to do is to
be able to perform a tremendous amount
of work
for a longer period of time something in
the realm of you know 20 to 80 seconds
so this could be something like if
you're surfing and you've got to paddle
extremely hard for a minute to get on on
top of a wave or you want to you got
you're out riding your bike and you need
to be able to get up a hill and it's a
very Steep Hill these are going to take
maximal efforts for some small amount of
time and then you'll get back up there
we tend to call that maximum anaerobic
capacity so that the max amount of work
you can perform at a higher rate for
some amount of seconds to like maybe a
minute
past that is your ability to repeat an
effort kind of like that for something
like 5 to 15 minutes and this example
would be run a mile right some some
interval like that which is a longer
distance right that is going to be your
maximum aerobic capacity
okay
another thing you're going to want your
body to do is we call sustained position
so this is you want to be able to sit in
your chair at work and have perfect
posture for 20 30 40 minutes right you
want to be able to stand in line at a
grocery store for 15 minutes and not
have a breakdown in posture so you want
to be able to maintain position when
you're riding your bike you're not
collapsing you're doing any of these
activities and you don't get hurt
or lose efficiency simply because you
couldn't sustain basic positions all
right whatever those shapes and
positions need to be
okay and then the last one is a maximum
distance so you won't be able to go for
a longer hike or have just a long day at
Disneyland for whatever it needs to be
and feel great at the end of it right so
the goal with all of these things is not
can you just do them but can you do them
and then you feel good afterwards so
we're back in a right position where
they give you energy you feel good about
it and it's not just something you had
to do and you regretted and you felt
awful so those are the factors I think
about when someone says I want better
endurance is I want to walk backwards
and say okay when you say endurance what
do you mean and that's generally the
things I've come across as if you can
handle all of those things you're going
to feel like you're in fantastic shape
you're going to feel your recovery is
going to be excellent and your physical
performance in the gym or in any of the
sporting activities you do will be
enhanced given what you told us a little
bit earlier that endurance really
reflects fatigue and management and
energy production
how do each and both of those things
relate to endurance at a mechanistic
level so really what I'm asking is what
is fatigue management and what is energy
production in order to do that it's
important that we understand all of
those functional capacities that I just
talked about
they all have different points of
failure
okay so in order to then work backwards
and say well how do I optimize my
performance in all those categories we
need to go through each one and figure
out where am I failing some of them are
going to be failing because of fatigue
management and some of them will be
failing because of energy production
issues so if we walk through a little
bit of how we make energy and how we
handle fatigue then we're going to have
a better understanding of exactly what
to do for each one of these categories
if you feel like one of them in
particular is worse for you or lagging
behind or if in general you just want to
improve all of them all right now I want
to make a little bit of a 90 degree turn
here
I'm going to do it with strategy though
I promise and I want to ask you a very
simple question
how do you lose weight
I was taught that the calories in
calories out
thermodynamics of energy utilization
governs most everything that is if I'm
ingesting
less caloric energy than I burn
then I'm going to lose weight and if I'm
ingesting exactly as much as I burn I'll
maintain weight and if I ingest more
then I burn
then I'll gain weight sure that is the
approach you would take
what I'm asking really is how are you
actually physically losing the weight
so my understanding is that we have
different fuel sources in the body
glycogen
which is stored in muscle and liver body
fat which is sort of mainly white
adipose tissue and which is subcutaneous
and around our organs intra visceral fat
and that we can also use protein as a
fuel and then as I recall there's also a
phosphocreatine system and I think
you're going to tell me that each of
these systems is tapped into on
different time scales and perhaps
according to different levels of
exertion and I'm certain that what I
just said is not exhaustive but
hopefully it is most or entirely correct
pretty correct what's that got to do
with fat loss
at some point body fat stores adipose
adipocytes fat cells are going to start
liberating fat as a fuel source
and the stimulus for that I'm assuming
is going to be that other fuel sources
are either depleted or that the energy
and metabolic systems of the body
I don't want to say decide because they
don't have their own Consciousness but
are um our flip signals are signaling in
a way that registers that body fat would
be the optimal fuel source given how
long
or into and or intensely a given
activity has been performed okay we have
some stuff to clean up there but we're
still not really answering the question
how am I actually losing that body fat
uh how is it actually leaving the body
correct uh my understanding is that it
leaves the body through respiration aha
so now we have some interesting things
to talk about
how am I actually losing fat via
respiration what the hell does that even
mean how is something that occupied this
physical space on the side of me leaving
my body through my mouth
and that is a very clear answer there
right which I'm sure you're queued up to
when you take a breath in you're
generally breathing in oxygen O2 that's
some other things but we'll just stick
to oxygen when you exhale you're
breathing out CO2 the difference between
those two is that carbon molecule well
one of the things that's important to
understand here is all of your
carbohydrates which is that word itself
is a carbon that has been hydrated so it
is a carbon molecule attached to a water
molecule it is a simple chain of carbons
your fat molecules are also chains of
carbon all of metabolism really in terms
of energy production is simply trying to
figure out a way to break those carbon
bonds as a result we get energy from
that we use that energy to create a
molecule called ATP which is the central
source of energy for any living being
right that carbon is then floating
around in free form which is bad news
internally so we've got to figure out a
way to get that carbon out of our system
so all of energy production all of
fatigue management really comes down to
this core issue of how are we handling
carbon and how are we moving it around
the body and so what we do is we do this
sneaky thing so another question I'd
like to ask people is why do we breathe
well
for two reasons uh to bring oxygen into
the system and to offload carbon dioxide
but the neural trigger for breathing is
when carbon dioxide hits a threshold
level and the set of neurons in the
brain stem and elsewhere uh activate the
phrenic nerve or the gas reflex or a
combination of things and we inhale or
inhale right so a reduction of oxygen
intake generally doesn't stimulate
ventilation unless you're at altitude
then that sort of changes right in
general it's an elevation in CO2 that's
going to stimulate breathing off the
only reason you bring in O2 for the most
part is to get rid of the CO2 oxygen is
not a fuel source
it is not a way and it works the same
with fire by the way so you know you
have to have oxygen present for a fire
to go and if you use quelch oxygen the
fire will go out right that's about half
of
um how those like fire extinguishers
work but we think then that means oxygen
is the fuel it is not the fuel it is
something entirely different it is a
necessary Pro it is a product that is
necessary for the metabolism process to
actually occur all right so we're kind
of dancing around an idea here which is
this carbon cycle of life
so what happens in plants is they
generally will breathe in the opposite
and breathe out the opposite of humans
so a plant will breathe in CO2 and
exhale O2 all right this is why we have
to have a certain amount of these things
and algae and forests and trees and
stuff to maintain this O2 CO2 balance in
our atmosphere we do the opposite so we
have this wonderful circle of life we
breathe in O2 breathe out CO2 they do
the opposite well what happens is
because carbohydrates are long chains of
carbon and fats are as well generally
when we think about fats by the way it's
important to understand that structure a
little bit so if we think about
triglycerides it is a three carbon
backbone chain of glycerol so one two
three and horizontally running off of
each one of those are fatty acid chains
right so we form this structure that
looks like an e right like the letter e
three in the back and then three chains
coming off of it each of those chains
are called fatty acids and each of those
fatty acids are a length of carbon right
or a number of carbons strung together
however many carbons are there
determines which type of fatty acid it
is right so stearic acid linoleic acid
like any different number of things it's
also what determines whether or not it
is a monounsaturated or polyunsaturated
as if carbon requires a special thing
called a double bond so if there's a
double bond across every carbon and
carbon then they're all fully saturated
and you're great if there's any of them
that are not double bonded and in fact
an example if there is one that doesn't
have a double bond that is now called
Mono and saturated if there are many it
is called polyunsaturated
so there's pros and cons to all these
things right in either case we're still
talking long carbon chains so what a
plant will do
is bring in carbon and then it has this
wonderful ability to use energy from the
sun called photosynthesis and it can
take those carbons that it inhales and
use the energy from the Sun to form a
bond now in our prior discussion when
we're going over hypertrophy we talked
about the energy that was required to go
through protein synthesis that's because
forming a new atom or a new bond between
atoms oftentimes takes energy in this
cases it does the same thing happens
here so if a plant does not have oxygen
or does not have carbon dioxide in the
air it has no fuel the basically think
about it is that's what it eats it needs
to get nitrogen from the ground in the
soil just like we need to get nitrogen
from our protein but fuel wise it needs
to get carbon dioxide then it needs sun
to give it energy so it can actually
form that Bond right that's what it's
getting its fuel from
all right so if we think about
um a classic
uh plant produce the plant that produces
either a starch or a fruit here's what
happens
it inhales that carbon and it starts
packing it away now in a root vegetable
what it does is it stores those things
together and if we store that thing and
we grow fruit at the bottom of it we
tend to call those things starches
all right it's going to then take the
carbon that is packed away in its root
and send it up the tree and it's going
to actually do that by breaking it down
into a smaller form of carbohydrate that
we tend to often call things like
sucrose and glucose it'll ship that up
the tree it'll go out to the leaves and
it'll convert it into the fruit and it's
going to eventually transform that stuff
into smaller carbon things called
fructose and if we think about the fruit
are the sugar in fruit it's often in the
form of fructose or sucrose or a
combination and sometimes glucose so we
have these smaller carbon six carbon
chains generally in the form of glucose
that are being made from this larger
storage of uh carbohydrates that we call
um starch right so it's packed in
together
your body does the exact same thing so
if it's a potato
and it has a whole bunch
of glucose packed away we call that
starch if it's in your quadricep and we
pack about a whole bunch of glucose Away
We Now call it glycogen if it's in your
blood as that six carbon chain we call
it glucose if it's in the tree and in
the fruit we call it fructose right
those are different molecules but that's
effectively the same thing happens so
the biology or the chemistry is almost
identical it just runs in the reverse
order and that's why again at tubers and
potatoes and stuff tend to be starches
and fruits tend to be glucose fructose
of sucrose so we have this
a wonderful Circle of Life the plants
can survive on just breathing in the CO2
and then getting the energy from the Sun
we don't have that ability at least to
my knowledge to run through
photosynthesis so the only way we can
get carbon into our system is to
actually ingest carbon which means we
have to eat the starch the fruit
the animal some other form of stored
carbon to get that into our system
we then pack that away we put the
carbohydrates as you mentioned earlier
either on our liver
our blood or in our muscles we put the
fat generally in adipose tissue we'll
put a little bit in muscle cells as
intramuscular triglycerides and then the
protein will use as structure right to
do different things we don't like to use
protein as material or fuel it's better
used as structure and what we have to do
then is if all of a sudden we realize
that storage is getting too much in our
body in other words we're gaining too
much weight we have to figure out how to
get the carbons out of our body
and that is metabolism right anytime
we're trying to break a carbon bonds
though we can get energy to make ATP
that's going to release the carbon out
of our tissue into the blood we have to
bring in oxygen to bind that carbon
molecule to make CO2 so we can exhale it
and put it back into the atmosphere it's
a beautiful description of the circle of
life and
energy utilization in the human body
I have to ask the question that I'm sure
many people are wondering about which is
if indeed we exhale these carbons and
as it relates to Fat Loss that is the
way that we lose fat if we're in a sub
caloric state for instance
has it ever been explored as to whether
increasing the duration or intensity of
exhales can accelerate fat loss I mean
that's sort of The Logical extension of
what you described and here I'm actually
interested equally in whether or not the
answer is yes as well as whether it
could be no because I could imagine if
the answer is yes well then there's some
interesting protocols to emerge from
that but that if it's no it will reveal
to us some important bottlenecks about
metabolism and energy utilization you
ever seen those magicians who like show
up and uh they can tell your mom's name
or something like that before you
because they can sort of hold you down a
path yeah I mean not to take us down a
deep dive tangent but I once went to the
Magic Castle in Los Angeles and I was
one of the people called up front and a
in an incredible magician a named um I
think his name was Ozzy mind or
something uh I think that's right had me
write my name on a card
in a Sharpie pen I ripped up the card I
ripped it up I put it in my pocket
and at the end of the 10 or 15 minute
bout of him doing a bunch of other
tricks
he asked me to look in my right shoe and
under my foot in my right shoe was that
card intact yeah and it was no longer in
my pocket and I swear in my life I
wasn't a a collaborator with him and to
this day it still gives me chills
because it well I I don't know how magic
yeah right magic well the reason I say
that is I've given that little Spiel and
I just gave you the countless times on
my glasses and I would say 99 of the
time as soon as I stop the very first
question is
so can I just like
do a bunch of exhales and lose fat which
is wonderful because I was really hoping
you would do that and you rolled right
into my trap right you landed perfectly
so I look like a like a a magician over
here I feel like I should look in my
right shoe right now no I asked the
question because it's the logical
extension of what you laid out but
I know biology to be um both uh
diabolical and cryptic but also
Exquisite in the way that things are
arranged and you don't get something for
nothing there are no free passes in
physiology that's the saying no free
passes the answer to your question is
yes
100 yes in fact that is the only way to
go about it you have two options you can
ingest less carbon or you can expel more
carbon people always say calories in
calories out it's really carbon in
carbonate
that's what a calorie is Right calories
the amount of energy we get per breaking
a carbon Bond so it's really Less in
less more out less in is fairly obvious
whether that comes in any form and by
the way
this is exactly why the percentage of
your intake coming from fats or
carbohydrate it doesn't really matter
that much if you look at fat loss
clinical trials you guys may have
covered this when Lane was in here I'm
sure like this is something he talks
about a lot it doesn't matter it's
irrelevant because it's not about that
there's nothing magic in those things
they are different they have different
physiological responses everything is
different right no duh but in general
it's just simply about carbon intake
turns out fat has a lot more carbons per
mole than carbohydrates do so there's
more calories per mole in there so if
you the physical amount of fat needs to
come in as a smaller amount physical
amount of carbohydrates these are coming
it will come in as a larger amount but
you can play
any number of very high carb low fat
what matters total calories right again
it's not like the only thing that
matters but you know what I'm saying
some percentages in the way can go fat
loss Works fantastic high fat low
carbohydrate why why do all these things
work because that's not about that it's
about total intake of carbon total Expo
so absolutely can you lose fat by simply
exhaling more in fact that is exactly
what you did this morning
when I hopped on the airline bike when
you did anything
right the question is can you think of a
scenario in which you could have a bunch
of increased rates of exhalation
that helps in Fat Loss sure I can think
of a lot of things that will stimulate
increased rates of exhalation one thing
could be simply going
right and so the question is like can I
literally do some breath protocols where
I force exhale and lose fat and the
answer is yes
but what happens what happens if you do
hyperventilation training well my lab
studies cyclic hyperventilation is one
of our many uh deliberate protocols and
one of the most prominent things that
one observes is that levels of
adrenaline increase very quickly
extremely quick people feel jittery
anxious stressed and unless they are
consciously trying to Anchor their
thinking about what that means and the
benefits that to persisting typically
they abort the cyclic hyperventilation
protocol really quickly within seconds
right you will feel tingling sweating
all kinds of things you're
hyperventilating right and we could we
could talk a nauseam about how that
changes everything from adrenaline to
focus to a whole bunch of things so
unfortunately a strategy of sitting
around just exhaling more than you
inhale
technically helps you lose more fat but
it's not going to last very long so then
the question is well how do I get no
situation or scenario in which I can
increase my rate of expiration
where I'm not going to pass out I'm not
going and altering hypocapny and
hypercapnia issues
any idea of a situation in which you
would have an enhanced rate of
explanation without worrying about
passing out
sure a steady state exercise or not
steady state exercise lifting weights
intervals moderate training repeated any
of these things they all work equally
for fat loss because all they're doing
is increasing respiration rate they're
saying increased demand for energy
increased exhalation
that's the trick here and when you
equate these things to that they have
equal success in fat loss
it doesn't matter theoretically
where you're getting it from and so when
we get into this idea of well what are
the best training strategies for fat
loss
it doesn't matter which one of these
tactics you pick
as long as you maintain a consistent
adherence over time
because of this exact fact it doesn't
matter if you're burning quote unquote
fat in the exercise session or if you're
burning carbohydrates in the exercise
session it is totally irrelevant to your
net fat loss over time okay now there's
some significant misconceptions there
about what I just talked and I would
love to come back and walk through that
in more detail but that's the main
take-home message here
it won't matter what's coming in and it
won't matter what's coming out because
in either case it is the same rate of
oxygen in and CO2 out that's the key
metric and hopefully this helps a lot of
people have some relief because they're
like man you're so tied up on what is
the exact protocol for training for
optimizing fat loss what's the exact
nutritional intervention I need for fat
loss and then you wonder why all these
different diets can work effectively and
wonder why all these different training
protocols you know surely you know
somebody who lost a bunch of weight and
the only thing they did is they just
started running
there was no Advanced protocol they just
started running and they ran five miles
every day that works and then tons of
people who tried that and like didn't
lose anything and lots of people who
went to I went to cardio kickboxing
class lost weight oh I just started
doing intervals on my law why why
mysteriously you'll do all these things
work
they had you have something had some
spidey sense have to has to be going off
in your brain where like there has to be
something linking these things
and what's linking it is simply carbon
Exchange
so put yourself in a position in which
you are exhaling more than you and
inhaling without passing out
the other problem is if you were to
Simply do a breathing protocol
while the rate of exhalation would go up
after that you would correct and go in
the opposite direction so that's the
problem is your net carbon the output
over the course today is not going to
change unless you increase the demand
for energy and that's how you get into
that negative state
along these lines of exhaling carbons as
the route for fat loss
it makes me wonder whether or not
increasing lung capacity is possible I'm
guessing the answer is yes and whether
or not
increasing lung capacity is a good goal
and route to enhancing fat loss
essentially what I'm asking is if you
can offload more CO2 okay carbons per
exhale
are you a more efficient fat loss
machine it's a wonderful thought and the
answer would be no
not something you worry about because
if you were to Exhale more
carbon than actually needed
now we're in a state of inefficiency
you're burning way more energy than
needed to do your activity the heart has
a metric called cardiac output this is
in Sciences we abbreviate this as Q
for some odd reasons it's either seal or
q and cardiac output
is heart rate multiplied by stroke
volume so it's how many beats per minute
you're having as well as how much
blood's coming out of it so cardiac
output is actually
very specific to energy needs if you try
to work around that it's just going to
adjust itself so what I mean by this is
if you were able to increase your stroke
volumes the amount of blood coming out
per pump you would automatically adjust
reduce your heart rate so that you keep
cardiac output
exact to energetic demands so you're
sort of pushing one end of this of the
spectrum but your body will pull the
other one back to keep you at that exact
same neutral level so if you look at if
you think about like cardiovascular
adaptations to endurance training and
any type of endurance training a common
thing people will understand is resting
heart rate and so what that number is is
just how many beats per minute you're
having when you're sitting here doing
nothing a very positive adaptation is a
lowering of that resting rate over time
as general numbers what you will hear is
people will say things like a normal
resting heart rate is between 60 to 80
beats per minute and you know if any of
the things I've talked about
um with the individuals I work with I
don't work with anybody with disease
just to clarify that I don't do anything
with disease management treatment
anything it's always about people who
are in a good spot
who want to optimize or get to the next
level whether this is professional
athletes trying to to Peak for physical
performance or uh the folks in our rapid
Health optimization program that feel
good again it's not disease stuff and
they want to feel incredible
one of the metrics we're going to pay
attention to is this resting heart rate
so here's what happens as you improve
your endurance
your resting heart rate will go down if
I see somebody over 70 beats per minute
um unless something's going on you're
not physically fed
regardless of whether or not that is
quote unquote within the normative
values I want to see everybody's sub 60
beats per minute or close right and that
does not a difficult thing to really get
to for most people so if you train a lot
regardless of how you train intervals
steady state
doesn't matter that resting heart rate
will come down but since energy demands
at rest haven't really changed cardiac
Alpha stays the same so what happens is
stroke volume goes up so literally like
we trained your quadriceps on the Legacy
engine machine to get stronger so you
can produce more Force per contraction
the heart will do the exact same thing
and so as you're able to get more of the
blood out of your heart per pump
the heart realizes I don't need to pump
as often
so that's the compensatory adaptation
which is saying hey look I don't need to
beat 60 times a minute I now need to
beat 55 times a minute because I'm
getting the same amount of Blood Out per
pump chill and this is why your resting
heart rate goes down your resting stroke
volume goes up but your cardiac output
is identical so that's not a good metric
of Fitness it's going to stay the same
cardiac output will only adjust for
energetic changes all right energy
requirements in the acute moment right
how much do I need go which is going to
be determined by ventilation right how
much air am I bringing in and putting
out that's going to determine cardiac
output and that's going to determine
where we're at if you were to do like a
sub maximal exercise test
when you were unfit to when you're fit
or when you're fit the way you're super
fit at sub Max you're going to see the
same thing
cardiac output will be identical and
you're like damn nothing happened what
you're not realizing is your heart rate
at that same workload is now lower
and that's efficiency because your
stroke volume is higher where it gets
people tripped up is at Max
because you may not see much of a change
at Max because you won't really you
don't really see an increase in maximum
heart rate with Fitness that's not a
thing right so maximum heart rate is not
a good proxy for fit or unfit or
anything like that stroke volume will
get limited eventually by filling
capacity of your heart it has to have so
much time to fill up with blood before
it can contract again and squeeze the
blood out and when you have a heart rate
of 200 beats per minute that just
doesn't leave much time to fill and so
it won't really push you past that so
don't worry about trying to increase
your maximum heart rate that's not
necessarily a good thing and it won't
really change but your cardiac health
will because stroke volume will be
higher but that doesn't necessarily mean
that I should avoid training that gets
me up toward maximal heart rate correct
oh you should absolutely do it right
that's what that was my assumption I'd
like to take a brief break and
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special offer getting back to energy
production and metabolism
so we've got these different modes of
moving energy but making and breaking
energy Bonds in the body moving energy
into different tissues and out of
different tissues and indeed out of the
body through exhalation
how do each of these different modes of
energy utilization
relate to different modes of movement
and exercise yeah in my mind I'm
starting to draw a bridge between
okay when I walk for 60 minutes
you know if I'm talking I'm breathing a
bit more maybe I'm burning a little more
fat after all speech is a modified
exhale
um and amazing if I'm sprinting
um breathing differently and if I'm um
you know doing a 30 minute moderate
quote unquote moderate jog breathing
differently so you've beautifully
Illustrated this bridge between energy
production and utilization and carbon
dioxide offload through exhalation
what are some of the specifics about
energy utilization
according to different modes of exercise
and if we could better Define modes of
exercise or types of exercise that
trigger specific adaptations I think
this is where the the bridge will move
from being a a mere line to a real
structure yeah absolutely I want to lay
one more foundational piece and then
it's going to be much easier to
understand
the limitations I put on some of these
training protocols as well as the lack
of limitations okay so it's really
really important the way I want to start
this is
we have this this Foundation now of of
carbon and and basic energy production
that's not to say there's no difference
there is and that difference is
important but maybe we can answer the
question from earlier which is
actually something you asked me this
morning when we were exercising
you're like training fasted
right does training fasted
enhance fat loss
and the logic is sound if I don't have
any fuel then I should be burning more
fat therefore I should be losing more
fat it's sound it's not true
is this great idea it's one of these
classic things in science and exercise
physiology where like sounds good
turns out it's not it's actually a
pretty gross misunderstanding of
metabolism
so it's not to pick on that topic I
don't really care about that topic but
it is a it's a common question it also
gives me an opportunity to just tell you
more about metabolism so
here's what happens
you're breathing in O2 and breathing out
CO2 however the ratio to that is what we
call the either rer respiratory exchange
ratio or RQ respiratory quotient and I'm
not going to differentiate those two
they're not the same thing but we're
going to skip past that for now as you
begin to increase exercise intensity
the percentage of o2 to CO2 rises in the
favor of CO2 so you start breathing out
way more CO2 than you are breathing in
O2 right and so if we were to look at
that number you know once the
relationship Echoes up so at rest most
people have a of a value that we would
typically call something like 0.6
okay and that's again the relationship
between O2 and CO2
maybe 0.7 if you were to go for a walk
that increases slightly because you're
now expiring CO2 at a higher rate so now
you've moved up to say 0.8 or something
like that one of the ways that we Mark
somebody of achieving an actual VO2 max
on a test is if that value exceeds 1.1
now any of you who are paying attention
are thinking wait a minute how the hell
can a ratio between two things ever get
past one
well that's because you're getting in a
place where you're actually offloading
more CO2 than is actually necessary and
this is what actually causes and
explains a thing that people like to
call Epoch which is excess exercise post
oxygen consumption this is another way
to think about it
the only reason you're breathing is to
bring in oxygen when offloads CO2
right
if I'm no longer exercising why am I
still breathing
in other words once you stop the demand
or the need for for energy you should
stop ventilating
but you don't
right that's because in the case of low
intensity exercise the second you stop
you're right back down to resting
ventilation no problem because you were
able to match the need for energy with
the offload of waste one to one during
that exercise when you start creeping up
the intensity you can't do that so you
have to basically start stealing a
little bit of fuel here so even though
you're done exercising you're still
ventilating because you have to pay that
back and pay that back by that I
specifically mean you have to bring in
oxygen because you have a whole bunch of
waste that's been accumulating in your
tissue that you've got to deal with and
I'll walk you through what that waste is
it's a particular molecule that a lot of
people have heard of but grossly
misunderstand
so you got to be able to handle that so
the reason that you sit there and go
and continue to ventilate is because
you're now trying to pay back that
excess post exercise oxygen debt that's
that oxygen debt we're specifically
talking about all right so
that being said as we start cruising up
that RQ starts going up up up up up up
up and if we get to one your 1.0 you're
you're in a like you're hurting you're
in a pretty good spot all right I like
that you're hurting you're in a pretty
good spot yeah a window into Dr Annie
galpin's mind now you really want to be
a subject in his uh his laboratory study
sure
masochists swarm to Andy's lab
absolutely all right
so
the idea that I will lose more fat
by being in an exercise situation that
is burning more fat it seems to make
sense but it's a massive failure to
understand the metabolism it's the exact
same explanation to like exercising
fasted doesn't matter so the exercising
fasted issue under normal circumstances
is irrelevant because you have plenty of
fuel in the system even when you haven't
eaten breakfast that morning now if
you're talking like extended fasting
over multiple days this is a different
scenario if muscle glycogen liver
glycogen and blood glucose are at
sufficient levels then you absolutely
have enough energy to perform almost any
type of exercise that most people are
doing
you know maybe if you're Rob and you're
at Mile 20 today it's a different story
but the vast majority of us have plenty
of fuel sitting around so we're not
going to burn more into fat
um just because we didn't eat breakfast
that morning so that just doesn't make
energetic sense we have a lot of backup
supplies you're never out the trick here
is this is there's a there's a concept
here we call crossover concept so as we
are starting to move up exercise
intensity
we start burning a higher percentage of
our fuel from carbohydrates and a lower
percentage of our fuel coming from fat
I'm sleeping
that's the highest percentage of your
fuel that will be coming from fat of any
activity you could ever do so if the
theory that I'm going to stay at a lower
intensity to burn more fat was true the
optimal fat burning strategy would then
be to sleep
like that doesn't make sense of course
it doesn't so why would then going at a
slightly elevated rate somehow all of a
sudden magically make you lose fat
it doesn't actually make sense when you
think about that where you're like oh
yeah there's no way
so
it's a percentage trick it's a
difference between absolute and relative
this is what this confusion is so yes as
you start doing lower intensity exercise
whether you're faster than audit it's
irrelevant but lower intensity exercise
a greater percentage of your fuel
is coming from fat however your total
fuel expenditure is very low
so that whole total carbon balance is
not really being shifted much
as you start exercising at a very high
intensity you actually start getting a
higher percentage of your fuel from
carbohydrate and a lower percentage from
fat in fact at rest about the highest
you can get in most people is about 60
of your fuel from fat
as you're sleeping you might be 70 but
you'll never be in a position ever no
matter what sort of thing you've heard
on the internet you'll never be in a
situation where fat is your only fuel
source
the highest I've probably ever seen is
like 70 percent
um you should probably beat about that
that's a kind of a good number to think
um honestly but people will understand a
little bit about metabolism to be
dangerous but not enough we'll we'll
throw out these terms like fat adapted
and fat adapted is a real thing but is a
massive misunderstanding oftentimes
right it is this idea thinking like I
can get into a spot where I'm maximizing
fat burning maximizing fat burning
and maximizing fat for exercise and
maximizing fat loss over time are not
the same thing at all right that's the
confusion so if you enhance fat
oxidation and exercise that does not
enhance fat loss
per se
right so this is a lot of the confusion
that's happening
right so as we start moving up we can
never get in a position where we're
using fat only as a fuel again at best
you're at 70 fat 30 carbohydrate for a
lot of reasons we probably just don't
have time to get into today
however the opposite is possible when
you get into true high intensity
exercise you'll be basically 100
carbohydrate and zero percent fat all
right that is very possible that in fact
is 1.0 that's what our Q 1.1 is actually
because your ventilation got so high you
actually exceeded that number even
though you're at 100 carbohydrate this
is what people came up with the idea
then it's like whoa I don't want to burn
carbs I want to lose fat
so my response to that is always like
okay great
so it makes sense burning fat losing fat
burning carbs is losing what then
like you think your liver shrunk like
wait a minute what did you lose then
where'd it come from it's all coming as
carbon don't worry about where it came
from for your fuel
it just has to come out as carbon
right there are differences in exercise
efficiency for performance with our
professional athletes of course but if
the only goal here is phallus it doesn't
matter where you get it from
the last Bridge we have to connect here
is like well wait a minute if I only
burned carbohydrate
how did I actually lose that fat there
was there was that love handle sitting
on the side of me how did that come out
of me if I never burned that from my
fuel what you're failing to understand
is there's a balanced game that happens
here so if you were to do a bunch of
high intensity exercise training
and you burned only muscle glycogen and
blood glucose and maybe even you did it
for so long you burned some liver
glycogen
the body understands that it has
expelled a lot of energy
from that side of the equation it's
going to do a couple of things now it's
very difficult
to go through this fancy situation where
you convert carbohydrates into fat and
back and forth like that's actually like
fairly hard what's easier to do with
something you said earlier is actually
just bias energetics to a different fuel
source so in that scenario where you're
down really low in your carbohydrate
carbohydrate stores
any carbohydrates you bring in are going
to go to storage
and since your net energy expenditure is
something that your body regulates a lot
any fat that you then bring in is going
to be utilized as a fuel source because
it knows it doesn't need it anymore that
is in excess so that's how you actually
use fat
as a fuel because you've burned down
carbohydrate storages
as I'm hearing this uh a couple of
things come to mind first of all
thank you for that incredibly important
description of what is otherwise a very
confusing landscape for most people one
of the key points I took away and
I just want to say from the outset this
is not exhaustive by any stretch is that
burning fat does not equal losing fat
from the body correct and then burning
fat has to be divided into burning of
body fat stores
and we need to distinguish that from
burning of dietary fat that is brought
in correct oftentimes people don't
disambiguate those correct
and I'm also understanding that
reducing one's body carbohydrate stores
muscle glycogen liver glycogen Etc
occurs during high intensity exercise
yep as well as other ways but that is
one very efficient way to tap into those
stores which makes me wonder
again this is one of these things that
does it lead to a protocol
makes me wonder whether or not doing
high intensity let's say weight training
for 45 to 60 Minutes 75 minutes of
strength training power training
hypertrophy training which we've covered
in an episode about those topics
and then doing some steady state
cardiovascular exercise is there any
benefit to that arrangement
that would quote unquote enhance
body fat loss from the body to be very
specific now
because unlike the idea that training
fasted would shift the bias towards fat
loss which it doesn't you've told us
under those conditions muscle glycogen
and maybe even liver glycogen is going
to be depleted
put simply can I enhance body fat loss
by doing some cardio after a bout of
weight training if you equate for total
energy expenditure it won't matter
now that you did bring up a very
important point that I want to clarify
if you look at the exercise modalities
that we laid out in our previous uh
conversations we talked about nine
different adaptations one was skill and
then speed power strength hypertrophy
muscular endurance anaerobic capacity
aerobic capacity and long duration
endurance
speed
power and skill development
have almost no benefit for fat loss
because remember those are low weight
a lot of rest and low volume
they're not really really going to be
helpful you can make a little bit of a
case for strength
a little bit but the total energy
expenditure for strength training even
if it's an hour if it's truly strength
training it's fairly low because the
repetitions are in the one to three
range that's exactly it's not enough for
total work so if you're trying to
develop a protocol that sort of
optimizes fat loss what you want to do
you were close in my opinion is do a
combination of something in the
hypertrophy slash muscular endurance
strength training realm okay so
um six to Thirty repetitions something
like that resistance training great
deplete muscle glycogen maybe even a bit
of liver glycogen maybe a little bit
depending on if you're doing it for a
long time but probably not a noticeable
amount okay so an hour of of uh
hypertrophy type training if you're
training hard with low responsibils and
you really did an hour you would for
sure get there but most people don't
because the reason why I crave large
bowls of oatmeal and rice after I do
weight training yeah and replenish
muscle glycogen totally right
um then you maybe do a little bit of
very high intensity maximum heart rate
well overview to Max uh hard as you can
for 20 30 45 60 seconds something like
that with some recovery
a lot of recovery and repeated and
that's going to do a great job of
replenishing muscle glycogen right if
you do that long enough you'll get the
liver but again most people don't
because it's really really hard to go
that hard so liver is sort of last Last
Resort yeah basic mechanics here which
will which we'll actually get into as
our like third segment here
is
energy production comes from the local
exercising muscle first and foremost
from phosphocreatine and carbohydrate
stores right and so again and we store
it in a muscle we call it glycogen right
that's it's your first sign of light on
defense if you need
glucose outside of that you're going to
start pulling it from the blood but one
of the things your body regulates a
handful of things over almost everything
blood pH blood glucose blood pressure
and electrolyte concentrations like it
really does not want to mess with those
things at all it will change almost
anything else in the body to keep those
things standardized right you generally
because you need all those things for
your brain to work and your brain will
stop working right if you lose blood
pressure it won't go up there pH changes
you can't run metabolism electrolytes
change you can't think and glucose is a
primary fuel source for the brain it's
going to be a problem right so if that
number starts to come down because
you're grabbing glucose out of the blood
your liver is going to then kick in it's
going to break down its glycogen to put
glucose in the blood to keep the blood
number the level in fact one of the
things you'll see is blood glucose
concentrations rise during exercise they
don't fall in fact they rise as an
anticipatory state if you train a lot
your blood glucose will start going up
before you start moving it knows it's
coming right so you you can play that
game you can rob Peter to pay Paul for a
long time and tell your liver runs out
and that's what actually is a bonk in
terms of like long duration endurance
stuff you're talking many many miles
several hours typically we say oh it's
got to be over two hours
before your liver starts to become a
real problem or it has to be
tremendously intense because of those
reasons you have to burn through just a
lot of energy before your liver starts
to get into a problem you can continue
to train when your muscle glycogen
levels are low
in fact people say glycogen depletion
and muscle but it's it's generally
misnomer and you are going to have
tremendous signals of fatigue when that
number gets lower than 75 percent
so people think that like their muscles
are getting heavy you're probably still
75 full a lot of folks will quit around
the 50 the highest I've ever seen is
like 95 true depletion and that's an
extremely high level cross-country
skiers and like they're deltoid it's
very very low some very talented Runners
will get fairly low in their quads but
the vast majority of folks by the time
you're 50 depleted you're gonna quit
it's going to be really really
challenging so you're never really going
to get that low it's like a bit of a
protective mechanism right but when your
liver gets low
you're going to be shut down and that's
the case of if you've ever been to like
a marathon and you've seen people run
like 25 and a half miles and then they
just like Bonk they go into like baby
deers walking stands and then they
collapse and you're like how are you
mentally weak like you ran 26 miles and
you can't run the last point it ain't
mentally weak it is if your liver is
done it's gonna stop you because there's
no more backup reserves muscle you can
get away with you can push through it
liver will not let you go any farther I
find this fascinating because it makes
me wonder whether or not the liver being
depleted sends a neural signal to the
brain or the brain must register some
signal like I would like to be alive
tomorrow thank you whatever is happening
right now
um stopping is going to be safer than
continuing yeah and so that stop signal
um is is one that I think a lot of
people including myself are are
intrigued by because we always think
that it's uh related to willpower but
the brain needs to preserve itself and
as the master computer I mean there are
ways to go into kind of automaton type
um you know not thinking just doing type
uh Behavior you have override switches
right and you can play those cards and
you can get better at learning and be
being less sensitive to that switch
that's exactly what happened when you
first start training right you start to
realize like oh my gosh I'm super tired
then you realize really quickly like oh
I'm totally fine here and this is like
the
pick pick your person who's made sayings
like this but it's like you're really
only 10 percent depleted or 30 or 40 or
something we're all operating 40 of what
we could do of course any of those
things are true because it is like a
little bit of an override um you've just
gotten very sensitive to being a small
percentage depleted and you've learned
okay I'm tired and there is a long way
to go past that but once you get past
that and you flip that override switch a
lot
um you just you're going to break
quickly because you basically learn to
ignore that signal and problems can
happen really quickly after that and
that's even experienced endurance
athletes if you hit that level
it's like you're going to be hitting the
concrete next and that's you know
potentially a problem
I want to make sure I understand a
concept that you referred to earlier
correctly because I have a feeling that
I don't and that's this issue of
how the body accesses body fat stores
when in a sub caloric State and I'm
doing mainly glycogen burning exercise
yeah
what I heard you say and please correct
me where I'm undoubtedly wrong
what I heard you say was that okay I go
into the gym and I start
lifting weights I'm burning muscle
glycogen mostly local to the muscles
that I'm using and then I start pulling
glycogen from the bloodstream
maybe there's some
body fat stores that are mobilized
probably not dipping into my liver
glycogen
okay I complete the workout maybe I even
hop on the air dime bike and do a little
Sprint yeah go for a jog maybe
um I eat immediately afterward maybe I
don't eat for a few hours afterwards but
across the day I ingest fewer calories
than I burn
is it the case that body fat is
mobilized in order to replace the
glycogen that my sub
caloric intake
was insufficient to provide in other
words because I didn't eat enough to
fill the glycogen stores
am I using body fat
converted into glycogen to fill those
stores right
and if so is that a case where I'm no
longer exhaling carbons in order to burn
body fat but rather I'm repurposing body
fat into muscle have I turned fat into
muscle in that case yeah I'm really glad
uh you asked this because I did a very
poor job on that last Point talking
about earlier I'm realizing playing back
in my head because that's so many really
good questions you cannot turn fat into
muscle
can you turn muscle into fat no I'm so
glad you said that because when I was in
college yeah our I don't want to out
that person the physiology teacher
seem to think still at that point that
one could lift weights get muscular but
then it would eventually turn into body
fat that that I that myth has I think
largely been dispelled I heard that so
many times
as a kid I heard it so many times in
college I heard it so I hear it so many
times in our
uh undergraduate students from other
faculty and such so
um no like they're not the same
structures they are very different um
let me take you out on answering this
better you're really really close so
yeah
if you were to do that type of exercise
where you've burned a lot of muscle
glycogen how is it I'm losing stored fat
right that's really the Crux of the
question and it doesn't even actually
matter if you then went ahead and
ingested carbohydrates or fat post
exercise
that's not really a thing you hit on a
couple of key things number one this is
all under the assumption that total
caloric intake
is still low right you have a total need
it's below okay
I also want to flag calories in calories
out is not the only thing that matters
this is a very complex thing calories in
is incredibly complicated calories out
is even more complicated okay so we just
maybe another series we can spend on
that alone all right so don't don't go
nuts about that
you have to be hypocaloric one way or
the other if you burn a bunch of muscle
glycogen and you are hyper caloric
you're still going to add fat
if you burn a muscle glycogen and you're
hypochloric you're going to lose fat
right think about it this way
you're in a negative calorie state
where are those calories going to come
from are you going to reduce your muscle
glycogen storages permanently no no are
you going to reduce your glycogen
storage in your liver
no you want to reduce blood glucose no
no way right so where is that extra
energy coming from it's coming from your
stored fat it is your backup Reserve
Energy System um the way that I want to
fly this here is people tend to think
about it as like carbohydrates versus
fat that's not it's more like a chain
more like a bicycle where there's a
front gear and a back gear you turn one
gear it turns the other one these are
complementary systems they are not and
or systems right you're turning one and
when we go through carbohydrate
metabolism maybe here in a second you'll
understand why you have to have an
anaerobic and an aerobic component to
that there is absolutely no way to
complete carbohydrate metabolism without
oxygen that has to happen the only way
to engage in fat metabolism is aerobic
and oxygen there's no anaerobic
component to it there's a fundamental
difference there
so the your carbohydrates are meant to
be incredibly flexible it is the primary
fuel source for a reason your fat is not
meant to be flexible it is meant to be
Unlimited that's the basic point so you
want flexibility over here and an
unlimited capacity over there now I'm
safeguarded against any energetic need
okay I need to run up a hill for safety
cool carbohydrates are there I need to
then run for 17 hours cool fat is there
we want both of these systems you want
to be able to have great energy
throughout the day
you want a slow drip coming from fat you
don't want up and down up and down feel
great up and down awesome you want to be
able to think very quickly and get hyper
focused boom carbohydrates ramp right up
right get it into the brain get thinking
better get thinking clearly fast so we
want all these not just for exercise
purposes for but for activities of daily
living we want an optimal system here
and when people use the terms like fat
adapted they're generally hijacking that
and they're thinking it used to be a
thing we said all the time and like all
of my undergraduate classes for years
and that idea of metabolic flexibility
is using optimal fuel sources and
optimal types not maximizing fat usage
the people have co-opted that term of
metabolic flexibility to be like oh yeah
yeah therefore learn how to maximize fat
burning that's not what that term means
that term means maximizing your ability
to use whatever fuel is optimal in that
time
now I'll Grant you most people
aren't fantastic and using fat as a fuel
source relative to the other direction
but nonetheless the the gold standard
here should be maximizing both
all right finally answering your
question if I were to to burn a bunch of
muscle glycogen how am I losing that fat
well the fuel you're ingesting in that
hypochloric state is going to say hey
look we have a lot of muscle glycogen we
have to replenish so any carbohydrate
that comes in needs to be biased towards
storage
it's got to go into those tissue any fat
that comes in or doesn't even come in
but any fat that we're using for fuel
needs to be utilized for activity
and that's where the caloric expenditure
from fat comes in so you're basically
saying you're
General physiology
the energy for that starts coming from
fat and the energy that's coming in from
carbohydrate needs to be simply stored
and so what you see is your respiratory
quotient changes right the rer is going
is going off and so in the exercise
moment it shot way up for carbohydrates
and shot way down for fat
as the compensatory response it goes the
other direction because your body's
saying we are low on carbohydrates don't
use them for fuel unless we absolutely
have to right so use them for storage
get our fuel
from the fat side of the equation and so
what you're generally going to say is
like oh I'm burning more fat just
sitting around
after things like that and that's not
even taking into the equation the epoch
part which is like it's not actually as
large as people think it is it's fairly
small
but it is it adds up sort of over time
so um does that explain a little bit
better about how you lose fat when you
actually only burn carbs for exercise
you explained it beautifully
you talked about Epoch the post-exercise
oxygen consumption yeah not being that
significant in terms of energy
utilization
even though today we're talking about
endurance and different forms of
endurance I do have to ask whether or
not people consider the
elevation in basal metabolism that
occurs when there's more muscle around
yeah because muscle is such a
metabolically demanding tissue
um you know if is there a
straightforward-ish equation you know if
one adds one pound of of lean muscle
tissue to their body even if it's
distributed across multiple muscle
groups does that equate to a caloric
need of X number of calories per day and
is that because of the muscle protein
synthesis needs of that muscle or it's
glycogen storage needs or both if you
don't have enough muscle you start to
have problems with fat loss it's
difficult challenge if you have enough
muscle and you're just trying to get
extremely large if your ffmi is 24 and
you're 15 body fat adding more muscles
not really going to play a lot in the
equation and here's why
muscle is more metabolically active at
rest than fat but fat is not inert so
fat is still going to burn a small
number of calories muscle burns more but
it's not nearly what people think it is
I'm a muscle guy I'm a muscle
physiologist I would love to get people
to have more muscle for any excuse I can
it's not honest to say that though
you're talking about when I was in
undergraduate we would say numbers like
50 Cake House per day per pound
is what you can look at right so if you
put on a pound of muscle spread across
the body your basal metabolic rate would
go up by around 50 calories per day
I think that number is grossly
exaggerated it's probably a tenth of
that
six to ten calories maybe um it's hard
to know exactly what that number is but
the more recent estimates are are
something like that so now on one hand
you could say oh my gosh that is not
even meaningful the other hand you could
say that's super meaningful it just
depends on time domain you want to put
that out right so if you were to put on
five pounds of muscle and your basal
metabolic rate went up 30 or 40 calories
a day well over the course of a thousand
days
like that actually adds up so you you
could slice this any way you want
um now maybe that number somewhere in
between I don't really know it's not a
field I paid that much attention to
candidly
because it's not a metric kind of like
epoch
um where it's like we used to really
harp on it and now it's sort of like wow
maybe we exaggerated that like honestly
just a bit but to me it doesn't change
the equation much because if you don't
have enough muscle as they describe
there are other consequences that are
going to make fat loss hard and so you
need to have sufficient muscle
if the additional caloric expenditure is
the carrot great if it's something else
I don't really care there's just enough
evidence that you need to have it or I
should say there's enough evidence that
it will really help you in your path
um maybe a few calories here there is
not really the thing especially if you
understand
a normal food item
anything you pick is going to be
probably a couple of hundred calories
one bad food Choice a day well out kick
almost any amount of coverage you got on
adding muscle mass to you so like
you're really stepping over a dollar to
pick up a dime if you're worried about
how many calories you're getting from
adding muscle
um fat loss is going to be about
regulating that carbon intake above and
beyond anything else
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20 off so I've heard about this concept
of metabolic flexibility mentioned a few
times
frankly you're the first person who's
ever explained it to me in a clear and
concise way how do I know if I am
metabolically flexible and how do I
increase my metabolic flexibility sure
there's no specific standard which is
actually a good thing right and so if
you have a level of specificity that you
want or need metabolically then you
don't actually want to be in this Middle
Ground an example would be if you are a
performing in a type of exercise or an
athlete who performs in a sport that is
glycolically dominated you don't want to
be optimally metabolically flexible you
don't want to be super quote unquote fat
adapted you want to be biased towards
the energy you're going to use the same
could be true for the other end of the
spectrum so in those particular cases
it's not optimal
to be equally effective because there
are no free passes in physiology right
your
energy producing systems
will up regulator down regulate
accordingly so you will actually limit
your ability to say maximally utilized
carbohydrate as a fuel if you're trying
to up regulate your ability to use fat
as a fuel and so this is like there's a
saturation point
outside of that Spectrum most people
just say hey like I want to feel great
throughout the day to be able to do a
bunch of different things how do you
know a couple things
there's a lot of biological markers you
can take there's also just some some
practical takes now none of these
markers
by themselves are any sign what you want
to do is probably a couple of them
and then say okay this is maybe a clue
so again it's really important to
emphasize not a single one of these
tests that I'm about to walk you through
automatically means you can't use fat as
a fuel or the other case which is maybe
you're poor using carbohydrate as a fuel
so disclaimers aside
we'll get into a couple of them so
should we think about these as
informative and useful but not
diagnostic exactly what we call this
data inspired or data LED and not data
driven
right okay cool so number one you want
to think about just overall
functionality do you have a reasonable
regulation of your energy throughout the
day now many things could be going into
this which is why these are not specific
Diagnostics but as a basic measure we
talked about blood glucose levels
um you know a lot of people will say
again you want that to be something like
between 80 and 90
um milligrams per deciliter is the blood
glucose level and you can go look at the
the cutoff points for what determines to
be pre-diabetic and type 2 diabetic Etc
um what I can actually recommend um this
is there's a little bit of science here
actually that I'll walk you through but
a lot of this is my personal preference
um I generally want people to be at 85
or lower and that's because of a couple
of things number one there's actually
some papers that showed any uh every
single point increase
above 85 increases your likelihood of
developing type 2 diabetes by about 6
percent
okay great so technically while maybe 90
or 95 or even up to 100 are you know in
the quote-unquote normative values
that's one clue again it's not
definitive by itself doesn't mean
anything
you need to really pay attention to what
increasing by six percent actually means
but it's a data point where I'm looking
at if I actually then see symptomology
and we run you through maybe some
questionnaires ask how you're feeling
throughout the day and we see
uncontrolled energy about so you're a
lot of energy then get really really
tired and swings okay another data point
all right and we may patch a few of
these things together that may give me
some Clues
um that being said
again this a lot of this rhetoric is
used to then scare people off of
carbohydrates and that is I want to be
as clear as possible that is not
not truly
um
the only thing people should care about
right it can be a thing that can also be
unrelated there are reasons you could
have blood glucose concentrations at
this level or energy swings that are
unrelated to carbohydrate ingestion at
all
all right so one test you can either run
in addition to that if you're going to
get blood glucose measured you can look
at some markers we talked about earlier
Richard AST and ALT what we talked about
how you can kind of look at that AST to
LT ratio before you can actually do the
inverse which is look at alt and AST the
kind of normative value there you're
going to look at is like 0.8 I actually
like to see it lower than that and that
alone has been actually associated with
blood glucose dysregulation and so if
you've seen multiple of science again
we're looking for patterns and patterns
and patterns in both in our case
biomarkers symptomology and performance
and now you're if all three of those
things are lining up you may have an
issue so performance wise
a couple of little tests you can run
um ideally you have some sort of
standard workout you do oh and hopefully
it's it's pretty objective so in other
words like uh I run the same 15 minute
Loop every morning for my cardio okay
great how long does it take you to run
that Loop like you could pick whatever
distance it doesn't really matter what's
your heart rate during that thing and
then what's your perceived exertion now
you should be able to do that fasted
with very little drop in performance
okay if you can do that then that tells
me you're fairly good at using a fat as
a fuel source if however the one day you
go to do your standard workout
and you feel awful
fasting that may be another clue that
perhaps you're not very good at dialing
in
that system if your recovery afterwards
in terms of heart rate recovery is very
long it may be another clue that you
have a poor utilization of fat as a fuel
source the inverse can also be true
so if I give you something in the
neighborhood of like 50 or so grams of
carbohydrate
and 30 minutes later your face is
falling off the table that's a good sign
that you're in the opposite you're
actually very very very poor utilizing
carbohydrate as a fuel and the reason I
bring that up is
um that is equally a problem we send we
hear people a lot make comments
um like man I have to stay away from
carbs I crash really hard if I do them
that has a what that actually means is
you're very poor at utilizing
carbohydrates as fuel you're getting a
your uh your sensitivity is way off we
should be able to have carbohydrate at a
reasonable dosage 50 grams and not fall
asleep 30 minutes later or have to run
to caffeine so that is a sign in our
opinion this is again now just my
practical brain telling you is that's a
sign of dysfunction we should be able to
have plenty of carbohydrates through the
day if we choose to if we want to for
any reason now of course if you were to
throw 150 or 200 grams of carbohydrate
in your belly
you're probably going to take a little
bit of an energy hit after that but we
should be able to have a reasonable
dosage and not you know have to fall
asleep afterwards
what is one way that people can enhance
their utilization of carbohydrates uh
for exercise the reason I ask is I think
I fall into that category yep um I do
consume some complex carbohydrates and
fruit post
resistance training and that tends to be
when I'm hungriest for them but
typically unless I'm I've just done some
resistance training I keep most of my
daytime meals relatively low
carbohydrate and then in the evening I
prefer slightly less protein and more
carbohydrate because it has this effect
of
um sedating me a little bit yeah and I
sleep well and I know this runs against
what everyone was taught which is to not
eat carbohydrates late in the day but I
like it because then I tend to wake up
in the morning
with at least as far as I can tell my
glycogen stores not necessarily topped
off but but certainly filled yep um and
I'm able to train fasted in the morning
and my favorite pre-workout is consists
of water and caffeine and electrolytes
and maybe some supplementation as well
but I love training fasted so there's
actually a number of things um
one little sneaky thing you threw in
there is actually the use of caffeine so
that's another sign if if you have to
have caffeine to do your fasted training
that's generally another sign you're not
very good at using fuel so I use
caffeine prior to resistance training
workouts generally I don't need it for
any kind of cardiovascular training yeah
and when I say that it doesn't mean it's
bad
it's just like another clue that's like
okay you should be able to do this
without having to have caffeine to
execute it now using caffeine to get a
better result is sort of different as an
ergogenic aid um we actually use
a lot of high carbohydrate meals at the
end of the day a lot of the times for
our athletes who are cutting weight or
trying to reduce weight so it is a
fantastic way to handle a lot of things
and that idea that if you eat carbs late
at night
that'll increase fat so like that's all
is so old and so well destroyed
scientifically that that's not a concern
um there's just so much data showing in
fact there's so much data on
like eating timing is is uh generally
poorly understood about when you can eat
and what you can eat eating in the
morning
um versus eating at night like a lot of
what we've heard in there is stuff in
maybe we just saved that for sort of
another day because we're going to get
really far down that's about our weekend
yeah but yes I think our plan is to
cover that in an episode on nutrition
um okay which is in this series the uh
the only thing that would add to it is
you know would you hear about ingesting
carbohydrate late at night I should just
say that uh at least in my case I'm
eating the majority of my carbohydrate
unless
I trained yeah resistance trained early
in the day and which guess I I post
resistance training
um in the last meal of the day but for
me that's not really late at night that
last meal is somewhere between 6 30 and
7 30 p.m so it's three or so hours or
something like that before we go to
sleep around 10 10 30 or so yeah so it's
not you know midnight uh bowls of pasta
I've done that too but um but typically
it's not so I think that um people will
be very interested uh myself included in
how meal timing relates to all of this
but
um yeah let's
so how do you improve fat utilization
how do you improve carbohydrate
organization let's Hammer both out
really quickly
um enhancing fat uh utilization is as
simple as doing a little bit of work in
a
either pre-fat ingested state
so anytime you ingest a nutrient prior
to training you're going to bias towards
that nutrient
right which is almost what we were
talking about earlier so if you want to
guarantee you burn more fat eat more fat
prior to a workout now you're not going
to lose fat but what you're what you're
effectively signaling is we have an
overabundance of this fuel
preferentially Target this fuel
now the downside is that may actually
hinder your performance that's typically
only a concern for people at a very high
level
um
fat is a slower fuel source so if you're
relying more upon that your top end is
going to come down a little bit and so
you wouldn't want to use that strategy
prior to race if it is a carbohydrate
dependent race
all right and in fact we actually see
long-term adaptations that would suggest
that so the enzymes responsible for
carbohydrate metabolism will down
regulate and so you'll get worse at that
so not not a great strategy there
carbohydrate be the opposite right so if
you have carbohydrate prior to exercise
you're going to bias more towards that
so a handful of things you can do
if your total caloric intake is simply
managed that's going to take care of a
lot of these problems an appropriate
eating strategy so the types of food the
combinations of food
all those things are going to make your
post carbohydrate ingestion bunk a lot
of those things can go away so there's a
little bit of physiology that has to be
corrected for so it's a little bit
in one hand you can go very deep here
right so the real answer of how we would
do this is if we see a scenario like
that we're going to do a whole set of
analyzes we're going to go full Labs
right probably extensive blood panel
urine saliva stool even and we're going
to figure out where is that glucose
dysregulation coming from so a lot of
people think like oh it's a metabolism
issue it might be it also might just be
a flag that something else is happening
in the body so we're going to actually
work backwards a lot to try to figure
out exactly why that's occurring it may
be as simple as oh you're eating a lot
of your carbohydrates
without any fiber or protein and we know
that that's important because those will
actually blunt the glycemic index like
the rise in blood glucose so it could be
a simple thing of just like oh your
combination of food is doing it it's not
the total amount um it may be something
again more endogenous to the actual
system
uh it could be
um a heart rate issue it could be a
breathing issue there could be a number
of things so the way to get better at it
is to Simply train it and specificity is
King here so if you want to get better
at managing your blood glucose
throughout the day so you're not feeling
those things it could be a fuel issue
but it could be a number of other things
and it's just hard to go into all of
them with within our time constraint so
the Practical tool that I would say here
is if you want to get better at managing
energy throughout the day make sure that
number one your protein is stabilized
making sure number two you're ingesting
your food in the right combinations
ideally with some Fiber
and or some protein or both that alone
will help stabilize a lot of the
problems then you need to train at a
high intensity you want to get better at
using carbohydrates as a fuel train at a
higher intensity and have carbohydrates
right before the workout we'll do that a
lot if um
uh if our if we see folks who are I kind
of walk you through the test of
identifying if you're not very good at
using fat as a fuel the tests for not
being good at using carbohydrate is the
fuel is both that eating test I talked
about as well as performance if you're a
very very very slow starter it's just
like really hard to get going that
generally indicates
you might be in a situation where you're
not very good at using carbohydrates as
a fuel so we're going to practice that
we're going to have a pre-carbohydrate
pre-exercise carbohydrate meal then
we're going to do higher intensity stuff
not the point of making you sick and
digestive issues all that stuff but we
want to get better at using
carbohydrates as a fuel faster if you
want to get better at doing the opposite
then you do that opposite starter either
again using the fat prior to the workout
knowing
your Peak Performance is going to go
down a little bit but you're you're
investing in adaptation right so it's
not about that workout it's about what's
going to happen six eight ten weeks from
now investment is what you want to think
about it or you could bring in some
fasted training and so I want to really
make sure I clarify when we were talking
about it earlier I'm not at all against
fasted training it's not it works it's
just isn't required for fat loss it
isn't required for fat adaptation it is
a great option though if you want
um what I was hoping to do with that
conversation and maybe I didn't
articulate that well is to not restrict
people but is to open you up and they'll
say you have a lot of options if you
like to do fasted cardio amazing it is
great if you hate it you don't have to
you can reach the same performance goals
the same physique goals without ever
doing it if you love long duration
steady state stuff it is great if you
hate it there are other options higher
intensity stuff again if we're just
talking about fat loss so
I hope now that that's a little clearer
in terms of the same thing with
nutrition if you like higher carb great
if you like lower carb these are all
great you have options and you don't
have to fret so much over oh my gosh I
have to do this thing a certain way and
I absolutely hate it you don't have to
worry about it hit those Concepts
and you'll be fine
a few minutes ago you mentioned that if
we ingest a given macronutrient fat then
the body will preferentially use that
fuel source
you ingest carbohydrate we'll use that
fuel source
is it always the case that the body uses
the ingested macronutrient prior to
using glycogen I have to imagine it's
using both I mean if I were to have some
carbohydrate be before
um doing any kind of training the
muscles still burn glycogen right or do
they have some way to register the
amount of circulating carbohydrate that
would allow or available carbohydrate in
the form of food stuffs uh that would
allow them to not tap into their own
muscle fiber stores with glycogen all
right so the way we derive energy for
exercise or basic maintenance a little
bit about cellular physiology so you've
got a couple of organelle and structures
that we need to pay attention to the
first one is the nucleus let's Hold You
DNA the second one is the mitochondria
and then everything outside of that
you've got all these other organelle
that do a bunch of things like ribosomes
for protein synthesis etc etc all right
now
when you want to produce energy for
exercise
anytime you hear the word anaerobic you
automatically understand we are meaning
without oxygen
all right great that all happens in the
cytoplasm the cytoplasm is that space
that is not the mitochondria not the
nucleus so it's the space in between
everything else this is like jelly-like
substance that sounds there so anaerobic
metabolism happens there every single
aerobic
metabolic process happens in the
mitochondria
all right why is that important
if I go to create cellular energy and I
need it the fastest possible I'm going
to go for phospho creatine because it is
stored directly in the cytoplasm the
stoichiometric is one to one there which
means for every mole of phosphocreatine
I burn I can create one ATP it's one to
one it is incredibly fast but it is very
limited because think about how much of
that could I possibly store in the small
size of the cell that's it if I need
energy past that point now I'll start
using muscle glycogen
because that is also stored in the
cytoplasm so it is right there the
Stoichiometry is not one to one it's a
little bit higher probably like four to
one so for every molecule of glycogen
you burn you're going to get something
like four ish some small number of ATP
out of that which is great
but again you're running into a storage
problem how much can I possibly store
inside a muscle cell it is very very
fast much more effective than phosphor
creatine but so there
if I then want to metabolize any form of
fat
or if I want to complete the
metabolization
of carbohydrates I have to start
transferring into the mitochondria now I
start getting whole hosts of ATP if you
were to fully run through this thing
which I'll talk about in a second I'm
called the TCA cycle or Krebs cycle
you'll get now something like 28 or 30
or 35 kind of depending
ATP per so the energetic output is much
higher
okay so here's exactly what happens then
I'm going to walk you through this in
the form of carbohydrate and then I'll
come backwards and go through fat
so remember
carbohydrate it is one carbon molecule
that has been hydrated so it is one to
one so the actual
chemistry here it is
C
H2O
one carbon two H one o glucose is a six
carbon chain so the chemistry here is C6
h12o6 six carbons six Waters very simple
that's a carbohydrate all right so you
can imagine if you're watching on the
video here you'll you'll see my fingers
going nuts I'll try to make sure I
explain it to you all just listening in
an easy fashion so you've got this chain
of six carbons as in front of you and
the very first step the metabolism is
you snap that thing in half
right so you break into two separate
three carbon chains all right now in
doing that you've got a little bit of
energy because you broke that one Bond
but not a tremendous amount this is
called glycolysis so lysis being the
split and you know glycoping like you
split
glycogen up got a little bit of energy
of them
all right you formed this three color
carbon chain called pyruvate or pyruvic
acid okay there's differences there but
don't don't kill me
General audience friends all right I
gotta gotta give this communicate this
to everybody
so you got a little bit of that now you
can't do much past that besides rip one
more carbon off of each of those three
carbon chains so I've got two three
carbon chains I'd have to be careful how
I do this with my finger so I don't flip
you off here in a second but I burn one
more off of each I get a little bit of
energy and now that little two carbon
chain I have two two concrete chains
those are called acetyl-coa all right
amazing I have now completed anaerobic
glycolysis I've got really nothing left
I can do here I made a little bit of ATP
now wait a minute
I have now freed
two carbons because remember I started
with six and I splited them apart but I
didn't I had two three carbon chains I
burned one each I've got two free
floating carbons I have to now do
something with them my body will not let
me go through that part that last
process unless I've got a plan for that
free Carbon because I can't break it in
half
amazing here's what's going to happen
if I have those three carbon molecules
and I don't have anywhere I can put that
carbon
you're not going to go through that
process
it's going to stop it
you're going to start building up
pyruvate
now at the same time you're breaking ATP
for fuel that's called ATP hydrolysis
right you have water that comes in you
have a condensing and three phosphates
that's why it's called ATP adenosine
triphosphate one two three you break one
of those phosphates off
there you go there's your energy so now
you have a free floating inorganic
phosphate and an adenosine dye phosphate
so two over there amazing that actually
results because you use water for it
results in a free-floating hydrogen ion
okay just have to trust me hydrogen H2O
any idea what a free floating hydrogen
is
um it's gonna
that's acid yeah it says I was gonna say
it's going to increase acidity that's
what I said for anyone that's ever
measured pH what you're really measuring
is the the amount of hydrogen potential
hydrogen that's what PH is Right 100
there's two definitions of pH but you
get that's one of the two so is this are
you going to tell me this is related to
the the burn
we're going to get close right so I've
got a bunch of free floating
um you've got the phosphates which are
actually a problem two probably more of
a problem Than People realize and that
hydrogen
what are you going to do with that
hydrogen well one thing you can do is
actually ship it over to pyruvate and
bond it there
we have a special name for that little
molecule when you have pyruvate and you
have a hydrogen attached to it you know
what it's called
uh hydrogen peroxide lactate
lactate lactic acid this is that whole
system right again I'm skipping some
steps making a little bit of mistakes
here intentionally folks just to make
this assumed so what happens when you
start running a bunch of anaerobic
glycolysis you start seeing massive
rises in
lactate
cool not lactic acid right right
that's why we see associations between a
lot of lactate and a lot of fatigue but
the lactate is actually not causing the
fatigue the lactate is actually sparing
you from having a bunch of free-floating
acid
it's also can be then used directly back
in the muscle because as soon as you
bring in enough oxygen
and you can take that hydrogen back off
of it you've now turned it right back
into pyruvate you can run it through
this whole cycle as fuel that I'm about
to do you can actually actually ship it
out of the exercising muscle and ship it
into a non-exercising muscle and then go
backwards and make glucose what actually
liberates hydrogen from from lactate
well you like chemically yeah so what
what liberates uh what well what are the
stimuli that can take hydrogen off the
pyruvate yeah oh yeah and and then in
other words to reduce lactate and free
up that hydrogen oxygen availability
so in fact one of the major places that
you ship hydrogen to or one of the major
places that you ship likely to is your
heart
because it's what we call like the
ultimate slow touch fiber and it is has
a ton of freely available mitochondria
which have a ton of access to oxygen so
it can actually then go to it form water
the H2O can be used to form water and
now we have a place to store the
hydrogen
got it right
cool so
as a result of anaerobic glycolysis
we have made a little bit of ATP we've
created a lot of waste and we don't have
anywhere to to go with these end
products
so when you do anything of a higher
intensity and it says I need energy fast
you're going to go to this system first
right right past ATP because it is the
fastest place to get energy but you're
not going to get much of it and you've
got to deal with the waste products
boom
right back to the beginning of our
conversation endurance is about two
things energy production and waste
management and we're right we're fatigue
buffering this is it right how well can
you handle the elevations in hydrogen
right drop in PH and how and then what
are you going to do with these products
if you want to fully metabolize a
carbohydrate you then have to take some
do something with those pyruvates or
those acetyl coase what you're going to
do if oxygen is available you will take
those things and ship them into the
mitochondria
they have to go through some cell walls
and some other things like that but
they're going to get inside there
once they're in there that two carbon
acetyl-coa runs through this entire
cycle that we call the Krebs cycle
that's this really interesting place
that's where B6 and nmn people are like
that's where that whole stuff starts to
kick in all your B vitamins basically
run that entire circle and you're going
to start off the top you have a bunch of
fun stuff going on but as a part of that
Circle you're going to pull off some
some of the hydrogen ions you're going
to send these to What's called the
electron transport chain that's where
you're going to get a ton of ATP out of
and as a result about halfway through
the turn you're going to pull off one
carbon and about halfway through the
other almost the other way to the Finish
you're going to pull off the second
carbon so you're going to take the
second acetyl-coa run that entire thing
same through as well and so what we did
is we started off with a six carbon
glucose chain we split it in half we
call those pyruvate made a little bit of
energy because we broke that one Bond of
those two carbons that are in the middle
cool those two three carbon molecules we
pulled one carbon off of each we brought
in sorry we moved those into the
mitochondria we brought one off we took
a breath brought in some oxygen bonded
that Brett took out two CO2 exhales we
ran the acetyl-coa through the Krebs
cycle one two carbons per turn coming
out of CO2 so we had six carbons total
as we started and we exited with zero
carbons now we have fully metabolized a
molecule of carbohydrate
that required an anaerobic start and an
aerobic finish
if you don't have a lot of mitochondria
large mitochondria high functioning
mitochondria you're going to limit your
anaerobic performance because you're
going to get they're going to run that
door full very very quickly you can't go
past it because hydrogen will build up
way too fast and one of the things that
we know is both temperature and pH
run enzyme function so they're going to
stop you won't even be able to run
through in fact that ATP hydrolysis
phase even if I gave you a whole
infinite supply of ATP if I put enough
acid in there it would stop working
because the ATP Ace enzyme needed to
split it won't be able to run in a
highly acidic environment or a hot
environment yeah at some point perhaps
today perhaps in a future discussion
but still not too far from now we could
talk about the role of temperature uh in
the uh in pyruvate from in terms of its
regulation muscle contraction but I want
to make sure I understood something
correctly you mentioned these these uh
two parallel fuel systems right one is
essentially anaerobic right and the
other is aerobic you said that if we
can't pull enough
um if we can't break enough bonds then
we limit our anaerobic capacity correct
I would have thought given that uh the
mitochondria or the site for essentially
for aerobic metabolism that we would be
limiting our aerobic capacity as well
um perhaps you could just clarify for me
how these two things are divided or is
there not a clean division is it not an
either No in fact again I think it's
better to think of these things rather
as two separate parallel things as one
big cycle they're one gear turning the
next being compromised in one will
compromise the other that I should say
reminds me of what you said earlier
which is this the bicycle gear analogy
that works uh great so if you if you
short circuit one basically that the
chain can't move that's yeah fantastic
okay so um so indeed they they are
running in parallel but they are
um interdependent yeah well they're
actually not even running in parallel
because they're actually funneling to
the same endpoint
right which is like if you're going to
come from the anaerobic glycolysis route
or you're going to come from the fat
route which I'll talk about in a second
they're both going to be limited in the
mitochondria
so when that thing's full it doesn't
matter you can't run either system
right so it is more of like a again if
you're running the bike gears it doesn't
really matter if the back one's larger
or smaller because if either one is
limited your toast because they're
running on the same system
you can you can you can sneak a little
bit here and there but but not much
you also really nicely highlighted how
lactate this thing that we think of as a
a limiting factor like the burn it gets
in the way and it's the thing we need to
stop and buffer and all all sorts of
things sure it's actually really a fuel
it's a tremendously effective fuel it is
a strongly preferred fuel actually the
is this interesting this is a very
classic case of Association
um correlation versus causation right so
the original actually like there's a
really cool history on lactate but it
was originally found uh I think in
Germany
um part of my history there
um somewhere in Europe in hunted Stags
so one of the things is they sort of
realized is like if we if we if we
harvested a stag in a rest estate when
it didn't know we were there versus if
we chased it and it was ran down that
these lactate concentrations were
significantly higher in in the latter
situation therefore lactate started
immediately getting this association
between High fatigue points and it is
easy to measure if you were to do any
sort of lactate test any sort of
metabolic test you will see as fatigue
increases lactate will also increase the
Assumption there was then oh my gosh
is the cause now we know like again it's
not the thing it's in large part trying
to buffer
the negative consequences of ATP
hydrolysis and and some other things so
it is certainly playing a part in that
role but it is not the core driver it's
also why you don't need to worry about
doing things to quote unquote
um
reduce lactate in the muscle after
exercise or to clear lactate or any of
those things you may still want to do
those activities but not for that reason
lactate's fine you're actually going to
use it in again the neighboring exercise
muscle fibers in the same muscle another
muscle you can send it actually to the
to the liver and it can actually go
through gluconeogenesis and it can
actually replenish liver glycogen just
does that feel sore sorry you sound
harder any number of sources you can
also just kind of put it in circulation
put a back in the muscle and once enough
oxygen is there you can just kick it
right back into either glucose or
glycogen it's totally fine so
it is obviously clear though once that
number gets very very high other things
are going to be happening they're going
to be causing a lot of hurt and this is
your managing waste right it is really
an issue of managing what am I going to
do with all this extra carbon what am I
going to do with all this extra
inorganic phosphate and some other nasty
byproducts but that's the thing you have
to deal with
I'd love for you to teach me how
different ratios of fuel sources are
used depending on how long I happen to
be exercising
for example if I do a very short bout of
exercise yep typically that's correlated
with a higher intensity output I mean I
suppose I could jog for one minute but
here I'm thinking about sprinting for
one minute or less
which fuels are used is that mainly
driven by fat stores by carbohydrate
stores is it driven by dietary fat
preferentially or carbohydrate that I've
ingested if indeed I've ingested those
or protein for that matter
and then as we transition to exercise
that goes a little bit longer you know
anywhere from you know three to five
minutes how do those ratios change and
as we transition to longer duration what
most people think of as endurance
exercise but long duration output of you
know 20 minutes or more
leading all the way up to a full
Marathon how does that change the ratio
of fuel sources that are used and I'd be
particularly interested in
distinguishing between
carbohydrate fat and protein that's
ingested so coming from food sources or
carbohydrate fat and protein that are
coming from Storage sites within the
body okay great let's start at zero
seconds and run all the way through
Marathon
and we'll we'll flag the distinctions
where they start changing as soon as you
want to create muscle contraction and
power the very first source of energy is
phosphoid creatine that's going to power
you for zero to maybe say eight to
Fifteen twenty seconds of maximal
exertion and that's in coming from the
muscle fibers themselves yeah that is
actually stored in the What's called the
cytoplasm so this is a little area of
space in the muscle fiber that's sort of
like in this jelly-like substance and
it's nice because one molecule of
phosphoid creatine gives you one
molecule of ATP so it's not a big energy
output but it's very fast because it is
stored right there in the local
exercising muscle right now if you need
energy past that point say you know 10
or 15 seconds up to maybe a couple of
minutes this is now you're going to have
to transition because you're going to
burn through that phospho-creatine it's
going to be out
you're going to have to move to now
carbohydrate metabolism this is what we
call anaerobic glycolysis so there's two
phases of glycolysis now glycolysis
itself means glucose burning all right
so this means we're using carbohydrate
as a fuel source so initially when we
start off this Cascade
which is going to take us again for a
couple of minutes
carbohydrate utilization comes first
from the exercising muscle so it's very
similar to phosphocreatine that way
if you start running low on it you can
actually start pulling blood glucose and
if blood glucose gets low you'll have to
start getting glycogen from the liver to
keep that up and we've sort of covered
that conversation all right so a little
bit of chemistry here just give me a
little bit of room here so now remember
a carbohydrate is a carbon molecule that
has been hydrated so one carbon attached
to one water and remember water is H2O
most of the time when we're talking
about glucose it is in the six carbon
chain so six carbons attached to six
water molecules all right great when I
go to split this up through anaerobic
glycolysis it works a little bit like
this so you've got this six carbon chain
the first step is to snap that thing in
half you're going to make two three
carbon chains now we broke one Bond
right there so we got a little bit of
energy but not a tremendous amount at
the end of anaerobic glycolysis you're
going to net something like three or
four ATP so more than you get from the
phosphate quadruple
but still not very much there's another
major downside that's coming in a second
to this system the upside is it's fast
now what actually one adaptation we get
to training in this style
is you'll increase your ability to store
glycogen in your muscle
which is great right we can actually
biopsy you and measure the amount that
you store in a training adaptation is
awesome so you're able to sustain this
system longer so perhaps 90 seconds into
your interval training you hit a fatigue
point and now you maybe can extend that
to 100 or 115 seconds simply because
you're storing more glycogen in the
muscle
before we have to and then go into the
blood and get up in the form of glucose
so that's great so we've got this six
carbon molecule and we split this in
half we got that little bit of ATP and
now we're in this little tricky position
because this three carbon molecule is
what we call pyruvate pyruvic acid and
again chemistry folks I'm skipping some
steps I'm going to intentionally make
some mistakes here I'm making sure the
entire world listening regardless of
where they come in can follow me here
okay so don't burn me on the details
right you've got this pyruvate the
problem is you can no longer do anything
with that glycolysis is over you've got
to make a choice
right in order to make something out of
those three carbon molecules you've got
to ship them to the mitochondria as we
said that is the only place of aerobic
metabolism
right we cannot do aerobic metabolism
anywhere else until we enter the
mitochondria so anytime we cross that
barrier we know we've automatically
switched from anaerobic to aerobic well
here's the problem
if you were to take one more carbon off
that three carbon pyruvate you have to
now do something with that carbon waste
okay so before when we split the six
carbon chain we didn't actually leave
any carbons free floating we just split
a two molecule in half
when we go to split from pyruvate and
make it into this two carbon molecule
called acetyl-coa or seal COA now we've
got a free-floating carbon
we have to have a strategy for that
because that's going to increase the
acidity level any enzyme in our body
that works to create fuel
is very pH sensitive right so if this
thing if pH gets off either high or low
these enzymes can't work and that's
really really important because even if
I were to give you a direct injection of
ATP remember that's that energy currency
that's the only way we can actually form
energy I guess remember to clarify
anytime we're using phosphoid creatine
or glucose or fat which we'll get to a
second we're not actually getting energy
for exercise by breaking those down or
getting energy that we can use to then
make ATP we break that ATP down that's
what's actually powering muscle
contraction
um you can go back to our previous
episode where we'll walk you through the
detail of the muscle contraction but
that's what we're after okay
so in the case of pyruvate if we split
that off we have got to deal with that
and the only way in the best way we can
deal with that is oxygen remember we're
going to breathe in O2 that O2 is going
to combine with that free-floating
carbon makes CO2 we're going to Exhale
that thing out that's our Waste
Management strategy
but
that has to happen in the mitochondria
remember if we're using oxygen it has to
be in the mitochondria so if we have the
ability to ship pyruvate into the
mitochondria
or golden
but what happens if we don't
why do we not well if we don't have
enough mitochondria or mitochondria are
too small or they're too far away
or we don't have sufficient oxygen
availability
why don't we have sufficient oxygen
availability because we created the
pyruvate too fast
and the demand in the mitochondria is
exceeded by the buildup of pyruvate and
so now we're having this giant backlog
and this thing fills up fast
we have a couple of strategies here
well when you're going through ATP and
you're splitting it's called hcp
hydrolysis
in of doing that remember ATP is a
adenosine molecule and then the T part
is triphosphate one two three which
means you have three phosphates attached
to the end when you break that phosphate
off that's where you get your energy so
now you have an inorganic phosphate and
an ADP it doesn't diphosphate two
that process requires water it's called
hydrolysis as a result of that you then
have a free floating hydrogen and as you
well know that is acid right that's
potential hydrogen that's what that
means and so you've increased the
acidity in the muscle by breaking up all
this ATP and so oh we're building up
acid we have building up pyruvate we
don't have nowhere to go with it and we
can't cleave off a carbon because now
we're just going to exacerbate
the acid increase
so what we can do is we can take those
hydrogens that we're building up and
store them on the pyruvate a pyruvate
that's holding an extra acid has a
special name and we call that lactate
all right so that's why we see this
buildup of lactase so one of the
downsides of anaerobic glycolysis is an
incredibly High rate of waste production
now lactate is not the cause of fatigue
in fact if you think a little bit more
carefully about what I just said it's
actually stopping you it's what we call
a acid buffer
you can actually use it for a bunch of
other things you can ship it to a
neighboring muscle fiber in the same
muscle that's not working you can ship
it to the liver you can ship it to the
heart and a bunch of other places and
then you can actually just work
backwards so if you ship it to for
example the heart and it's got a bunch
of mitochondria that are free you can
bring in the oxygen
attach it to that hydrogen make water
and now you're right back to pyruvate
you put two pyruvate back together and
now you just make glucose so you can
actually store it in the liver this is a
process called gluconeogenesis through
this fancy thing called the Corey cycle
which is what the the proper cycle here
is
so you can use it as a very potent fuel
source in fact a lactate is a
tremendously valuable fuel source I'm
not like for exercise but for cognition
and a bunch of other things so lactase
in fact this is why um if you've seen
the research about
pre-exam testing exercise uh you'll see
a noticeable increase in exam scores if
you do a 20 minute about of exercise
prior to taking the exam and it's
largely in part probably because of
things like elevations and lactate how
intense of exercise uh would be most
beneficial I don't know that exact
answer I just know that generally any
form of exercise is good but if you were
to reach a reasonably high heart rate
you're probably going to see in fact
there's an acute and chronic adaptation
here so Folks at exercise have better
memory memory retention scores and exams
Etc but then also doing it prior to that
exam make sure you recovered and rested
back down the street but you'll
generally perform better previous guests
on the huberman Lab podcast who's the
who's a psychology professor and
neuroscientist and also dean of College
of Arts and Sciences at New York
University NYU Wendy Suzuki is religious
about
daily morning exercise yeah specifically
for this purpose of enhancing learning
and memory and has a lot of really
beautiful data I consider one of the
real Pioneers in this space
um so if people want to learn more they
can look to that episode or Wendy's work
we can provide a link to a couple of the
papers but
this is fantastic in that it's
incredibly clear I think for the first
time I'm understanding what what lactate
is really doing yeah
um and it's dispelling a lot of myths
that I think I and a lot of other people
arrive to the discussion about lactate
with
what happens when the bout of exercise
extends longer amazing so if we want to
continue past that point we have to have
some sort of strategy to get through it
right we're stuck we're out of gas we
have to then ship it to the mitochondria
and now we're going to enter what's
called aerobic glycolysis and this is
going to take us anywhere from again say
that 90 seconds of all that work up to
really 20 30 minutes in fact it really
will take us to unlimited if you look at
a highly competitive marathon runner
even those that are running say your two
hour marathon those folks are burning up
to 80 carbohydrate
it is a it it is not a fat burning thing
and the reason is fat metabolism is way
too slow it provides a lot of energy but
it is incredibly slow if you're trying
to run a four and a half or so minute
mile repeated 26 times you have to be
moving fast are they ingesting
carbohydrate as a fuel source during the
race
unless you're on the team you don't know
they won't really tell you these are
sort of Trade Secrets
um it would be I would say fairly rare
to not have something right there's a
bunch of different strategies if you're
going to go really long like some of
these um like cycling where the races
will be several hours then you actually
might go to some fat as fuel sources I I
know a lot of cyclists are using ketones
and things like that now but
traditionally most endurance folks are
going to buy us heavily towards
carbohydrate
um
now
in one respect
you're not going to run out of
carbohydrates
until you're many hours in these folks
are a unique case but the average
individual who's doing an hour hour and
a half cardio even you're not going to
be limited by your carbohydrate stores
you're going to be just fine you're
gonna be limited by some other things
which will maybe sort of break down here
in a second
but you're going to be fine there a lot
of those folks will take carbohydrate
they'll have very specific intervals you
want to you do want to be careful though
of ingesting too many fast carbohydrates
prior to your exercise spout um we
actually have this little thing that's
called the insulin glucose double whammy
and what that means is when you ingest
carbohydrates immediately your blood
glucose goes up and that's depending on
the type of carbohydrate and things like
that well the same thing happens with
exercise and so what happens is insulin
wants to start pulling glucose out of
the blood at the same time muscle wants
to start pulling glucose out of the
blood and so we have this giant bolus of
carbohydrate come in and then all of a
sudden our blood sugar crashes
and so if you're going to be doing so
your your first half marathon or
something like that and you're in those
giant Corrals where there's like you
know 100 people waiting to go and you're
standing there for 45 minutes you may or
may not want to slug down like three or
four bananas in a bagel and and honey
and things like you probably don't need
that now not everyone experiences this
double whammy but it has been shown in
literature to happen to some people so
you want to just be a little bit careful
um an easy way to combat that is just
practice exactly what you're going to do
in your race in your training that's
like the simplest advice ever but you'd
be stunned how many people do things uh
during the race that they've actually
never done in training I suggest people
do exactly what you describe also for
any kind of cognitive testing of course
before a big exam is not the time to
discover whether or not you can handle
twice as much espresso or take a
nootropic for the first time or no uh or
change anything I mean if if indeed the
the score on that exam is is Meaningful
to you you keep keep things regular so
to recap what we've done here is we
started off in the cytoplasm with this
glucose molecule that is six carbons we
took that thing we split it in half we
call that thing anaerobic glycolysis we
made a little bit of energy but not much
we take those three carbon molecules we
ship them into the mitochondria we take
each one of those we clear off one
carbon each those carbons we take a
breath in we attach them to oxygen we
exhale them get rid of that energy we
are now fully into aerobic glycolysis
each one of those two carbon molecules
we run through the Krebs cycle
each round the Krebs cycle Burns one two
carbons so we go one two one two and now
we've gone from six carbon molecule all
the way down to zero we used the
hydrogens that we pulled off of that
Krebs cycle run to go to the electron
transport chain from there we made a
whole bunch of ATP and so we have now
fully metabolized one molecule of
carbohydrate and the end product of all
of it is simply ATP water and CO2
beautiful
and leads me to
the conclusion that most everything is
really about
utilization of carbons and exhaling CO2
is that how I should think about
bookending what you just described this
is why we started off the conversation
with the circle of life
this is really a carbon game this is why
we call Chemistry with carbon organic
chemistry right that's what this whole
thing is about any living being has to
run through metabolism
it's all a carbon game
any living being has to use ATP this is
all just a big fancy game of how do I
make ATP and handle the waste remember
endurance is all about Waste Management
fatigue resistance the same thing
and energy production we're playing a
game here
the whole game
bring in energy use it
mitigate waste products
so when thinking about aerobic exercise
or long duration exercise
in this case anything longer than five
minutes for that matter five minutes all
the way up to an ultra marathon
the breathing associated with endurance
exercise the heart beating which of
course is associated with the breathing
and vice versa
it's really all about bringing oxygen
into the system that then allows those
carbons to be used and
within the mitochondria specifically and
then carbon dioxide to be exhaled as we
work through the carbons of the sort of
beads on a string is that right unless
you're moving incredibly fast for a very
long time and we're talking probably
north of 90 minutes
endurance is really not a game of making
sure I have enough fuel it is simply
managing the waste production
and that's exactly what you described
you need to bring in the oxygen so you
can handle the carbon that's building up
as a result of both the anaerobic
anaerobic glycolysis
that's our game here
if we start talking about endurance
events longer than that now we do have
to start worrying about running out of
muscle glycogen running out of liver
glycogen
Etc or if we are at that two hour mark
or so and we're moving very very very
fast but anything south of that is just
managing carbon buildup
and we do that best through oxygen
utilization or
getting more efficient having a higher
capacity for our anaerobic side
so we can do that by having either more
glycogen in our muscle
so that lasts longer or building better
asset buffering systems and there's a
whole line of supplementation that are
specifically acid buffers there's a
whole line of training there's a whole
line of breathing to manage this that so
we have a lot of strategies where we can
maximize endurance all we have to do
is go back to the earlier part of our
talk which is figure out what's the
actual limiting step
and then train according to that or do
your strategy your nutrition your
supplementation that defeats that
limiting factor for an example if you're
trying to maximize your performance in
this 20 second maximal burst and your
strategy for that was to make sure your
muscle glycogen is saturated
it's probably not going to help a ton
because you're not going to be limited
by total fuel you're going to be limited
by your ability to buffer acid however
storing more glycogen in your muscle in
preparation for a marathon is a
tremendously effective strategy because
that will become a limiting factor so
what we can do actually next if you'd
like is we can just walk through these
and look at the individual limitations
where the failure Point happens and that
effectively will outline your strategy
for improving them so you taught us
about carbohydrate utilization as a fuel
source
what about fat and what about protein
great I'll start with protein because
it's easy it is
generally at best going to represent 10
percent
of your energy output now that will grow
over time in terms of if you did a
several hour lot of exercise when you
started doing it you might be using five
percent of your energy from protein and
then in that micro to 10 or so and that
happens because you start running low on
muscle glycogen you start running low on
liver glycogen
you start then having to pull in energy
from another place so like as those
numbers go down you'll see an increased
uptick of energy from fat as well as
protein having said that it's not a
tremendous fuel source it is only
aerobic so it has to be oxidized those
are the same thing when I say oxidized
you use oxygen to burn something to make
a fuel
um so it's not a significant contributor
to energy in that regard and unless
you're talking ultramarathons are longer
and it is also not something that can
enhance performance and so we don't
really need to talk much more about it
than that in terms of fat as a fuel
source now here's the fundamental
difference while carbohydrate starts
anaerobically and finishes aerobically
in the mitochondria you're using mostly
the carbohydrate in the exercising
muscle tissue
eventually you can pull from blood and
then you can pull from the liver with
fat you have a tiny amount stored in the
muscle intramuscular triglycerides but
the overwhelming majority of fuel you
get from fat comes systemically
and so now we have a fundamental
difference we actually literally have a
Time problem I can get energy from
carbohydrates faster because it is
directly there if I go to pull it from
fat I've got to pull it from the rest of
the body which is why somebody who loses
fat loses it from their entire body
despite the fact that they may be only
exercising a couple of parts so think
about a runner someone who lost a lot of
fat or running you don't see them just
lose fat in their legs it comes from
their face and their neck and everywhere
why because what you're going to do is
pull fat from the entire system you're
going to break it down through a process
called lipolysis
which means you break it down from the
stored form you put it in the blood as
that glycerol backbone which is that
three carbon backbone
in the individual fatty acids it's going
to float through the blood there's a
seven step system here but we'll skip it
for now it's going to have to get then
uptaken into the muscle in the muscle
then it has to get taken up and run into
the mitochondria now
that backbone that three carbon glycerol
backbone is actually going to function
almost exactly like the three carbon
pyruvate just get it into the
mitochondria cleave off one carbon run
it as acetylch
exact same thing super easy to
metabolize small enough to go through
the mitochondrial membrane the fatty
acid chains become a problem
so if you have a chain that's longer
than or eight or so carbons
it has to actually go through a special
transporter on the cell wall to get in
and that's going to be limited by a
thing called carnitine
and you're probably familiar with that
as a supplement you may have talked
about it there's a lot of places that
make it that's going to be a limiting
factor if it is a smaller what we call a
short chain or even a medium chain
triglyceride which a lot of folks have
heard of MCT that's what we're talking
about that can actually go directly
through because it's small enough to
pass through and you can use it
immediately as an energy source in
either case the way that you finally
metabolize a fatty acid is a process
where you would go through and cut off
two carbons
at a time why would you cut off too
because you're trying to make that two
carbon acetyl COA so you can run through
that Krebs cycle again
because you're cutting off two carbons
at a time we have a special name for
that oxidation process it's called beta
oxidation that's exactly why we call it
beta oxidation
two carbons in you cut it off to make
that acetalkoa so you can notice the
oxidation pathway the electron transport
pathway is identical whether you're
talking about the carbohydrates or the
fat in fact it doesn't even matter
more to our point if we're talking about
simply fat loss it really just is about
running that electron transport chain
whether it came from a carbohydrate or
original Source or a fat original Source
it ends up in the mitochondria as
basically the exact same thing it then
ends the end of metabolism as the same
thing remember the final endpoint
of carbohydrate metabolism is water ATP
and CO2 do you want to guess the final
endpoint of fat metabolism
water
ATP and CO2
so
practical applications here
if you want to maximize fat loss what
type of training is best
it really doesn't matter
if you enjoy longer steady state stuff
fantastic if you enjoy intervals amazing
if you would like to do a combination
that's my personal preference that's
great too you have a ton of options pick
what you think is a combination of
challenging
not all exercise should be easy but you
will actually enjoy someone or you're
willing to accept
and anything that you absolutely hate
don't do it sometimes is very very very
difficult to do high intensity training
you have to really be interested in
doing it if not it ends up turning into
like moderate intensity training you
sort of just check the box and it
doesn't work that well if you're just
checking the box so if you're like man
mentally I don't have it in me today to
get to a high heart rate and throw up
and all that stuff cool but you can just
do some moderate steady state stuff well
that's a win great if you're like oh my
gosh more than 10 straight minutes and
I'm so bored and you're all maybe you're
also like I don't have 45 minutes I got
to get this done in eight minutes great
go do some high intense intervals either
option will be equally effective
as you mentioned earlier
exercise is useful for aesthetic changes
functionality
and for longevity
but when thinking about exercise
specifically for fat loss
I do have to ask this question
I often hear from people that they
prefer one type of exercise versus
another
for sake of fat loss because certain
forms of exercise make them very hungry
I'm wondering whether or not there's any
relationship between the intensity or
type of exercise and the hunger stimulus
now I don't have this problem because
basically everything makes me hungry
um and yet I'm also okay fasting for
part of the day yeah I'm one of those
pseudo-intermittent fasters
talk about what I mean by that I just
happen to eat between 11 A.M and 8 PM
naturally I'm not religious about it but
um but I don't do it for any other
reason except that that tends to be when
I'm hungry and I exercise outside of
that
um in the morning typically
in any case
is there a way that people can determine
what type of exercise might be better or
worse for them based on its appetite
stimulating or inhibiting effects
because I also hear that you know some
people will go for a long run and then
they are quote unquote not hungry for
several hours afterwards does that have
anything to do with which fuels are
being utilized during different forms of
exercise that's actually a really good
question I don't know the the mechanisms
that can explain that answer what I can
tell you is you hear the same comment
for physical activity in other words
people say
man if I do this type of training then I
just am exhausted and I lay around the
rest of the day so my total caloric
expenditure is actually compromised as
an aggregate because I'm down um the
data would suggest in general that
doesn't happen
so most of the time we don't see a
reduction in physical activity
um with either high intensity or steady
state training in fact you generally see
equal if not increased what's called
need so it's the non-exercising part of
your day
in addition to the basal metabolic rate
so physical activity wise you don't send
to be prop now hunger is a little bit of
a different thing
the answer here is I don't think we have
time to actually do justice on this so
perhaps best to not get into this one
yeah why don't we punt this down the
road to our discussion about nutrition
specifically and and weave back to it so
we'll earmark it for that
um meanwhile it sounds like if one is
thinking purely in terms of uh
burning calories yep and getting the
health benefits of exercise to create a
caloric deficit to create fat loss it
doesn't matter whether or not they burn
those calories using a form of exercise
that relies predominantly on
carbohydrate fat or protein correct it's
not that it doesn't matter it's that
either one will work
because when we say things like that
it's it doesn't mean they're actually
identical
there are some slight differences and
maybe those differences are important
for some people and not others
ought to say is either one is a viable
strategy
great what about protein as a fuel
as an actual feel so here let me give
you an analogy
imagine that you are you were with me a
few weeks ago in southern Montana and
we're out
um in the wilderness for a week okay and
it's cold out there and you needed to
make a fire
uh and if I said look you can pick any
of these things there are so there's
some wood over there we brought some
newspaper and then we brought a match
and we need to create a fire we're gonna
use that fire to energy and heat up
okay I said great the very first place
you would probably start to make that
fire is the match you like the match in
any match hey it's going to light
immediately but it's probably going to
last 5 to 20 seconds I don't know before
it burns out that's fossil creatine
real fast real Burns Out
if you were smart you would take that
match and then light the newspaper on
fire right now if you were to burn a
whole newspaper it is more energy
then you get to the match but you still
you know I don't know what's going to
take a few minutes some number of
minutes before an entire 65 burns up
five I don't know right depends on then
yeah which type of newspaper it is I
guess right amazing
that's carbohydrate
right if you were really smart you would
use that to then light a piece of wood
on fire and a wood if you've been in the
wilderness it could last hours days it's
really quite unlimited your phospho
creatine storage is very limited small
glycogen is a lot higher because you can
store it in muscle you can store it in
other places so you have more but not a
lot fat is unlimited the average person
if you're around say 70 kilos up 170
pounds or so and you're moderately lean
maybe 15 body fat nothing crazy you
probably have enough stored fat
to create enough energy to survive for
more than 30 days
right this would literally be if you
ingested zero calories you have enough
fuel in your stored fat to keep you
alive for certainly 30 days
you wouldn't feel good and all those
things but energetically basically fat
will never
ever be your limiting factor to
Performance
so when we start talking about well what
limits my performance in these areas you
can just wipe fat off the list it will
never be your limiting factor to any
type of endurance performance you simply
have way too much the only problem with
fat is is just too slow I've got to
mobilize it I've got to get in the blood
move it that whole thing too slow so if
I want to go faster I will never be able
to fully utilize fat which is why we
talked about earlier you'll never see a
situation in which somebody is a hundred
percent burning fat as a fuel and no
percent carbohydrate it's always going
to be too slow
highest you'll get maybe 70 so percent
protein in this equation
is none of that now you may notice
how do you make paper what's fibrous you
combine with water that you it gets
pressed it gets compressed yeah yeah
it's made from wood
how do you make a match
it's made from wood
what's carbohydrate a chain of carbon
what's fat a chain of carbon these are
similar molecules right they're meant to
give you pros and cons it's very
difficult to just light a log on fire
without a lot of work you'd have to burn
burn burn burn burn so these are
complementary systems that are really
close to the same thing protein
is none of those things protein is more
like a piece of metal
so if you were out in the woods with me
and we were trying to make a fire and
you're like hey look I found some old
uh
railroad over there let's throw that on
there I would probably look at you like
crazy now technically can you melt metal
sure but you're gonna burn a lot of
energy to try to get a little bit back
out of the metal and now you've also
cost yourself a very very valuable
structure
so protein is a fuel source for exercise
or metabolism it's just an incredibly
poor choice your body will do it again
maybe five to ten percent but you now
you're burning a very valuable Supply in
a situation in which you don't know
where there's ever going to be anymore
remember protein is fairly transient
it's you're not very good at storing it
you can store a ton of carbohydrate and
an unlimited literally amount of fat so
you just really need to disregard
thinking about protein as a fuel source
your body does not want to do it you're
not good at it you can go through a
process of gluconeogenesis from protein
make glucose from it is just very poor
you're not going to get much out of the
exchange and you've burned your supply
of metal which is going to be very
difficult it's a very high commodity in
the woods or the Wilderness to have
something like metal for people that
consume very low carbohydrate or zero
carbohydrate diets are they pulling more
energy from muscle so which I imagine is
a conversion of amino acids into ready
carbon chains yeah I mean in this
particular case once you've reached um
a certain level of adaptation you've
just gotten extremely good at generating
glucose from other Fashions right so you
can bias heavily towards fat adaptation
the downside is and we've seen this born
in literature you're going to perform
slower
so if you don't care about maximizing
performance especially over something
where it is a maximal effort for a few
minutes or something then maybe you're
not concerned and that's absolutely
great especially for people just don't
exercise
then hey geez very little concern here
but if you're interested in your
performance and you're wondering why
you're just like slugging it down well
what you've done is you've down
regulated the ability literally the
enzymes responsible for that entire
anaerobic glycolysis portion they get
down regulated which means there's not
as much around anymore and so you get
really bad and slow at using
carbohydrates as a fuel source so it's a
very poor strategy for people on an
anaerobic based sport or who like that
type of activity again if you don't care
no problem if you don't exercise at all
then you really have no problem there
which is actually why
a high fat low carbohydrate nutrition
strategy for people who don't do much
physical activity is probably like very
well it's very effective it is a really
good strategy for weight management for
energy stabilization throughout the day
and the research would very much support
that in my observation I would agree
I've tried low carbohydrate diets of
severely limiting or completely
eliminating carbohydrate and
after about two or three days I feel
pretty lousy but mostly because I want
to train very intensely in the gym in
addition to doing longer runs I tend to
do all of those things across the week
yeah but I've also observed and in fact
know several people that love the very
low carbohydrate AKA ketogenic type diet
they're not doing ketogenic diets for
mental health reasons per se but indeed
those people tend to do very limited
exercise or they tend to do a lot of
long endurance but low intensity long
endurance these are the I walk to get my
exercise types and they do indeed walk a
lot and some of them manage to control
their weight very readily and like that
diet for that reason
um when we had Lane Norton on the
podcast he pointed out quite aptly that
in order to lose weight you have to
restrict something either of course time
or macronutrients Etc to arrive at that
sub caloric threshold get below the the
sub maintenance threshold I guess one of
the things I want to point out is
this should be received as again not a
this is better or worse this is just you
now have a ton of options
so whatever personal preference other
factors you get to craft this strategy
of performance Aesthetics and health
based on your personal preferences
at this point I'd like to go back to our
classic list of nine adaptations that
exercise can induce
the first four of course being largely
largely unrelated to today's
conversation but that we're covered in
the episode
that we did on strength speed and
hypertrophy so just to remind people the
nine adaptations are number one skill
and technique two speed three power
which is speed times Force four strength
and five hypertrophy today we're talking
about the remaining adaptations on that
list starting with muscular endurance
followed by anaerobic capacity
followed by maximal aerobic output and
finishing at number nine with long
duration exercise so
if we could start with muscular
endurance this would be number six on
the list of nine adaptations
muscular endurance
how do I build muscular endurance why
should I build muscular endurance and
just to remind me what fuel sources
are predominating when I'm training for
muscular endurance great so remember
muscular endurance is something that's
going to be generally in a local muscle
it is not a cardiovascular or systemic
issue and it tends to be something in
the neighborhood of say five to maybe
even up to 50 repetitions so this is the
classic example we'll give here is how
many push-ups can you do in a row most
people are going to land somewhere in
that range I just said how many sit-ups
can you do in a minute how many pull-ups
how long can you hang on a bar
um as a dead hang things like that
that's muscular endurance muscular
endurance is not a mild run or a
marathon or anything like that so uh how
long can I stand without breaking
posture
this is muscular endurance a plank a
wall sit great yes love all these things
okay now the reason I took you on that
big long metabolism Journey is so I
could help you understand exactly how to
train
this Factor any of these factors
with a more comprehensive understanding
of what's Happening meaning thinking
back to metabolism
if I'm going to ask my triceps to do 50
push-ups in a row
what's going to be my limiting factor am
I going to run out of fat
no chance am I going to run out of
glycogen no chance that's way too few of
repetitions you have a lot left there so
what's going to be the thing that stops
me from getting 51 repetitions either
you're going to have too high
of a pH rise so too much acid build up
or you're going to have a problem
clearing the waste
so really this is two factors dealing
with acid buildup and getting acid out
of the muscle tissue and end of
circulation because you have plenty of
ability to handle that small amount of
acid buildup in your entire body it's
just you can't handle it in that tiny
spot now I picked the tricep for a very
specific reason
you're gonna deal with more pain when
you use a large muscle group like your
quads or your glutes than you are with a
small muscle group for example nobody
ever threw up after arm day
but a lot of people throw up after leg
day why is that look at the total amount
of waste that you're dumping into your
system when you have quadrupled or 10x
the muscle size small muscle groups are
only really going to be challenged in
that local area large ones will dump so
much waste into the system that you'll
want to avoid that as quickly as
possible and that's one of the reasons
why you throw up
after Hard Exercise great so
the reason I'm laughing because I don't
think I've ever thrown up uh from a
weight training session and so it's
making me wonder if I've ever trained
that hard I've received uh or obtained
the progress that I've wanted to do
generally over time not every week every
workout every month but certainly over
the 30 plus years that I've been weight
training I've achieved the results I've
wanted I have however
vomited after a long run
when I didn't hydrate well oh or if I
drink too much water sure oh sure too
much water yeah you'll you'll get that
out quick right I just uh want to be
clear because I think some people are
getting the picture that if they're not
vomiting then after their leg workout
that they're not training according to
uh your standards Again by the way um Dr
Andy Galvin runs experiments in his lab
he's recruiting subjects
[Laughter]
also known as my graduate students
that's right in any event sorry to
interrupt uh but I felt it was the
necessary Interruption so muscular
endurance
there's plenty of fuel plenty of fuel
you manage acid buildup and you also
need to get that fuel out of you that's
going to be a capitalization issue so
the way that we can think about this is
capillaries surround your muscle and the
whole point of them is so that blood can
come into them they hit this
capitalization that actually slows the
diffusion rate of blood down and so you
can exchange nutrients in and get waste
products out and then we get things back
into circulation so the more of those
you have the better you are at
dispersing any of these waste products
build up whether it's CO2 or the acid so
the adaptation you're looking for here
is an increase in capitalization
potentially a slight increase in
mitochondria but the time is too fast
right so we're going to be able to need
to do these 50 repetitions and say under
a minute or something like that so
getting the mobilization into the
mitochondria getting fuel that way too
slow it's not really going to get our
performance here so what are strategies
to increase
acid buffering ability and then
capitalization
so on the capitalization side you simply
need to train
at that ability so you go close to
failure and practice that often that
alone will increase increase blood flow
to that local area which will take you
through your process of increasing
capitalization easy peasy specificity
just to briefly interrupt
I find it remarkable although not
surprising giving how amazing the human
body is that simply by doing some
movement repeat like a wall set or a uh
or push-ups or dips for that matter
repeatedly over and over and over until
you reach that failure Point yep or that
quaking point in the case of a wall set
that provides a stimulus for more
capillaries to be built into the system
literally the the production or the
um the trafficking of endothelial cells
which make up the capillaries and allow
basically more little pipes to feed the
system with oxygen and remove waste
products it's like irrigation right
imagine you had a giant field and you
had two big pipes running down the
outside well in fact if you want to make
sure water gets evenly dispersed across
the entire field you'll have a bunch of
offshooting little pipes and the more
those you have the more coverage you get
do we know what the specific signal is
that says hey
I failed at this we need more
capillaries I actually don't know what
that is I could I would speculate It's a
combination of
um acidity as well as carbon dioxide and
probably some nitric oxide stuff
happening there but I actually don't
know I'm guessing nobody knows for sure
because we still don't know for instance
what the exact signal is for hypertrophy
it's kind of an amazing situation we
know the requirements for getting the
results that we want yeah but we still
don't know what the specific signal is
um in any event what I'm hearing is
building more capillaries is great for
enhancing muscular endurance and the way
to get more capillaries into those
muscles is to train for muscular
endurance
by getting
close to failure or to some point where
you simply can't continue for whatever
reason could you give us an example of
what a reasonable training protocol
might be in terms of
the classic Galpin lists now exercise
Choice maybe a few options order
volume and frequency great what should
we be doing how often should we be doing
it and you know for instance should I do
wall sets to failures and push-ups to
failure given that this is a local
process I'm guessing that if I do
push-ups to failure I'm not going to
increase the number of capillaries in my
legs very much correct
so you nailed it exercise choice is high
Precision here so pick the muscle group
and the exact sequencing and movement
pattern you want High Precision this is
the thing if you want to get better at
applying hold the plank you're going to
do more push-ups two more push-ups you
can do some other stuff that's
complementary but really this is a high
Precision game do the exact same thing
for exercise Choice very simple there
okay in terms of exercise order I
suppose this dovetails with volume yeah
can I combine
um training let's say wall sets for my
quads and real you know nearby muscle
groups and then do push-ups to failure
uh and then also do some sort of um
pulling exercise to failure yep
absolutely again pick the exercises you
want the movement patterns you want to
do and do them the order almost doesn't
matter with the one caveat with larger
muscle groups particularly again
multiple leg activities that will induce
a small amount of systemic fatigue and
so if you I guess theoretically wanted
to maximize your push-up number
and you did a whole bunch of say split
squats
and you just did those and and you you
know did lunges for a mile or something
like that you might actually slightly
compromise you might not but you might
slightly compromise your ability to do
as many pull-ups in a row or hold a bend
over row or something like that so if
you really cared about that level then
you maybe want to do the one thing
that's most important first in general
my recommendation though is to do the
bigger muscle group first how many sets
and how often should one perform
training for muscular endurance
and when now the lovely part here is
we've moved down the Spectrum past
hypertrophy
you don't need a lot of load here in
fact the load only needs to be at or
slightly above what you want to move
so if you want to get better at
moving 50 of your one rep max you don't
really need to train much more than 50
maybe 55 or 60 percent of your one or
Max because if you go higher than that
the repetition count is going to fall
and you're no longer going to be
training muscular endurance so you just
need to stay right around that number
that you want to work on so again if the
target is doing more pull-ups and
assuming that you have the strength to
do it you check that box you simply need
to practice the repetition range that
you want to be in that's all it takes
you can repeat that a number of times
but because remember the volume is
fairly low the load is very very low you
can actually repeat these quite
frequently so you won't get extremely
sore from muscular endurance relative to
traditional hypertrophy straining
because the load is very very light so
you can do these more frequently if you
would like
more frequently such as you could do it
three or four times a week easy if you
would like you don't necessarily need to
three days a week per muscle group is
probably fine here
um if you wanted to do more sets on a
given day and do less days that would be
fine so if you want to do two days a
week and you say wanted to do let's say
you could do 25 push-ups and the goal is
to get to 30 push-ups just as an example
you might say okay I'm gonna do sets of
17.
and I'm going to do three sets of that
I'm gonna do that three days a week
that's going to build up quite a bit or
you could say look I'm gonna do a set
basically to failure I'm going to
recover and do one or two sets that say
80 percent
and I'll do that twice a week
that's going to push the pace pretty
well you're going to have a lot of gains
from that and again this is not about
hypertrophy this is about muscular
endurance so I do want to emphasize and
again please correct me if I'm um
talking out of line here I do want to
emphasize that
because we mentioned pull-ups if you
can't get 25 pull-ups then and you're
doing 10 you're training for hypertrophy
you're not training for muscular
endurance personally remember there's a
big cross over here
so anytime we're talking past like 15
reps we're technically in hypertrophy
and muscular endurance got it so here's
the common mistake
I don't want to get bulky
so I'm I'm gonna go lighter and do more
reps
and then people grow and then you landed
still right in the middle of hypertri
rank right so like for people who are
like oh my gosh like every time I lift
weights I blow up I go lighter I do more
reps and I you're still writing the
hypertrophy song they'd actually be much
better off training very very heavy in
the one to three rep range they'd get
really strong and they wouldn't grow
much exactly
so tell me if this is a reasonable
protocol for what I'm going to call the
typical person in my mind the typical
person is somebody who hopefully is
doing resistance training hitting that
10 sets per muscle group per week
minimum yep
to maintain or build strength and
hypertrophy
but is also doing some long duration
training that we'll talk about in a
little bit maybe throwing in uh high
intensity workout here there some
Sprints maybe some plyometrics
some skill based training they're doing
a bunch of different things to be all
what I would call All Around fit yeah
they're not training for any specific
event or trying to maximize any one of
the nine adaptations to the exclusion of
the others
that person decide okay after
um they do their longer run they're
gonna do uh Max time a plank to Max
duration
they're going to do a wall set to Max
duration and they're going to do
push-ups to Max duration and then also
do that same workout before they do
their high intensity interval training
some other point during the week and
then maybe even do it uh again
um on their so-called rest day just a
real quick five minutes of sure and in
doing so build more capillaries into the
relevant muscle groups and build their
muscular endurance yep without eating
into their overall recovery too much too
much yeah so again the nice part about
this is they don't Hammer you too much
you're not going to get tremendously
sore if you keep the load light the only
switch I'd make there is I would
probably do them after your interval
rather than before so you can make sure
you keep quality there and you're not
compromised by a local muscular
endurance when you're actually trying to
get a more systemic fatigue with
something like a higher intensity
interval training so that would work
fantastic the only other variable we
have in it on here is progression and
this is very simple try to add a rep or
two per week
that's really all you have to go after
so if you're up to 22 this week try to
hit 23 next week or for wall sits and
planks that would be added add time time
yep and if and if you run into a wall
there
just like the same Concepts we talked
about with strength or hypertrophy back
it down to more like in the 80 or 85
range and accumulate a lot more practice
that's going to help a lot with
capitalization as well as asset
buffering so you're going to continue to
give yourself signals for up regulation
of the processes needed for that and
it's not always pushing you to the end
failure just like we don't want to
always go to failure with strength we
don't want to always go to failure with
high intensity intervals either same
thing would be happening here
what about anaerobic capacity how should
people train for anaerobic capacity
what exactly are they training for
meaning what is the structural or seller
adaptation or adaptations that are
occurring that allow for increases in
anaerobic capacity and why are increases
in anaerobic capacity good for us
even if we're a quote unquote endurance
athlete or we are a recreational
exerciser who is not interested in
building more muscle speed or things
that I typically associate with
anaerobic capacity yeah so this is
really really fun
remember anaerobic capacity is the total
amount of work you can do for something
like seconds to a few minutes and this
is extremely high levels of fatigue the
highest you're really going to see and
by fatigue here I mean acid buildup
byproducts not fatigue is in like
mentally I don't want to do this anymore
so if we just think about the energetic
for a second
I'm gonna do say let's take a really
easy example of people have done that
thing where you uh you'll go to the
track and you sprint the straightaways
and you walk the corners remember that
sort of thing yeah uh tabatas
30 on 30 off things like this like this
is what we're talking about in this kind
of anaerobic capacity area now
here's what's going to happen is fat
going to be your limiting no we've
already made that clear right what about
carbohydrates well if it's a single bout
or a two or three bouts probably not but
if you're doing this for a long time say
you're going to go 30 on 30 off for 20
rounds you may actually start reaching a
point of running out of my muscle
glycogen
in any of those cases though you're
going to be running into an acid problem
if you were to continue to do this
multiple repetitions in addition to
running low and muscle glycogen you're
also going to start running into oxygen
transportation problems
because you're building up a lot of
byproducts you've got to continue you
will actually cruise into aerobic
glycolysis this is exactly why the
community that I have worked a lot with
professional fighters
very high level boxers world champions
UFC fighters it is a five minute round
that you're going to do five times this
is for world championship fights you get
one minute break in between so imagine
going like 30 on 30 off for five minutes
getting a one minute break and doing
that five times
even though the individual ballots are
30 seconds long the entire thing lasts
so long it is primarily aerobic
you have to have both capacities you got
to get really high anaerobic you also
have to have a lot of aerobic going on
you have you're going to start running
into limitations because of heart rate
stroke volume and then even potentially
ventilation
the need for oxygen to be able to come
in and clear the carbon dioxide totally
out of the system becomes a problem
because not only are you having so much
build up for such a long time you're
also using multiple muscle groups so now
this is a very important distinction
muscular endurance tends to be localized
now this is not
right if you're doing these intervals
you're on an assault bike you're
sprinting up a hill you're grappling
with somebody you have a lot of muscles
being involved which means all of that
waste is being dumped into the central
part you have to clear it and I'm by
clearance I now mean not out of the
muscle I mean out of the body
so your ability to bring in and utilize
oxygen is going to be a major limitation
to your ability to handle this stuff so
what do you do
well specificity wins practice the exact
thing you're talking about so if you
want to get better at sprinting the
straightaways and walking the corners do
that
you can't always do it though you're
going to run into limitations so this is
when backing off to a lower intensity
is going to give you a lot of benefits
we know very clearly if you want to
improve cardiovascular fitness high
intensity moderate intensity and low
intensity are effective and you actually
probably want to do a little bit of all
of them
this is why none of our Fighters would
ever just do high intensity training
there's going to be some moderate we
tend to call this like cardiac output
training you can think of this as like
anywhere between Zone 2 to zone four if
you like zones I don't use them
personally so I'm just going to
intentionally interrupt you because this
issue of zones has come up a few times I
want to make sure everybody's on the
same page you also mentioned that you
don't necessarily favor the Zone
nomenclature but for those not familiar
Zone one two three four all the way up
to five
is a kind of uh back of the envelope uh
type verbiage for some people and is
more precisely followed by for other
people meaning
for me uh Zone one is simply walking uh
easy walking zone two would be for
anybody the
Pace or intensity of exercise that one
could perform while still maintaining a
conversation but just barely
meaning if you were to push any harder
then it would be difficult to hold that
conversation then you'd be in zone three
and then zone three four five as I
understand them are a little bit vague
but maybe you could give us a sense of
the breathing patterns associated with
each of the zones so that people could
map to those uh when we discuss Zone one
through five uh and as I say all this I
certainly
um tip my hat to all of those people out
there who like to measure percent of
maximum heart rate they like to use
heart rate monitors
um they're using any number of different
devices I sometimes use those devices
but in general I tend not to and I use
my breathing as a Rough Guide of which
zone I'm in so before we go back to
specific protocols for anaerobic
capacity
tell me how you think about Zone one
through five and how people might be
able to assess whether or not they are
in zone one two three or four or five
great so zone five is that absolute top
thing and we can flag ourselves there I
liked how you flagged one and two the
distinction between three four and five
I'm less concerned with either uh we
will do some heart rate stuff but not to
identify what zone we're in
um the fact is the distinction between
those zones is basically just made up
right that not that it's fake but
there's no like
rationale there it's a little bit like
perceived effort and weightlifting you
know how are you at 100 output or 70 you
know when you're at zero and you know
when you're at 100 in that moment but
the difference between 60 and 70 is
anybody's guess totally so we use or the
relevance right so why does it matter if
I'm at 60 or 70. is there actual
difference there's not right so it
doesn't really matter in that regard
um if you're a very highly trained
particularly cyclist things like that
then and you can control a lot of
circumstances those things start to make
a lot more sense um but when you're in
an open environment like the athletes I
deal with
just not gonna it's not gonna matter
that much so the way that I approach
this is
and I will use this word intentionally
stolen directly from Brian McKenzie and
his company shift adapt they use what's
called a gear system and I absolutely
love it it's what we've been using for a
long time
so with Brian with your permission I'm
going to take it right now thank you
Brian he gave me the permission to thank
you Brian Brian's a good friend of of
ours and I do think the breathing gear
system is a terrific way to think about
the zones and to get a good sense of
what zone one happens to be yeah great
so um the first gear is your ability to
Simply breathe in and out through your
nose at a set Cadence so basically
regardless of how hard you're working
can you restrict your breathing to like
a two to three second inhale
and then a two to three second exhale
and this is really clever actually
because
a lot of folks will jump immediately
into an over breathing strategy which
means you'll be ventilating more than
you need which actually sends that rer
up higher than it needs to be which
kicks you higher into carbohydrate
utilization if you're supposed to be in
quote unquote Zone one you're trying to
be efficient not fast so using more
carbohydrates than you need is not
beneficial here
you're walking for the day you're out on
a longer hike you're enjoying the day
you shouldn't be trying to ramp up
carbohydrate metabolism it should be
all right and so this would be getting
into an argument with somebody while on
a long walk you feel exhausted
afterwards and over breathing yeah
totally right okay yeah so you should be
able to breathe at a specific Cadence
and generally people are um doing that
more frequently than they need right
zone two uh rather gear two
is
inhaling and exhaling at whatever rate
you needed to be but still nasal only so
it is a force
right whatever you need to do but your
mouth is closed the entire time
you've shifted higher up you're burning
more and more carbohydrate as the fuel
source but you're still able to control
that and restrict the nasal breathing
now gear three and four which is our
final ones there's no gear five gear uh
three and four is like a subtle strength
and I actually don't even care about the
difference there I basically use gear
one two and then S4 but you're basically
talking about either a nose to mouth
strategy
or a straight up mouth mouth right so
breathing in through the nose out
through the mouth if you can control it
that way you can do the opposite
actually right can you breathe in
and out through your nose but the
classic one people do is enter the nose
out the mouth
um again I really don't even care about
distinction I basically jump from two to
four Brian May do it differently I don't
actually know
um four is just mouth mouth right and
this is the case in most sporting
applications you're going to be
breathing
because the nose is restricted right
there's only so much space and as we
talked about earlier the consequences of
not having enough oxygen in or CO2
exhalation if you're restricting that
this is going to be problematic so in
your actual competition please go to the
mouth if you need to right we practice a
lot trying to stay nasal only for as
long as possible but that's going to
eventually happen when you're doing your
high intensity intervals and you're
really going as hard as you can you're
going to have to go to your mouth unless
you're an absolute Freakazoid and you
can say in your nose but that's not
going to happen right most people can't
get past say 70 or 80 percent
while breathing through your nose um I
know some people can get higher but
that's the general distinction so we pay
much more attention to those particular
gears than we do heart rate zones and
zone five would be just pure mouth
breathing all out and then running into
your life the gear system is just one to
four there's no fifth gear got it so the
gear four would again be mouth mouth
breathing as much in as you can
breathing as much as you can out got it
and I I appreciate your description of
of the gear system and how it um roughly
relates to the zones we've been talking
about also
um I'm reminded if anyone wants to
experience the relationship between
breathing in the offloading of carbon
dioxide and your ability to exert effort
in anything a game that a friend of mine
sometimes likes to play when we walk or
Jog and talk is he'll say let's just
hold our breath now until we hit that
piling or that
um uh lifeguard stand on the beach and
within seconds you actually can start to
panic absolutely also becomes very hard
to coordinate your action after a little
while again be really careful with this
but but it will teach you in a moment in
a very real world way how important it
is to be able to offload carbon dioxide
because you're probably not running out
of oxygen at those lower intensities no
questions You're simply building up
carbon dioxide and that gas reflex is
screaming to go off and you're actively
suppressing it yeah so the interesting
test here is your CO2 Tolerance on
Ryan's website you can go directly there
you can there's a video to how to run
this test and then you can put in your
numbers and it'll tell you sort of
exactly what to do as a result of it but
the CO2 tolerance test is a test of
exactly what you just mentioned so you
should be fairly tolerant in other words
non-reactive
can be responsive but non-reactive
two elevations in CO2 so you should see
them and feel them but you should be
choosing how you respond rather than
adding a reaction
um there are interesting data looking at
things like out of the blue panic
attacks
you can actually notice those in blood
via rises in CO2 up to 45 minutes prior
to the event happening so there are
signals happening in your body that you
may be sensitive or not sensitive to the
more in tune you can get with that the
better your life is going to be and even
if we're specifically just talking about
exercise performance so it's okay for
CO2 to rise it's going to rise it's a
byproduct of anaerobic anaerobic
metabolism it's a byproduct of
carbohydrate and fat metabolism as we've
established it's going to get there
you're going to feel that however if you
immediately go into a panic because of a
small increase in CO2
this is a problem so returning to
anaerobic capacity this morning we were
training not together I couldn't keep up
with your workout but I uh but in the
same uh General space and I did my once
a week maximum heart rate uh one minute
Sprint on the assault bike sometimes
I'll do more minutes uh meaning I will
do a one minute then take some rest and
do another minute after some rest but I
decided to do that one minute with you
there so I could learn from you and
indeed
um
I have to assume that that was largely
within the anaerobic capacity Realm
the first 30 seconds or so were
manageable we're getting more and more
painful there was a quit signal going
off in my head you said there's real
magic that occurs around second 40 and
indeed somewhere around second 40 for
whatever reason it seemed easier but at
the one minute Mark I was happy to stop
because I was really at at least what
fell to me uh 100 output yeah is that a
good protocol for building up anaerobic
capacity keeping in mind what you said
before which is that specificity or
precision as you've raised it
um is important that is if I want to
train uh anaerobic capacity for
sprinting I probably should have been
sprinting cycling I was I was on the
assault bike
um and so on
how many of those one minute all out
Sprints or 30 second all-out sprints on
the on the bike
could and should one perform per workout
and per week so marching through
exercise Choice yep let's do it um order
volume frequency and progression yep
choice of exercises
train for what you want to improve is
that right
not necessarily so in this particular
case if you have a specific goal yes of
course Do It
um exercise Choice a couple of things
you want to look for you want to pick
something that you feel extremely
confident in the movement with
because you're going to forget your
brain very quickly here because you're
going to go into our pain cave okay so
if you're not comfortable running
don't go run here you're never going to
get to the spot we need to get to it if
you're not comfortable or if every time
you you go on a rower your low back
hurts the next day
don't do it if you're not comfortable
using kettlebell swings you get the
point don't do an exercise you're not
comfortable with you also secondarily
want to be carefully cautious of heavy
eccentric loads
because you're going to be doing a lot
of repetitions at a high intensity so
this is where I love an assault bike
this is why a rower is great swimming is
amazing running uphill
generally more favorable than running on
normal ground especially if you're not
Runner don't run downhill that's a lot
of eccentric load I don't love things
like box jumps here
right because again a lot of eccentric
loading if suppose you can jump up land
on the box step down but now you're
you're again you're too many things are
going in your mind I don't want to slip
and fall I don't want to smash my
on the box what happens if I'm too many
variables
pick something that is safer where you
can really focus on your breathing and
your posture
and the performance
all right so that's exercise Choice and
then within that if there's some
specific thing you want to get better at
go ahead do it okay
how many different movements meaning
should I do the assault bike and then uh
some form of safe executable uh overhead
pressing
um it's a little hard it's a little
harder to imagine
um anaerobic capacity for the upper body
unless you have access to a skier or one
of these um what are those things called
the climber machines yeah the reversal
climber the Versa climber that's the one
the Versa climber
um you can tell how often I do that one
uh it's a great exercise so great piece
of exercise equipment yeah so we're
thinking how many how many
how many exercises and in what order is
it going to be two or three exercises
since you're involving a lot of muscle
groups typically that's a really
distinction generally these are going to
be total body movements so you can do
something like a ski org if you want to
really isolate your upper body great
love that you can do lower body
isolation like cycling right where
everybody's not involved you can use
weights here you can do some barbell
movements and stuff like that
they're just not my favorite choices for
most people
too many complexity things going on so
uh I generally am going to pick total
body movements uh pushing a sled
dragging a sled sprinting uphill
swimming these things like that are
going to be good I'm seeing now why the
assault bike is such a powerful tool
because you're using your arms with some
degree of resistance but not a lot of
eccentric load plus legs some resistance
not a lot of eccentric load and yet one
can go quote unquote all out for 30 to
60 seconds yep and and the consequences
of a technical breakdown are minimal
it's more like you're gonna actually
have a worse performance rather than an
injury rate so there's just a wonderful
invention uh because of that where other
things the consequences like say if
you're going to be doing a barbell or
kettlebell activity the consequences of
making a technical mistake
you might actually get an acute injury
right there so they're just a little bit
higher in the risk scale how many sets
or sometimes referred to as repeats so
how many 30 to 60 second
all out sprints again doesn't have to be
running sprinting but all out effort
would be the better way to phrase it
should I perform
let's say per week right and then decide
whether or not we can divide those up
across multiple workouts or whether or
not it's better to do them in the same
workout yeah if you're staying with the
same exercise for all of your workouts
that's a little bit different answer
than if you're if you're modifying them
so say you're going to do this three
times a week and you're gonna do an air
bike one day you're gonna do some Hill
Sprints another day and then you can do
some swimming another day for sake of
example I'm going to say
um same movement
because I think most people are going to
be most comfortable with one or two
types of movements unless they are
really coordinated or an excellent
athlete I think most people can probably
find a hill that they could run up yeah
and uh an aerodyne or assault bike a
rower things of that sort yep you're
gonna
have a pro and a con here so the pro of
doing less sets is you can actually
train much closer to truly 100 percent
the downside is volume slow
okay so a major mistake people make here
is they'll do something like
um I'll do 20 seconds on 10 seconds off
and I'll do that for 40 rounds
you're not really actually going that
hard on those 20 seconds so a key in
fact if you look at the literature and
all the buzz and all the positive
benefits of high intensity neural
training that assumes you are actually
hitting very close to 100 percent
if you're sliding down into like again
moderate training stuff you start to
actually be in a spot where you're not
getting the total
high-end stuff but you're not doing it
long enough to get the low end stuff
either and so you end up in this like
you burn some calories you probably
still enhanced mitochondrial biogenesis
and a little bit of capitalization but
you didn't really justify only doing
three rounds
that's where the problem comes in
so in terms of a couple of protocols
I'll give you how many sets per week
it's it's really hard to give a number
unlike the strength training stuff where
it was easy to kind of land some stuff
on a typical thing you'll see is like a
minimum dose tends to be something like
four rounds per day three times per week
wow that's a lot so my once a week
all-out effort of sprinting on the
assault bike the so-called Airline bike
for 60 seconds
one to three rounds of that
might be doing something useful for me
but I should probably be doing that
two or three times a week if you're
gonna get to a max heart rate I
generally like to say give me a minimum
of one day a week two's better
days per week how many rounds whatever
it takes you to get to that maximum
heart rate right so in your case you did
one minute okay good if you're gonna
extend past a minute or two
one round might be enough so for example
uh if you want to just do something
where I'm going to run a mile as fast as
I can that's all you need to do for the
day you don't need to do multiple you
can do mile repeats if you'd like but
that is really really challenging I know
we've extended the time duration here
but I wanted to go there to show you
the time domain matters here if you're
doing something like a 20 second burst
you're going to need more rounds if
you're doing something longer like
multiple minutes you don't need as many
rounds to get there so in addition
if you're really reaching past this
um 90 seconds of of Hell window
it's just going to do a lot more damage
to the system not damaging than bad but
as in there's a lot to recover here so
we need more recovery time from that a
20 second burst
doesn't really challenge you challenge
you in that 20 seconds but you'll be
recovered and fine a three minute thing
is going to hurt and it's going to hurt
for many many minutes after that and
you're going to still see maybe some
performance decrements the next day
depending on what your recovery stuff
looks like so a couple of things to pay
play with would be something like this
if you want to try like a classic 30
seconds on 30 seconds off protocol the
literature will show like a minimum of
four rounds of that probably three days
a week so 30 seconds all out 30 seconds
rest is one round repeat that four times
at least once a week at least two would
be better great right if you want to go
something a lot longer than that you
might be able to get away with one but
generally two days a week of this is
better if you start actually pushing
past like three to four days a week up
to five or six you may actually be
causing some problems
um there's just a little bit of excess
fatigue that's going to happen there
that you you maybe want to stay away
from in fact you can see a lot of
endocrinological problems and some other
sleep issues and some other things kick
in and we'll talk about more of those
things as later but um that's the number
to get with if you want to try something
more like a 20 second burst I actually
would recommend giving yourself more
rest
so you can actually do a higher rest
than work ratio most people tend to
think of this as doing like one to one
20 seconds on 20 seconds off or lower I
love doing like 20 seconds on 40 seconds
off
the quality of that 20 seconds becomes
extraordinarily high and it's also
possible to now get like six to eight
rounds so as I'm hearing this I'm going
to wager a uh an offer uh to you and if
you say Okay
um then to to those listening based on
what you're telling me about the
relationship between intensity and
quality
and the need for
sufficient duration of this anaerobic
work yeah
how is five to six minutes per week of
all out work that's pretty good so what
that means for me is I would do three
all out one minute sprints
on one workout separated by a minute or
two
maybe more
and I would do that two or three times
per week
just trying to hit that five or six
minute per week threshold yep actually I
think uh one of the uh
Marty gabala is the scientist a Canadian
uh guy amazing work he was done a lot of
the the research on high intensity
interval stuff right and I think the
number he actually threw out there is
some of his original research was
comparing six total minutes of work to
upwards of like 180 minutes of work
throughout
um the entire week and and one of the
classic studies was looking at VO2 max
improvements and he saw equal if not
greater improving civil to Max with that
so I think actually the name of his book
might be like the six minute workout or
something and so you'd like may have
nailed that directly on the head uh
purely by law but actually but I also
may be wrong with the numbers we should
probably fact check that yeah Will and
also by inference from what you were
saying you know if you're going to do
this 20 seconds on 40 seconds off and
you're doing more rounds or one minute
all out so the way I'm going to think
about this if it's okay with you is for
five to six minutes a week
I am sprinting yeah for my life correct
but I'm sprinting for my life with good
form in whatever movement I happen to be
doing and I can do all of that in one
workout but I'm separating out bouts of
20 seconds all the way up to one minute
yep by the necessary rest in order to
recover my breathing get back to Pure
nasal breathing maybe Zone one zone
totally totally and then hit it again if
you're gonna do the one minute thing
like you do I actually generally
encourage one to three minutes of rest
before you do the next round and
probably up to four to six rounds that
would be your six minute number there
now the caveat there is we don't worry
about heart rate recovery we worry about
exactly what you mentioned which is
nasal only recovery once you can get
back to that give yourself another 30
seconds or so and then you're ready to
go for round two this is where it gets
fun because I can imagine challenging
myself to get on the assault bike for
one minute of kind of warm-up very low
intensity each morning and then Sprint
for a minute and then head off into my
daily routine no okay that
if you're going to do that though you
need to give me three minutes of nasal
only breathing before you go back to
work
we need to download and there are people
in my life that would love for me to
engage in more nasal breathing because
it will have me speaking less so no
problem chances are I'm going to use the
um two or three workouts per week of a
one minute all out maybe I'll try the
shorter protocol can I give you one fun
protocol to try here please so if you
have a you can use this on any equipment
um but I learned this from another
mutual friend Kenny Kane this is a great
little it's a little test a little a
little game you can play with yourself
and the only way to play this game is
you're going to lose
which is really really lovely so you can
do this at any rate you can do this for
any duration of time but two minutes is
a good number Okay so you have to do
this in somewhere where you can no
distance so this could be running
cycling the the air bike is what I use
the first two minutes you're going to
cover as much distance as you can
possibly cover in two minutes
and you're going to note that so let's
say you covered
400 meters
right okay great you're going to rest
for two minutes
amazing that next round you're now going
to go for distance so you're going to
cover the exact same amount of distance
you covered in round one which in this
example is 400 meters
and it doesn't matter how long it takes
you
it may take you two minutes and five
seconds two minutes and 10 seconds
because you're a little bit fatigued
from round one round three you're gonna
now come back and do that exact same
time domain that you did in round two so
if it took you two minutes and five
seconds in round two now round three is
going to last two minutes and five
seconds and you want to see if you can
cover a greater distance
405 meters 410 meters and then you did
in round one and the beauty of this
little protocol six minutes total of
work right
but if you slack in one of the rounds
you just make the next round harder is
there any rest between rounds yeah two
minutes
always two minutes rest you don't have
to but this would be my recommendation
Kenny king came up with this I don't
know if he came up with it he taught me
this thing we both know Kenny and he's
an incredibly nice and Incredibly
skilled trainer um I'm gonna call it the
sugar cane yeah it's so great because it
sounds really painful and if you go out
too hard in round one
you're in such big trouble round two but
if you go to Easy in round one you're
going to get absolutely obliterated in
round three so it's like a wonderful
thing and you can pick that number as a
standardization and then just try to
improve that a little bit per week so
progression is the last part of this
whole thing that we haven't got to yet
before we move on
um and the way you want to progress all
of these things
is you can time stamp again how much
work you can do and then just try to do
a slightly higher amount of work five
percent or so
every week or you can add a round which
is a really nice way so
um uh in the in the research studies
that have been done they're going to do
things like week one you'll do three
rounds week two you'll do four rounds
three you'll go five rounds you'll like
add a round until you get up to say six
or seven or eight rounds at the end of
the protocol so that's a really nice way
to go about it or you can cap the rounds
and just try to get more work done in
that same amount of time meaning go more
intensely correct get you know get
further distance in your 30 seconds or
your 45 seconds or whatever
um I want to encourage people
to go as low as 20 seconds
that's going to allow you to go very
very fast that's going to actually
challenge that phospho creatine piece a
little bit I want to encourage people to
also go as high as 90 seconds so the
honest way the way that I will do it not
that it's about me but just as an
example of something you could do I do
something in the 15 to 22nd burst range
and I will generally hedge towards a two
to one rest to work ratio so I'm
probably going to rest 40 to 60 seconds
that's true that's to make sure that 20
second burst is extremely high quality
cool I'm also going to do something in
the 30 to 50 second range okay I might
go one-to-one work rest ratio
the quality of those 30 seconds is going
to come down
but the acid buffering is going to be
extraordinarily challenged
I also will do that with a triple or
quadruple rest range so again 30 seconds
on maybe two minutes off
now I won't be able to be I won't be
working on my ability to handle
um the waste product build up there but
I'll be working on my ability to produce
more force over that time which is
another skill set and then all the way
up to say what you do a minute 70
seconds and you can go one to one there
or up to three to one um you're gonna be
working on a little bit of this
different thing but that's exactly how
we hit both sides of this equation
working on dealing with waste as well as
actually working on bringing in
nutrients and getting that system a
little bit more effective so you could
set that up across your week
and just it could be something like
day one is that 20 second burst window
day two is that maybe 60 second window
and then day three is maybe one all-out
effort
and we're done there let's talk about
the specific protocols and adaptations
related to maximum aerobic output or
maximum aerobic capacity as it's
sometimes called sure now we're moving
past like that couple of minute range
into like the you know five to 15 minute
range but at a maximum intensity so
what's the highest you can go from there
we're not talking about our last
category of long duration here well the
beautiful part is we've already
explained a lot of it because it's very
similar to what we just talked about
with anaerobic capacity it is primarily
going to be a problem
I'm dealing with waste products
especially at the end it's not enough
total distance to be running out of
muscle glycogen though it may start to
creep down a little bit Fat's not going
to be an issue but certainly more oxygen
transportation is going to be an issue
so we're just hedging a little bit more
towards that side of the equation
towards the end of that workout
no doubt about it clearing out waste
products is going to be a huge issue but
really oxygen demand delivery is
starting to take more of a prominent
role because we have had more time to
clear the waste and if we're not good at
that we're going to be failing earlier
than we need
so the training for that needs to be a
little bit
at that exact same so a classic thing
here is a one mile
test right this is going to last for
most people somewhere between five and
ten minutes you're sort of right in this
window if you just want to practice that
once a week we're done here right
exercise Choice same thing we talked
about right pick an exercise you're
comfortable with that you can actually
do and you can progressively increase in
terms of the intensity um you're not
going to be you don't have to stop and
change your exercise you're not going to
move around it's like a circuit isn't
great here because you got to put one
Implement down pick up another one you
want to be doing something where there
is literally not a second of off switch
so similar exercise Choice principles we
just covered
if you gonna become a real Savage and
you want to do repeats here you can
um endurance folks will do that a lot
one of my repeats 800 meter repeats
things like that or I'm not sure what
the swimming distance equivalents would
be but swimmers we do this constantly
but you don't need to
this is really hard it's pretty hard in
the system it's very good for you one to
twice a week of hitting this I think
you'll be in a really really good spot
frequency we sort of just covered we
covered exercise Choice volume we just
sort of nailed and intensity is
basically running you up to the top
there now because you can only do that
so often you want to add in another 40
or so percent of your time being lower
intensity support work for that so this
is something probably less than 85
percent of your heart rate but higher
than quote unquote zone two you got to
be working here this is not I could have
a conversation Pace this is higher than
that it's in between conversation pace
and the pace I need to be at to run my
fastest mile I've ever done that's that
middle ground and you need to train that
so that you can continue to work on
capitalization auctioning Transportation
but you're not burning down the house
getting all the way up to 100
100 plus percent of your vo to Max
could I use a uh accrued version of this
where I say okay I'm going to exercise
for 10 minutes I'm going to go as fast
as I safely can
and
every week I'm going to measure how far
I travel
yep in that 10 minutes love it
probably not on the same day that I'm
doing the anaerobic capacity work
probably not
if you're probably okay to do after a
strength training or hypertrophy workout
as long as I didn't train legs you could
um
is probably going to compromise recovery
is the way so I would if you're going to
do a session like this I would probably
do it on its own day unless you wanted
to do something like speed or power
then you could roll right into this and
have no problem
maybe a strength day a hypertrophy day
I'm not sure
um you would do there because again
especially if you did any sort of lower
body exercise you're going to be
compromised here but remember these tend
to be full body movements so even if you
did arms that day your arms are going to
be compromised and you don't want to
fail this because of local muscular
failure
all right so now I've got my work cut
out for me I'm going to be doing five to
six minutes per week of all out work
divided into 60 20 a 60 second
bout with sufficient rest and I'm going
to give myself 10 minutes a week of
in my case it'll probably be running as
fast as I can because I do enjoy running
and I can do it safely
um maybe uphill and see how far I go yep
if you want to combine the two
so if you're just saying hey I'm bought
in Andy like I want to do both of these
things they are similar but they have
independent benefits I'm convinced how
would I build these into the same week
um maybe do one of each that still gets
you at quote unquote two days per week
where you're going to hit a hot maximum
heart rate so we already checked that
box off so one day can be a shorter
length interval repeat one and the other
one can simply be a 5 to 15 minute
maximum work and you're done long
duration
endurance exercise the stereotypical
endurance exercise sure
how far how long how fast or how slow
rather should I go and here I'm gonna
Venture that exercise choice is one that
we could click off even at this point in
the discussion because obviously it's
got to be something that I can do for a
long while without getting injured uh
overuse injuries
um there's a little bit of novelty we
can actually throw in here so
one of the things I love to do for long
duration and endurance for people who
don't love running cycling or swimming
is you can do a really cool workout any
number of things where you can put a
little circuit together as long as
there's not a lot of downtime between
one circuit to the next time you can
actually do something as simple as like
maybe you're going to do Farmer's
carries and you'll do that for
say three minutes and you'll set those
down and you'll go straight into a plank
for a minute and you'll pick that up and
you go straight into maybe body weight
squats for two minutes then you go
straight into another exercise and you
can sort of rotate things around maybe
you can do even some like Shadow Boxing
stuff or some jump rope you can do
different gymnastics movements and body
weight movements and you can run that
thing through and you can basically get
the exact same thing accomplished and
not feel like you're doing oh my gosh
this mind-numbing type of training if it
feels like that to you another way you
can do that to actually even simplify it
even more we've done this at Kenny
Kane's gym plenty of times where you
just maybe even pick three machines so
you're gonna I'm gonna go 10 minutes on
the rower then I'm gonna go 10 minutes
on the treadmill and I'm gonna go 10
minutes on the bike you can actually
knock a 30 minute quote-unquote steady
state session out in and not feel those
problems if those things happen so you
can actually have a lot of fun there we
will do a lot of times
with our Fighters we'll do things like
put a very low load I'm talking sub 50
of your max on a barbell and you're
gonna Squat and you're gonna do you know
maybe a minute you're gonna put that
down and then you're gonna go over and
do 50 of a bench press you're gonna put
that down you're gonna go over and do 50
of uh
of a crab walk and then you're gonna go
over and do another one and you can
actually run through this entire thing
you don't hit that many reps in any
individual movement the load is very
very light and you can keep heart rate
basically a steady state and do 15 or 20
or 30 different exercises and it's
actually like fairly fun and engaging to
do and it's a little bit more specific
than trying to get a 275 pound NFL
player to run for 30 minutes which is
not going to be good so I'm just
chuckling because I love to run outdoors
and I've enjoyed runs on all my travels
and I find it to be a great way to see
different places and I like moving
through space but there are weather
conditions and times when that's not an
option so what you described is a
terrific alternative I have to
assume that the specific adaptation
that's occurring here is related to the
fat burning system
and again that doesn't necessarily mean
fat loss correct overall but fat burning
system and yet I do have a question
which is can you build enhanced
microcapillary systems into the muscles
uh by doing this long duration cardio
yeah absolutely can in fact depending on
which paper you uh like more than the
other papers you may even find evidence
that this is a superior method than
anything else a steady state endurance
is very important
I used to not like it as much
there's just so much evidence now that
suggests it's probably a really good
thing for basically everybody maybe for
some individuals it's not in all year of
their training but if if you're not a
high-level athlete or have a very
specific goal that's right in front of
you it's probably best to do at least 20
minutes as a minimum maybe 30 minutes of
some steady state exercise once a week
for basically any training goal outside
of again a couple of really specific
scenarios that are happening
the other thing that kind of kicks in
here that we haven't really talked about
is now we're actually reaching a
position where fatigue of the
intercostal starts to play
so diaphragmic fatigue starts to run an
indication so we forget generally
breathing is a contraction to open up
the lungs to change pressure so the air
will flow in and then the exhalation is
passive right it's just a muscle's been
stretched it goes back to it's resting
when you get to a maximum heart rate
inhalation and exhalation become active
so you're squeezing as hard as you can
to open up and you're squeezing to
contract to blow air out
you're going to get fatigued that system
right over time you have contracted
contracted open up if that system starts
to get fatigued you start running into
failure here so you need to practice
that and this is when all kinds of
things like breathing drills to just
simply training in this fashion there's
all kinds of exercise devices for your
lungs and when we say that that's what
we're really talking about the
musculature around the lungs needs to
not fatigue so that's the only other
little component I wanted to throw in
here if we're not talking about acid
buffering
which in this particular case is not a
problem anymore
the time domain is long and slower so we
have plenty of time to use fat as a fuel
we also have plenty of time to use
anaerobic and aerobic glycolysis and
clear out waste products so we don't
really see pH being a problem with this
type of exercise you may start running
low on liver glycogen if you're going a
very long time muscle glycogen may start
getting low but not really these are
huge issues you're going to run into
maybe a little bit of stroke volume
issue but and the intensity is not high
enough to become a problem you're more
likely to break down posturally or
breathing mechanics than really anything
else unless again that duration really
gets generally past two hours for most
people so those are the things that are
going to limit us so how do we improve
it what do we train we went through the
exercise choices you also need to make
sure you're training your intercostals
we need to be training our diaphragm
in some fashion again it can be the
exercise itself can be your normal
training
the thing you need to be careful of here
and this is actually true for all the
things we just talked about
when we think about fatigue and we think
about failure and endurance we really
need to pay attention to technical
breakdown
that is always the marker we look for so
when we when we go through our stuff
with our athletes and they quote unquote
fail or they finish that's generally
because we saw a massive technical
breakdown you're done like you're over
there it's not always the case during
all year round of the training but this
is something to really pay attention to
so if you're on that bike and you're 40
seconds in and all of a sudden posture
starts punching over I may stop the test
I may stop the training it's like no
well we decided failure was is when you
lost your Technique
to some sufficient level so you want to
pay attention to that too because that's
going to determine your ability to
perform well as well as maintain
efficiency which is a really big problem
here
tell me if the protocol I'm about to
describe would be a reasonable one for
people to incorporate
60
to
120 Minutes
of long duration work per week
so one way to accomplish that that I
often use is to head out for a
weight vested hike it's not a heavy
weight vest it's maybe I think it's
eight or ten pounds it's one of these
thinner ones and if people don't have
access to that you can bring a backpack
with some items in it I mean it can be
you don't even need external load it
could just be your body okay great and
and do some hiking at a at a fast enough
clip that breathing harder than I would
be if I just kind of shuffled along yeah
I might stop here there drink some water
no big deal
but I can carry on a conversation if I
need to so it's a Zone two-ish but
probably pushing a little bit harder
than that for that duration yeah not a
lot of um deep soreness occurring after
this maybe a little bit of achiness and
some stabilization muscles that were
used that may not be used Too Much
especially if I've been sitting a lot
during the week
um kind of reminds me of how much I've
been sitting but doing that all in one
Long Afternoon
um typically on a weekend or doing two
shorter sessions throughout the week
maybe 45 minutes and 45 minutes and then
working up the progression to longer
longer duration seems like that would be
something that most people should be
able to do yep and that it would weave
in well with any resistance training or
the uh anaerobic and aerobic output
capacity work that we talked about just
a moment ago great that's a fine version
to do it if you want to go shorter and
bring up the intensity a little bit so
you want to keep it more to the 30 to 60
Minute range and go you know closer into
the I can't have a conversation right
now but again I'm not at a blistering
heart rate
um then you could probably get that same
thing done in a smaller time window if
that was a consideration so if you
wanted to blend all three of these
together
you have a lot of wiggle room right so
you could do something like
order
if we're talking about this type of
training you could do this first
and then finish with either one of the
higher intensity stuff we talked about
so it could be roped into the same thing
it could be its own independent day
it could be your sort of active recovery
day it tends to be fairly restorative as
you alluded to a little bit there so
it's not that big a deal to do this on
your quote-unquote off day if you're
those
if you're that type of person who like
even on your off day you have to do
something physical
this is fine right if you wanted to do
it on a lifting day
especially if it's a power or strength
date it's probably fine if you wanted to
do it before the workout or after it
either way you're probably okay probably
best to do it after
if the primary goal is one of the
strength training adaptations if it's
not if this is a primary goal do it
first
amazing if you wanted to do it in the
combination
with the other interval stuff you could
do it fine there you could do it before
or you could do it afterwards I actually
have no problem doing it afterwards
because that in effect
especially if you say nasal only during
this training will help the down
regulation go and so you could finish
that fairly well down regulated actually
so it's kind of like a nice way to get
thoroughly warmed up
go really really hard and then give it a
nice 20 to 30 minute slow back down and
by the time you finish maybe even on a
three minute walk
nice slow nasal breathing four second
inhale
four seconds and yeah maybe five even
play with the numbers a little bit then
maybe you don't even need to do the down
regulation breathing afterwards you'll
be in a good spot what you wouldn't want
to do this before do your intervals
finish your intervals throw up lay on
the ground sweat all over the gym floor
get up and go back to work that's
probably not our best strategy
as people are hearing this all they may
be thinking wow this is a lot of work to
do but I've been keeping track of the
math here as I'm sure some of you out
there are as well and we're really
talking about
10 minutes of the of running or
sprinting on the bike or rower once a
week we're talking about six minutes or
so of the much higher intensity but
short bouts divided into rounds of 20 to
20 seconds to a minute with with rest in
between and then some longer duration
work out of
30 minutes minimum but maybe as much as
an hour even two hours which in total
doesn't really equate to that much time
especially if one can access these
things right out their front door or at
home and as we point out you don't need
any specialized equipment to do that
oh and I forgot the um muscular
endurance
that I wasn't trying to cheat there
um some muscular endurance
thrown in as well so that brings me to a
question which is
if I'm doing my training for muscular
endurance each week for anaerobic
capacity and for maximum aerobic output
and long duration and given that all of
that is going to take roughly two hours
for the typical person total for the
entire week which I would argue is going
to give you back so much life literally
in terms of longevity you're literally
going to earn back years of your life
productivity you name it offsetting all
sorts of uh metabolic issues and uh
enhancing your sleep and improving mood
I mean there's so much data so much data
pointing to all those positive benefits
if I do all of these things
and I'm fairly consistent about them am
I going to be metabolically flexible am
I going to have a well-developed
fat burning
carbohydrate burning system and
will I be essentially fit I mean this is
not leaving aside issues of strength and
hypertrophy which were covered in the
previous episode
will I be fit I mean to my mind the
ability to you know Sprint very fast if
one needs to the ability to go longer
duration if one needs to and the ability
to do something in between as well as
you know hold a box overhead if
necessary while installing a shelf or
something like that these are the
realities of life and to me represent
real functional World Fitness if that's
the case is there anything that we would
want to add to this program or would you
consider that a fairly comprehensive and
complete endurance training system if we
remember the target which is I want to
have energy
I want to look a certain way and you
want to be able to do that for the
duration of your life for a very long
life
this style of training where you
incorporate all of those areas of
endurance
gives you all of the necessary
adaptations one would need to execute
all of those things remember
fat loss or Weight Management
is not best done with any individual
style of protocol so if you do a little
bit of all three of these you've checked
that fat loss box you don't need to go
out and do anything separate for it
you've done all the things then to cover
Aesthetics
from that side of the equation right
you've done the things to both enhance
mitochondria
to enhance blood flow increase
oxygenation and manage fatigue and waste
development boom energy is there fatigue
is there I'm not going to get tired or
have to quit or stop or sit down doing
any of these activities I want at the
same time if you look at the literature
on mortality one of the strongest
predictors of how long you're going to
live is your VO2 max
so we've set up a scenario in which
you're going to hit all three of those
primary goals by doing a combination of
this training you're not going to miss
any plausible adaptation from endurance
training and you should be set for
regardless of your goal
incredible and as I understand totally
compatible with strength and hypertrophy
training provided that your goal is to
also be strong
and also selectively hypertrophy or
generally hypertrophy your muscles or
maintain your muscles
for many people that are listening to
this I'm guessing that they have an
interest in building more endurance but
not just the ability to go further but
the ability to go a given distance at a
higher speed and to do it with better
form and to breathe better and to feel
better before during and after
for those folks maybe you could spell
out a program that combines these
different elements of endurance
and does so in a way that informs how
for instance the higher intensity short
duration Sprints would be expected to
improve their longer duration work and
how perhaps their longer duration work
can progress if they are careful to
include some planks and some wall sets
and and things of that sort
I asked this question specifically
because I have to believe that while
there probably are some folks out there
they're looking to just maximize their
plank from week to week to week
typically it seems that people fall into
these categories of either wanting to
get stronger and get bigger muscles to
varying degrees or to get better at
endurance or to get better at everything
overall right now I'd really like to
just focus on what you think is a nice
Contour of a program for the person that
wants to get better at endurance but do
it with more speed more stability and
just feel like a strong endurance Runner
cycle or swimmer or whatever happened to
be their endurance event okay great so
let's just give an example maybe you
want to run your first half marathon
something like that okay or maybe done a
couple times before but you want to get
better at that time I would probably put
somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 to
70 percent of your you know mileage in
the moderate intensity Zone okay so you
need to accumulate mileage and you need
to be able to handle what we call the
tissue tolerance so in this case your
feet need to be able to handle 13 miles
of pounding okay it doesn't matter how
much high heart rate training you do or
your fat deliverability none of that
matters if your feet are blown up by
mile eight Okay so
in addition we talked about how even
training in that 70 to 85 percent heart
rate zone is quite effective at oxygen
delivery fat utilization capitalization
Etc so you're going to get a lot of
direct endurance benefits from that work
you're also going to be working on
what's honestly going to be one of your
limiting factors which is that tissue
tolerance and that pounding okay in
addition you need to be efficient with
your Technique and you need a lot of
repetitions for motor skill development
so you want to spend most your time
there it's easy to recover from it's not
extremely
demanding and challenging awesome that
leaves you with another 30 or 40 percent
of training I would spend 10 percent of
that in that like 20 second burst area
you're going to drive up fatigue
extremely high and you're going to
really maximize your ability to recover
from waste production all right great I
would spend the remaining amount of time
either on a little bit of actually
maximum speed stuff
that could actually be in the 20 second
burst if you're really trying to go as
fast as you can
at the beginning of that exercise
and then the rest of it I would spend in
that other Zone which is more of like
the five to 15 minutes but you're
probably going to want to repeat those
and this is when things like 800 meter
run rest for double the time
and then repeat that two or three times
you actually need that in this scenario
because you're gonna need to be able to
be running for two most people are gonna
do a half marathon and maybe around two
hours or so something like that and so
you want a little bit of what we call
repeated endurance right so be able to
handle that higher heart rate come back
down do it again at the same time that's
actually how you bump your mileage up
so instead of having this do more of
these long duration distance runs you
can still get maybe five or six miles
down in a day if you're going to do a
one mile repeat
or whatever number you're looking at so
for a lot of people that's kind of how I
would structure it um that's honestly
it's very similar to what we laid out in
the previous conversation which is
getting to this idea that more than 50
percent should be basically practice
a little bit of work at the very top end
of the spectrum but not too much and
then a little bit of work at the other
end and you should be in a good spot a
major mistake one would make here is
only doing the long duration steady
state stuff and just sort of saying I'm
gonna run a five mile this was a week
and then do six miles next week and
seven I said that might work for you
it's I think we have enough evidence at
this point both in the scientific realm
as well as most of the coaches I think
in this space would agree with me is
that's a sub-optimal strategy so it
could work but we can do better and in
terms of the structure of a program like
this I realize that those structures
vary tremendously different coaches and
different books and different programs
are going to say oh you should run
Monday through Friday with weekends off
or every other day but in terms of this
70 percent
um thirty percent divide where seventy
percent is going toward the specific
event you know doing the kind of work
that you're going to do during this
specific event that you're most
interested in cultivating or improving
and the remaining 30 coming from other
sorts of uh of supporting were work
how should one thing about Distributing
that other thirty percent should it be
all geared towards maximizing recovery
for the 70 or in other words
um could I do all that 30 work on one
day I probably would split it into two
days
um that's the reality is so if you're
thinking man coach wants me to train six
days a week my schedule is tight I can
pull off four to five
okay great what I might say is two of
those days are just your your tempo
right this is what like a runner would
call this like Tempo training I'm kind
of in that space remind us what tempo
training is
80 effort range where you're like
running at probably the same stride
length and and rate that you're gonna
run your race at maybe a little bit
lower but something similar you're
practicing skill you're accruing mileage
and you're getting a little you're
getting work in for sure work but it's
not absolutely the fastest you can
Sprint it's also not conversation so
this would be the um what before we
refer to as the 10 minutes of of fast
running or ten minutes of fast run this
is lower intensity than that got it this
is uh
this is work accumulation got it this is
practice stuff
um then one of the days a week I would
probably enter in that 22nd 30 second
burst for a little bit of speed there
and then one of the other days is when I
would do that true high intensity as
hard as I can for hitting a VO2 max
something like that so that's probably
how I'd break it up if I had like four
days a week if you had five you can
maybe add in another day where you do
more of that volume accumulation
practice work but that's that's a pretty
good split well this is the point in the
episode where I say
thank you ever so much you provided an
enormous amount of incredibly
interesting clear information that's
also actionable
I do feel as if I far better understand
endurance in its many forms and even the
seller underpinnings of that and even
sub-seller underpinnings of what
endurance adaptations are and how to
Foster those through specific protocols
things that not only I can do tomorrow
but that I will do tomorrow and where I
hit my pain points I'll understand
what's happening and the adaptation that
I'm triggering when my legs are burning
or I'm sucking for air through my mouth
or I can calmly move along just through
nasal breathing I will now know what's
happening in my body and the specific
adaptations that I'm triggering I think
you also highlight something that is
vitally important and I've never heard
it phrased as clearly as you did today
which is that it really doesn't matter
how one seeks out to achieve fat loss
provided certain criteria are met
even while certain forms of exercise tap
into fat stores more than others and you
beautifully Illustrated the relationship
between energy utilization and breathing
and the fact that we literally exhale
fat to some extent of course
so once again thank you thank you and
thank you I know I'm not alone in um
recognizing this information as
incredibly interesting and actionable
and indeed I do plan to put it into
action as I hope many of our listeners
will as well
yet again the pleasure is actually all
mine and uh I actually really appreciate
the fact that you let me go so far into
metabolism my PhD is in human
bioenergetics so anytime I can go many
hours into metabolism I get very excited
and I don't typically get that leash
um in this format so I appreciate that I
know
you understand your audience will love
that hopefully Oh They'll love it and I
think that they'll especially love it
because they understand that if one can
wrap their head around even just a small
fraction of the mechanisms that underlie
a given protocol it gives both
tremendous depth and meaning to that
protocol and makes it so much more
flexible for people they can really
think about what's happening as they're
engaging in a given protocol and know
exactly what they can expect in terms of
results Great we've been on a bit of a
journey here we've covered a lot of
ground with speed development and
strength and hypertrophy and now we walk
through you know probably several hours
here of of endurance what I would love
to do next is to just give you a more
straightforward
not as much background not as much
metabolism none of the mechanisms right
into protocols for someone who says look
I want to hit those marks you keep
talking about I want to look good I want
to feel good and I want to do that
across my lifespan how would I build all
these things into a protocol that
actually covers maybe the entire year
and how would I would be able to repeat
that year after year so I almost have
this Evergreen sustainable year-long
periodization structure that covers all
the nodes I need to if I want everything
we've talked about in these nine
adaptations in this short Series so I
would love to do that in our next
conversation
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discussion about fitness exercise and
performance with Dr Andy Galpin and as
always thank you for your interest in
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