Podcast #250 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2013/07/250-how-to-

build-muscle-and-endurance-at-the-same-time-get-abs-like-magic-mike-and-

become-a-faster-runner/

[0:00:00]

Introduction: In today’s episode of the Ben Greenfield fitness podcast: Can

Qigong lower your cortisol, how to build muscle and endurance at

the same time, the ALCAT test for food allergies, how to get abs

like Magic Mike, how to use oil of oregano, and the best workouts

for building speed and endurance at the same time.

Brock: Well it is a beautiful morning once again to have a delightful

discussion with you about fitness and what not. How are you?

Ben: You want a dog?

Brock: Do I want a dog? What?

Ben: I got a Rhodesian Ridgeback. His name is Blitzen and he needs to

go.

Brock: Oh no. What’s he done? Did he eat your favorite compression

shorts?

Ben: No he figured out how to open my bedroom door. So now he

comes in there whenever.

Brock: That’s pretty clever.

Ben: Seriously the past 3 mornings, 5 AM. He comes in there and

jumps up on the bed and he’s just like nose in your face. You know

come on come on come on let’s go.

Brock: That’s cute though.

Ben: And I’m like, no it’s not cute. It’s not cool. I get out of bed at 7

dude. And so this morning, he comes in, come on come on come

on, let’s go. So I get up and I’m already pissed at the dog. I’m like

dude you know, I just lost 2 hours of sleep so I get up and I’m just

like wandering zombie mode into the kitchen to make myself a

cup of coffee. And I slipped in like the biggest puddle of dog piss.

Brock: Oh no.

Ben: That I don’t know what he drank last night but it hadn’t been a

liter or coke or something ‘cause it was everywhere. And….

Brock: Nice.

Ben: As I hit the floor, shove out my hand into a nice big steaming pile

of his poo.

Brock: Dude. Aww.

Ben: And oh man, I was not a happy camper.

Brock: So you actually completely wiped out.

Ben: Oh yeah.

Brock: Not only that but into poo.

Ben: I yard saled into dog excrements so anyways, got my little, my

cold thermogenesis shower came a little earlier than planned this

morning and yeah, if any of our listeners would like a Rhodesian

Ridgeback, come and get him. He’s all yours.

News Flashes:

Brock: bengreenfieldfitness.com/250 is the place to find these next few

awesome, interesting, and abundant studies?

Ben: Good vernacular.

Brock: In it? Yeah ‘cause I was doing my best to try to alliterate a little

bit.

Ben: I was hoping you’d progress beyond the 6th grade vernacular with

awesome and interesting.

Brock: Awesome and interesting, nice.

Ben: What was the last one you said?

Brock: Fun. Abundant which did not make any sense.

Ben: Abundant, not bad. Abundant is not bad.

Brock: Make it quintessential.

Ben: Quintessential. There you go. And by the way you said 250. This is

our 250th episode.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: Dude.

Brock: I don’t know, is that, I don’t know if that’s a thing.

Ben: You know what? we’re actually giving out a crapload of stuff today

in today’s podcast.

Brock: Hey. Well we should have….

Ben: I don’t…..

Brock: Pretended we knew that.

Ben: Yeah. There we go. It’s because it’s the 250th episode.

Brock: There you go.

Ben: It’s official. So yeah, let’s go over this week’s cool news flashes.

Abundant news flashes. Quintessential news flashes. So here was

a cool study that came out about sports drinks and as many of our

listeners who’ve listened for a while know, I’m not a huge fan of

commercial sports drinks. Number one, ‘cause they’re mixed in a

ratio that’s greater than 4% which means that they have this

osmolality. There’s a 6th grade word for you.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: They have an osmolality that essentially drives water from your

muscles and your gut and so they decrease sports performance

ironically. And then of course also, they shift your body out of a

state of fatty acid utilization so I’m not a huge fan of sports drinks

and I actually wrote an article on this at bengreenfieldfitness.com

and I published it last night actually about everything that I feel

about pre-post enduring race nutrition for something like an

Ironman triathlon or a marathon. Published the exact protocol

that I used for Ironman and just a bunch of stuff about fueling.

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Brock: It’s good, it’s good. I’m only about halfway through it right now

‘cause it’s a monster of a read.

Ben: I was gonna say.

Brock: Really good stuff.

Ben: If you read it already I feel bad. I should have made it thicker.

Anyways though….

Brock: I’m only halfway.

Ben: This research study what they did was they built on research that’s

been around for a while that’s called the Swish and Spit Research

which is the idea behind mouth rinsing with a sports drink and

then spitting it out. Not in a form of like miniature bulimia but to

actually stimulate sensors connected to your brain so your brain

senses the sweet taste in your mouth and it inhibits its neural

shutdown of muscles so it decreases your rating of perceived

exertion, and increases how long it will take you to be fatigued.

Now this research has been around for a while.

Brock: So you’re not actually processing anything. Like your body is not

absorbing anything, it’s totally placebo.

Ben: You probably get a little bit of sublingual absorption but

interestingly, this most recent study showed that the people who

rinsed and spit out the sports drink actually had better results

than the people which actually swallowed the drink during the 60-

minute time trial which is really interesting.

Brock: In your face Gatorade.

Ben: And they suggested that this was because the carbohydrate spent

more time in the mouth during the rinsing so it had more

opportunity to stimulate the sensors connected to the brain.

Brock: Oh I see. ‘Cause usually just sort of pouring it right down your

gullet and you’re not spending any time letting your taste

receptors enjoy the shower.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: The deluge.

Ben: The deluge of….

Brock: I’m just gonna try and outdo you with big words.

Ben: You will win this morning, I guarantee after my dog….

Brock: Might have slipped in poo so yeah.

Ben: But the, this was a 60-minute cycling time trial which means that

glycogen depletion or carbohydrate depletion wasn’t an issue

anyways so swallowing this sports drink was obviously not gonna

give you an added advantage per se. But what they actually were

looking at in the study was if there was an effective time like how

long you actually kept the sports drink in your mouth prior to

spitting it out or how long you kept a sugary solution prior to

spitting it out and they had a control group that was you know,

kinda like an artificially colored you know, beverage that you kept

in your mouth for a little bit of time prior to spitting it out.

Brock: So it’s just water, no sugar, no malted extra or anything.

Ben: I don’t know if it was pure water that they used. I think it was a

placebo where it looked like it could have been a sports drink but

it didn’t have sugar in it. In any case, what they found was that the

longer you kept it in your mouth, the better results that you got.

Specifically, they did a 5-second versus a 10-second. They did not

actually have to keep this portion in their mouth for an entire

hour long.

Brock: For the entire marathon.

Ben: Right. But yeah, you hold it in your mouth for about 10 seconds,

you swish and then you spit it out and it gives you this

performance boost and for people who might be wanna stay away

from some of the deleterious effects of consuming sugar, like the

formation of reactive oxygen species and advanced glycation end

products and all these things that happen when you consume a lot

of sugar. Well you could still maybe like, you know, let’s say you’re

doing a marathon or you’re doing a triathlon or something like

that and you pass by the aid station where they’ve got the sports

beverages, just grab a cup or a bottle or whatever, swish, spit, and

get on your merry way and it appears it will help you a little bit.

Brock: Cool. Yeah, I always avoid those. I always go straight for the water

and drink that and pour it on my head and stuff and yeah, maybe

I’ll try rinsing my mouth out. Just be sure to brush your teeth

right after the race is over so it’s just not coated in sugary goo.

Ben: Yeah, the good old oral carbohydrate rinse.

Brock: Nice.

Ben: So there were a couple of interesting things that hit the news this

week on fish oil and I don’t know if you saw any of this but there’s

this study that came out that actually looked into the effect of

omega-3 fatty acid supplements aka fish oil and they actually

found a bunch of supplements in the market that were highly

oxidized and we’ve talked about how fish oil can be oxidized and

what that means is it’s been exposed to oxygen and a lot of times,

heat and some environmental variables that make that fish oil a

damaged fat and in this study, they took fish oil that had have

been oxidized and they split women into 3 groups: fish oil that

was not oxidized, fish oil that was oxidized, and then no fish oil at

all. And the fish oil that was oxidized actually resulted in an effect

in cholesterol levels that increased bad cholesterol, increased

circulating blood triglyceride, which is a bad thing, and basically

damaged the body more than not taking any fish oil at all whereas

the good fish oil that was not oxidized actually decreased these

levels of circulating triglycerides and oxidized cholesterol. So.

[0:10:00.1]

Brock: Can I just do a little aside here? Why is the circulating triglyceride

not a good thing? Don’t we want inter-muscle triglyceride that

uses fuel?

Ben: Yes, but high levels of intra-muscular triglyceride are much

different than cholesterol particles carrying large amounts of

triglyceride through your blood stream or having high levels of

blood triglycerides. That’s a pretty high cardio-vascular risk

factor.

Brock: Okay, so those are 2 very separate things I think that are coursing

through your veins.

Ben: One of the best ways to find out if you are high risk for heart

disease is to look at your triglyceride to HDL ratio. And if your

triglyceride to HDL ratio is greater than right around 3 and the

numbers vary, some people say 3, some people say 4, but if that

triglyceride to HDL ratio is high, that is a pretty significant risk

factor for heart disease and interestingly when I do my consults

via WellnessFX where I look over the bio markers of people, they

send me a lot of athletes, and you know, cross fitters and

triathletes and people like that and I usually see HDL-triglyceride

ratios that are actually or triglyceride-HDL ratios that are really

nice. Like in most cases, 1, 0.5, I mean that is one thing that is

seems an active population doesn’t have to worry too much about

is low HDL and high triglycerides. Unless you’re using crappy fish

oil.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: So, a few kinda takeaways from this study was number 1, make

sure that if you get fish oil, if you buy fish oil, you know the

source. You would ideally be getting fish oil that actually has been

tested for what’s called peroxide content by an independent lab

and you’re usually gonna pay more for a fish oil like that but it’s

worth it. There are some brands out there that I like. Pharmax is a

good one. Barleans is a good one. Carlsons is a good one. The

brand that I use is called Super Essentials. I’ve talked about that

one before. That’s also a good one because it’s also packaged with

anti-oxidants like Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, the skin

productine astaxanthin so you don’t have to wear sunscreen.

That’s a good one. That’s kina like my Cadillac of fish oil but the

other thing that I would recommend you do is whatever fish oil

that you get, you know, let’s say you go out and you get a good fish

oil, you wanna make sure that it doesn’t get exposed to a lot of

oxygen so keep it in a cool, dark, dry place. Make sure you get the

lid on there, keep the lid on there. The amount of oxygen it was

exposed to in processing is more important than the amount of

oxygen it was exposed to post-processing but it’s still important.

Once you get your fish oil, take care of it. And then when you first

get your fish oil, chew it. Like literally see if it tastes rancid. So

those first few fish oil capsules, if it tastes nasty, rancid, it will

basically almost taste like, a little bit acidic, that’s a really bad sign

and throw it out because it’s not only doing you any good but it’s

doing you harm and can harm your heart.

Brock: I’ve heard people talked about how, if you’re burping your fish oil

up after a couple of hours, it tastes like you’ve eaten a can of really

bad fish or something like a couple of hours later then that’s a bad

sign as well.

Ben: It is. I don’t burp up. I don’t even keep my Super Essentials Fish

Oil in the freezer which is a recommendation I made in the past to

avoid that burping up because it causes zero issues like that at all.

Brock: I know some of them are flavored like lemon and stuff to sort of

cover that up. I don’t know. Is that, does that make any

difference?

Ben: You know it might a little bit but you know, there are some really

really good nice like cod liver oils out there. Fermented cod liver

oil has some really good heart health and joint health benefits and

can really help with, for example, the growing brains of children

and we give our kids cod liver oil. They actually like the lemon-

flavored version but like a green pastures fermented cod liver oil,

that’s some really good stuff and they’re not putting mint or

lemon in there to cover up the taste of rancidity. You know, that’s

a good quality brand. So just make sure you know where you’re

getting your fish oil. And this reminds me of another study that

came out. I think you may have sent me this one Brock about how

they’re now trying to mitigate the effects of over fishing in the

ocean and the extraction of these omega-3 oils from fish by

producing omega-3 fatty acids in what amounts to a beer factory

so….

Brock: I didn’t hear that.

Ben: I thought it was you that sent me this article.

Brock: You just think anything that has anything to do with beer is from

me.

Ben: That’s true, kinda. The biochemical company Dupont has actually

created a strain of yeast, a genetically-modified strain of yeast that

produces omega-3 fatty acid as a by-product of fermentation and

these are the same, kind of, if eating omega-3 fatty acid is

generated by genetically modified yeast is your thing.

[0:15:16.9]

Brock: Okay so this isn’t a good thing?

Ben: I’m kinda waiting for the long-term human studies to come out on

this one just because of the unknowns, you know, when it comes

to consuming genetically modified foods or oils that are produced

by genetically-modified foods but these are yeast-borne lipids that

are very similar to omega-3 fatty acids. The cool thing that this

might be good for, if it turns out to be safe for vegans because it’s

not a fish-extracted oil and it did not hurt a fish in the process of

its making.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: And it could also, you know, be something that comes in handy if

we do end up completely over-fishing and you know, effing up the

ocean, then perhaps the global over-fishing crisis is something

that could be mitigated by a beer factory for fish oil. So I’ll link to

that article in the show notes over at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/250 and you can check it out. By the

way, last week, we mentioned that we were going to introduce a

new drinking game.

Brock: Oh yeah.

Ben: There are a lot of drinking games proposed over at the facebook

page but one of the drinking games was every time we say go

check the show notes you gotta take a drink so.

Brock: Oh, I like that one.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: I only saw the one that said every time we said poop.

Ben: Oh, yeah.

Brock: Just take a drink.

Ben: Between that and the show notes, people would already be get

their buzz on. So then the last thing I wanted to mention was

barefoot running. And a study that came out that looked at what

happens when you run barefoot versus what happens when you

run with shoes and in particular what they looked at was the

forces, what are called the patellofemoral forces, the joint stress,

your patellofemoral joint which is your knee joint.

Brock: Your knees.

Ben: And by the way, chalk me up a point for patellofemoral.

Brock: Yeah, nice.

Ben: Is that 5 syllables? It’s close.

Brock: Yes.

Ben: What they found was that there were significantly reduced forces

in the knee when running barefoot versus running shod, which is

my cool word for running with your shoes on. Shod. So which

reminds me of a horse.

Brock: It can be confused with shad.

Ben: Horses are shod. People wear shoes. Anyways though, this was

cool news and I, as you know Brock, because I coached you, I’m a

fan of sending you out there and having you run barefoot every

now and again, and one of my go-to workouts is just to put on you

know, I wear minimalist shoes but I put on my minimalist shoes

and I’ll run to a park where I know there isn’t a lot of sprinkler

heads and glass and where my dog hasn’t been.

Brock: Yeah, your dog. Yeah.

Ben: Then I’ll do some hundred-yard sprints, some strideouts, stuff like

that in the barefeet and just run home. And then the other thing

that I’ll do is that I’ll put on my vibram fivefingers and I’ll run

down to the river and I can swim in the river with my vibrams

along the trail, get out still wearing the vibrams, run along the

trail, jump back into the river, keep swimming, and that’s one of

my favorite workouts is I’ll just run around the river and hop in

the river and swim for a while and get back out, keep running and

you can do that just fine in a pair of vibram fivefingers, you can

swim with them and they don’t get soggy and kinda weigh down.

Brock: Don’t pull you down to the bottom of the lake?

Ben: Yeah, at least not yet so and you’re doing the minimalist footwear

as well right, Brock?

Brock: Yeah, I’ve been wearing the Skora for, actually it’s probably

coming close to, now I guess in the fall it will probably be a year.

Ben: The Skora.

Brock: The Vibrams a while ago.

Ben: The…

Brock: I’ve got some forms and some bass.

Ben: Yeah, that’s the company out at Portland?

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: Oregon, I think? Those are the ones that I wear for triathlons, the

Forms, no I mean the Faces that I’m in right now which is they’re

super duper barefoot style running shoe so….

Brock: Those ones with the laces or the Velcro straps?

Ben: Laces.

Brock: Yeah, I like the Velcro ones for triathlon cause you just like, I

don’t even have to undo them, I just like slip them on and then I

go. In fact, there’s, I have in the video that came out on the Ben

Greenfield Fitness phone app, I did a video review this week of the

pro-compression socks and sleeves and during that video I

showed something and we probably already gave the answer but I

showed a pair of shoes during that video and if anybody can name

what kind of shoes I showed in the video and put it in the show

notes or in the comments on the show notes, for this show, 250,

episode 250, the Pro-Compression folks said that they will give

somebody a pair of socks and sleeves for free.

[0:20:11.7]

Ben: Killer.

Brock: So you comment.

Ben: What are you wearing? are you wearing pants?

Brock: During the video?

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: No.

Ben: Okay, sweet.

Brock: I was wearing shorts.

Ben: Definitely go check out the video. It’s on the phone app. The

phone app is free and by the way, leave a review on the phone app

too if you dig it. So.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: So there you go and you win yourself some compression socks if

you’re the first person to watch Brock’s video and leave a

comment on, where are they supposed to comment? What shoes

you’re on?

Brock: Just comment on…. Yeah. What shoes I’m actually I’m not

wearing but I actually show some shoes during the video. Just put

a comment on episode 250. Podcast 250 at

bengreenfieldfitness.com and yeah, we’ll get your contact info and

send it to Pro-Compression and they will send you some free stuff.

Ben: Sweet. So not the compression socks that you wore, they’re fresh-

washed.

Brock: They’re fresh. They have none of my stink.

Special Announcements:

Brock: And because this is our 250th episode, we’re giving away more

stuff.

Ben: That’s right. What else are we giving away? We’re giving away

some Timex watches on the Facebook page. We’re giving away

Timex watches.

Brock: Awesome.

Ben: If you go to facebook.com/BGfitness, all you have to do is, many

of our listeners know, I’m writing a book right now and I’m

releasing all the chapters for free to bengreenfieldfitness.com and

if on your blog, your facebook, your twitter, or as a comment on

like, you know, some other big blog like Huffington Post or

whatever, you share linkbacks to any of the chapters in my book,

we are giving away, actually we have some really cool Timex gear

like GPS running watches, we’re talking about like 250 Dollar

watches.

Brock: Cool.

Ben: Handing them out like candy over at facebook.com/BGfitness so

check that out if you wanna win a watch and then also, how many

twitter people do we have following the show on Twitter right now

Brock?

Brock: 9 thousand and some…..

Ben: 9 thousand 700 something? I think it’s, I don’t know. 9,733. So if

you… 9,733. For our 10,000th follower on twitter, I am going to

send you a luxurious bag of salt that basically are like Epsom salts

on steroids. Ancient minerals.

Brock: Steroids.

Ben: These are the magnesium bath flakes that I use. They’re similar to

what you’d get if you’d like float in an isolation chamber and get

all of these super duper muscle healing salts absorbed through

your skin. It also does a lot in terms of like detox and stress

reliever.

Brock: Through your subcutaneous.

Ben: Through your subcutaneous layer. And what happens is it makes

you feel like a million bucks when you have added usually about 1-

3 cups of this to a bath and you soak for about 20-30 minutes.

Anyways, I have a 6 and a half pound bag of this stuff that I’m

gonna stick in the mail along with my dog and mail to our

10,000th twitter follower. So if you’re not yet following the show at

twitter.com/BenGreenfield, what are you waiting for? Go get

yourself some magnesium.

Brock: You know what they’re waiting for now is for somebody to be the

9,999th.

Ben: Well, yeah. What you could do if you really wanna do this the

right way is you follow right, and then at once you get to 9,999

you unfollow and then you follow again. I don’t know. You can

probably game it. I didn’t really think….

Brock: It’s gonna be that much but there’s gotta be a way to do it.

Ben: There’s gotta be a way to game it. Either way though, I'm keeping

my eye open and as soon as I see that 10,000th, I will direct

message you on twitter and send you some cool shizbang.

Brock: A luxurious bag.

Ben: So some other special announcements before we jump in to the

Q&A. I’ll roll through these pretty quick. Sound good?

Brock: Cool. I won’t say anything.

Ben: Alright. Let’s go through in chronological order. Boom.

Chronological, five syllables.

Brock: Nice.

Ben: August 14th through 17th, the Ancestral Health Symposium.

Myself, Mark Sisson, Robb Wolf, and Jamie Scotts and Jimmy

Moore are gonna be on a panel about ketogenic diets for athlete

performance. I don’t even know if you can still register for the

Ancestral Health Symposium but I know that a lot of our listeners

are attending it so come say hi. I won’t bite and I’d love to hang

out so ketogenic diet and exercise performance, come to our panel

and ask me some kind of funky question.

[0:25:09.1]

Brock: Don’t believe that. He will bite you.

Ben: London, for our London listeners. September 10th through 12th, I’ll

be speaking at the Global Business Triathlon Conference in

London. It ends on the 12th but I have decided to stay in London

until the 15th. So that’s a week and that’s a Friday, Saturday,

Sunday, something like that. And I have no plans, honestly like

I’m just chilling in London so I did it because I would love to do a

meet-up with all of our listeners, and all the Ben Greenfield peeps

in London so just go to the show notes, check it out, you can email

me ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com if you are a London Ayt, I

would love to get some boots on the ground. Help me put together

a meet up so email me if you wanna do that. We can even make it

to a mini-clinic if we wanted to, if you’re listening in and you own

a gym or a studio there, let’s do it.

Brock: Cool.

Ben: So check that out, London again, my schedule’s hella flexible over

there. What else? The Perfect Health Diet Retreat in Austin, Texas

specifically from February 6th through March 6th. If you wanna

detox your body, get away for one month, change your entire

month life in terms of the way that you view food, prep food, cook

food, and experience food, and especially if you’re an active

person and you wanna kinda see how to apply the perfect health

diet to an active lifestyle, you’re gonna want to register for the

Perfect Health Diet Retreat, specifically the one that goes

February 6th through March 6th. We’ll put a link in the show notes

or you could go to albertoaks.com which is the place where the

retreat is. Go back and listen to a few episodes ago, to episode

number 248 where we really delved through this in detail. I

interviewed the guy who’s putting it on, the Perfect Health Diet is

the diet that I endorsed, the diet that I use and I’ll show you how

to tweak it for an athletic lifestyle if you wanna get away and do

like kinda a 30-day intensive, it’s gonna be super cool.

Brock: You don’t have to go for the whole 30 days, so do you?

Ben: You could actually….

Brock: Go for like a week.

Ben: If you go for like a week, what they do is like just teleconference a

bunch of stuff over to you if you decide you just wanna drop in for

a week or whatever.

Brock: It’ll be hard to get away from home for a month.

Ben: Yeah.

Brock: Especially to Austin.

Ben: You know what, some people do it though. I mean like.

Brock: Yeah.

Ben: I won’t beat around the bush, I mean like some people just like

have high amounts of expendable income or whatever or you

know, or an intense desire or maybe you’re just like you’ve got a

spouse who works a bunch and you just sit at home you know, on

your bare feet with your feet up the couch watching Hulu and you

can stay at Austin for a month. So then the last thing is the

Thailand Triathlon Adventure. I don’t know if anybody listening

to the podcast episode that came out earlier this week with Dr.

Tamsin Lewis. She’s gonna be speaking at our camp there in

Thailand and she’ll do a triathlon medical Q&A. We’re gonna do a

bike fits, run workouts, swim analysis, and swim clinics, bunch of

stuff and then we’re also going to be like island hopping all over

the place in Thailand. Who knows, maybe we’ll drink some snake

blood and eat some scorpions.

Brock: Of course.

Ben: But either way...

Brock: I’ve never thought of doing that.

Ben: You can still get in at pacificfit.net/Thailand and we’re gonna be

over there. It’s kinda flexible, you can go for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 1

week, whatever but it’s approximately November 15th through

December 4th in Thailand if you go for the full. She bang. So we

are still gonna give away one another big giveaway at the end of

this podcast. A Ben Greenfield Fitness care package straight from

me but let’s save that for the end and jump in to the Q&A.

Listener Q&A:

Craig: Hey Ben and Brock, this is Craig! I just wanted to mention, the

folks over at Sweetbeat recommended that I try something called

Qigong to help with a little bit of sympathetic dominance there, I

think that’s how you say that.

[0:30:13.4]

In any event, it is really been helping my numbers on the app and

really been helping just over all well being for me. So, I wanna

know your opinion on that and also to mention to your listeners

there’s a great app available on Ipad called “Healthy with Simple

Qigong”. So thanks, love the podcast. Take care, bye.

Ben: Qigong!

Brock: Qigong.

Ben: Do you know, I have the Japanese kanji symbol for chi tattooed on

my shoulder inside the tribal sun. So yeah! I got that one, I was in

college. I thought it was pretty cool. I swear I come in late a few

times, the chi symbol, kanji. It’s worth it just for that.

Brock: And that’s what it’s for. What is that mean?

Ben: It’s chi. Life force baby. Anyways though, just to clarify I’m now

happily married and so the taichi or qigong, they are for all

intense and purposes relatively similar. I would say that taichi is a

little more of a practice you know, that involves postural and body

movements and a flow of the breath, stilling of the mind and

essentially specific movement protocols that are designed to de-

stress you, make you self-aware and heal your body and also be

use to get yourself into a state of meditation kinda similar to yoga

but a little more slow and flowing and almost dance-like.

Brock: Yeah! That’s beautiful watching some people do taichi properly.

It’s really mesmerizing.

Ben: Yeah and I actually ….. when I’m working with folks who are in a

state of adrenal fatigue or overtraining, one of the

recommendations that I make to them when I’m writing out their

program and at this point most of the programming that I do for

those folks is on Training Peaks, my online training platform. I

encouraged a taichi session each week and just recommend that

they go get like beginner’s guide to taichi on Amazon for example,

that’s really a good one and you just watch the video and walk you

through it (that’s the one that I own) and you can just do a few

simple taichi moves for example when you get up in the morning

or you know, once a week, like on a Sunday for example you

know, perhaps if you’re not working out and actually it’s really

really good way to reduce stress and we’re jump in a moment here

in terms of looking at this from a more physiological, bio-chemical

slightly less woo woo standpoint and whether or not it actually

works but Qigong is kinda similar to Taichi. Qigong is a little bit

more of a lifestyle though where you’re also focusing on things

like the introduction of Chinese herbal medicine, you’re focusing

on food, on lifestyle component, so Qigong is almost more of

kinda like your lifestyle and also incorporates many of the Taichi

movements as well. Now, any student of Chinese literature or

Qigong and Taichi practitioners probably about to jump to the

podcast and choke me out because I’m sure I didn’t do that

justice and you know, I don’t claim to be a Taichi or Qigong

expert. It’s essentially just something that I’ve personally

experimented with and the reason that I got into it is when I

tested my blood cortisol levels several months ago, and found

them to be true the freakin’ roof and so I looked into a lot of

different stress reduction protocols and taichi was indeed shown

in studies to be one of the ways that can effectively lower your

cortisol levels and similar studies have been done on qigong that

show a similar hormonal response in terms of reduction and

blood cortisol values. The cool thing is that it doesn’t stop there

for both practices they’re been studies that have shown

improvements in a bunch of different immune related blood

markers like your white blood cell count, your eosinophils and

your monocytes and your leukocytes and these are all cells

associated with your immune system function. An increase in

your ability to have an immune response in terms of the efficiency

of your antibody response, a drop in inflammation specifically a

drop in cytokines, c-reactive protein and interleukin which are

three pretty potent markers of inflammation. And then of course

what you would expect from like a psychological and

cardiovascular standpoint - decrease stress, improved markers of

mood on mood performance ratings, decreased resting heart rates

and also you know, if looked at in sedentary individuals, things

like improved bone density, improved fitness, I don’t think that

most of our listeners being relatively active people are gonna

noticed that doing taichi and moving around a little bit in grassy

park is gonna increase your VO2 max or anything like that but

from a stress control standpoint and especially interestingly to me

from just like a physiological bio-marker standpoint, we see some

pretty cool stuff going on with both of these.

[0:35:33.8]

I don’t know if I’m convinced that the qigong and the taichi per se

as much as it is learning how to slow down when you incorporate

these practices into your lifestyle but either way definitely worth

looking into the Ipad app that Craig recommended is again just

for Ipad but like I said there are other videos and dvd’s and things

of that nature out there as well as because this is popular for some

reason among old folks, you know, a lot of like your local

community centers, they offer senior classes on qigong and taichi

and so as long as you’re cool with going in, hangin’ out with Fred

and Wilma and whoever at the nursing home doing your taichi

there. You could also learn you know, more of a kinda hands-on

format. So yeah, there you go qigong, taichi, try it out! I’m a fan.

Brock: Yeah, it’s good stuff for people who are specifically suffering from

some sort of overtraining or adrenal fatigue that are having a lot

of trouble letting go of doing some sort of activity, this would be a

good way to sort a substitute that in and not have that just freakin’

out feeling like, “I need to go and do something, ride on my bike,

do for a swim or something,” this would be something to sort out

placate that part of your brain without beating up your body

more.

Ben: Yeah, or use this as your stepping stone to kung-fu. Kung-fu haaa,

Kung-fu panda! Waah!

Brock: I don’t know what that was. What was your voice doing there?

Ben: Waah! Everyone touch the pebble from my hand.

Chuck: Hey Ben and Brock, this is Chuck. I just got hired as a personal

trainer at a local gym and would like to put on some more muscle

and strength to better look the part also because I wanna get

stronger but I don’t want to sacrifice the triathlon speed that I had

as in previous training. I’m just trying to figure out how I can

maintain my triathlon speed ‘cause I’m still doing my cardio while

improving strength. My second question kinda live into that and

help me do this by starting taking creatine. I wanna see your

thoughts and I also sells some different ______[0:37:47.1]

including creatine monohydrate, beta alanine and citrulline

malate. I wanna ask if that would be more productive blend than

just taking a creatine monohydrate. So, if I have any problems I’m

glad to hear and thank you for having an awesome podcast. Please

keep it up, thanks guys.

Brock: I like that he wants to look more the part.

Ben: Look more the part. Yeah, yeah. Well, I’ve got four words for you

Chuck. Cut off jean shorts.

Brock: And of course, that can’t go wrong.

Ben: It goes along with the handle bar mustache and a mole. You can’t

go wrong. If you wanna get 80’s swole or 70’s swole whichever it

is, that the way to do it.

Brock: Cut the sleeves off of all your t-shirts as well.

Ben: Yeah, but like how to build muscle and maintain endurance at the

same time, tough gig but you can do it. I definitely have some

strategies that I use …..

Brock: Did you write a book about that?

Ben: I did write a book about it too. I wrote the ….. it was not a book, it

was a program but tri-ripped.com that’s part of what that is really

is like how do you be a fast triathlete but also not look like the

kinda person who’s gonna get sand kicked in the face of the beach.

I personally being an ex-body builder, being in fitness, still havin’

to take my shirt off in videos and stuff like that, I like to maintain

a decent body like I don’t wanna totally gets super duper skinny

and lean. Yeah, I’d probably be able to be a faster cyclist or a

faster runner if I were to shed a little bit more muscle than I’ve

already shed but I mean how I’ve lost 35 lbs of muscle since I

started this sport and I really don’t wanna lose much more. As a

matter of fact …..

Brock: You see those guys in the Tour De France and their upper bodies

looked like 12 year old, some you know, I respect the ability to get

that way and to stay that way and why they do it and stuff but not

just how I wanna look.

Ben: Yeah and you have some you know, downstream bone density and

hormonal issues and all that jazz but I mean, I respect to those of

these two, they ride bikes very quickly, bike quite quickly quite

faster than my car.

Brock: Ridiculous.

Ben: Vernaculous. But anyways, as far as what you can do, first of all I

mean, to be honest with you like creatine, and beta alanine and

citrulline and all that stuff, I’ll give you some of my

recommendations for supplement strength stacks but popping a

bunch of pills is not what’s going to really significantly help you

out here.

[0:40:17.2]

It’s gonna come down more to what you’re doing from an activity

level standpoint. So, I’ll give you some basic rules that you can

follow Chuck and these are the same type of rules that I use in my

program at tri-ripped. First of all, when you can do strength

before cardio, okay that means that if you’re doing it in 2 days,

strength session comes first or if you’re doing a one a day you are

not doing your cardio training prior to your strength training so

you’re not going for a swim and going up and hit in a weights or

you know, whatever running to the weight room and lifting

weights and running home or doing anything like that. What you

want to do if you’re trying to maximize muscle while still building

endurance is not send a message to your muscles post strength

workout that there is any type of caloric depletion or stress taking

place. So, you put the muscles in anabolic resting state as soon as

possible after you’ve drop the bar or the kettlebell or the dumbbell

or whatever. You moved on and there’s no heavy endurance

training after that and if there is any type of endurance training,

you split it up so it’s taking part later on in the day after you’ve

refueled, after you’ve re-fed. So for example if you are going to do

strength before cardio what that would mean is, you’re into the

gym or doing your multi-joint you know, heavier weight training

routine to put on some muscle or increase strength or increase

muscle mass and then that’s it. Now if you want to warm up with

cardio, you can warm up with cardio where you can do a short

cardio session before hand but ultimately what you’re trying to do

(and it’s a little bit of a convoluted answer here, I should have

another cup of coffee) separate the cardio and the strength. That

that make sense? What I’m getting at? Like ….

Brock: Yeah, yeah, no I think that you explained that really well it’s just

make sure strength comes before cardio if you’re doing heavy

endurance separate it, make sure you’re refueling and prioritize

one or the other on any given day don’t try to do both.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. Even like when I say strength comes before cardio,

like the even that kind of sounds like I don’t want you to think

that means that you go into your weight training workout and

then you hop on the treadmill or hop on the bike or whatever.

When I say strength before cardio I mean like strength workout in

the morning and then like cardio workout later on in the

afternoon or the evening after you’ve re-fed and you know …..

Brock: This is one of those times where fueling within like, what is it 30-

60 minutes after that workout is really important.

Ben: Yeah I mean, what research has shown is that there is no huge

need for post workout fueling unless you’re working out again

within 8 hrs or unless you’re trying to put on a lot of muscle in

which case you’re suppose to post workout both…..

Brock: Yes, your fueling both of those, that’s what you’re trying to do.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. So you’re trying to hit that 20-60 minute window, you

know, in some cases that window isn’t important at all in this case

it would be especially if you’re doing 2 a day. Strength on separate

days when you can in that kind of tied to just what I said about

separating strength and cardio but I realized that when you’re for

triathlon a lot of times you’re training for some of the sports:

swimming, biking, running and then in this case strength building

or muscle building that you can’t have a day that is only muscle

building day sometimes you’re just like “I gotta swim or bike or

run today,” in a case like that do not do eccentric muscle tearing

activities on the same day. So what that means is, the two things

that should not go together on the same day would be running

and weights. So what you could is weights early in the day and

then swimming later on or weights early in the day and then

cycling later on. If that doesn’t kinda logistically jive with you,

yeah you could kinda like combine all that into one workout but

just be careful again not to present your body with energy

depletion following your strength training workout meaning don’t

do like a long catabolic swim right after you finish pumping iron

but at least ensure that you’re not combining the two most muscle

tearing activities on the same day which should be running and

weight training. So, that’s another thing to be careful with. When I

said combine running with weight training, I’m not talking about

you know, for example like Martin Rooney’s got a really good

book called Cardio for Warriors which is kinda like an MMA style

training book and in that book yeah, there’s a workout called the

hurricane workout where you’re doing like a 3 second sprint on

the treadmill and then you’re getting off and you’re doin’ clean

endurance push presses, recovering, going back to the treadmill

for a sprint, that’s not what I mean when I say don’t combine

running and strength, what I mean is don’t combine like you’re 10

mile run day on the same day as the strength day.

[0:45:04.6]

I’m talking about like the long you know, chronic slow cardio type

of stuff so, make sense?

Brock: Alright. Yes.

Ben: Cool. I mentioned Cardio for Warriors by Martin Rooney is like a

good kinda like high intensity protocol and I like minimalist

training program like that for building muscle and maintaining

endurance at the same time simply because you’re taking

advantage of kind of a horse that we’ve kicked to death before on

the show the fact that high intensity interval training can build

endurance just as well as the long slow distance stuff and this

kinda you know, 2 different ways that you can skin that endurance

cat. So, in this case if you’re trying to build muscle you definitely

wanna choose that minimalist approach ‘cause you wanna use

your program like that Cardio for Warriors like my tri-ripped

program, like any of the …. go and read the article that I wrote at

bengreenfieldfitness.com called The Ancestral Athlete Approach.

You can just do a search for ancestral athlete at

bengreenfieldfitness.com where I talk about this concept of just

staying relatively physically active throughout the day, you know,

whatever, standing work station, pull up bars installed in the door

of your office, that kind of thing and you’ve got this short intense

workout that you’re kinda interspersing throughout the day to

really almost simulate that warriors, you know, hunter gather

standpoint of you know, I’m gonna gather, farm, walk around, etc.

and every now and again I’m gonna run from a lion or a bear or

lift a heavy rock and that’s a good way to kinda naturally build

both endurance and strength. So, I’d use that approach for sure.

For sets and reps, you know, I did mention that you want to lift

heavy things and do multi-joint activities and things of that nature

but don’t go too heavy and too low rep because if you want to look

the look you are gonna need to build some hypertrophy and I

mean, if you look at a power lifter a lot of those guys are slight,

they don’t look all that strong, some of them frankly are pretty

wryly and small but they move a lot of weight really quickly.

However, if you’re just looking to score aesthetic points in the gym

I would necessarily be doing like a five by three cleaning jerk with

short reps and heavy weights. I would be looking more into kinda

like the traditional more body builder ask, you know, 3, 4, 5 sets of

12-20 reps to muscular exhaustion and you’re basically just taking

your muscle and making it so that that muscle is really sore the

next day. And that frankly builds muscle pretty quickly I mean,

that’s the reason body builders do what they do so that’s called a

hypertrophy style set and repair engine and Chuck being a

personal trainer probably is yawning at this point ‘cause he knows

what hypertrophy is but that is the style of training that I

recommend more than like mass, strength or power training and

there’s a trade off there, hypertrophy training has not result in the

same type of sports performance benefits but if you’re just

wanting to be able to wear your ‘welcome to the gun show’ t-shirt,

you know, hypertrophy training is definitely something that you

wanna mix in there so 3,4, 5 sets 12-20 reps and that’s gonna

build muscle faster than lower sets with higher weights and low

reps so which which you know, that ladder approach is good for

power and strength not so hot for just straight up building muscle.

And then as far as supplements go, I’ve got a full on supplement

stacks that I recommend for building muscle. I give you the cross-

eye overview of it but really the gist of it, the most important thing

is that you wanna keep your blood levels of amino acids high

because that’s what gonna stave off muscle cannibalization

especially if you’re doing endurance training. And so that means

even if you can’t stomach let’s say a protein shake or a nice piece

of fish or a steak or something like that before say, like a bike ride,

you’re doing 10 grams of essential amino acids before you head

out and 5 grams of essential amino acids you know, like the

Master Amino Pattern amino acids or something like that every

hour during that ride or during that run or during that swim so

you are never putting your body in a state where it has to deep in

to and cannibalize its own lean muscle and of course the opposite

strategy goes if you’re on a loose muscle and lighten up you know,

maybe you’re a whatever extra ball player wanted to get in to

Ironman and you just shed a little muscle you know, that’s a

situation where you exercise in a state of low amino acid

variability and you cannibalize muscle but if you’re trying to do

the opposite, yeah, you keep the blood levels of amino acids up by

dozing with amino acids and again that article that I just wrote at

bengreenfieldfitness.com gives you options other than amino

acids for this like hydrolyzed whey protein that you can mix into

your water bottle or like an organic collagen blend like a great

lakes gelatin or a Bernard Jensen gelatin and these are like

powders that again you can add to a water bottle or something

like that or even interestingly bone broth you know, doing a few

cups of bone broth during the day does a pretty good job keeping

your levels of amino acids up where you can make it yourself or

you order it from like you know, thebrothery.com as you get one.

[0:50:25.5]

So, keeping the blood levels of amino acids up, that’s the key most

important thing from like a supplementation nutrient standpoint.

I have a muscle gain pack that I personally designed over at

pacificfit.net. It’s comprised of the top three things that I

recommend for building muscle. Number 1: whey a hydrolyzed

protein isolate and for you vegans out there, you can make a

substitute for a vegan protein but when it comes to muscle

building you can’t beat hydrolyzed whey protein. If you really

wanna get every advantage possible and you’re okay with eating

animal derived products, colostrums which flies under the radar

but it’s really potent in increasing growth hormone and you know,

there’s a reason that every baby mammal on the face of the planet

that breastfeed gets colostrums because it helps them grow fast

and then amino acids that pack is hydrolyzed protein colostrums

and essential amino acids and I’ve got some high school players

that I’ve coached that I trained online and were able to get

anywhere from 5-10 lbs of muscle a month by eating a lot of food

and including packs like that so, that works really well as far as

some of these other stuff you know, yeah, Creatine works,

Carnitine works, Citrulline works, beta-alanine works, usually

when you’re lifting as much as you’re gonna have to lift and doing

as much endurance as you’re gonna need to do to build strength

and endurance at the same time, you’re gonna wanna green

supplement in there as well to balance ph and so you know, that’s

a lot of stuff to stock but if you’re kinda looking for like the

ultimate supplement stock, I’ll give you exact milligram and gram

ratios and tell you exactly when to eat them, I’m just gonna put

them in the show notes, I won’t cover them in the show ‘cause

frankly I think most people wouldn’t remember the stuff anyways

so I’m gonna put it in the show notes but I’ll tell you exactly what

to take and when and just put that underneath your question over

at bengreenfieldfitness.com/250 but yeah I mean, you know,

creatine, carnitine, citrulline, beta-alanine, amino acids, greens,

colostrum, hydrolyzed whey protein, boom! You know, if you

really are going after everything that you could do so there you go.

Jenny: Hi Ben and Brock, this is Jenny. I have a question from the

podcast, I just wondering if…. I wanted to get your opinion on the

ALCAT food sensitivity test A-L-C-A-T. I had this test done and

after I had it done, I started to hear some controversial news that

it wasn’t accurate and I was going to apply the result of the test

which ______ [0:53:09.8] probably sensitivity to my diet and

since you know, I had many changes resulted in the report, so I

just want to get your opinion on the test and whether or not you

think it’s worth trying to apply and I don’t feel that, I just wanted

to know what I had as sensitivity to if anything and see if I will

still any different if I apply the results of the test. Thanks a lot.

Bye.

Brock: I’ve never heard of this test before the ALCAT. Have you tried that

one before?

Ben: Yeah, I get a lot of people that will come to me for a consult after

getting their ALCAT test because suddenly they magically find out

that they react deleteriously to like 300 different foods and

minerals and preservatives and environmental factors and it’s one

of those tests that’s like medical school syndrome or medical

school student studying a disease or …..

Brock: All of a sudden you think you’ve got every disease.

Ben: I have that. I have that too. Oh crap, I have that. So, ALCAT

testing measures how your blood cells react to foods under

conditions that are designed to mimic what happens when those

foods are consumed in real life. So I mean, that nutshell is what it

is but it sense for antigen leukocytes anti-body test and it

measures adverse reactions to dietary substances not by having

you eat all those substances and measuring your response but

instead simulating for each of those substances. What would

probably be going on from an anti-body standpoint in your blood

stream and then kind of extrapolating what you’re probably gonna

be allergic to based off of that. And I’ll put a link in the show notes

where you could go over to directlabs.com and check out all of the

different foods that this would test for, I mean, it test for food

additives and colorings, it test for environmental chemicals like

benzene, like chlorine, like fluoride, it test for 20 different molds,

you know, like spore molds and just penicillin and all like kind of

stuff.

[0:55:13.5]

And then every food on the face of the planet like 200 different

food groups and then what you get is a print out that shows severe

tolerance, moderate tolerance, mild tolerance and then stuff that’s

just kinda like super cool to eat. And the print out that you get

after an ALCAT is okay I mean it doesn’t include kinda like a little

bit of rotation diet where you can try out all the things that are

recommended to you as being okay to eat and see which of those

rotations you feel best on. It gets pretty complicated frankly I

mean like a lot of times this stuff stresses people out because it’s

there like so many things that you end up finding out that you

have to avoid and this is why it annoys because these people come

to me and they like ….”Can you write me out a healthy nutrition

program and oh by the way, I can’t eat pork, chicken, beef, eggs,

pears, apples, fish, any beans, legumes, no peppers and nothing

from the squash family”, you know like okay.

Brock: So you’re eating paper with ketchup?

Ben: Yeah, so we’re gonna do some romaine lettuce with barbeque

sauce. And you know, the issue is that when you look at ALCAT

testing or you look at Eliza testing which is similar or you look at

sublingual testing which you put this suspected foods underneath

the tongue or you even look at somebody’s IGG, IGA, IGE, what

are called immunoglobulin tests and I went over a lot of these

tests in a recent article I wrote about detoxing your body and

fixing your gut over at bengreenfieldfitness.com and we looked at

applied kinesiology and we look at ….. I liked some of the more

alternative medicine stuff like the NAET– Natural Allergy

Elimination Technique. All of these stuff is gonna test you and

none of it has really good pre-reviewed research behind it showing

that it’s gonna give you true results and also showing this not

gonna result in a lot of false positives, a lot of false positives which

is the big issue. A lot of these things are gonna identify things that

you tend to have a reaction to but they are really gonna generate a

lot of false positives and frankly many of the antibodies that are

gonna indicate circulating your blood stream are not because

you’re allergic to the food but just because you’ve got a natural

completely natural immune response to those foods because you

are already including them as a large part in your diet. So, I know

that’s kind of a bummer to a lot of people that a lot of this stuff

doesn’t work all that well but frankly the best way to assess

whether you’ve got a food allergy or a food intolerance is you have

to do the work. You have to get one of this you know, like an app

get like the sweetbeat food sensitivity app where you can input

your food intake and measure your heart rate everytime you eat

certain foods and also record how you feel or get the azumio argus

app is another one or you know, the good old pen and paper and

you essentially record your food intake …..

Brock: I’m not familiar with the pen and paper one, is that the Ipad?

Ben: It’s the penandpaper.com.org and yeah, 2 dollars and 99 cents on

ITunes.

Brock: Oh, …..

Ben: And you pay attention to your symptoms over a period of several

weeks, usually up to four weeks so if you’re getting swollen lips

and hives and skin rashes and diarrhea and constipation and high

heart rate, and dizziness and weakness and you’ll like finding…..

Brock: Go to the hospital right now.

Ben: And you’re getting what would be considered an allergic response

or an immuno sensitivity response or an intolerance response to a

food, you put a big red X through that food and you don’t eat it.

Okay? It’s not that hard but it takes work and I think a lot of

people don’t like to work, they just wanna go and do a blood drop

and get this magic result that tells them what not to eat and there

are a hell of a lot of false positives that you get from that versus

paying attention to what you eat, assessing how you look, how you

feel and you perform when you eat those foods and then avoiding

the foods that make you feel crappy. It’s not rocket science, it’s

really isn’t and I think a lot of people over complexify (I’m gonna

take a point for that word) and strategarize too much when it

comes to these stuff when in fact you know, there are some …..

let’s put it this way, if you feel crappy after you eat let say a pear

and then you get an ALCAT sensitivity test and you just like off

the chart for pear.

[1:00:05.1]

I’ll say, “Okay, so maybe we shouldn’t eat pears anymore,” but just

the ALCAT sensitivity chart alone that somebody who just feels

fine on pears but now gets really nervous when they eat them is

not enough for me personally and so that’s kinda what I feel about

this stuff I think that unless you combine it with actually paying

attention to what you eat and how you feel after you eat it that it’s

somewhat useless and very prone to error.

Brock: I think a lot of people just spend so much of their time walking

through life just kinda feeling mildly crappy all the time and that’s

the appeal of these kind of tests, I just wanna know what is

triggering this crappy feeling ‘cause I generally don’t feel like I

wanna feel all the time and I understand the desire to just wanna

have a list instead of having to break everything down I mean, I

spend a lot of time in a lot of big offices and see the things that

people eat on a regular basis it’s just awful and it’s a really big

change for them to make in their lives so it is heard and like you

said it’s like you being afraid of hard work is one of the biggest

problems but you gotta do it.

Ben: Yeah, I mean that’s really like I don’t do a ton of food allergy tests

like I’ve done some of it but let’s say, oats, I’ve never tested food

sensitive or food intolerance to oats and I’m done ALCAT and

Eliza and immuno, you name the test, I’ve done it ‘cause I dig into

this stuff and I used myself as a guinea pig and you know, I used

like a Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free oat and made oatmeal and soak it

overnight and did everything but if I did oatmeal at 8 AM which I

did for like 3 years almost every morning by 10:30 AM I was on

the toilet for 15 minutes or so and I like this kind of thought that

was normal. I was like yeah, it was my mid-morning bowel

movement or whatever. Lo and behold once I switch from oats

and eliminate them from my diet, gas, bloating, flatulence all that

stuff minimizes drastically, so there you go. I’m not gonna do

oatmeal much more anymore and you know, frankly no test told

me that and I just have to figured it out for myself based off the

way I feel.

Brock: Yeah, I just think it like for a lot of people they’ve got to start at a

higher level than that like you are already targeting oats because

you’ve already got zero narrow down to there but first of all you’ve

got to stop eating all the chocolate bars, you’ve got to stop eating

the donuts every morning that people bringing to you ……

Ben: Wooh, wooh! Back it up, chocolate bars! I’m not gonna stop eating

my chocolate bars.

Brock: But seriously, like there are just like plates of candies oat and little

balls of little chocolate bars and stuff and you’ve got to cut that out

first and then start eliminating the things that are actually food

and I think that’s a, that’s the big step.

Ben: Yeah, everything that I just said, you’re right Brock, it makes the

assumption that you are eating kind of a clean diet anyways and

then we’re talking about the real food that you might have issues

with. So yeah, if you’re starting from big Mac and candy yeah,

that’s a totally different perspective to start with then you know ….

Brock: That’s kind of a no brainer that the big Mac is making you feel

bad. We can make that assumption.

Ben: Those are the people that are listening to Jillian Michaels Show,

they are not ours. Our listeners are much more refined there and

further along their path would help in that, I think. Based off of

our demographic assessment, the majority of our listeners are 40-

60 years old highly educated females actually.

Morgan: Hi Ben, this is Morgan from Colorado. I’ve been listening to your

podcast over this past year and really enjoying it. I’m 43, six foot

tall and kinda lean and trying to bulk up a little bit in your average

sizes which planks have worked really well giving me some abs

but I’m kinda plateaued so my question is, after the planks gets

easier or I got really good at them, what is the next step to

continue the progress of building some abs kinda like your Magic

Mike abs on a podcast. I just started the planks and I get to, did

great, just looking for the next step. Appreciate what you’re doing,

thanks! Bye.

Brock: You know, I wanna get to the point where planking is so easy that

I just need something else to do. Way to go Morgan.

Ben: Magic Mike, Yeah! What’s the guy who plays Magic Mike in Magic

Mike? What’s his name?

Brock: Oh, he’s got a crazy name.

Ben: Oh, it’s like ah, ohh it’s gonna drive me nuts now. Ah, it’s like

Chaser Chatum or uhm ……

Brock: Channing Tatum.

Ben: Yeah, Channing Tatum. Do you know he actually used to be a

stripper before he was an actor?

[1:05:03.9]

Brock: He was a dancer.

Ben: I think he was a stripper. I’m pretty sure, I’m pretty sure that he

do, he was like a male stripper but yeah, Magic Mike, he’s got

some good moves on that show, some good stuff. Magic Mike abs

exercises, yeah, I wrote a whole article on “How to Get Abs Like

Magic Mike.” I’ll link to it in the show notes but it just goes on to

everything that you would need to do and one of the first rule is

don’t do crunches just because they don’t burn a lot of calories

and they primarily just burn or build your rectus abdominis and it

don’t give you show muscles really or go muscles for that matter.

But one of the exercises that I do…..

Brock: We should clarify what “go” muscles are. Go muscles are ones

actually help you with your daily activities. Like sitting up, out of

the chair, getting out of bed and anything like that.

Ben: yeah, or banging and thrusting imaginary poles. Anyways though,

as planking gets easier and easier because planking is something

that I do recommend in the article, you can make planking harder.

I’ve got some definite tips for that. I don’t know if anybody listen

to my podcast with Ari Meisel where we talked about the Man

Maker Exercise, that’s kind of a variation of the plank because …..

Brock: You know, with the renegade rows and the…. there’s a burpee

jump oh no, there’s a shoulder press at the end of it?

Ben: Yeah, you jump down into a plank position and then you do a

dumbbell roll on one side, a dumbbell roll on the other side, stand

up, you do a squat, you press overhead but you could just take the

rowing portion of that movement where you’re getting down,

you’re holding on to 2 dumbbells and you just doing renegade

rows one on one side, one on the other side while you keep your

hips from rotating too much and that’s killer for the core and

builds your upper body pushing and pulling muscles too. A

variation on that is you get into your front plank position and

front plank like a cable apparatus or an elastic band or a couple of

elastic bands that you have in front of you and you do elastic band

rows alternating arms while you are in that planking position.

Again trying to keep your hips from rotating side to side so that

your core is completely stabilizes as you do that variation front

plank.

Brock: So you started doing like a superman reach almost ‘cause you’re

out planking lifting your arm up towards your head but it’s

resistance on the way down.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. And so you’re pulling that band, you can also do but

nothing at all just getting the front plank position and you just lift

your right arm off the ground, reach forward, thumbs up as far as

you can at about like 1pm if your head is at noon and from that

plank position come back and then reach out thumbs up to 11

o’clock come back and that’s tough to do if you’re letting your core

rotate too much. I’m a fan of shoulder tops where you’re getting

the front plank position, you pop up into a push up position like

you just press yourself up into a push up position, you touch your

left hand to your left shoulder and then you touch right hand to

your left shoulder and then you go back down into a plank

position and just see how many of those you can do in 2 minutes

or do like whatever, 10 reps reach side or whatever. Kudos any of

our listeners who can do a 100 with us and that will show that

you’re pretty damn good shape, you can do a 100 …..

Brock: That’s a man maker.

Ben: Fifty per side. Side planks variations of the plank, big fan of those

probably my 2 favorite are number 1. To hold the dumbbell and

rotate the dumbbell completely underneath you body and then all

the way up to the sky or you are in that side plank position. If any

of you are visual people and not audio people when it comes to

these stuff, I’ve got all these exercise video recorded over on the

youtube.com/bengreenfieldfitnesschannel. If you go there and

you use the youtube search function and you just do a search for

the plank, for the word planks, you’ll see like a crapola, variations

of the plank but I like that one called Side Plank Rotations where

you hold the dumbbell and rotating your body. That’s a good one

for swimmers especially and then also just getting into a side

plank and doing abduption with your leg lifting the leg that’s

closer to the ceiling towards the sky and down, that one works

your abs and kinda your glute mids and a lot of those hip

abductors at the same time. So, that’s a good. And then the last

one I recommend for plank variation be the role out and this is

one that I’ve got a video for also on the youtube channel where

you get into a front plank position but you’ve your chins on a foam

roller or on a stability ball and you roll your butt up towards the

sky until that foam roller, that stability ball is more over your toes

and then you just roll back and it’s literally like your humping in

imaginary whatever it would be that you like to hump while using

that foam roller or that stability balls is kinda resistance.

[1:10:01.3]

If you really wanna take this one like to the umpteenth level, you

literally put a weight plate underneath your toes and in a front

plank position you walk that weight plate across the floor or you

could do it in a push up position either way so that’s called the

crocodile crawl and our crocodile carry or crocodile drag whatever

you wanna call it.

Brock: So, you just dragging the plate basically with your feet towards

your hands until like a pike position?

Ben: Yeah, actually you’re just walking the plate like it’s actually like a

basketball gym or like what a yoga studio …..

Brock: Oh, like a nice smooth flow.

Ben: ….just like walking the plate across the ground but it’s really….

Brock: Gotcha! I got to try that!

Ben: A lot of crossfit boxers will throw that exercise into, so, it’s a

goody.

Brock: What about dangling exercises like anything like you know, in like

a chin up bars, is that worth doing?

Ben: What’s you called, dangling exercise.

Brock: Dangling, yeah. ‘Cause I always do the pantless.

Ben: Yeah. Like no extra dangling. No. A hanging leg raises, a hanging

straight leg raises, hanging a bin leg raises, all that stuff helps but

I mean we’re specifically kinda focusing on plank variations you

know, these ones and all the other stuff you could do but for plank

variations those are some of the better ones that Morgan can

throw in there.

Brock: Magic Morgan.

Tanya: Hi Ben, this is Tanya Beben. I have a question for you regarding

the oregano oil. I just got over bronchitis last month unfortunately

I now have upper respiratory viral infection so I am taking some

flora since I was on antibiotics for the bronchitis. Bryan told me to

start taking the oregano oil this morning so I’ve been taking it

twice a day. My question is, how long do I need to take this and

should I take more of this than twice a day. Looking forward to

hearing your response. Thanks Ben, bye.

Brock: Yeah, how long can you take the oil of oregano before it start of

loses its efficacy? Hmm, efficacy?

Ben: By the way Tanya, shout out to Bryan. Bryan actually is one of our

thicky, Bryan just joined up with our Superhuman Coach Network

this month I believe so he’s in my mastermind program at

superhumancoach.com now. We’ve hang out, we hang out like in

Paleo Effects and he came to the superhuman live event and all

that jazz so, yeah cool stuff, Bryan’s a good guy. So, oregano oil, if

you wanna really get access to the full meal deal on oregano oil, go

to bengreenfieldfitness.com and listen to like the hour long

interview that I did with the guy who’s kinda like the world’s

expert on oregano oil. But oregano oil has really good properties

when it comes to breaking down bacterial cell walls, when it

comes to boosting your immune system or killing like air-borne

pathogens, it’s got some really good free-radical crushing

antioxidants in it, it’s good good stuff when it comes to

strengthening your body. Some of things that you can use it for as

it works really good with like candida and yeast and for people

who have bacterial overgrowth. What it does is it selectively

attacks bacterial cell walls of the type of bacteria that you don’t

want without destroying like probiotics and good bacteria in your

digestive tract so I mean, you can literally take oregano oil and

still be using , whatever you know, like a raw yogurt or something

like that, it wouldn’t cause issues with the yogurt. So, it’s really

good for that if you got like Candida albicans similarly for mold it

can do pretty good with molds as well and that what just be like

using orally it also works some like fungus and mold infections on

the skin like athlete’s foot and stuff like that. It works well with

parasites as well, you got to step up your consumption pretty high

to really work against like tapeworms and parasites and a lot of

nasty critters that people don’t like to think that they have but a

lot of people actually do. And for something like that we’re talking

a pretty advance usage like 50-60 drops a day so you go through a

lot of it ‘cause it does take kinda some pretty big guns to take out a

parasite but it works well for that. It’s actually got a lot of good

nutrients in it, oregano oil has a good amount of magnesium in it,

it’s got zinc in it, it’s got vitamin C, vitamin E so kinda beats the

pants off like one of those air-borne (I forgot some tablets, doesn’t

taste as good) but if you get and mix in decent ratio like you can

get it Pacific Elite Fitness has Mediterranean oil of oregano that’s

harvested over in Turkey I believe and that’s mixed in a really

highly absorbable 7:1 almond oil to oregano oil ratio so it actually

doesn’t taste that bad and almond oil really enhances the

absorbability and you use it like sublingually or in a glass of water.

Brock: I think that’s actually tasty, I’ve actually considered cooking with

it, oh just a couple of drops and the sauce would be delightful.

[1:15:05.3]

Ben: What else? It’s a bio-stimulant so it’s stimulate the flow of bio into

your digestive organs so you can use it during like a cleanse or a

detox protocol and it really helps to step up your detox. Some

women have found that it works pretty well with correcting like

pms symptoms or irregular menstruation just using that on like a

daily basis. What else? For allergies, it can improve like

hypersensitivity with the immune system also if you’re congested

or anything like that if you use the real potent stuff like 100% of

oil of oregano few drops of that in a glass of water, you toss a glass

of that back, it literally clears out your sinuses almost by the way.

Brock: And burns your face off.

Ben: I actually use the 100% …..

Brock: Really?

Ben: I have the people who mix it for pacific elite fitness just send me

the 100% bottles, you can’t buy it because it is dangerous like if

you get it on your skin and it’s really potent, it will burn your skin

but I like it because I can mix it in a glass of water and literally I

mean, feel like going down, it’s like taking a few shots of apple

cider vinegar type of thing in the morning. So yeah, it’s really

really good for that and then finally like colds, flu’s, things of that

nature taking it whenever you start to calm down with the cold or

a flu can help quite a bit with that especially with sore throats

because a lot of times that is like a bacterial fungal growth in your

upper respiratory tract so it can help kill off a lot of that stuff. So

as far as how you use it, advance usage if you already come down

with something or if you have like yeast, fungus, parasites that

type of thing advance usage we’re talking about 40, 50, 60 drops a

day and you can split that into like 20 drop portions in the

morning, in the mid-afternoon and in the evening preferably on

an empty stomach. For just daily use, getting some of the mineral

benefits out of it, getting some of the cleansing properties out of it,

just the natural detox properties, you would use right on 5-10

drops a day and I started off my day in the morning, the very first

thing I put into my body every morning is about 5 drops of that

100% oil of oregano. If you’re using the diluted stuff, you can do

more than that, you can do like 10 drops but I just stack that down

and it’s just kind of a good way to jumpstart my day’s cleanse and

you know, if you’re the type of person who requires a maybe like a

cup of coffee to have your morning bowel movement, oil of

oregano will definitely achieve the same thing within about 20

minutes or so.

Brock: Good.

Ben: So, you can use it for that as well. Anyways though, there’s a

bunch of different staple essential oils out there but the ones that I

keep around always are astragalus for improving my white blood

cell count and I take that during like flu season or when I know if

I’m expose to something or I’m traveling. I keep oil of oregano,

I’ve got phyto-plankton drops which kinda like, it’s not really an

essential oil but it’s like a drop we’ve talked about that before in

terms of helping out with the body’s natural repair mechanisms

through stem cell formation and then Echinacea again if I know

I’ve been exposed to cold or flu or something like that. But the

only one that I take everyday is oil of oregano, the other ones are

just kinda here and there as need be kinda in the medicine

cabinet.

Will: Hey Ben and Brock, it’s Will from the Ucan. Do you guys have any

tips for endurance training for natural sprinters? My lovely

fiancée is a personal trainer and natural long distance runner

while I am on the opposite side of that coin. I’ve always been fast

but struggled to run long distance and that long distance I mean

anything over 5 kilometers. I find maintaining my endurance is

extremely difficult as well. Any tips you could pass along would be

fantastic. Cheers! I love the show.

Ben: Oh what I would do if we’re Will, Brock is I would just like run

really fast in the beginning and then go around the corner, hop in

a car or bicycle, take advantage of that speed and just get as far as

you can and then meet everybody else in the finish line.

Brock: I think you should just run like 4k at a time as fast as possible and

then wait if you’re ready to catch up. If he’s really quick at

recovering, he can actually still beat them, just do it like in little

chunks.

Ben: Yeah exactly. So, building speed and endurance at the same time

just comes down to you know, the fact that as you build endurance

you gonna get conversion of your fast twitch muscle fiber into

more oxidative fat utilizing slow twitch muscle fiber which has a

longer time to fatigue but can’t produce as much force over a short

period of time so you lose some power. So you’ve got 2 strategies

you have to go over. One is to improve your endurance without

losing a fast twitch muscle or at least mitigating the loss of fast

twitch muscle but then also maintain what are called the number

of motor units that you have in the muscle are being stimulated by

your nerves so that as you kinda get that fast twitch to slow twitch

muscle fiber conversion, you’re still grabbing as many of those

fast twitch muscle fibers as you can when you do want to use

them.

[1:20:20.5]

So, a few strategies that you can use for this. The first would be to

go back and listen to what I already said to Chuck about not like

cannibalizing muscle mass so you do maintain some of that fast

twitch muscle fiber but then I would also for the endurance

component be going after things that are going to help you build

endurance without necessarily pounding the pavement. Probably

the top 2 things I would recommend to you would be, number 1

my enhanced breathing protocol that I have found people who are

not very good with endurance be able to go out and run and bike

for long periods of time just using this protocol and essentially it

is deep nasal breathing. It’s teaching yourself how to do deep

diaphragmatic breathing but do it through your nose and what

that does is it keeps you from going anaerobic, lowers cortisol

release and enhances your ability to tap into your aerobic system

without exhaustion and if you know that if you are doing the deep

nasal breathing you’re not tapping into the energy system that is

gonna fatigue you kinda prematurely. Now, I have a full article

that walks you step by step on how to breathe the right when

you’re working out and especially how to breathe the right way

and use this deep nasal breathing when you’re exercising. And

we’ll link to that in the show notes, my enhanced breathing

protocol but that’s one thing that I would recommend is the deep

nasal breathing and that’s what I personally been using like in my

Ironman training.

Brock: I think something that isn’t actually written up in your protocol,

one little hint is make sure you blow your nose really good before

you head out the door ‘cause your breathing quite vigorously

through your nose and stuff tends end up like on your shirt.

Ben: Breathe right strips. Have you used breathe right strips?

Brock: I haven’t tried that, no.

Ben: Those work really well like you use it like cleared out within the

first five minutes and you can even after you’ve warmed up, take

the breath right strip off and you’re good to go like it helps to

kinda clean you out in the first few minutes. The compex ems

(electrical muscle stimulation) training is another decent way to

build endurance at the slow twitch muscle fiber level without

actually going out and cannibalizing your fast twitch muscle and

so that you know, this kinda more of a biohacking technique that

some people might snicker at but it actually does work. It has

specific protocols in it the compex electrostim device and I’ll link

to that one in the show notes but you can choose the frequency

and the electrical frequency that you choose is going to dictate

whether you are calling on slow twitch or fast twitch muscle fiber

with those electrodes and so you can train your slow twitch

muscle fiber or the fast twitch muscle fiber or both throughout the

week and ensure that you’re getting both of those energy systems

trained without going out and doing actual catabolic training

that’s going to result in a loss of speed more still building

endurance.

Brock: Cool.

Ben: So, those are kinda 2 things that will kinda fly into the radar from

a training standpoint if you’re doing endurance training and you

want to maintain speed, number 1, make sure that you include

plyometrics. Plyometrics are going to ensure that that stretch

contract phase of your muscle after your foot hits the ground still

pretty quick so you’re gonna train yourself to decrease ground

reaction time which makes you better endurance source speed

either way so we’re talking about single leg hops, double leg hops,

bounds, depth jumps, things of that nature. So, even you know

like jump ropes can work in a pinch just like doing some short fast

jump ropes type of sets. Another thing that can really help out if

you’re trying to maintain speed while you’re doing endurance

training is overspeed training specifically the downhill repeats,

the treadmill repeats with the belt moving along at a pretty good

clip or using deep water running and deep water running allows

you to run at a really really high cadence without the same type of

knee and ankle and hip impact as you’d get running at that same

cadence on the ground. So, plyometrics over speed training those

are 2 things that I would use, another thing that I would look into

are running stairs ‘cause stairs can really give you that fast speed

if you do one stair at a time and then you do the downhill stairs

really fast that also can build endurance while at the same time

maintaining your speed, maintaining your turnover. So the whole

lens through which you’re looking at this is training your

endurance, going out and doing whatever those long training runs

that you’re doing to build up your ability to run longer than a 5k

but also not neglecting speed.

[1:25:07.3]

So you’re still doing plyos, you’re still doing fast feet repeats, still

doing some high cadence under water running, treadmill or

downhill running, still doing some stairs and then the other thing

that you should consider is ….. when it comes to maintaining

speed (trying to think if there’s anything else) that I want to get

into as far as it goes, just wracking my brain about speed training,

quickness training, exposes training, I mean, like speed ladders

and a ______[1:25:38.2] ladders that’s another thing that can

help out a little bit. I’ve got a whole article at

bengreenfieldfitness.com, it’s called “The Five Essential Elements

of a Training Program That Most Athletes Neglect: Power and

Speed.” I mean, go read through that one and just make sure

you’re not neglecting that stuff as you’re training for endurance.

Those are the biggies, those are the main things and I’m just

trying to think. Anything you can bring to the table here, Brock?

Brock: No, you’ve covered anything that I could think of.

Ben: Yeah, yeah.

Brock: Other than some sort of a blood transfusion or something.

Ben: Yeah, or dangling, dangling would also …..

Brock: Uhm, yeah. Dangle lots.

Ben: Dangling like Magic Mike baby. So yeah, I believe that …. Does

that wrap up the questions for tonight?

Brock: Does that wrap up the questions.

Ben: Gosh! That was a shizbang ending wasn’t it.

Brock: But, let’s save it by reading an ITunes review.

Ben: Ah, ITunes. Okay, so got a good one. So, if you listen to the show

and you’re going to leave an ITunes review and we read it on the

show and you hear it as we read it on the show then you tell us

that you heard us read on the show, we send you some cool stuff

usually it’s me sending out a bunch of random things I have lying

around my house and in this case well I have this week, I’ve got

some Tianchi, some Lifeshotz, I’ve got some X2 Performance,

natural calm magnesium, I’ve got some Phenocane, basically just

like a bunch of drugs. Here is what a chaoseternalnow has to say.

Brock: Nice! I like the name!

Ben: I kinda picture chaoseternalnow as being like disguise like

covered in tattoos with like a long haircut goatee and …..

Brock: Definitely some sort of a contrast …..

Ben: Like a dead bird on his beard and yeah maybe an electrical guitar

that he’s strumming as he …..

Brock: An electrical guitar.

Ben: Yeah, electric guitar. And his review says, “How would I end up on

this bike?” and he gives us a five star. So here we go, it says, “I am

fascinated with nutrition but as far as fitness goes, I’m mostly just

listen to fitness podcast while sitting on the couch much like

watching the food network while nooking a lean cuisine. However,

the more I listen to Ben and Brock the more I thought about

getting off my butt. Started small, a pair of running shoes, a

fifteen minute goal and here I am six months later biking with 50

lbs of kid trailer behind me. Hopefully doesn’t have like dead

birds and stuff and the kid trailer…..

Brock: Yeah, there’s a kid in there.

Ben: …… and training for a 25k this August. They busted too much

knowledge on me to ignore, oh, and all this knowledge put into

action cause me 50 lbs of body fat.”

Brock: Oh, that’s what he got in the kid trailer.

Ben: His own body fat. “Educate yourself,” he says, “this podcast will

do that.” That’s a pretty killer review! I like it so chaoseternalnow

if you heard us read your review then let us know and we’ll send

you some dead bird and body fat in the mail. So, there you go.

And you can be international, we will ship stuff internationally. I

don’t care if you’re in Dubai or Indonesia or wherever, we’ll send

you stuff. We’ll figure it out.

Brock: We have listeners all over the place. I can’t believe it sometimes

where we have a reach and …..

Ben: And no matter where you live also, go to bengreenfield.com/love

and spread the love. There will be a nice treat waiting for you

there. A nice special secret surprise at

bengreenfieldfitness.com/love. So, visit that, if you’re gonna be at

the Ancestral Health Symposium come say hello if you’re gonna

be in London, come say hello, think about Thailand…..

Brock: Go to the phone app, we’ll think about Thailand.

Ben: Yeah, go check up the phone app to win Brock’s running shoes, be

our 10th thousand listeners and get magnesium salt, get a brand

new Timex watch over at facebook, yeah, twitter follower.

[1:30:02.1]

Brock: You’re confusing everything.

Ben: And, oh the last thing, I released a premium podcast episode and

a premium video to our phone app this week. So, if you’re 1 of our

10 dollar a year premium members, that episode is everything you

wanted to know about ketogenesis and ironman triathlon training

so check that out if you’re into that and you actually don’t even

have to have the phone app to be a premium member, you can

just sign up and access any of the premium content from your

computer as well if you are 80 yrs old and all you have is a

computer without a phone or a phone….. and a dial up

connection.

Brock: and a dial up connection.