Beyond Training – Ben Greenfield – Podcast #18

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In this episode, Dr. Justin and Dr. Baris interviewed Ben Greenfield, the New York Times bestselling author of “Beyond Training”.  He is also a prominent fitness coach, ex-body builder and an Ironman triathlete.  Ben has over a decade of experience training professional, collegiate and recreational athletes through proper nutrition, lifestyle management and wellness to obtain optimal performance.

In this podcast, discover the proper workouts to help improve one’s speed and performance.  Recognize the benefits of combining isometric exercises and electro-stim for greater accumulation of lactic acid as well as improve endurance.  Learn how to maintain ketosis even on a high carb intake.  Also find out the common parasitic infections in triathletes and the natural supplements to deal with it.

 

In this episode we cover:

08:31   Proper speed training

13:10   Isometric training plus electro-stim

16:41   Lactic acid and growth hormone

22:48   Ketosis

25:52   Parasite infections in triathletes

30:10   Two-A-Day Training

 

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Baris Harvey:  Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Beyond Wellness Radio.  And today’s awesome podcast we are interviewing Ben Greenfield.   Ben is a super productive, awesome person.  He had so many different initials behind his name.  So I am going to try to condense his bio real quick.  He is a coach, nutritionist, author, speaker, ex-body builder, Ironman, Spartan Racer, like every fitness thing you can think of he has probably done it.  In addition to that, he is the head coach and nutritionist for a specific elite fitness.  He is a consultant for WellnessFX.  He is the host of the Get-Fit Guy and the Ben Greenfield podcast on ITunes.   And he also just released an awesome book called “Beyond Training”, not to be confused with our Beyond Wellness Radio. (Laughs)  So Ben, how is it going today?

Ben Greenfield:  Actually, I was totally ripping off you guys…

Justin Marchegiani:  Laughs

Baris Harvey:  Yes.

Ben Greenfield:  Actually the whole scheme there was… (Laughs)

Baris Harvey:  And no way that we would have even known that, though.  If anything, we are ripping you off.  You are way more…

Ben Greenfield:  That is right!  Actually, because my publisher is the same publisher that published Beyond Bacon, I have not gotten out before their book.  Beyond Bacon, I am like, “Oh, it actually was it.”

Baris Harvey:  And it’s the same people so you know it’s the same thing.

Ben Greenfield:  Yo.

Baris Harvey:  So first question.  I noticed you used to be an ex-body builder. So what got you into the kind of holistic field?  I know with body building, you know you read the muscle magazines, kind of just the generic kind of carb loaded kind of thing.  And the same thing with the Ironman, too.  But what got you into the holistic form of training?

Ben Greenfield:  Well, you know, like, body building is kind of a lot of BroScience like you are definitely delving deeper into especially like nutrition.  Everything from sodium loading to diuretics to a lot of research into supplements.  And so like you kind of start to go down that road.  Grand body building does not look at things through the lens of performance combined with health.  Like I do in my book and like I do now, you know in my own training.  But I think that between body building and then what I got into later which is just the same thing, one of the nerdiest geekiest sports on the face of the planet when it comes to like delving into the nutrition part of things and that is triathlon.   Like between those two, that really got me into looking more deeply into this science of performance more than just like you know, smashing yourself with workouts.  So, I think that the reason for that again is that, body building, there is such a nutrition bend in order for you to really get from 15 down to 10 percent body fat, let us say as a I did.  You can do that just by working out hard and by kind of following your diet.  But then if you drop from like, let us say, 10 percent down to 3 percent.  You got to pull out a lot of stops.

Baris Harvey:  Basically, those are like the, oh, gee kind of biohackers, right?

Ben Greenfield:  Yes, exactly.  Exactly.  And so, like the same thing for triathlon.  In triathlon, you could go out and do like a sprint triathlon and do pretty good by just having done some pretty tough workouts.  But then once you get up in the Ironman and it becomes a sport of attrition or if you run out of muscle glycogen and whatever glycogen you are pretty much screwed.  Then that becomes a little bit more of like a nutrition science sports.  So body building and triathlon shoved me kind of deeper down into the tunnel of nutrition, supplements and the deeper science of performance.  Then going into that got me more into self-quantification.  Going into self-quantification began to help me realize that, “Hey!”  Even though we are going fast and we have got lots of muscle or we are getting good results in races or whatever, we are not actually healthy when you look at cholesterol parameters or inflammatory parameters and stuff like that.  And then that kind of got me into like the whole holistic thing of kind of taking into account everything from sleep to nutrient density to digestibility of foods to Biohacking to everything that I kind of focus on now.  When you look at stress fractures for example, you know, that is a pretty common occurrence especially in female endurance athletes.  That is part of what is called the athletic triad which is basically an eating disorder and that is combined with the amenorrhea and osteoporosis.  So typically, like if we look at those in detail in a female endurance athlete, that first component, eating disorder that I was talking about a little bit earlier like you just need to eat more damn food.  Like so many, like let us use as example like this whole ketogenic diet thing.  Like so many women are like, “I am ready to do this ketogenic diet to lose weight.”  That is not really a weight loss diet.  And a lot of times like carbohydrate restriction especially, drop so low on that diet that women kind of shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to creating basically like either nutrient depletion or carbohydrate depletion by focusing so much on this ketogenic diet when all they really need to focus on is just eating a lot of food when they are hungry if they are like a hard charging female endurance athlete.  And trying to skew a lot of it towards that but not focusing on like the ketosis per se.  We will get the next part, amenorrhea.  In most of the cases of like female athletes, it is usually due to pregnenolone steal and low progesterone from too much of cholesterol and sterol precursors getting shuttled towards cortisol formation.  And so in the case of that, it is a combination of eating a lot of fat, getting a lot of vitamin D, eating a lot of calories period and then focusing on decreasing cortisol using some of those methods that I have talked about earlier.  And the other part of this, osteoporosis.  When you look at that a lot of times it is just straight up mineral depletion.  What I mean by that is when you are constantly perspiring through your inspiration and expiration and also through your sweat.  If you are eating a standard fruit and vegetable-based diet just because of the leeching of minerals from modern farming practices you are not getting typically as many minerals as are necessary to help you out with bone density.  And so most female endurance athletes in addition to decreasing cortisol, increasing fat intake, increasing overall calorie intake, I usually really encourage the use of like Sea Salt mineral supplementation, things of that nature to help out the things from that standpoint.  So those are some of the big winds when you look at that.

Baris Harvey:  Yes, that sounds great.  I wanted to kind of go on to a tangent for a bit.  We are talking about some of the metabolic processes.  Now I want to kind of shift over because I hear you talk a lot about endurance because you are an endurance sport athlete, of course.   But you have such a wealth of knowledge.  And one thing that I have only heard you talked briefly about is more the Fast Twitch kind of athletes.  And now that you are kind of shifting into the sport and racing, I know that that might have play in a little bit more.  So the question that I wanted to go into some of the sports performance kind of thing is what are some of the best ways to improve speed?  I know speed is one of those things that people would say you know you are kind of born with it.  You either have it or you don’t.  Can you possibly increase your speed like a significant amount like someone can increase their strength or their mass?

Ben Greenfield:  Oh, yes.  I mean, you can absolutely increase you speed.  But really the biggest thing or the biggest kind of like misconception that I find is that people, they tend to focus on more kind of like 400 or 800 meter distance, 1 to 2 minute efforts per speed.  You know very glycolytic efforts when really like speed is more about almost like patience when you are trying to tap into that phosphagenic energy pathway that relies primarily upon the splitting of creatine phosphate for very short efforts that are under, usually under 20 seconds in duration and at a very, very high turnover.   So when it comes to training speed, we are talking about short quick efforts with low, low amounts of resistance or force that you are working against with very long recovery periods.   And that is hard for a lot of just like exercise enthusiasts to wrap their heads around because when you are trying to get better or faster you are just thinking you got to be huffing and puffing and breathing hard and feeling the burn the whole time.  When in fact, there is no hydrogen ion accumulation when you are tapping into your creatine phosphagenic pathway.  There is very little fatigue, from like a musculoskeletal standpoint, when you are primarily just taxing your neuromuscular system.  And it is just a totally different type of workout.  So, what I mean by that is like a speed workout might be that you are doing a set of depth jumps, maybe some single leg plyometrics and some quick, very, very short over speed treadmill or downhill repeats and surely not that taxing of a workout.  You are just focusing on from a metabolic standpoint.  It is taxing from a neuro system standpoint but not from a metabolic standpoint.  So you are basically just trying to increase turnover, decrease ground contact time and increase your ability to tap into that phosphagenic pathway.  And it is a style of exercise that is commonly neglected.  I mean, even when you look at it from like a professional sports level, I will see still a lot of coaches like strength conditioning coaches saving these types of workouts for like when the day’s metabolic conditioning is over.  When in fact, and I have talked about this in my book, like if you want to get faster, if you want to get fast feet, if you want to get fast nerves, if you want to get quick reaction time, you do that stuff while you are fresh and preferably also when your reaction time peaks during the day which is typically between 4 and 6 pm in the afternoon.  And that is kind of tough logistically to pull off for a lot of athletes.  What it means is you are going to save your working out until the afternoon.  You are not going to go into a speed workout fatigue and you are going to prioritize speed before you move into any metabolic conditioning.  So if you are looking at this from like, let us say, like the World Cup soccer or leading up to it, so let us say, like a soccer team is prepping for something like this.  Well, ideally what they would do is they would go in.  You do your warm-up; you do your foam rolling.  Then you do all your speed protocols and then you move on into your metabolic conditioning and scrimmage and practice and that type of thing.  So it is just kind of a matter of priority and a matter of knowing the right way to stack your sets and your reps.   And then make sure that you do speed with a low, low amount of resistance.  So typically, if you are doing speed protocols you should not be using anymore of 10% of your total body weight.  So if I am going to go out and do let us say like squat jumps for speed then I am 180 pounds.  So I might be using at most the bar and that’s it.

Baris Harvey:  Uh-hmm.

Ben Greenfield:  So speed is an interesting animal.  They got a lot folks kind of misunderstand how to train properly.

Baris Harvey:  So everybody out there that are listening, do not throw on a 40‑pound weight vest and at the end of your workout try to run the entire football field.

Ben Greenfield:  Yes, that is not speed.  That is all metabolic conditioning.

Justin Marchegiani:  Interesting.   Good points, Ben.  How do you incorporate some of Jay Schroder’s work with the explosive dynamic, isometrics or altitude drops or even just isometric training?  How do you incorporate that into your workout routine?

Ben Greenfield: So the cool thing about electro-stim especially when you combine it with isometrics is that you build up crap loads of lactic acid in the muscle tissue.  So you get a bunch of hydrogen ion build up and you build up your enzyme buffering capacity big time.  And you are able to do it without joint impact and without some of the things that would tend to cause a bigger release in cortisol, longer recovery implications, etc.   So I personally use those types of protocols even though Jay works with like professional football players for example.  I use those protocols for enhancing endurance, like I train 8 to 10 hours last year for Ironman.  Qualified for Ironman World Championships and had some of my best races ever.  And I was doing Jay Schroder’s protocols twice a week.  Meaning that I would get into an isometric position.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Ben Greenfield:  Like a squat.  Like a wall squat against the wall.  And I would have electrodes; in this case i just use a unit called the Compex Unit because the ARP wave unit that Jay uses and like what you use, Justin.

Justin Marchegiani:  Right.

Ben Greenfield:  It is kind of expensive for just like the general population grab.  So I would hook up that Compex Unit and just put it at a pretty high electro stim setting and just basically feel the burn for 5 minutes.  And you finish up on those sessions and felt like you have ran like two hours.  So you get this lactic acid buffering capacity that just goes through the roof.  And one of the reasons for that is when you are in an isometric position you are now milking lactic acid out of your tissues, it is just accumulating.  Like there is a very, very little occurring, you know like if you are riding a bike and you keep the pedals turning over.  Like that is one of the things that I tell the triathletes that I coach.  You never, never glide.  You never cruise on a bike, like you always pedal even when you are going downhill.  So you are always milking metabolic byproducts out of the tissue.  And when you are in an isometric position and you are holding your joint in a specific position that does not happen.  And the cool thing is even though it hurts like hell because it is burning, you really are building up a really good buffering capacity when you do something like that.  So, I mean you can do just isometrics but when you add the electro stim in, it just gives this compounded effect that is great for squeezing a lot of training in the short period of time.  And I got to the point when I would travel through airports, I would duck into like the, don’t tell any of like the folks in the airport with kids this.  But I would knock into like the family restroom.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Ben Greenfield:  And just like hook up the electro.  And I would do like a 15-20 minute protocols or I do like a pushup-hold, squat-hold and lunge–hold with the electro stim added and you know then I travel with this little action wipes so I can wipe off the sweat and everything when I finish.   I could be travelling internationally and get like a killer workout in doing something like that.  So I like it as biohack to really tap into a ton of fitness in a short period of time.

Baris Harvey:  Uh-hmm.

Justin Marchegiani:  That is great.  And for everyone listening at home, Ben goes in to the detail in that on my topic right there in Chapter 4 of his book.   So if you want more information feel free and check that out.  And what do you think about the lactic acid providing a growth hormone stimulus?  What is your take on growth hormone and lactic acid?

Ben Greenfield:  I have not seen a lot of research on lactic acid and growth hormones stimulus so I cannot really speak to that.  What have you seen?

Justin Marchegiani:  I mean Charles Poliquin talks about that in a lot of his training and I think Doug McGuff has mentioned some stuff, you know creating that lactic acid that has provided a strong growth hormones stimulus.  I have seen that in a handful of places I am just not sure if you had any personal experience with that.

Baris Harvey:  You did have an interview with, forgotten his last name, and it was Peter with NASA and he has the Vasper System.

Ben Greenfield:  Oh yes.

Baris Harvey:  And it is kind of that idea of like holding the lactic acid in a place while you are doing the exercise to release more growth hormones.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Ben Greenfield:  Oh, it is interesting because one of the other things that can increase lactic acid buildup is like a short hypoxic state.  And there is some pretty good evidence out there for hypoxia-based induction of DHEA and growth hormone.  And I actually do that on my recovery days, every Wednesday.  I do a hypoxic session in the pool where I will do 20 repeats of underwater swimming for as long as I can go holding my breath until I am literally about to pass out.  And it is very, very low impact, like you recover from that workout super-duper quick.   The only thing that is taking a hit is your lungs.  But I do that because of that research I have seen on DHEA and growth hormone release related to hypoxia.  So yes, it is possible that a big, big part of that is because of the increased lactic acid that accumulates in the presence of low oxygen.

Justin Marchegiani:  Interesting.      

Baris Harvey:  Yes.  Yes.

Justin Marchegiani:  And it can have a similar effect with EPOC like after your exercise when you get to that state where you are kind of like really reaching for your breath.  That type of exercise excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, can that have a similar stimulus?   

Ben Greenfield:  I do not know.  Because it is a different feeling.  Just like breathing hard after your workout.  It is a different feeling than what I would consider to be true hypoxia where it’s like going blue in the face holding your breath type of thing.  Probably a closer analogy on that would be like using for example, like an elevation training mask during a workout.

Baris Harvey:  Uh-hmm.

Ben Greenfield: Or using, like I got a device out in my garage called the hypoxicle which decreases the partial pressure of oxygen in the air.  And you can like put it next to a bicycle or a treadmill and it will simulate you exercising like 18-20,000 feet.  And the interesting thing about that is that it is kind of hypoxia but it is also decreased partial pressure of oxygen.  So you will also get increased production of erythropoietin which is a red blood cell precursor.  So that is kind of a cool little toy to have around if you want, let us say, compete at altitude or increase your blood’s oxygen carrying capacity.

Baris Harvey:  Yes.  And speaking of hypoxia training, you talked about the elevation mask which I guess technically does not change the partial pressure like the other device you have but it is kind of more of a resistance breath kind of training thing.   So I have one of those and also a Powerline but I have been using it during some of my practices.  During some football practices, running routes in the beginning and actually getting pretty fatigued quickly at first but it makes the training without it so much easier.  Can you talk a little bit more about, because I think that is an easy first step for people because it is not that expensive.  Like I think its 80 or 60 bucks something like that.  Can you talk about the elevation mask and how you might use it in you training?

Ben Greenfield: Yes.  The elevation mask like you say is just resisted breathing, really.  It is not reducing the partial pressure of oxygen.  You are just kind of having to breathe through a smaller hole.  It is like breathing through a straw.  So there are a variety of applications for something like that.  I mean my favorite way to use it is just like I do not do as many short quick exercise sessions with it as much as I will rock with it.  Meaning I will put on a weight vest or weighted backpack and do a hard hike in the hills wearing the elevation training mask.  And the thing I like about that is like I can take my kids with me and take my kids out on a hike and whereas normally like going on a hike with your kids, like my kids are six.  Like that would be really easy but it turns into a hard workout.  The other thing that I like to use it for because I am really focusing on slow controlled breathing anyway during this is Yoga.  Just because it takes something like Yoga and turns it into a little bit more metabolically demanding type of routine.  So I have used it for that.  There are a lot of people that like to use it for you know kind of like you are doing running routes or doing like a Burpee based workout or Kettlebell swings, stuff like that.   The only issue I found with that is sometimes I have trouble focusing on quality of form when I feel like I am going blue in the face.   And maybe that is why I like doing it better with things that do not require as much quality attention paid the biomechanics.  But you know if you are able to maintain good biomechanics and good running form and all that jazz while you are using it, then you know it certainly has got some application there, too.

Baris Harvey:  Yes.  Definitely when the form starts to go down it is like, “All right, let me take this off of my face so I can breathe and actually focus a bit.”  It is the same thing with like a weighted vest which is probably not that much heavier because it is like 12 to 15-pound kind of thing just for some added resistance.  But yes, definitely like you said not the kind that will throw you off and just start making your form horrible.  Because then, you will be actually going backwards and training yourself to do the wrong thing.

Ben Greenfield: Yes.

Justin Marchegiani:  And Ben, I also see you write a lot about doing a lot of your endurance work.  But you are going into ketosis and I noticed that you said that you can keep your carbs even upwards of 100 to 150 grams of carbohydrates and still be in ketosis.  And most people if they are familiar with ketosis, that is basically your body burning more fat for fuel.  And typically like in an Atkins type of world, that is keeping your carbs below 20.  But Ben has experienced keeping his carbs much higher.  Can you talk more about that?

Ben Greenfield: Yes, just this paradox between trickle down health information coming from people who might be, no offense, wander around Whole Foods,  doing yoga, you know, three times a week versus people who are out there really exercising hard.  Like my experience, primarily my background is working with athletes, people who are really going out there and doing some pretty tough stuff.  In many cases, you know most days of the week.  And when you look at somebody like that who is going through that amount of energy, they can get away with a lot more than the average person can when it comes to things like carbohydrate intake or even total calorie intake.  And when I do blood and breath ketone monitoring when I am in the throes of Ironman training, I can maintain ketosis on a very high level of carbohydrate intake because I am simply using all that carbohydrate very rapidly for formation of ATP.  And elevations in blood glucose really are pretty slight just because glucose is disappearing from the tissues so quickly when you are exercising.  Especially, if your primary carbohydrate intake is coming during periods of time when you have a really high upregulation of non-glucose dependent insulin or non-insulin dependent glucose transport pathways.  Meaning that you are really not putting much of a strain on the pancreas, glucose is getting shoved in the muscle tissue or liver tissue very, very quickly because you are exercising and because you are very insulin sensitive.  And so when you look at a situation like that, you can even get as high as 250 grams of carbohydrates on a tough day and the understanding there is that depending on like the training program that you are doing or what you are eating during exercise, sometimes half to three quarters of that is just stuff that you are taking in during exercise to support, you know, the day’s fueling.  And you know, in a situation like that there is very little happening in terms of elevations in blood glucose and you can still stay in a very concentrated form of ketosis.  And all the more so if you are using things like medium chain triglycerides and things that are going to keep ketones elevated.

Justin Marchegiani:  Interesting, interesting.  Great.  I am going to switch gears here for a second because Ben does a lot of work with functional medicine and he works with WellnessFX, blood panels and those consulting I think across the country?  International?

Ben Greenfield:  Well, I work primarily online.  So yes, like I do most of my consults via Skype and over the phone.

Justin Marchegiani:  That is cool.  And in Ben’s book, he talks about parasites.  He talks about the experience of him getting one or two different parasite infections.  Can you go into that and how that affected your performance?

Ben Greenfield:  Well, you know parasites primarily where you would see that of course, as you would expect would be on a bowel performance level.  But you can also, like for example, I did that completion in Thailand where I got a parasite from basically the stagnant water that we swam in in Thailand.  And initially, it manifested itself as just a little bit of like diarrhea and some bowel upset.  And then like long-term, I had some floral imbalances and issues with constipation about every two weeks like clockwork as these things like hatch inside of you.  You get insomnia.  And so there are some pretty nasty things that are happening.  And interestingly, I test a lot of triathletes, especially.  And they, a lot of them wind up with parasites related to fresh water, the type of parasites that you would find in fresh water or water growing parasites.   And I think that a lot of times when you are looking at gut issues, leaky gut, you know, stomach problems, bloating, poor sleep, and those types of things that you tend to see a lot of times in athletes, and in this case triathletes.  And a lot of cases it can be a parasitic issue.  And there are different things that you can use.  You know in my case, I use the Chinese Herbal extract that was primarily a base of Berberine and the Ayurvedic herb complex Triphala and you know that was and has been pretty efficacious for me for knocking out a parasite.  But yes, it is definitely an issue.  And you know, I do not think that all parasites are bad.  There is definitely that whole healthy hygiene hypothesis that suggests that some amount of dirt and germs and bacteria and viruses and even parasites help to strengthen the immune system.  But I think that there are some that you know, if you are very symptomatic with bowel issues and insomnia and stuff like that, that is a parasite you should probably think about getting rid of.

Justin Marchegiani:  Absolutely, and I worked with patients all over the world as well and I see a good amount of these parasite infections they do not even have gut symptoms along with it which is pretty crazy.  I mean just seeing brain fog or hormonal issues or just lower performance because they can just be that kind of silent energy suck out of your adrenal glands where it just lowers that cortisol.  Decreases your ability to recover.  Kind of drains down your sex hormones a little bit.  That is interesting that you had that in your book and then you had an experience with it.  Very cool.

Ben Greenfield:  Yes, yes.

Baris Harvey:  Yes, when I first met you, you are on that herbal extract and you looked like you have something you are putting in there to take that bad boy away.

Ben Greenfield:  Yes, yes.  Well, because parasites can cause gut inflammation, I think in that case I was using the, who is it that makes that; it is the InflamX Meal Replacements.

Justin Marchegiani:  Oh, that is Metagenics.

Ben Greenfield:  It is very, very good with people with Crohn’s or irritable bowel.   Yes, Metagenics, yes.  The Metagenics InflamX is good.  Thorne has one called MediClear, I think.

Justin Marchegiani:  Yes.

Ben Greenfield:  But yes, those are good.  They are good for travel, too.   Like a lot of people get stressed out.  This happens to me sometimes when I travel, I will get constipated.  I am travelling with some kind of a meal replacement blend that you use for most of your meals.  Can help out quite a bit in situations like that where you just basically kind of not going for your airplane food or airport food or even hotel food at all.  And you just travel with these meal replacement blends and you go to Starbucks and ask them for a cup with some water and dump it in there and stir it up with a plastic spoon.  And will do that three times a day when I travelling now and it helps up quite a bit.

Baris Harvey:  Uh-hmm.  Yes, really smart move.  All right, last question.  Overtraining.  Now this is something that comes up big but at the same time we have people that are CrossFitters that we work with that are pretty darn good at their sport and they do like Two-A-Days. Now, with the world of the neutraceuticals and some of the access to food that we have, is there a way that you can, I guess, push the envelope and possibly do something like a Two-A-Day?  Say I know this is something we do.  As a football athlete, I might do a Two-A-Day.  But CrossFitters and what not, are there ways to kind of improve recovery I think would be the main point not necessarily the ads where people sell these pre-workouts.  I think what is important is the recovery portion.  Is there a way that you think that you can get by doing Two-A-Day at least for a short period of time to increase performance for a sport?        

Ben Greenfield:  Oh, yes.  I mean like I do Two-A-Days with a lot of my clients.  We do in the morning when parasympathetic nervous system is a little bit better branch of the nervous system to go after.  Where you would like easy aerobic movement protocols, a lot of Yoga, we will do foam rolling, inversion, just like a lot of the stuff that is a little bit more like deep restorative exercise.  And then the hard MetCon stuff, high intensity interval training and weight training we do later in the day.  And that works out really well.  I think that a Two-A-Day that includes hard training that is very sympathetic nervous system based earlier in the day is stressful.  I have done it before, I have gone to camps.  Like I will be at SEALFit camp this August and I can guarantee we will be getting up early in the morning and like hitting the grinder with drill sergeants yelling in our faces in the mornings.  And I do not think that is good for the body or the adrenals long term.  One of the reasons I am doing it is because it makes you cut short term and it prepares you for stress short term.  But I think that long term as a habit to do hard morning workouts, I do not think that is an ideal scenario.  I think that the human body does best slowly waking up and getting that parasympathetic nervous system activation and training the body for parasympathetic dominance in the morning and then doing more of the fight and flight later on in the day.

Baris Harvey:  Uh-hmm. Sounds awesome.

Justin Marchegiani:  Good stuff.  Good stuff.  So everyone that is listening here, if you to want to get more information about some of Ben’s work and his New York Times bestselling book, “Beyond Training” feel free and check that out at Amazon.  Ben, tell us about some of your site, your blogs, YouTube channels, your coaching stuff.  Where can our listeners get access to that stuff?

Ben Greenfield:  Yes, I do a lot of blogging and podcasting over at bengreenfieldfitness.com and that is a good place to go to just check out the articles that I write and the audio recordings that I do about twice a week.  And it is basically kind of tapping into some of the stuff that I am talking about.  I am constantly trying to research the best ways to optimize performance and fat loss and health.  And so that’s it.  That is a good place to go, its bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Justin Marchegiani:  Thanks so much, Ben.   We appreciate you coming on.

Ben Greenfield:  And thanks for having me on guys.

Baris Harvey:  All right, thank you.

Justin Marchegiani:  Awesome.

 

 

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