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Podcast #93 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/05/episode-
93-swimmer-dara-torres-secret-fitness-weapon/
Introduction: In this podcast episode: resistance stretching, the best
temperature for ice baths, skipping meals, exercise
headaches, runner’s knee, slow metabolisms, hay fever and
exercise, more on carbo loading, sodium phosphate
supplements, V8 juice, the health effects of alcohol, altitude
training and trouble sleeping.
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, it’s Ben Greenfield and I don’t know
what it is, maybe it’s the nice weather, people getting out and
about more, people thinking about their health more, but I
have gotten a lot of questions this week. So I’m not going to
waste too much time, jumping right into the content. We also
have an interview with one of the trainers who travels with
Olympic swimmer Dara Torres and Dara Torres has
something that she calls one of her secret weapons for fitness
and I was able to track down an interview with the person
who actually invented the program that Dara uses. So you do
not want to miss that interview. It’s pretty cool, and it’s
actually something that I’ve started to implement in my
program. So we’re going to start off with a few special
announcements, move on to this week’s huge Listener Q and
A, have that featured topic and of course keep you
entertained along the way.
If you have a question, then all you need to do is email
[email protected] . As I mentioned earlier, just
leave a comment or you can call and leave your audio
question toll free to 8772099439. And the first question this
week comes from listener Tina.
Tina asks: Hey Ben, in training for my Ironman I finally decided to try
the dreaded ice baths. And I was amazed at how well I felt
the next day. I’ve tried it by running down to the lake which
is close to my home and standing in up to my hips for 10
minutes. I’ve also sat in lukewarm water in my tub and
slowly added cold water up to the big dump of the ice tray
from my freezer. So my question is, is there a certain
temperature that ice baths work better in? If I’m still sore the
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second day after a hard workout, would another ice bath be
beneficial?
Ben: Well, that’s actually a great question. With ice baths which
are perfect for recovery and effectively eliminating a lot of
that tiny microscopic damage that occurs to your muscles
during exercise, more is not necessarily better. Most of the
research points to about 54 to 60 degrees as the ideal ice
bath temperature range. 54 to 60 degrees is definitely
uncomfortable but it’s not so cold that it’s teeth-grittingly
numb to even be for 15 or 20 seconds. It should be cold to
the point where it is slightly uncomfortable but it doesn’t feel
like it’s actually doing damage to your limbs. Believe it or not
you can do damage by sitting in too cold of water for too long
and you can also cause things like spontaneous fainting
which can occur when you’re exposed to cold for long periods
of time, almost the same as if you were becoming
hypothermic. So, don’t worry about getting any colder than
54 degrees and you can just use any type of thermometer
that you’d use in a pool to measure the actual temperature of
your ice bath, if you’d like to go to that range. Typically, what
I’ll do is just take one freezer tray full of ice, dump that in a
bathtub full of cold water and that generally gets it pretty
cold. I’ll also do a cold shower or as you do go down to a lake
or river and just stand waist deep after a tough run. It really
is one of nature’s best anti-inflammatories and very, very
expensive when it comes to a recovery method. So great
question.
Fitz asks: Ben, how do you feel about paleo primal diet proponents
who advise skipping meals, avoiding carbs or even skipping
breakfast? It seems like there’s a lot of science behind it.
Ben answers: Skipping meals or skipping breakfast is not necessarily going
to do something magical to your metabolism. Contrary to
popular belief it’s not necessarily going to shut down or slow
your metabolism, but there’s also really nothing special that
happens physiological aside from the ability to enhance
caloric restriction and also the ability to burn a little bit of
extra fat as you’re moving around because it’s likely that your
carbohydrate stores are depleted. Now the problem that I
find with my clients is that if I have them skip meals too
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often or if I do not stay on top of them in terms of making
sure that they prioritize getting a nutrient-dense breakfast
into their bodies, they end up getting hungrier later on in the
day. Their exercise sessions – especially in the mid-morning
or mid-afternoon tend to suffer because they aren’t able to
bring themselves up to the intensity that they’d be able to do
if they had ample carbohydrate on board. And they usually
have less resistance to some damaging snacks later on in the
day. A Snickers bar at 11am looks a lot more appealing when
you haven’t had a bowl of quinoa with blueberries and a little
bit of almond butter at 8am in the morning when you get up.
Now the times that I do encourage people to skip meals
would be if they’re going to incorporate, for example, a mini
fast protocol. And this is something that I’ll do to lean up
prior to for example a triathlon. I’ll eat dinner at 8 pm and
then go to bed at 10 pm, get up at 6am. By then it’s been 10
hours since I’ve last eaten. I’ll exercise for about 45 to 60
minutes with some light aerobic cardio and then I’ll go eat.
And doing that light aerobic cardio in the morning after the
overnight fast really helps you burn through some fat stores
and fires up those fat burning enzymes in the liver. So, that’s
where I’d recommend skipping meals. For the most part,
people tend to adhere to their diets a little bit more when
they’re eating frequently and not engaging in irregular eating
patterns.
I’m going to move on to a question from listener David.
David is a personal trainer.
David asks: One of my clients complains of headaches halfway through
the workout. I train him pretty hard. Usually circuits with
minimum breaks in between sets. He doesn’t drink coffee or
tea and keeps caffeine intake to a minimum. He’s 30 years
old, in good shape, and of average weight with no special
conditions. No diabetes, no high blood pressure, no high
lipids. I’m looking to build his upper body strength and
improve his core. I think the headaches could have
something to do with his breathing technique. I do watch
him and it appears he’s exhaling on concentrics and inhaling
on eccentrics. (That just means he’s doing as he’s supposed
to. He’s exhaling during the difficult phase and inhaling
during the relaxation phase. David goes on.) So maybe he’s
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not breathing correctly or deep enough. What other
possibilities do you think could be causing his headaches?
Ben answers: Could be low carbs or lack thereof. Usually glycogen
depletion isn’t going to be a big issue with headaches. If it
were going to be depletion of any type of nutrient per se, it
would be water and dehydration and that would be just kind
of… the big red flag would be – and I’m going to kind of
assume you already looked at this. Make sure that he’s
drinking enough water. Specifically his body weight divided
by half is how many ounces of water he should be drinking at
a minimum per day. That being said, I don’t know how his
eyesight is, but people who have sensitivity to bright light or
difficulty focusing can get headaches no matter where they
are including exercise. Sensitivity to noise can cause
headaches. It’s possible that if he has very good hearing or if
he’s especially sensitive to weights dropping or loud music in
the weight room, that can cause a headache. Other certain
anxiety disorders – if he’s very tense in social situations, that
can contribute to headaches. As can muscular tension in the
traps and shoulders, which could be eliminated with foam
rolling or massage or even just a little bit of trigger point
work which you can do as a personal trainer. You can put
your hands on your client’s traps and basically massage the
traps. You don’t have to be a licensed massage therapist to do
something like that. And then finally I’d look into
magnesium as well. Magnesium deficiency can cause quite a
bit of symptoms including headaches. I’ll put a link to topical
magnesium that he can rub into his shoulders or his neck. I’ll
put a link to that in the Shownotes. The other thing I’m going
to put a link to is a breathing article that I wrote that focuses
on breathing drills that can really help outside of exercise.
Ways that you can breathe to assist with potential problems
with too shallow a breathing or not having the right habits
when it comes to getting deep breaths in when you’re
exercising. So I’m going to put a link to that article David and
you can click on that in the Shownotes to this episode,
episode number 93. I’d consider some of those things. The
eyesight, the hearing sensitivity, the magnesium, the
breathing and the hydration. Those are some of the things
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that come to mind right away when you describe what’s
going on.
Mike asks: Question one, I was hoping you could point me in the right
direction on your recommended brands for vitamin D,
magnesium, Omega 3s and greens.
Ben answers: I don’t want to be a supplement whore. I don’t want to
necessarily tell you that there’s one single supplement that’s
best. All I’m going to do Mike is tell you what I take in terms
of those supplements. For vitamin D, I take the Bioletics
stuff that I spray under my tongue. For magnesium, I take
Ancient Minerals – that one that I just put a link to for David.
For Omega 3s, I take the flax seed oil from IMPaX called
EnerEFA, and I also take the fish oil from Bioletics. And then
for greens I use EnerPrime as a greens powder and I use
something else called Living Fuels Super Greens for a meal
replacement powder that has greens in it. So, there you go.
Now question two.
Mike asks: Do you have any treatment or supplement recommendations
for jumper’s knee? I developed a severe case playing
volleyball a couple of years ago and still struggle with it.
Ben answers: Number one thing I’m going to recommend to you Mike that
has helped me tremendously, I used to play competitive
volleyball. Played for a couple of years at the University of
Idaho, discovered this and I’ve used it for both IT band and
for jumper’s knee and that’s something called a Patt Strap.
It’s a little strap, you put it over the front of your patellar
tendon during activity and it eliminates a lot of the friction
and the rubbing that can lead to the inflammation and the
pain. For the IT band you can actually put that about two
inches above the knee. I’ve even worn two before, one for the
IT band and one for the knee. But that would be my top
recommendation for something you could use for runner’s
knee or jumper’s knee and I found that works really well.
Lance asks: Are there any other sunscreens worth considering other than
the SCAPE product from podcast number 92.
Ben answers: You know Lance, the only real sunscreens that I’ve
experimented with too much with are that SCAPE product
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which I actually wore in a triathlon last week and was really
very impressed with it. I had interviewed Dr. Martins about
it on the podcast, and tried it out during the Wildflower
Triathlon. I was very happy with it not stinging my eyes,
helping to cool more core temp, or helping me not to feel like
my temperature cooling capabilities were being inhibited
and then also zero sunburn lines or tan lines from my
triathlon jersey. So, in addition to that one, the only other
thing I’ve done is gotten coconut oils, jojoba oils and zinc
and basically made sunscreen in my kitchen and that’s
something else you can do. As a matter of fact, if you went to
YouTube and did a search for my name plus “sunscreen”
you’d find that video where I’m making it in my kitchen. But
that’s something else you could do and other than that, in the
past – I’ve been the guy that wanders into Walgreens and
buys whatever’s on sale. So I’m kind of sold now on this
SCAPE stuff after interviewing the guy about it, finding out it
was really designed for people doing what I do, exercising
hard in hot weather. So, that’s what I’d do. I’m probably not
going to end up making any more in my kitchen just because
of the opportunity and time cost versus just getting some
from SCAPE. So there you go.
Lance asks: In podcast 92 I was puzzled by your fat recommendations.
The research I have looked at indicates we need single digit
percentages of daily calories from Omega 3 and 6s. Why do
you recommend 15 to 25%?
Ben answers: The short answer is I don’t. I recommended 15 to 25% for
total fat intake. Which means that if you take the fat that
you’re getting from fish oils, flax seed oils, Omega 3 sources,
Omega 6 sources – you take the fat that you’re getting from
coconut oils, you take the fat that you’re getting from
monounsaturated sources like olives, olive oil, avocado,
seeds, nuts – you put all that together plus whatever fat you
might be getting from dairy and meat and that should come
out to the 15 to 25% mark. So I wasn’t saying that just for the
Omega 3s and 6s. That’s total fat I recommend at 15 to 25%.
Josh asks: It’s been a mantra in my family that slow metabolism is a
curse. Is it true that some people struggle with a slower
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metabolism, or do those people like me just eat a little bit or
a lot more and slowly add to their body fat?
Ben answers: Before I progress to the second part of your question, Josh, it
is true that some people do struggle with a slower
metabolism. You can get your metabolism tested via
something called “indirect calorimetry.” It’s done in a resting
metabolic test where you sit down or you lie down after
you’ve been fasting so there’s no thermic effect of food that’s
skewing the results, and you simply sit there and breathe for
anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes and you find out how many
calories your body is burning at rest. It spans the gamut, I’ve
had some lean people come to me with slow metabolisms
and I’ve had some very overweight people come to me with
fast metabolisms. And so that’s actually how you can get it
measured versus using something like an equation online. So
your local university might be able to hook you up with that.
You could also do a search on Google for “metabolic testing”
wherever you happen to live. Now you move on and you
say…
Josh asks: No diet or meal plan seems to be able to really help me drop
my body fat. My physician says my blood tests don’t indicate
a slow metabolism but even his dietary advice doesn’t work.
Can you help?
Ben answers: Your physician should not be giving you a blood test for a
slow metabolism. Your physician can give you a blood test
for thyroid or for anemia or something that’s going to
indirectly affect your metabolism, or directly affect your
metabolism but those don’t measure metabolic rate. Those
are just measuring parameters that influence your
metabolism. The only way your doc can directly test your
metabolism is via the measurement that I just described. So
I’m not sure why they’re telling you that other than maybe
they’re just trying to tell you in some other way that your
thyroid is normal. Let’s say that your thyroid is normal and
you’re still having trouble dropping body fat. I can tell you
right now that when my clients come to me and they
complain about this or when potential clients come to me
and they complain about this, usually I’m suggesting a range
of tests from food allergy tests to yeast tests, fungus tests. I’m
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looking at their full nutrient profile. A lot of times looking at
not just the nutrient intake but also the supplement intake,
the hydration status, the actual exercise program that they’re
utilizing as well as their lifestyle, their stress levels, their
sleep levels. There are so many things at play here that you
just having a slow metabolism could pretty easily be
overcome if that’s all it is. But when you say no diet or meal
plan seems to really be able to help, it doesn’t tell me much.
Other than that, we would need to dig a little further to see
what’s going on and those are some of the ways that we
would do it. Now your second question is how far in advance
do you plan your workouts? How do you anticipate muscles
that you’re overtraining when you’re planning ahead? I plan
out my cycling, running and swimming workouts in a macro
perspective for the entire year. Meaning that I sit down, I
look at the triathlons I want to do. I look at the shape I want
to be in. I look at possibly maybe being a little bit heavier
over the holidays, a little bit more body fat in the winter, a
little bit less in the summer. And I plan out the big picture
based on that. Knowing the time of year that I’m going to be
focusing more on strength, knowing the time of year I’m
going to be focusing more on cardiovascular endurance or fat
loss and knowing the time of year I’m going to be focusing
more on explosive racing type of fitness because I do
triathlons. Now from there, if I know the macro perspective,
what I do is at the beginning of every week and this is the
same thing I do with my clients, I sit down and plan that
week’s workouts based off of where I need to be from a
macro perspective for that week. So if it’s a race week, then
I’m planning lots of short, very intense sessions without
much volume. If it’s a fat loss week, it’s a lot of early morning
workout sessions on an empty stomach that are slightly
lower intensity usually followed by some type of resistance
training session or cross training session in the afternoon. If
it’s strength building week, usually it’s a lot more time in the
weight room with lower reps and higher weights. So as long
as you know the general direction you want to go – for me,
it’s usually on a week by week basis. Because what I find is if
I plan out my entire month specifically or if I plan out one of
my client’s entire month specifically, we end up running into
stuff two weeks in. I’m having to go back and re-invent the
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entire program because they remember they had a family
reunion or their foot starts to hurt or we have to do any
number of things to modify the program based off of the
dynamic things that are happening in their lives. So I
wouldn’t plan too far ahead in terms of the workout details,
but I always have a big picture. In terms of anticipating
muscles that you’re overtraining and avoiding overtraining?
Generally, you want to give a muscle enough rest to where
it’s not sore the next time you work it. And that’s just a
matter of knowing your body. For most people, it’s 48 to 72
hours. So if I’m, say, working my chest muscles with bench
pressing or pushups, then the way that I’m planning out my
week, I’m not going to be bench pressing on Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m going to be doing it on, for
example, Monday and Thursday. So there’s a lot of different
ways you can split up body parts. One would be pushing
exercises on Monday, pulling exercises on Tuesday, cardio
on Wednesday, back to pushing on Thursday, pulling on
Friday and then core on the weekends along with cardio.
That’s just one example. Another example would be three full
body workouts during the week with two cardio sessions. So
as long as you plan it out so you’re not doing the same thing
every day and allowing 48 to 72 hours between muscle
groups, then it tends to be pretty effective. So good questions.
John asks: What’s your opinion on V8 juice? The 5.5 ounce cans are
really convenient for eating on the go. Should I be concerned
with BPA like most other canned tomato products?
Ben answers: Well John, I couldn’t necessarily find any studies for you that
would indicate that you do need to be concerned about BPA.
However, there’s really nothing that could truly replace the
type of fresh juice that you’d get from making your own juice
at home and then carrying that in whether it be travel coffee
mugs or water bottles or whatever is convenient. Because V8
is made from processed vegetable juice concentrate. So it’s
heated. A lot of times it’s reconstituted and they’ve added a
bunch of salt to it as well as natural flavoring which in many
cases can basically just be re-packaged MSG. So, if you look
at the ingredient label of V8 juice you’re getting water,
tomato paste, reconstituted vegetable juice blend – which is
carrot, celery, beets, parsley, lettuce, water crest and spinach
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– lemon juice, salt, vitamin C and citric acid. You can easily
make something like this at home and also save yourself the
salt because you’re getting almost 500 milligrams of salt in a
V8 which is not doing your blood pressure or health many
favors. You’re almost getting your daily recommended dose
of sodium from just a couple of V8s. So in terms of making
your own at home, there are recipes out there. One of the
things you could do is get a VitaMix or even a Magic Bullet or
a blender like food processor, and you can get a bunch of
vegetables that you turn around and see on the can of the V8.
So you’re looking at getting some tomatoes, celery, onion.
You can do some garlic like the whole garlic cloves and any
other number of vegetables that you care to add and just boil
them. Put them over heat for about 20 minutes and then
once they’re boiled, throw them into your food processor or
your blender and blend them. And then the things you could
add to make it taste more like V8 would be the same types of
things you’d add to a Bloody Mary. You can add a little bit of
sugar or brown rice syrup or molasses or whatever sweetener
you would prefer to use. You can use salt and generally not
more than about a tablespoonful for anywhere from three to
four servings. You can add some pepper, you can add a little
bit of horseradish. You can put some lemon juice in there.
Worcestershire sauce. But basically, you mix all this together
and you can batch produce a big batch of fresh juice, throw it
in the refrigerator and just hit on that during the week from
your water bottle. And it’d be a good way to go if you kind of
like that flavor of V8, without actually getting the
reconstituted vegetable juice and salt that you’re getting
from the canned product. That’s what I would do if you’re
going to be relying on vegetable juice as one of your primary
snacks through the day.
Casey asks: I have to work and go to school full time right now, and I
often lose sleep and can’t wind down until very late because
of it. Not to mention the mass consumption of alcohol which
has become my main goal to eliminate. Do you have any
suggestions that do not include quitting my work or school? I
know that stress is slowly killing my body. I suffer from heart
burn, fatigue, anxiety, high stress, etc. and I am only 21. I
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would just like a real world solution to what I’m sure is a
pretty common issue.
Ben answers: Casey, you’ve kind of answered your own question. That you
are working, going to school full-time, which in and of itself
is doable. But mass consumption of alcohol combined with
that scenario is probably holding you back just a little bit,
especially when you have some of the symptoms that you’re
describing. Now, alcohol in terms of a glass of red wine a few
times a week has cardiovascular protective effects and de-
stressing effects. On the flip side, mass consumption of
alcohol in the way that you described is not all that great for
you. Of course weight gain from the empty calories is going
to be an issue but hypertension or high blood pressure is an
issue. You can get dry skin because of the dehydrating effects
of alcohol. You increase your risk for cancer and psoriasis of
the liver. You affect your kidneys, not just the high blood
pressure but also metabolizing all the other things that
you’re getting in when you’re drinking alcohol and mixed
drinks including the toxic byproducts of metabolism of high
amounts of alcohol. Alcohol can interfere with your body’s
ability to absorb calcium, so you’re going to affect your bones
and your bone density. As far as your mental health, alcohol
consumption is directly correlated with depression, anxiety,
personality disorders, schizophrenia, disrupted sleep
patterns. Essentially that would be the number one
modification that you could make to your life right now to
help you out. When I got serious back in college, I was
drinking quite a bit. I was probably a three or four night a
week party-er. So, not that much different than most of my
friends in school, hitting a few frat parties during the week
and hosting a party or two on the weekend, and usually each
of those, you would average anywhere from five to 10 drinks.
Once I decided to get a little bit more serious about my
education and my life, that was one of the first things that I
quit doing. After that point, I was working full-time and
averaging 24 credit hours per semester and I really didn’t
change that much in my life other than quitting my partying
and late night drinking. My social life was still great. My
health was still great because I was working out, but that was
one of the biggest things I did to affect not only my stress
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levels but also my ability to be able to concentrate and focus
and excel at my studies. So, I would recommend that you
kind of tone the alcohol a little bit and if that means you got
to start drinking sparkling water and maybe even switch to
some of the things I’ve talked about in the show before like
the flavored Noon or U-Hydration effervescent tablets that
you can add to beverages that you still feel like you’re
drinking something flavored, that can help out quite a bit. So,
ultimately though, you kind of answered your own question
during your question.
Jeff asks: What are the benefits of sodium phosphate? I’m thinking of
trying a product called Race Boost from Hammer. Any
thoughts?
Ben answers: Yeah, sodium phosphate is one of those classic supplements,
been used for a long time. It’s a buffer. It’s highly alkalinic
which means that it can help your body deal with all the
acidity from the hydrogen ions that get kicked off from lactic
acid when you are exercising. There have been multiple
studies that have shown sodium phosphate to be effective in
lowering the rating of perceived exertion or increasing the
time to fatigue. The only problem is that most of that was
done with short term activities like 800 meter sprints, and
there was not quite enough time for the GI distress to set in,
that’s going to set in when you’re taking that stuff long term
during endurance exercise. And that’s the issue – is that in
most cases, the gastrointestinal distress that occurs with the
level of sodium phosphate consumption necessary for an
ergogenic effect is typically not worth taking the sodium
phosphate. You’d be much better off focusing on improving
your ability to tolerate large levels of lactic acid and saving
the sodium phosphate supplementation for a Master’s track
and field meet where you got to run a very short distance for
a very short period of time and you aren’t having to dump
that stuff down the hatch. Even for a sprint triathlon, that’s a
long time to be taking sodium phosphate. So understand that
in a lot of supplements, the dosage that they’re going to
recommend might not give you GI distress, but that means
that it’s probably not a high enough dose to actually help you
out when it comes to buffering acidity. Of course, ultimately
you are your own case study, so you can try it out and see
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how you feel but most research points to the necessity to take
quite a bit of that stuff to really see a good result.
Rich asks: Just a quick question, I’ve had a good diet helped by your
tips and advice which focuses on the anti-inflammatory
foods and wondered if you had any further tips on reducing
my hay fever symptoms. I can deal with the extra mucus and
itchy eyes using topical homeopathic remedies, but it is the
systemic effect that really kills my performance. I noticed a
dramatic change in form throughout May, June and July in
my running, cycling and rowing times and recover more
slowly after a tough session.
Ben answers: That’s something that’s pretty tricky. My wife actually deals
with hay fever a little bit as well, and the idea behind hay
fever is that it’s basically your immune system overreacting
to what would normally be harmless airborne particles. But
you’ve got enough allergens running through your
bloodstream and enough sensitivity to them that it causes
the runny nose, the sneezing, the watery eyes, the coughing,
all those things that you might be able to tolerate when
you’re sitting at your office, but once you’re on a bicycle it
becomes a whole different issue. You mentioned some of the
homeopathics and there’s definitely some out there that can
help out a little bit. Specifically things like the Butter Burr,
that’s one that’s typically used as a natural allergy treatment
and that’s something you can get as a homeopathic remedy
at your local health food store. Quercetin, which is
interestingly an ingredient in the FRS energy drink that
Lance Armstrong uses – that’s actually an anti-histamine but
there haven’t really been many studies done on it in terms of
its direct influence on hay fevers. It would be between about
200 and 400 milligrams of that three times a day, though, in
terms of the anti-histamine like effect. I’m not a doctor. I’m
not prescribing this as medical advice. I’m just saying the
amount that’s been found actually show an effect on the
histamine production. So caratenoids, that’s basically a
family of plant pigments and you’re going to get that from a
lot of the darker vegetables and also things like apricots,
carrots, sweet potato, butternut squash and then of course all
the darker ones I mentioned like the collared greens, the bok
choy, the kale, the spinach. Taking in caratenoids or
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caratenoid rich foods can be a good idea as well because
those can actually promote the opening of the airways and
eliminate a little bit of the inflammation there. Identifying
any food sensitivities outside of the hay fever that you might
have an issue with, specifically all the things that you’ve
probably heard me talk about before that people tend to be
allergic to – peanuts, soy, wheat, dairy, gluten, even
tomatoes in some cases, eggs in some cases – those are some
things that I would get looked at. You can do a skin prick test
for food allergies, a stool test for food allergies. There’s a
company out here that I work with called Unikey Health
Systems. They have you send them a stool sample and that’s
fun to think about, and then they analyze it and send you
back your results. You could call Unikey and tell them as well.
I think they do give a 5% discount if you mention my name,
which I guess probably saves you on your poop shipping.
Moving on, Omega 3 fatty acids – those are something that…
they’re usually for a variety of health conditions, but
basically what they do is they can reduce the production of
inflammatory chemicals in your body specifically something
called prostaglandin and cytokines. And taking in Omega 3
fatty acids supplements is something that I would highly
recommend, either a fish oil or a flax seed oil or do what I do
and do both. So, I would recommend that. And then finally,
acupuncture believe it or not is something that’s used for
quite a few allergic type of reactions and it’d be worth giving
a try. You could go ahead and Google your local
acupuncturist. I believe that the new program similar to
Craigslist, called Angieslist actually has reviews of local
healthcare practitioners. I tend to like to review and research
practitioners before I go visit them, because some of them
can be really kooky and some of them can actually be good
people who are well-educated and have done quite a bit of
what they practice. So I would research that before you see
an acupuncturist, but that’s something that would be
important to consider as well.
Chuck asks: I was wondering for what distance should one do a carb load?
Obviously for a full or half Ironman, but should I implement
for an Olympic distance triathlon or is there a certain point
where it’s just not necessary to do at all?
Page 15
Ben answers: Well Chuck, basically you can look as a guy at storing
anywhere from about 1900 to 2500 calories of carbohydrate
on your body. And so, if you know that going really, really
hard – exercising really hard – most guys are going to burn
around 1000 calories an hour. You know you’ve got enough
to last about two hours in terms of carbohydrate stores on
board. So, no need to carbo load for anything under two
hours. Once you get up to that point though, you can
definitely start to carbo load and see the benefits of that up
to 60% additional glycogen that you can store in your body
from a carb-loading protocol. Now carb loading is a little bit
logistically intensive, trying to figure out your percentages
and gradually increase your carbs throughout the week and
also do your carbohydrate depleting session a week before
the exercise. Listen to podcast number 92 if you want to hear
more about what we talked about with the carbohydrate
loading. But for a shorter race, I really only focus on eating a
high carb diet for two days leading up to that race. It’s the
only carbo loading that I do. And then making sure that I of
course get a high carb diet for breakfast the morning of a
race. So really, there’s not necessarily a tried and true rule
that I follow for carb loading for a shorter distance event like
a sprint or an Olympic distance triathlon. It’s just basically
upping carbohydrate intake for those last two days, and
typically the carbohydrate intake is replacing proteins or
fibers in my diet. So for example, instead of having a salad
I’ll have a couple of sweet potatoes or instead of having, for
example, a protein smoothie, I’ll have a fruit smoothie. And
so I just throw things in here and there to replace some of
the foods that I would normally be eating. So, that’s about as
scientific as I get when it comes to carb loading for a shorter
distance event, just because it’s not super important. But a
lot of people don’t do Olympic distance triathlons in under
two hours, so obviously you can get some benefit from carb
loading a little bit for that distance.
Chris asks: I just got my butt royally kicked this past weekend at the
Devil’s Punch Bowl bike race. I believe that the altitude
which was 3800 feet at the start had a lot to do with that, as I
live and train at sea level. My heart rate was skyrocketing the
entire race, much higher than it ever had in the past. Do you
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have any practical advice on how to prepare for three days of
hard racing at a similar elevation in mid-June?
Ben answers: You’ve got a couple of choices when it comes to that, Chris.
First off, if you get to your place of competition just like a day
prior to the event rather than two or three days prior to the
event, your body doesn’t really have a chance to react to the
altitude and you really don’t struggle with it quite as much.
So one strategy is to get there as late as possible. The other
strategy is to get there two to three weeks prior and
acclimatize to the altitude which is logistically a lot more
difficult to do for most people. Now, for altitude training,
living low – meaning living at your normal altitude and
training high, meaning training at the higher altitudes is a
very good way to do things, because you get the physiological
benefits of training at altitude but your body is given a
chance to recover when you drop back down out of altitude,
and that’s kind of the gold standard for altitude training. The
problem is that means you have to live near a mountain.
Then you can drive to the top of the mountain to train and
then go back home down to sea level when you’re done. And
so again, that’s logistically difficult to do. You can get full-on
altitude training systems where you have like a tent that you
train in and some people use those tents for sleeping, not
training and I actually frown on that. I don’t encourage the
sleeping in the hypoxic tents just because it can inhibit
recovery, but I do recommend training in them. And that
would be an investment but that’s something else you could
do. There’s not much that you can do to really get your body
ready for the type of things that occur at altitude other than
training at altitude. But I would make sure that you have
adequate iron and ferritin in your diet. Ferritin is a storage
protein for iron and iron is of course essential to your red
blood cells’ ability to carry and deliver oxygen to your muscle
tissue. So I would make sure that you’re eating a diet that’s
high in iron. You don’t necessarily have to supplement with
iron. It can be actually toxic and it’s pretty easy to overdo the
iron. Basically you’re looking at things like sesame seeds and
dark leafy greens, and eating some of the more hemic
containing meats like the red meats, the dark red salmon, the
steaks, things of that nature. Making sure that you take in
Page 17
those types of foods and then focus on your breathing. Look
at that deep breathing article that I recommended to David
earlier in this podcast that I linked to from the Shownotes.
Read that too, so that you make sure you’re getting as much
oxygen in as possible when you are at altitude because there
are fewer molecules of oxygen per breath of air and so you’ve
got to breathe more to get more oxygen. Even though if
you’re a physiologist listening in, I know that you’re jumping
up and down right now, waving your hands in the air, talking
about the partial pressure affecting the actual absorption of
the oxygen at the alveola level, but again there’s not a lot that
you can do about that other than training at altitude. So I’d
focus on the breathing component if you’re not able to train
at the altitude.
Ken asks: I am having problems staying asleep. I’m going to bed
around 10 or 10:30, I’m waking up to go to the bathroom and
I am not able to fall back asleep. I’m very wide awake after
four to five hours. Also I’m drenched in sweat when I wake
up. I do not work out before bed. Most of my stuff is done
morning or early evening. Is this normal and what can I do
about it?
Ben answers: This to me – again, not a medical doctor – but this sounds
very much like an overactive thyroid. Hyperthyroidism is
another way that you can describe it. Your thyroid is a little
gland right underneath our Adam’s apple and it influences a
ton of your body functions including metabolism and body
temperature, and if it is overactive, then there are a variety of
metabolism and body temperature symptoms that can occur.
And this would include the type of things that you’re
complaining about. Being really jittery, having lots of energy
but it not being a good type of energy like more like a
nervous twitching kind of energy, laying awake at night,
trouble sleeping, cold or clammy skin, sweaty skin. All these
types of things can occur with hyperthyroidism. Now, if you
were to go see an allopathic medical doc, they’d tell you that
what you could do if you do have that is take an anti-thyroid
drug that will prevent the thyroid from producing its thyroid
hormones. You could get a radioactive iodine treatment
which basically means that the thyroid cells that absorb that
radioactive iodine get damaged, basically get killed. Or you
Page 18
could surgically remove the thyroid gland or the thyroid
nodule. Now, those of you listening to this podcast know that
I’m not a huge fan of those options unless we’re talking about
a very serious case of Gray’s disease or hyperthyroidism that
simply cannot be managed. What I would instead
recommend is you look into homeopathic treatments –
herbal or homeopathic treatments – there are a few out there.
Lemon balm is one, bugle weed is another one. Motherwort
is another and I know all of you are snickering because it
sounds like I’m talking about Harry Potter herbs. But bugle
weed, lemon balm and motherwort are actual names of herbs.
I would look into acupuncture, once again using some of the
recommendations that you heard about earlier in the show. I
would look into massage therapy as well, and I would have a
very serious visit with a naturopathic physician and once
again, you’ll want to research a naturopathic physician that is
good and you can again use something like Angieslist for that.
But everything that you’re describing to me sounds more like
hyperthyroidism or overactive thyroid type of issue. So I
would definitely go speak with a medical professional about
that.
Now I know that you’re all waiting with bated breath at the
edge of your seat to see who won the free membership to my
Body Transformation Club based on the question that they
asked. And that’s actually going to go to listener Josh with
the question about the slow metabolism. So Josh, if you
email me, I’m going to give you a special code that lets you
into my Body Transformation Club for free. Just email
[email protected] . Now we’re going to go ahead
and move on to this week’s featured topic after a brief special
announcement.
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield and on the other
line I have somebody from a company called Innovative
Body Solutions. And if you watched the last summer
Olympics, you may have seen Olympic phenom swimmer
Dara Torres – the woman who wore several golds, five time
Olympic swimmer, gold medalist, 28 time All American,
American record holder, one of the best swimmers we’ve
ever produced – if you saw her warming up before her swims
or maybe you watched the video that was out there on TV of
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all the different protocols that she uses to keep her body
tuned, you may have seen her being stretched and worked on
by a couple of individuals. One of those people was Anne
Tierney, who I have on the other line. Not only was Anne
over there at the Olympics with Dara. She was also with the
Olympic Gold medalist gymnast Nastia Liuken and has
worked with a huge number of collegiate athletes,
recreational athletes, professional athletes incorporating
something called resistance stretching which we’re going to
talk about today. So, Anne. Thanks for coming on.
Anne Tierney: Hi Ben, thank you.
Ben: Well I guess the best place to start for people is to ask you a
little bit about what resistance stretching is and how you got
into this.
Anne Tierney: So, what we call it is basically Ki-Hara resistance stretching.
What it is, is it’s all based on eccentric training. So typically
when people stretch a muscle, they just lengthen a muscle.
That’s what you think of as stretching. You lay back, you pull
your leg up. What we consider as stretching is that as you
lengthen the muscle you contract it. This helps – actually it
works in the (staging) mechanism. If you can’t contract the
muscle as your lengthening it, then that means that there
could be substitution or a weakness there. So it’s a staging
mechanism that doesn’t allow you to overstretch the muscle.
So it actually keeps muscles longer and stronger.
Ben: Okay and for the people listening in, can you go back and
explain real quick – what do you mean when you say to
lengthen a muscle or to stretch a muscle, how do the muscles
actually work in that sense when they’re being stretched or
lengthened or contracted?
Anne Tierney: Okay, well most people like when you go to a gym and you
lift a weight, what you’re lifting or strength training is a
concentric movement. So you’re going to do a bicep curl, you
lengthen your arm where the muscle’s long. The bicep will be
long. You put 15 pounds, 20 pounds whatever have you
weight in your hand and you curl it up and that will be
strength training or concentric movement. So we actually
think that the stretch is when you lower that weight. The e-
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centric movement. So it’s actually lengthening the muscle
while maintaining contraction. And most philosophies of
stretching simply just go for lengthening the muscle, just
trying to get it as long as possible and we want to make sure
that as you’re trying to get it as long as possible it can still
maintain a contraction.
Ben: Okay. So basically the concept behind resistance stretching is
that you’re actually contracting that muscle as you lengthen
it?
Anne Tierney: Exactly. It’s kind of very – actually very counter-intuitive. It’s
not what most people think. Most people think you relax as
you stretch or you relax the muscle. But that can lead to
injury and overstretched muscles. Whereas if you contract it
while you stretch it then it keeps it in a safe range and you
won’t overstretch the muscle.
Ben: Okay, is there anywhere that somebody could go to actually
see something like this in action? For the visual learners out
there.
Anne Tierney: To see something like this in action… we’re actually working
on our Web site to develop some… there’s video, etc., but if
they want to see a diagram of the muscle lengthening, etc.
we’re working on some animation for that, that will be up on
the Web site eventually in the future. Right now there’s
obviously videos. The hard part is when people see it… like
our video that we have with Dara Torres, it looks like the
person isn’t doing much work. Just like during the Olympics
or any TV show, etc. that we’ve been on – it looks like they’re
just lengthening their muscle when actually there’s a
contraction going on. It’s a lot more work than what it looks
like.
Ben: So let’s say that you were going to stretch my hamstring
using resistance stretching, how would that work?
Anne Tierney: Yeah. Well you know, say we’re going to do a hamstring
stretch, you’d lie on your back. You’d bend your right knee
into your chest if we’re going to do a hamstring. I would first
lengthen your leg up to a long position to see what kind of
range you have, at the point where it starts to shake or you
Page 21
start to feel a tug, that’s kind of our (inaudible) point. We’d
have you kick down. So we’d have you strength train the
muscle first to help warm the muscle up, to teach the muscle
the movement and then what we’d have you do is keep
kicking down so you would keep kicking your heels to your
butt and as you kept kicking down, creating that contraction
– if I was stretching you, I would then meet the force of you
kicking down to lengthen your leg only as far as I could feel
you resist. The key with that – because people hear the word
“resistance”, they think I should kick down as hard as I can.
But really, you just need to kick down at a five or a six out of
10, and you just keep a steady contraction and it’s almost like
a magnet – a magnet between your heel and your butt. They
want to stay together but I’m the force in between them
lengthening your heel away. And that’s kind of how that
works.
Ben: If I didn’t have you there to produce the force, could I
actually do resistance stretching on myself?
Anne Tierney: Yes, of course. There are phenomenal self stretches. What
you do is instead of me producing the force, it would be your
own hand. So your own hand would be on your heel. Your
heel would be kicking in to your butt and your hands would
be meeting the force of your leg. So in this situation,
obviously your leg is stronger than your arm, you’d have to
regulate it and not resist too hard. But because your arms are
working to stretch your legs to get the contraction, your arms
are actually going to get stronger. Because you’re working
your upper and lower body at the same time, the core is
engaged the whole time for stability. So it ends up being a
really intense full body workout.
Ben: Gotcha. So when you’re doing resistance stretching, you
describe it as a workout. How long would a typical resistance
training or resistance stretching session actually take you? Is
it like yoga where you can just choose a few moves and do a
few moves or do you have an entire program that you go
through?
Anne Tierney: Yeah, the great thing about it is you know, it’s portable
obviously. All you need is yourself. Or if you’re with a trainer,
Page 22
it depends. Most of our trainers end up doing an hour and a
half session because we try to get the upper and lower body
as well a technique of massage we call mashing in as well.
But sometimes with professional athletes, we’ll work as long
as two hours and sometimes we can get a solid workout in
with somebody in 30 minutes as well. Or if you’re going to do
it on your own, you can pick and choose. I’m going to go
boxing today so I’m going to do my chest and my back. I’m
going to do some lats, I’m going to do quads. Pick and choose.
Or like on our DVD, there are 16 self stretches that can be
done, five to seven reps, both strength and search in under
20 minutes. So it’s pretty easy to get… you can make it as
long and as hard as you want or you can kind of make it as
short and quick as you want.
Ben: And the DVD just walks people through a resistance
stretching workout?
Anne Tierney: Exactly. It’s a two DVD set and so on the first one, it’s like
you learn the concepts of resistance and e-centric and why
this works and balancing muscle groups and some problem
solving. Then it goes through in great detail – probably
excruciating detail – each stretch. And then on the second
disc, it’s just Dara Torres leading you through all 20
stretches in a row basically. Sorry, it’s 16 stretches, 8 legs and
then followed by 8 arms.
Ben: Okay, gotcha. I’ll make sure that I put a link to that in the
Shownotes to this podcast. Now I know some people are
worried about flexibility and the potential for an athlete
becoming too flexible and not being able to produce as great
a force as they should be able to. Is that an issue with
resistance stretching? Getting too flexible?
Anne Tierney: No. That’s actually the benefit of this, is that you can’t
overstretch the muscle as long as while you’re lengthening
the muscle, you have a contraction, you can’t overstretch it.
So, that’s the magical thing – is often times people end up
overstretching their muscles and then that leads to pulls or
injuries. This is its own spacing mechanism. If you can’t keep
a contraction and you try to keep going, you’re going too far
and that’s as far as you go. The other thing is it leads to more
Page 23
explosive muscles, and because of e-centric, it basically
creates more tears in the muscle than typical weigh training
does – so it can actually build stronger muscles as well. And
so, it’s those longer and stronger muscles which lead to more
explosiveness. It’s been really great for the athletes. We have
a lot of triathletes that we work with. They’ve found it to be
very beneficial. Not only keeping them not injured but also
keeping them improving in their time even as they get older.
Ben: Gotcha. Okay. So could you actually substitute resistance
training for a workout? Because the way you described it, it
sounds like it’s actually kind of tough on the body if you’re
actually giving yourself the resistance and resisting your
limbs as you move through space. Do you actually get a
workout when you’re doing resistance stretching?
Anne Tierney: You definitely get a workout. I think something that we hear
the most is “I can’t believe I’m sweating. Aren’t I supposed to
be stretching right now?” So it’s definitely a workout. But you
know, our philosophy is we think it’s a great complement to
anything you do. So if you like to do yoga, great. Do this with
yoga. It will probably get you into some positions that you
couldn’t get into before. You like to weight train? Perfect.
This helps take that tension out that you just put in your
body weight training. You like to run? Good. You’re going to
get to run longer, etc. So, could you do this on its own as a
workout? Yes. We have people who do that separately, and
have I done that for periods of times as experimentation? For
sure. But is it the be all, end all? No. I don’t believe that at all.
I think that it’s great to have diversity in your workout to
strength training, to do other forms of – other modalities of
functional training. But it can be a workout, so yeah
definitely. You’ll get a burn.
Ben: Gotcha. Now would you want to do this if you were going to
do it before a workout or as a supplement to a workout – say
a swim session – is it something you’d want to do right
before a swim session, earlier in the day, immediately after?
When is the best time to do resistance stretching?
Anne Tierney: We have all sorts of different… we kind of base that on
people themselves, on individuals and what they like. For me
Page 24
personally, I like to do it before I go work out because then I
feel so much better when I’m working out, so I feel like it’s
such a better workout. I don’t feel stiff and I don’t feel tight.
I’m not thinking “Oh, I’m cramping here.” Other people like
to go get their workout in – like Dara for instance, she likes
to do all of the other stuff that she’s going to do – swim for
two hours, do her functional training, do her dry land, etc.
She likes the last thing she does to be getting resistance
stretched and mashed because she feels like it takes all the
tension out of her body. So the next day she can start
refreshed again. Whereas other people, you know, like to do
it as soon as they wake up so they’re just fresh for the day or
right before they go to bed. So it kind of depends on how you
feel. So we like our athletes or anybody we work with to
experiment with it. What do they like? And we can adapt it to
that. That’s a great thing about it. You can do it before or
after or both. And it’s quick and you can do it that way.
Ben: So if somebody isn’t an athlete and they just – let’s say they
have whatever – low back pain, they’ve been told they need
to improve flexibility – is this something that somebody like
that would be able to handle or is this just limited to athletes?
Anne Tierney: No. I would say it’s actually probably 50 or 60% are people
who come to us are just regular Joes. They stand a lot. They
sit a lot at their jobs or whatever it may be or they have
injuries. Tons of back injuries, knee injuries, whatever it may
be. This is actually great for it because it’s a way to do it
without – it’s a way to kind of get stronger without weight
bearing. So we do have an older crowd. We have some clients
in their 80s, 90s, etc. because they can do this. They can
strengthen their bodies without load bearing. But the great
thing about it is there’s a problem solving formula. So a lot of
people think that their hamstrings are really tight. They can’t
touch their toes, whatever it may be. So what that is is it
might not be their hamstrings at all. It could be the balancing
or agonist/antagonist muscle groups – their quads, the front
of their legs, the hip flexors that are actually in the way. So
the reason why this has worked so well is it kind of gives
people an answer or a way to problem solve and fix it instead
of “Oh your hamstrings are tight? Well just keep holding that
position for another 20 minutes and maybe you’ll move a
Page 25
centimeter.” We have an actual formula that says, hey if this
muscle doesn’t feel like a good stretch, let’s go try this muscle
group, and then when you come back I bet it’ll feel better.
And almost 90% of the time, you can get a pretty dramatic
change in range of motion by just doing a couple of the other
exercises based on how it’s laid out. So that’s a major thing,
and the back problems come a lot from hamstrings and hip
flexors of course. So, we’ve had a lot of success with the
injury angle of it because it’s not weight bearing and it is
your own body and you can control it.
Ben: Gotcha. Now I want to ask you one more question and this is
kind of the personal trainer in me and this is for the trainers
or the instructors who are out there listening. How would
something like this be different than like PNF which for
those of you listening is propeoceptive neuromuscular
facilitation, where you contract and relax a muscle as you’re
stretching someone.
Anne Tierney: So with PNF, it’s usually at the very end range. They take you
to an end range and they have you contract and then relax
and then move you farther. With resistance stretching, you’re
actually contracting throughout the entire range of motion.
So it’s not just at the end range, it’s through the entire range
of motion. The other thing is the problem solving formula
that I described, which is something that’s intrinsic in our
system as well as we like to stretch in rotational movements
as well. So a lot of the stretching is done in linear patterns.
And we like to add rotational movements because every
muscle has three functions, right? It either flexes of extends,
it abducts or it adducts, or it externally or internally rotates.
So, to truly stretch a muscle, rehearsing all three of those is
crucial. So that’s what we really get into as well – working on
rotations – and we kind of think of that as if you have a towel
that’s wet, and you squeeze it, you get some water out. But if
you squeeze and twist it, you get a lot more water out
because you’re grabbing more muscle fibers. So the
rotational components of the stretching is huge for us,
grabbing more muscle fibers that way.
Ben: Okay, so cool. Alright, so those of you listening in, if you
want to hear more, what I’ll do is I’ll put a link to this DVD
Page 26
that Anne talked about on the Shownotes to this podcast and
I’ll also put a link to their Body Solutions Web site where you
can find out more about what they’re doing and some of the
really cool concepts they’ve got in terms of making the body
more flexible, more athletic, etc. So, Anne thanks for coming
on the call today and explaining this resistance stretching to
people.
Anne Tierney: Thank you Ben. I appreciate it.
Ben: Alright, have a great day.
Anne Tierney: Thank you, you too.
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