Ben Greenfield Podcast 100
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Transcript of Ben Greenfield Podcast 100
Podcast #100 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/06/episode-100-
bengreenfieldfitness-turns-100/
Introduction: In this 100th episode of the www.bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast: a trip
down memory lane back to the very first podcast, how to make your
kitchen healthier, calories burnt walking versus running, how long it takes
to burn off caffeine, how long it takes to build tolerance to caffeine,
whether caffeine after a workout helps, is aloe vera a scam? How to
determine how much salt is in your sweat, how to know if you’re running
hard enough and how often should you train in hot weather?
Ben: Well folks, you finally made it to the 100th episode. I know some of you
have actually listened to all of them. I don’t know how you made it
through 100 episodes, but if somehow you did, congratulations. Give
yourself a big hand. Now, in today’s episode, a little bit special on the
featured topic. We’re actually going to go back to the very first podcast
ever. It’s a little bit entertaining actually to hear the difference between
that podcast and this one. But there’s actually a lot of really great
information in there. Workout of the week, some information on research
at the National Trainer’s Conference, recipe for healthy chocolate peanut
butter ice cream and a little bit more. So about 20 minutes worth of
podcasting there for the featured topic in today’s episode. Also, remember
that all the questions this week were listener call-in questions. So a little
bit different there on the Listener Q and A and we will do our special
announcements, go on to the Q and A and then move on to that featured
topic. And remember, everything that you hear about today, I will put
links in the Shownotes to. So just go to the episode Shownotes for episode
100 at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and thanks for your support of Ben
Greenfield Fitness.
Now if you subscribe to the free www.bengreenfieldfitness.com newsletter,
you already know all about this upcoming Web cast that’ s on June 30th.
It’s a healthy cooking Web cast put on by the highly entertaining Chef
Todd. He actually did a great video post for us earlier this week that you
should definitely check out at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com where he
walked us through a farmer’s market, showed us how to get fresh produce
delivered to our house and at the end of this week, he will be showing
what he does with a fresh produce box that he gets at the Farmer’s Market
or has delivered. The whole theme of this month with Chef Todd is how to
cook with fresh, healthy ingredients. So I would definitely check out the
link in the Shownotes to go sit in on Chef Todd’s free Web cast on June
30th. You can actually listen to it after the Web cast has been recorded but
to get the listening link you have to register for the Web cast beforehand.
Now in addition to that, the podcast over at the Get Fit Guy this week was
on how to actually burn fat the fastest – which workout actually works to
burn fat the fastest. And remember those podcasts are only about five
minutes long but they’re kind of jam-packed with snippets and they’re
really, really dense in terms of the amount of advice that you get in five
minutes. And just like this show, they are completely free. Now the
Marathon Dominator for you running fans out there is still available at
www.marathondominator.com as well as a 30 minute video that I shot to
tell you a little bit more about how to actually train for a marathon
without getting injured and how to put together a four day a week running
program. So check that out at www.marathondominator.com and finally if
you want to join me in Thailand this winter for a double triathlon trip,
there are still a few slots left for that trip. You need to email me very soon
if you want in on that trip to Thailand. So if you’re a triathlete and you
would like to have a vacation organized for you to go race, then send me
an email [email protected] and I can still get you into that
race in Thailand which is sold out, but which is one of the best races in the
world of all that I’ve been to in terms of triathlon. So check that out. We’re
going to move on to this week’s Listener Q and A. Remember that if you
would like a Ben Greenfield Fitness T-shirt, you can either donate to the
show or order one or I’ll tell you during the Q and A how you can get a
Ben Greenfield Fitness T-shirt for free.
Sue asks: Hi, my name is Sue and I was wondering – it might be a strange question
but I think maybe you could help me out – we are remodeling our kitchen
and I was wondering if you had any recommendations on how we could
design our kitchen to better facilitate health, fitness and maybe even self-
control and eating habits. I think maybe you might have some good ideas
before we get started here, so if you could address this soon that would be
great. Thanks a lot, Ben. Bye bye.
Ben answers: Well Sue, that is a great question and I wish more people put a little bit
more thought into not only how they design their kitchen but how they
approach their kitchen in terms of the way that they’ve worked it into
their lifestyle. So let’s talk about some things that you can do with your
kitchen and with your eating habits in your kitchen to actually help you do
things like control your weight and eat healthier. Now, the first thing is
that there has been research that shows that when people off of dinner
plates that are smaller, they eat 22% fewer calories per meal. And in
addition to that, since the 1970s, dinner plates have grown by 25%. So
what this tells you is that if you stock your kitchen with smaller dining
platters then you’re going to enable yourself to eat just a little bit less.
That’s actually one of the things I’ll do when I eat lunch. I used to grab a
big plate and pile it with a huge salad or really big wrap, and what I find
now is if I use a smaller plate, I’m actually prone to eat less even though it
kind of fools my brain, because when I put a bunch of food on a small
plate it looks like I’m eating a ton of food. So, by making sure that the
larger plates are kind of more towards the back of your cupboards or more
inaccessible, maybe saving those for some of your bigger holiday meals
like Thanksgiving or Christmas, what you’ll do is enable yourself
psychologically to eat less. That’s essentially a way that you can trick your
brain. The next thing I would consider in the kitchen is that a lot of
kitchens have a ton of lighting in them. What research has shown is that
the higher the wattage of the lighting, the higher your stress levels. When
your stress levels are high, your appetite gets stimulated and you tend to
eat faster than usual. But on the other side if your kitchen is too dim,
research has shown that dim light actually reduces your inhibitions. That
might just be because you really can’t see what you’re eating or how much
you’re eating and so you eat more of it or eat some of the foods that you
normally wouldn’t. So, the trick is to light your kitchen in a comfortable
fashion without using too much light. So, the recommendation from
lighting experts is to not use more than 240 watts in your kitchen design.
So that’s the equivalent of four 60 watt bulbs. Or you could use six 40 watt
bulbs if you’re doing a bunch of different lights. For compact fluorescent
bulbs you could use a few of the 75 to 100 watt compact fluorescent bulbs,
but lighting actually affects your eating habits. So not too light, but also
not too dim. Now the other thing that’s very important is you not put your
kitchen or set up your kitchen in a way that it becomes a dumping ground
for things like your mail, for things that you have to file, for things you
haven’t gotten around to yet. Essentially the more organized and the more
clean your kitchen is, the more likely it is that you will engage in less
chaotic eating patterns. So they’ve done studies on this and they’ve
actually found that when people are distracted by things going on around
them they tend to eat about 15% more. So if you’ve got a bunch of mail
that you’re surfing through and you’re being distracted by a bunch of
other things going on in your kitchen, you’re going to end up eating more.
So what I would do is make sure that you reserve a space in your kitchen
that’s really designed just for eating and not for doing a lot of other
activities such as watching TV or surfing through folders that are on your
kitchen counter. In addition to the dinner plate issue, I would also pay
attention to the issue with the glasses. Studies have also been done on
glasses. I talk about this in my book 100 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism,
about how people tend to drink more when they drink out of large glasses.
When people drink their calories in general they tend to drink more. But
by using smaller glasses in the same way that you use smaller plates,
you’re going to basically enable yourself to drink a little bit less. In
addition to that, with large pantries that tend to have lots of bulk food
stored in them in huge packages, you will tend to eat more. As a matter of
fact, what research has found is that people will eat 23% more food when
they’re cooking from large containers and they’ll eat twice as much candy
from big bags as compared to little bags. So while it can be helpful from a
budget standpoint to shop in bulk, you may want to consider adding a
space in your house outside your kitchen, outside the place where you’ll
be snacking such as your garage or your basement where you store a lot of
your bulk food and the food that comes in big bags and then you can
transfer that into your kitchen and put it into smaller containers and
ensure that you don’t have large bulk sections of food cluttering up your
kitchen. Because you will be more likely to eat more when you’re eating
out of big packages. So here’s an interesting tip as well. If you have snacks
and you keep your snacks in clear jars, that actually makes you far more
likely to eat, because when you see the snacks you get this trigger that
goes on in your brain even if you’re full that you want to grab that snack.
So if you tend to keep things like cookies, mixed nuts, M&Ms, Trail Mix,
things like that in your kitchen – you actually do yourself a favor by
making sure that if it is in a clear container, it’s kept out of sight. And even
better yet, put it in a container that’s not see-through. So none of your
cookie jars should be clear, big, glass jars. And then finally, interestingly
on the same note as dinner plates being 25% larger than they were back in
the 70s, kitchens are about 50% larger than they were back in the 70s. So
again, a lot of things happen in the kitchen. And what you may want to
consider doing if you’re creating a huge kitchen and that’s the way your
kitchen re-design is set up, is ask yourself whether you actually need all
that extra space especially if any of that extra space is being devoted to the
type of activities that are going to detract from your focus on eating and
cooking. So for example, if you’ve got a space for a big TV or
entertainment center in your kitchen, you may want to re-think that. If
you’ve got space for bookshelves or magazine shelves in your kitchen, you
may want to rethink that. Essentially you want your kitchen to be a place
for cooking and for eating and not for entertainment. So great question
Sue, and I hope that helps you out. Best of luck.
Daniel asks: Hi Ben, this is Daniel calling from Switzerland. First of all, I wanted to
congratulate you for your qualification for Hawaii Ironman Gold
Championship. Cool job, man. Now my question is about following
formula. How to measure how many calories you burn during a run
session. My buddy gave me the following formula which goes like body
weight x distance which you meet for your run or your race, which will
equal into calorie burn rate. For example in my case this would be 70 kilos
which is 154 pounds x a marathon, this would equal in calories 2954. Now
my question, is it really the same calorie burn rate no matter whether you
run the marathon in three hours or three and a half? Your input or
clarification would be highly appreciated. Thanks Ben and have a good
one.
Ben answers: Okay, so first of all before we get to the meat of Daniel’s question,
essentially that equation that he’s referring to is an equation where you
could take your body weight and you can multiply it by the distance that
you travelled and that will approximate the amount of calories that you
burned during that distance. Now this works for the metric system. So
that would be the amount of weight that you weigh in kilograms x the
amount of distance you travel in kilometers and that’s supposed to give
you an equivalent of the number of calories that you’ve burned. Now,
according to that equation Daniel is correct, meaning that if you run a
marathon in three hours or if you run a marathon in say three and a half
hours, you’re still going to burn the same amount of calories because you
covered the same distance. Now from a purely mathematical standpoint,
that’s true but what the equation does not take into account is the
dynamic nature of movement. Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re
wondering how you could burn more calories with your training, this is
going to be important information for you to know. Because even though
you would technically burn the same amount of calories, say walking a
mile versus running a mile, the type of movement required to make your
body run makes you breathe harder because you have to push your body
off the ground. You have to swing your arms harder and you essentially
have to generate more movement if you’re going to run a mile versus
walking a mile. Now, when that occurs – when that increased movement
occurs, you generate what is called oxygen debt. Specifically, you have a
post-exercise oxygen debt. That means that when you finish exercising for
a certain number of hours, you have to consume more oxygen than you
would normally consume. When you consume more oxygen, that oxygen
is used to burn calories. So while you may burn the same amount of
calories walking a mile versus running a mile, after you’ve finished
running you will continue to burn calories resulting in a run generating,
for example, an extra 100 or 150 calories after the workout. In addition,
when you run you cause your muscles to create a greater amount of force.
So you stimulate the ability for your body to grow new muscle and you
also stimulate your body to produce hormones such as growth hormone.
Both of these will not only help you to stabilize your blood sugar levels a
little bit more, but they’ll also ultimately raise your metabolism. This is
why whenever you have the choice to go hard or go easy, you should go
hard unless you are recovering or unless you’re doing a very scientific
based triathlon periodization program where there are a lot of reasons to
go easy versus going hard. But ultimately what it comes down to is that
you always burn more calories when you run than when you walk. So
there’s more to the equation than first meets the eye. So great question,
Daniel.
Chuck asks: Hey Ben, this is Chuck. I had a question for this week’s podcast. They’re
kind of four questions all based around caffeine. And I wanted to ask first,
I know about how much to take before a training session or before an
event, but is there any point at which I should re-dose if I was, say, doing
a half Ironman? Would it be a good idea to take in some more halfway
through the bike? Also, how much really makes a difference? I know we
talk about 200 to 300 milligrams more or less depending on body weight,
but using a lot of energy, should you also take 25 or 35 milligrams, and
does that really make any difference? Next, can someone build up a
tolerance against caffeine where it becomes less effective and they have to
take more? And lastly, I’ve read some research regarding taking caffeine
post-workout with the recovery supplements and supposedly it helps it
get into your bloodstream faster and circulate around more to your
muscles and I wanted to see if there was really an validity behind that and
if it was worth doing or whether or not you would recommend it? Thanks
a lot man, I really appreciate it and I’m looking forward to the podcast.
Thanks Ben.
Ben answers: Well, as Chuck already knows and as you know if you’ve listened to this
podcast, caffeine can help you quite a bit with exercise. It helps you to
spare the use of carbohydrates as fuel so you use more fat and it also
makes you feel as if you’re not exercising quite as hard so you can usually
push harder and feel less pain. Now, what Chuck is first wondering is
exactly how much caffeine is actually going to make a difference –
basically he’s wondering whether the caffeine in something like a gel is
going to make a difference. Well, most of the studies find that the amount
of caffeine that’s necessary to really stimulate you to have a good what’s
called ergogenic or a sports performance enhancing response range from
3 to 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That’s a lot of caffeine. For
example, for some of the average guys who weigh 70 kilograms, if you’re
looking at 3 milligrams per kilogram, that’s 210 kilograms of caffeine.
That’s a few cups of coffee. If you look at a lot of these sports gels, many of
them contain 30 milligrams or 40 milligrams of caffeine. Well, sure, if you
just took one of those gels, you’re not going to feel it too much. But the
idea is that if you are taking say 300 calories an hour and each of those
300 calories is coming from a gel-based source and the gel has 40
milligrams of caffeine for every 100 calories, well suddenly you’re getting
120 milligrams per hour and that begins to take effect. Especially if you’re
taking in this caffeine during a long event like a five hour event or a 10
hour event. You end up dumping a lot of caffeine into your body. Now
while caffeine does have an ergogenic sports performance enhancing
effect, it can do things like draw water into your colon and over-stimulate
your central nervous system. And chronic caffeine loads over a period of
10 hours even to the range of 120 milligrams per hour will leave you with
things like diarrhea halfway through and the jitters. Eventually what
happens is the central nervous system stimulation almost causes you to
wig out. You start to feel really jittery and very moody, almost in the same
way as you would get if you experienced low blood sugar. So just think
about what would happen if you sat there during the day and drank eight
cups of black coffee. You kind of start to feel the same way when you’re
exercising. And that’s where you need to use caution. A lot of these studies
that have been done on caffeine have been done on people exercising for
60 minutes or 90 minutes and not out doing 10 hour Ironman events. So,
that being said, let’s move on to the second part of your question to
investigate this even further. And that is the actual rate of burning of
caffeine. So basically any molecule has what’s called a half-life in science.
And the half-life of caffeine or the rate at which it’s metabolized is about
4.9 hours in a regular adult. Now considering the fact that your
metabolism is going to increase as you’re exercising you could generally
give yourself a range of about three to four hours for caffeine to work its
way out of your system and for its effects to begin to disappear. So, if you
were doing a long distance event of say 10 hours, you basically have a
couple choices. One is you can take in a bunch of caffeine about 30 to 45
minutes prior to that event, which is how long it’s going to take caffeine to
hit your system and then you can continue to take smaller amounts of
caffeine the entire time such as by using the gels that I just talked about. If
you incorporated this strategy, what I would recommend is that you only
take in about 40 to 50 milligrams of caffeine each hour after you’ve taken
that initial load of about 200 milligrams. That will allow you to still
experience the effects of caffeine without getting very jittery. There has
not been research done on this but this is actually based on anecdotal
evidence with myself and with many of the athletes I coach. We’ve kind of
figured out the exact amount of caffeine that lets you continue to do a
longer distance effect without actually burning yourself out in the process.
Now, option two would be you take that initial dose of caffeine. You wait
three hours and then you take another dose of caffeine. And I’ve done this
before and it works pretty well. In that case, you’d want to make sure that
you were taking in uncaffeinated gels or uncaffeinated sports drinks and
then after about four hours you would load with caffeine again, using say
a pill or an energy powder or something of that nature. You’d load with
about the same amount as you would use for that initial load three hours
prior. So at least around 200 milligrams. So that answers that question.
Then as far as your question about caffeine tolerance – your body
definitely can reach a tolerance to caffeine. Basically what studies have
shown is that complete tolerance to caffeine can develop after about 18
days. So after you’ve taken caffeine for about two and a half weeks, you
begin to develop a tolerance to it. That’s according to research. Now, the
issue with this research and my issue with it is the research had people
consuming 900 milligrams of caffeine per day. So they were drinking
eight cups of coffee a day in order to develop that tolerance to coffee after
about two and a half weeks. So I haven’t see any studies that look at how
long it takes to develop a tolerance when you’re just drinking, say, one cup
of coffee in the morning. I can tell you from personal experience that the
effects of coffee begin to kind of wear off for me if I quit taking coffee and
then start drinking it again after right around two weeks. So it could be
that even the studies that use higher doses of caffeine still have an effect,
or still have a relevance with the lower doses of coffee that most of us
drink when we’re not in a research lab, being a coffee-guzzling guinea pig.
So my recommendation ultimately is if you’re going to use caffeine to
make yourself a better athlete, you abstain from caffeine for seven to 14
days prior to using it and that will ensure that you’ve actually de-loaded
from the caffeine and that you’re not tolerant to its effects when you
finally do decide to dose up. And then finally, you ask about whether you
should take caffeine after a workout. There’s actually been interesting
research on this. This is fairly recent research that shows that when
individuals exercise and then they consume caffeine post-exercise, they
can get up to 66% more carbohydrate in their muscles within four hours
after exercise. Now that may seem like a breakthrough concept, but here’s
the deal. Most of us are going to achieve that level of glycogen absorption
within a day after a workout anyways. So the only people who should be
consuming a caffeine tablet or a cup of coffee post-workout along with
their post-workout meal would be someone who’s going to exercise again
four hours later or a couple hours later or maybe in the afternoon after a
mid-morning workout. If you’re exercising every morning and you have
24 hours to replenish your carbohydrate stores then there’s no need to
dump a bunch of caffeine on your central nervous system because you’re
probably going to reach that same level of carbohydrate absorption just
through your day to day fuel. So it’s not like the caffeine is going to help
you store more fuel. It’s going to help you store the same amount of fuel
but at a much faster rate. So it increases what’s called your rate of
glycogen re-absorption. So, great question Chuck.
Listener asks: Hey Ben, this is a question for your podcast. It’s about a product that
(inaudible) a jar of Life Force Nutrition Greens with MSM. I was just
wondering if you were familiar with the product. I like the product but it
costs like $50 a jar for 90 servings. And I was just wondering if this is a
good value for this type of product and is it necessary for someone who
needs to be taking three servings a day of this, and what is MSM? Just
what function does that have to do with the product? Also if you have time,
my wife has been approached to use a product from Univera company. It’s
called Ageless Xtra and they make some great claims and I was just
wondering if you ever heard of it. It seems like it could just be some
money-making scheme. But alright, hey thanks a lot and you might want
my email address. Thanks Ben, love your program.
Ben answers: Okay, so this is basically a supplement question and I looked into this
Light Force Nutrition Greens and first of all Light Force does not have any
information about their ingredients on their Web site. If anybody from
Light Force is listening, let me give you a little hint here. You want to tell
people the ingredients of whatever they’re ordering if you really want to
make it in the nutrition industry because you’ll only get so many people
who are going to put something into their body and have no clue what it is
that they’re putting into their body. So, ultimately it looks like Light Force,
once I dug into it is used by a lot of these martial artist type of fighters,
mixed martial artist guys, UFC guys and some of their big names use this
Light Force High Energy Greens. Like many other green supplements, it
contains a range of different herbs – spirulina, barley grass, Kamut
powder, alfalfa leaf, lemon grass, dandelion leaf – so kind of both a
cleansing and what’s called an alkalinizing product. All of these are high
alkaline foods that would tend to help your body be in a less acidic state.
Now in that particular product, they’ve also included something called
MSM, which interestingly I discussed on the podcast recently. MSM is a
naturally occurring sulfur compound. And while it’s precursor DMSO has
been banned by the FDA, MSM still appears in a lot of primarily lotions
for helping with muscle soreness. Now the interesting thing about MSM is
there really have not been any studies that have shown that it’s done
much for people in terms of soreness. Most of the evidence on MSM is
primarily anecdotal. There was a big meta-analysis done on MSM. A
meta-analysis means they looked at a bunch of different studies of studies
and no clinical significance was found that showed that MSM would be
helpful in the reduction of pain for osteoarthritis. Now, that being said,
tons of athletes swear by this stuff and kind of like glucosamine
chondroitin, say that they can feel almost immediately that decrease in
joint pain. Most of those claims I haven’t seen with oral intake of MSM
such as what you’re getting with the Light Greens, but with like a lotion,
topical intake of MSM. So, the MSM is one of those things where if you
find that it helps your joints. Then use it. There’s not a lot of evidence that
it could be harmful. That’s not medical advice, I’m just basing this on
what the evidence shows. Not a ton of evidence to show that it helps, but
not a ton of evidence that shows that it’s going to kill you or that it has a
toxic effect either. As far as all the other ingredients in the greens, I’ve
told people this before – if there’s one supplement in my entire
supplement protocol that I could take, it would be the EnerPrime capsules
or the EnerPrime powder. That’s a greens supplement. Now I’ve taken a
lot of other green supplements and I’ve never found one that I can
actually feel the same way that I feel the EnerPrime. I’ve actually had
quite a few upset customers in the past couple of months because the
spirulina used in EnerPrime went out to back order and the company that
makes EnerPrime refused to go with any other source of spirulina because
what they were using was such a high quality source. So this company
really doesn’t cheapen its product. It uses ingredients that are very high
quality and it doesn’t cut corners in order to substitute ingredients if
something happens to be out of season. I think this was due to floods in
the area that they were getting their actual spirulina. So that being said, I
am a big fan of green supplements but I can’t guarantee that this
supplement is as good as the EnerPrime supplement that I’ve talked about
before. So, that Light Force High Energy Greens could be something to
look into. I’d also check out the EnerPrime for sure. There’s my shameless
plug. Then you also ask about this Univera supplement and that’s really
interesting. It’s put out by a company called Univera. It’s a multilevel
marketing company that has several patents on a few different forms of
aloe vera. Aloe vera has been something that’s been touted as medicinal
and a health product for a long period of time. Most of us are familiar with
using aloe vera on sunburns to help with just the pain from a sunburn,
because it has soothing, moisturizing, healing properties on skin. But it’s
also been used in herbal medicine for a while. No, you don’t take the aloe
vera lotion that you buy at the grocery store and chug it. Aloe vera is
actually just like any herb. It can be put in a capsule format or it can be
put in a liquid format to drink and it’s supposed to have anti-bacterial and
anti-fungal properties. It’s very high in amino acids. It’s very high in a lot
of different nutrients and minerals. And like many of these fringe
nutrition products, it is a little bit overpriced. I noticed that the company
Univera actually kind of owns some patents and also has sponsored much
of the latest research on aloe vera and so it’s tough to see some of the
latest research as unbiased. But I did find one research paper that was an
unbiased research paper and it concluded that oral administration of aloe
vera could be effective in stabilizing your blood sugar levels and reducing
your cholesterol. And it also could be very useful as a treatment for genital
herpes and for psoriasis which kind of suggests that it does have these
anti-fungal properties. So, in terms of whether or not the patented
formulation put out by Univera is superior to a basic generic aloe vera
that you could get at the grocery store, I can’t say whether or not it is,
because I’ve never seen any studies that compare the two and any studies
that have been done on it have been sponsored by the company that’s
making the product. So, very tough to say but ultimately there is some
research to back up aloe vera. Just not necessarily to back up the high
priced stuff that you’re going to find, for example, in that Univera Web
site. Any time that you’re looking into a supplement from a multilevel
marketing company, a lot of times you are going to get a higher quality
product but sometimes to even out the extra that you pay for it, you
almost have to join the company and make it part of your business so that
it’s supporting your investment in the product. So, good question. And I’ll
put a link to the EnerPrime in the Shownotes.
Patrick asks: Hey Ben, this is Patrick from just outside of Nashville, Tennessee coming
at you with another question. Now that it’s starting to warm up a little bit
and I’m sweating a lot more during my workout, I got to thinking if there
was some way that I could measure my sweat for specific salt content –
I’m not talking about sweat rate per se but I’d be really embarrassed if
Bioletics offers this, but some way that I can measure the amount of
sodium and the amount of chloride, the amount of potassium, magnesium
and calcium in my sweat so I can better know to replenish it. Thanks a lot
Ben.
Ben answers: So, this is a really interesting question. I actually used to direct a sports
performance laboratory where we did sweat sodium analysis using a
protocol from the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. What we would do is
take a series of patches and put them at strategic locations in your body
and each patch was a specific size. You would then sweat on a bicycle or a
treadmill for an hour and we would determine not only how many ounces
of liquid you lost during that exercise period but we would also measure
the amount of sodium that ended up in each of those patches from each
different site of your body. Then we’d take the algorithm developed by the
Gatorade Sports Science Institute and essentially based off the surface
area of your body, determined how much salt you were losing for each
ounce of liquid or fluids that you lost, or for each pound that you lost. It
was really interesting, most of the time people were losing anywhere from
1 ½ to 2 ½ grams of salt per hour which is what you would expect. But
interestingly, based on that is essentially a formulation that you can use to
determine approximately how much salt you use per liter of sweat or per
ounce of sweat and that can help you to determine your sodium
replacement rate if you were going to just go to a lab and get tested. So,
what we know is that for every liter of sweat that you produce, you have
about 2 ½ to 3 ½ grams of salt that’s lost in each liter. So if we were to
round that up to 3 and say that you were to lose 3 grams or 3000
milligrams of salt for every liter of sweat, the next thing that we would
want to do is figure out exactly how many liters of sweat you are losing per
hour. And if you assume that most of what you lose is salt and you go
weight yourself after exercise, essentially for each pound of weight that
you lose you can assume that the conversion to number of liters lost is
about half a liter. So, if you lost one pound and that’s half a liter and we
know that there’s three grams of salt in one liter, for each pound that you
lose, you’d be going through about 1500 milligrams or 1.5 grams of salt.
And you can generally replace salt at about anywhere from 30 to 50% of
what you’ve lost. Really, really heavy sweaters are going to be wanting to
replace closer to 50%. So, you would be taking anywhere in the range of
right around 500 to 750 milligrams of salt per hour if that was the state
you were in. So, that is how you would go about doing it. You would want
to weigh yourself before and after exercise and then you would want to
use the fact that a liter of fluid lost is going to be the equivalent of losing
about 3 grams worth of salt and then replace your salt at about the 30 to
50% rate loss. And that’s when it comes down to experimentation. I would
start with 30%. If you’re still cramping, ramp it up a little bit. If you’re still
cramping, ramp it up a little bit. Kind of get to that point where you can
take in enough salt. If your fingers start to get puffy, if you start to see a
lot of white salt on your pores or your armpits, etc. that probably means
that you’re taking in too much of it.
Luke asks: Hey Ben, my name is Luke and I’ve been competing in triathlons for
about two years now. My question has to do with race performance. I hear
a lot of people talking about how they’re running through pain during the
run portion of a race and how they are sore for several days or weeks after
a race and when I’m running I don’t get that feeling during a race. I feel
like I’m pushing pretty hard but I don’t feel like I’m running through pain,
I don’t collapse at the finish line. I guess my question is should I be feeling
those things? Should I run to the point where I’m in pain during a race? I
don’t know if it’s just a mind thing or I’m not training hard enough to
know what it feels like to exert myself that way during the run portion of a
triathlon. So, I’ve done everything from sprints to half Ironmans. I don’t
know if the distance varies makes a difference on how hard I should push
it. So I guess that’s my overall question. Should I be running in pain
during a race? Should I be pushing it that hard?
Ben answers: Okay, so Luke as a coach, my short answer is yeah you should be hurting
during the run. If you’re not hurting, you’re probably not pushing yourself
hard enough. But I don’t want to leave you hanging with that. So, one of
the things that can occur in individuals is they can either have lungs that
are overpowering their legs or legs that are overpowering their lungs. Now,
in the former case if you have lungs that are overpowering your legs –
what that means is you’re one of those people who is very aerobically
gifted but you don’t have much leg strength, and so while you can run all
day long and feel like you’re breathing just fine, you can’t run that fast
because you’re not able to generate that much force. You usually don’t do
that well on the hills. You essentially don’t have the musculature to be
able to push yourself to that speed. So, if you’re a real, real skinny guy – a
lot of times that’s the case – and you can benefit from doing things like
hill work, lunge work, plyometric work. Now, if your legs are
overpowering your lungs, you’re typically somebody who’s come into the
sport with a background of power or explosive or strength sports and your
aerobic system is not that well developed and in that case you would want
to sacrifice too much weightlifting type of work or explosive sports type of
work and do a little bit more aerobic type conditioning like doing five to
10 minute tempo repeats on a treadmill at a slight incline or doing two to
five mile repeats on your bike. So the training can really affect how your
body responds in terms of getting the legs to catch up with the lungs or
the lungs to catch up with the legs. Now this can be very mental as well.
I’ve got an article coming out soon in Triathlete magazine about mental
tactics for getting yourself to push harder during exercise. What I find is
that people who grew up playing sports really don’t have any trouble at all
getting themselves to push to the next level. But sometimes people who
didn’t play a lot of sports – who never really were at that point in their life
when they had a coach pushing them to the point of puking – they don’t
know what it feels like to push hard or mentally they haven’t really taken
their body to that stage and so it’s tough to get to that stage in a race later
on in life. Now, that’s just simple practice. That’s a lot of times something
that’s improved by going out with other people who are going to push you,
going to a Master’s swim group, getting out on the road with a group of
road cyclists or other triathletes. Joining a track club or doing your
workouts with runners who are faster than you, who are going to push you
– if you have a lot of intrinsic motivation, that can help you quite a bit.
Now if you’re not intrinsically motivated, if other people pushing around
you don’t really tend to make you want to take it to the next level, then
sometimes you have to use some intrinsic motivation to push yourself.
You have to ask yourself why are you doing what you’re doing? What is it
that you want to achieve? Do you want a podium slot? Do you want a PR?
Do you find that the increased fitness that you gain when you push
outside your comfort zone is something you like? Both in the way that you
look and the way you feel. And you can use some of those elements to
actually convince yourself to push a little bit harder. But ultimately what it
comes down to is that unless you’re for example doing a really, really long
event like an ultra-distance 50k, 100k, 100 mile type of ultra-marathon
then your intensity should be such that you are feeling it quite a bit. The
feeling of pain or discomfort is always relative to the distance. In a 5k road
race, you’re going to be running a lot faster and harder than you are going
to be in an Olympic distance triathlon, than you are going to be in an
Ironman triathlon or a marathon. But really there’s always a level of
discomfort that you should feel during the race. And when you get to that
point, you’ll know it the next day. You’ll be sore after a race and you’ll
think okay, I really did give it my all. So great question.
Toby asks: Hey Ben, my name is Toby Hunter. I’m from Clarksville, Tennessee. My
question is for your podcast. I’m training in the south. In the last two
weeks it’s been 95 degrees with 90% humidity. Heat index about 105.
Unfortunately the only time I can do my run is about high noon and my
question is, training in that heat – is there any benefit to that? Because
I’m obviously slower. My heart rate zones are all out of whack. I blame it
on the heat, but is it affecting me that much? I’m about 10 beats higher
per minute. So, I just don’t know how to train in that heat and am I
getting any benefits and do I need to change my strategy in that kind of
condition? Most of my races are not going to be that hot, but triathlons
are generally hot but usually not heat index of 105. So, I listen to your
podcast all the time so maybe this will make it. Thank you.
Ben answers: So training in the heat can be tough. Not only do you force your body to
shunt a lot of blood volume to your extremities to cool you off so your
heart beats a lot harder. But you tend to lose a lot more salt, deplete
electrolytes. Mentally it’s much more difficult. You tend to have a higher
rating of perceived exertion, so you feel like you’re working a lot harder
when you’re out there in the heat and you are correct, it can really feel like
you’re beating up your body when you’re going out and training in hot
weather every day. So the question is, if there are diminishing returns – if
you get to that point where mentally and physically, the amount of
dehydration that you’re experiencing and the amount of mental strain
that you’re experiencing by daily training in the hot weather – the
question is can you get to a point where you just have to do that every
once in a while? And the answer is that studies have shown that once you
acclimatize to heat – fully acclimatize to heat – which actually takes 14
days of exercise in the heat for anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours,
then you can retain those heat acclimatization benefits for about one week.
And then you start to lose those and almost fully lose the heat
acclimatization after three weeks. So, if you were to spend 14 days, two
weeks and you were to get through those two weeks, technically after
those two weeks if you were able to even go out and just do a weekly two
hour hard effort in the heat, you could sustain your heat acclimatization
pretty well. Now I’ve found for myself with personal experience and I’ve
read that a lot of coaches – there’s not many studies done on this, but a lot
of studies have done this – they’ll generally get their athletes out there
every three days at least in the heat to exercise. So what it comes down to
is if you were to exercise, you’ve already been exercising in the heat,
you’ve gotten a couple of weeks under your belt, you could get away with
going out there just once a week or a couple of times a week. And if
mentally, you’re able to get yourself to workout with more consistency
when you’re exercising, for example, in an environmentally controlled
gym or something of that nature then you may actually do yourself some
favors and also help yourself from a recovery standpoint. Now, I
personally when I’m, for example, getting ready for a Hawaii Ironman
Triathlon and I live in Spokane, Washington where it tends to be a little
bit chillier through September and the October leading up to that race – I
will every two to three days do a session indoors either on the treadmill or
on my indoor trainer with the heater and a humidifier. That’s as frequent
as I do it. I don’t go out every day and beat myself up in the heat for
multiple training sessions. I just get in there every two to three days and
do a session and typically I don’t even go 90 minutes to two hours – I’m
usually right around 1 hour that I get heat acclimatization in. I generally
feel okay with that. I’m sure it would feel even better if I was going 90
minutes to two hours like a lot of the studies do, but ultimately it comes
down to how long you can sit your butt on an indoor bike trainer with the
heater and humidifier on. So, great question Toby. And then we have a
little bit of feedback from listener Chris.
Chris asks: Hi Ben, my name is Chris. I’m a frequent questioner of the show. I just
wanted to call you and tell you how much I appreciate your show and the
wonderful information that you give. You just do an amazing service and I
can’t believe that you do it for free. This next part, you can take off the air.
You don’t have to put this on your show if you don’t want to, because I
don’t want to seem like I’m bragging. I just did the road race at the Para-
cycling National Championships in Bend, Oregon. I went from being a
couch potato one year ago to placing third in a field that competes
internationally, and I owe a lot of that to the great advice from your
podcast. I just wanted to thank you personally and there you go.
Awesome, Ben. Take care, bye.
Ben answers: Well, I thought that’d be a fitting call to end the Q and A section on and
Chris don’t worry, you didn’t appear to be too hottie in your bragging
there. I’m happy for you. I’m happy that you found value in the podcast
and I thank you and all the rest of the listeners for supporting me. Every
week I receive a donation from at least one person who decides to support
the podcast which is fantastic and helps out quite a bit while I’m doing the
research and the preparation to get these out to you. You can actually
donate yourself. If you go to the Shownotes for any episode and scroll
down, there’s a little button there that allows you to donate and anybody
that ever donates more than $15, I always send a T-shirt to. A free Ben
Greenfield Fitness T-shirt. Now this week, the other way that you can get
a T-shirt is to ask a question in a new way. This is a new thing that we’re
doing, but I’m going to send a free T-shirt to the best question of the week
that is asked through Twitter. Now, if you’ve not been on Twitter before,
you can click on the link that I have in the Shownotes to go to Twitter and
check it out. Sign up for free and it’s always free. My Twitter name is Ben
Greenfield and all you have to do is go to my Twitter page and there’s a
little button there where you can leave me a message or you can use the
“@” sign bengreenfield to leave me a message. And you need to make sure
that you’re following me in order to leave a message. So make sure you
push the “follow Ben” button and then leave me your question. And the
best question of the week that’s asked through Twitter and you got to be
creative because Twitter questions can only be 140 characters long, I am
going to get your address from you and send you a T-shirt. So I’ll put a
link to Twitter in the Shownotes along with a link to everything that I
talked about. So a few different ways to get your T-shirt there. You can
either donate to the show and you can also ask a question through Twitter.
So we’re going to move on to this week’s featured topic which is the very
first podcast ever released from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Enjoy.
Welcome to the www.bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. This is your
weekly free audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, diet and wellness news.
Whether you’re an Ironman triathlete or you’re just trying to shed a few
pounds, this podcast is going to present you with the latest exercise and
nutrition content from the nation’s top experts. My name is Ben
Greenfield, I’m a personal trainer, certified nutritionist and exercise, diet
and wellness guru. Each week, I’m going to be bringing you cutting edge
fitness, nutrition and wellness advice. Stay tuned for this week’s podcast
from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com.
In this week’s podcast: a preview of the interviews that are lined up for the
weeks to come, workout of the week “round and round” with an
accompanying exercise video, book review of the brand new title Run
With No Pain, healthy recipe for chocolate peanut butter ice cream and a
special preview of the National Trainer’s Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Before I let you know about the interviews that we’re going to be featuring
in the next several weeks at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, let me point
out the fact that I did include in this week’s Shownotes that there was
going to be an interview with Brian Rhodes, pro triathlete. Unfortunately,
en route to the venue where I was going to be interviewing Brian Rhodes
at a triathlon in which we were both competing, I stepped on and broke
my headset, microphone piece that I use for interviewing. So that
interview never happened. I’m going to be interviewing Brian Rhodes via
Skype however sometime this week or the week after. I’m primarily going
to be asking him questions about injury prevention, rehabilitation, and
nutrition. So in addition to that interview, some of the other interviews
that are going to be coming down the pipeline are a massage therapist
interview on the four different types of massage therapy that you can have
done as an athlete depending on the time of the training year that you’re
in. We’re going to have an interview with a naturopathic physician from
Corti’lane, Idaho on the differences between naturopathic and allopathic
medicine. We’ll be interviewing a representative from Mt. Capra
Nutritional Products on the benefits of probiotic supplementation and
also a type of protein that might be absorbed 20 times faster than current
whey proteins on the market. We’ll be interviewing Dr. PZ Pierce on
exercise as medicine. I’ll have an interview with a couple of podiatrists.
One on how custom orthotics can help your knee, your hip or your back
pain. Another podiatrist on high performance bicycling orthotics and how
to get them. We’ll be talking to a chiropractor about common low back
injuries and what chiropracty actually does to help them. We’ll be talking
to a dentist about dental health and immune system integrity and the link
between those two factors. And then finally, we’ll be talking with a
certified dietician on why your nutritional habits may be setting you up
for diabetes. So the next few weeks, we’ll have all sorts of content and
guests here at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. So be sure to subscribe to
the podcast. You aren’t going to want to miss a lot of the content that’s
coming down the pipeline here at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com.
Book review. If you go to www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and click on
books and DVDs, each week we’ll be featuring a different book and DVD.
Because this is one of the first podcasts that we’ve put out, I actually am
going to talk about one of my recent books that just hit the Web. It’s called
Run With No Pain. I based this book off the past decade that I’ve spent as
an endurance athlete and coach. Dozens of my cyclists and runners have
at one time or another experienced this debilitating low back pain,
primarily limited power production on their bike, stride length and push
off while running. Usually the origin of the pain is a little bit mysterious
and it couldn’t be traced back to a single episode of acute injury. It was
typically described as kind of a radiating discomfort typically located on
one side or the other and a lot of these athletes would feel it when they
were cycling or running and the pain and the slight weakness or tingling
tended to manifest more significantly when they were sitting for long
periods of time especially with their legs crossed, and riding a bicycle
when they’re bent over in a time trial arrow position. Or when they’re
running especially on a hard surface for a long period of time. There were
certain activities that kind of relieved the pain. I noticed that when they
did hip flexor stretching, hamstring stretching, yoga, non-weight bearing
exercises that improved blood flow to the low back, lying on their back
with their feet up especially on a heating pad and then side to side
movement – a lot of these activities were seen to relieve some of the low
back pain. But I basically – since I’m not a medical professional or a
sports medicine physician, coached a lot of these athletes through their
pain without providing specific rehabilitation protocols. That was
basically until I actually injured myself in the same way and it was during
a deadlift exercise that I actually injured my bike. I spent several months
rehabilitating my low back and avoiding running, cycling, any type of
heavy lifting and eventually that acute pain disappeared. But over the
course of the next several months I noticed myself experiencing a lot of
the same symptoms that my athletes were complaining about – tingling
on one side, a little bit of weakness while running or bicycling, pain with
extended periods of time in the seated position and kind of a popping
sensation in the low back with a lot of rotational stretches that I would
perform. So that discomfort kind of severely affected my training, my race
performance and I started to research what exactly was going on. So, I
learned about the SI joints. The sacroiliac joints, and how they’re
considered a source of most of low back pain that occurs in athletes or any
individual and a compression of the pelvis or an asymmetry – meaning a
rotation in one direction or the other of the hips can cause joint
dysfunction and it causes the pain we feel in the low back if the low back is
out of rotation. So this development of asymmetry actually causes
different muscles in your low back to actually assume a new proper
muscle length. Primarily your hip rotator muscles. So usually what
happens is your lateral rotator muscles shorten and your medial or inside
hip rotation muscles actually lengthen. When the lateral muscles shorten,
the entire hip bone is pulled posteriorally towards the short side and that
can cause nerve pain that originates from the sacroiliac joint, which a lot
of runners and cyclists and athletes actually feel. One really good resource
that I found on this was a book called The Malalignment Syndrome by an
author called Wolf Schamberger. It’s a really big book. It’s about 450
pages long and I can’t just give that to people to read without actually
giving some more specific advice that might be a bit more practical and
quick for you. So what I did was I actually gleaned the most practical
information from that book that I could along with a lot of information
from discussions that I had with sports medicine professionals, physical
therapists, chiropractors and massage therapists. And so what I began
doing was designing an exercise routine that I could do everyday to
actually bring my hips back into proper rotation. So for four weeks on
about four to five days of the week, I performed the exact routine that I lay
out in this new book Run With No Pain, and my pain began to disappear.
My back quit popping, the weakness and the tingling on one side of the leg
while I was running and cycling was no longer present. And so I basically
put the routine together in about 10 simple stretches and exercises and I
began to recommend then to my athletes. And within a couple of months
almost every one of my athletes had not only reduced or completely
eliminated their low back pain, but the power meters on their bikes and
the lap splits on their runs were starting to show PRs. So basically their
pain disappeared and they got faster. So what I’ve done is actually created
a Web site called www.runwithnopain.com. I filmed all the exercises,
created videos for them and then put together a little bit of an e-book that
lays out the exact exercise routine that I designed for myself and for these
athletes based off the research that I did to eliminate low back pain during
running, cycling and basic athletic movements. So check it out. The Web
URL is www.runwithnopain.com. And the book, the videos are all
accessible on that Web site. www.runwithnopain.com. Check it out.
Alright fitness fans, this week’s workout of the week can be found at
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Click on “videos”. You’ll get instant
exposure to a video there that will show you how to do each of the
exercises in this week’s workout. It’s called “round and round.” This one
starts off easy and gets a little more difficult as you go through. You’re
going to shoot for anywhere from three to six rounds of the round and
round workout. What you’re going to start off with is five swing squats per
side. You’ll move on to 30 to 60 seconds of a maximum cardio effort of
your choice. That can be biking, running, rowing, elliptical trainer,
jumping jacks, whatever you can get your hands on. After you’ve finished
that maximum cardio effort, with minimal rest you’re going to drop down
to the floor and do five super slow pushups. Modify those to knee pushups
if you need to. Once you finish those five knee pushups or regular pushups,
you’re going to move on to five mountain climbers per side. Then find a
pull up bar, assisted pull up machine or lat pull down machine. Complete
five reps and then finish with another 30 to 60 second cardio effort of
your choice. Alright, once you’ve finished those stations you’ll move back
round to the beginning and start with six swing squats, another 30 to 60
seconds of cardio, six pushups, six mountain climbers, six pull ups or pull
downs and again a cardio effort of your choice. If you go six times through
this circuit, again you’re going to be looking at about 10 reps on
everything by the time you’re doing. So you can check out the video for
this workout with the instructions for each exercise at
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Click on “videos.” Have a great workout.
Today’s recipe can be found at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Just click
on “nutrition.” And this recipe in particular is one that has saved a lot of
my nutrition clients from committing dietary suicide when they get their
sweet tooth. Basically it’s a way to get chocolate peanut butter ice cream
without getting all the calories and the saturated fat and the sugars.
There’s a Web site that I mentioned in this podcast and I’ll put the URL
for this Web site in the Shownotes but it’s www.nutritiondata.com. And if
you go there you can get the exact nutritional label for just about any food
on the planet. I haven’t checked to see if rattlesnake or alligator or any of
those types of things are on there but for the most part if you can eat it,
it’s going to appear on this Web site. What you want to do is check out
what you’re actually getting if you type in something like “chocolate
peanut butter ice cream.” You’ll come up with about 400 to 500 calories.
About 70 to 80% of that from saturated fat and anywhere from 35 to 45
grams of sugar. Pure sugar. So basically that means for about a three
quarter cup serving or about 10 spoonfuls of ice cream, you are getting a
boat load of calories. One of the things that you can do is to make your
own substitution for chocolate peanut butter ice cream at home. What you
want to find is just plain regular fat-free yoghurt. I know it doesn’t taste
that great but you’re going to make it taste good. You want to take about
half a container of that which is right around 60 calories worth. And then
take some almond butter or some peanut butter. Make sure if you’re using
peanut butter that it’s the stir style peanut butter – far lower in
hydrogenated fats, much better for your heart. Anyways you use just
almost a tablespoonful of that. So we’re talking anywhere again from
around 60 to 70 calories. You’re going to add that to the yoghurt and then
you’re also going to take either about a quarter of a dark chocolate bar or a
tablespoonful of Hershey’s chocolate or you can use a little Ovaltine or hot
cocoa powder as well, depending on what you like, what kind of texture
you want. You add all this together, you stir it, you put it in the freezer for
about 20 minutes. When you take it out, you get something that closely
resembles the taste of a Reese’s peanut butter cup. Try it out. You’re
looking at about 200 calories, far less saturated fat, far less sugar. Much
healthier for you. Helps you satisfy that craving that you might get for
dessert every now and again and it tastes great. You can check it out again
at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Click on “nutrition.”
As promised in the introduction of this podcast, I’m going to be giving you
a little preview of the National Personal Trainer’s Conference and
Exhibition happening this July 9 through 12, 2008 down at the Paris
Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. I will be traveling down there to
listen and participate in some of the latest, greatest news coming from the
fitness and nutrition industry. Every day while I’m down there I’m going
to be sitting down and giving you a fresh look at some of the new topics
that are coming at us from a fitness and nutrition perspective and quite a
bit of helpful information for you to achieve your personal goals, your
weight loss goals, your nutrition goals, whatever the case may be. If I have
the opportunity, I’m also going to be trying to get some interviews with
some of the top fitness professionals in the country to get their
perspective on crucial issues in the exercise and nutrition industry. So on
Thursday, a few of the more interesting topics of the day are going to be:
secrets of the Navy SEALS goal setting and training methods. We’ll also
be looking at nutritional supplementation during resistance training,
some of the latest science and some of the latest recommendations to
maximize the anabolic effects of resistance training as well as the post-
workout nutritional recovery. We’ll be looking at some interesting recent
research findings on calcium and weight loss. The role of fitness and the
treatment of eating disorders, how resistance training differs from
endurance training in its effect on the cardiovascular system specifically
arterial compliance which is basically blood vessel wall elasticity. Then
finally, we’ll be looking at the influence of dexterity training on injury
prevention and common musculoskeletal compensation patterns for basic
movement mechanics so that you can determine essentially if for instance
your knee goes in front of your toes on the squat – might be compensating
and what might be weak when something like that happens. So let’s go
ahead and move on to Friday. Friday we’re going to be looking at some
ways to introduce screening and corrective exercises for problem
shoulders that essentially don’t respond to conventional exercise and
stretching. So I’ll be talking about how to use trigger point techniques and
free weight techniques to help rehab your shoulder or strengthen a
shoulder problem. We’re going to be talking about performance training
for the aging athlete, which is basically going to look at a new sport
conditioning paradigm called the twist sport conditioning protocol and
it’s going to teach how to take an aging athlete and actually reintroduce
the aging body to high performance athletics. We’ll be looking at some
ways to actually apply power research into your training and then also an
interesting discussion will be on resistance training for hypertrophy which
is basically muscle growth – why some people’s muscles grow fast and
some muscles really don’t grow that much at all. One other thing, the
effect of the length of the rest interval between your exercise sets and how
that’s going to actually affect the effectiveness of your exercise training
program. So let’s go ahead and move on to Saturday and check out what
we’re going to look at on Saturday. So, on Saturday we’ll be looking at
functional training and what functional training actually is. We’ll define it
and talk about how to implement it in your own training protocol. We’ll
also be looking at periodization programs and this would basically be how
to split your year – your fitness program during the year into different
periods of time where during each period you focus on a different aspect
of your fitness so you constantly grow fitter from week to week and month
to month. We’ll be looking at plyometric training. One interesting talk will
be on how to train 12 to 16 year old age groups and that should be
interesting. I don’t know if any of you have children but we’ll be talking
about psycho-behavior development, lifestyle management, literacy,
musculoskeletal and energetic considerations for the 12 to 16 year old
athlete population. One of the other real interesting things that we’ll be
looking at on that Saturday session is how to train the endurance athlete
in the gym, and basically how the strength training protocol of a
marathoner or triathlete or road cyclist – whether recreational or
professional is going to differ from the type of training protocol of a
strength athlete. And then finally we’ll be looking at some recovery
techniques to prevent overtraining, to maximize the actual response to
training and allow you to train day after day without actually getting
injured or ill. So Thursday through Saturday of next week, there’ll be
some real interesting stuff coming down the pipeline from
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast,
it’s free. You can do it on iTunes if you go to
www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and you click on “how to subscribe” if
you’ve never subscribed to a podcast before or a blog, I lay it out right
there, make it real easy to understand and you can get started right away.
So tune in next Thursday for news from the NSCA Personal Trainer
National Conference.
Hi podcast listener, this is Ben Greenfield. That’s all the content for today
from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Obviously this first podcast gets a
little rough around the edges and we do have some work to do a and a
little bit more content to present in coming podcasts. What I would like
you to do if you get a chance is just to go to iTunes and click on the “write
a review” button underneath Ben Greenfield Fitness and you don’t even
have to write a review. Just click on five star. Give us a good rating so we
can get to the top of iTunes. Get as many people as possible to listen in on
Ben Greenfield Fitness. The more support that I get for this podcast, the
better and better it’s going to become. I have to tell you I’m really, really
excited about the things that we’re going to be presenting on Ben
Greenfield Fitness. I know that there’s a lot of people out there that are
into kind of the ideal combination of healthy nutrition, weight loss,
performance, outdoor sports – that’s the type of person that’s going to
listen to this podcast and that’s the type of content that I’m going to bring
to you. So I will speak to you on Thursday night from the National
Personal Trainer’s Conference in Las Vegas. Until then, this is Ben
Greenfield, over and out.
This also is Ben Greenfield about a year and a half later, but it’s still me.
So, that’s going to wrap up our show for this week and remember if you
have questions you can email [email protected]. You can call
toll free to 87772099439 or you can Skype Pacific Fit. Remember to check
out that free healthy cooking Webinar on June 30th and you access a link
to that in the Shownotes to this podcast. Remember to check out the Get
Fit Guy and for that podcast or this podcast, leave a ranking in iTunes and
feel free to donate on the show page as well if you’d like. Leave your
question to the Twitter page at www.twitter.com/bengreenfield to be
eligible to win a free T-shirt if your question is the best question. And then
remember who wants to accompany me to Thailand this winter for a
triathlon, then you need to email me very soon if you’re a triathlete and
you like adventure travel. So, until next time this is Ben Greenfield hoping
that you’ll stick with me and learn with me through the next 100 podcasts
from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have a great week. z
For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s
from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at
http://www.pacificfit.net