The Simple Framework That Cuts Through Confusing Fitness Advice and Helps You Train for Longevity with Alex Viada

[Music] It is really important more than anything that you not just track how you perform on a workout, but you track how you felt on that workout. Because that can be one of the most important things to track over time. I've really encouraged people to track things on both the object to side of things and subject to side of things. And be as absolutely diligent in your subjective progress as an objective progress because that's one of the best ways to notice all these little subtleties in your training. Hey guys, it's Ted here. Let me ask you something. You've got the money, the success, the career. But when you look in the mirror, do you see a tired out of shape die staring back at you? And you're tired of the weak body, the way you're close bit, and you're lack of confidence about the way you look. This can end now. In my program Lean After 40, I've created a four-phase system that helps high-achieving men lose 20 pounds in just 10 weeks. 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So even if we don't end up working together, you're going to leave with insight about your process, how to get in better shape, what you're doing wrong, what you need to do better. And if you do end up hiring me to help you, you don't pay unless you get results. Again, that's legendarylightpodcast.com/apply. Welcome to the legendary life podcast, where it's all about taking control of your health, losing fat, transforming your body, and living the life you deserve, with celebrity fitness trainer and longevity enthusiast Ted Rice. Are you a bit overwhelmed by all the conflicting advice on cardio and strength training, and intervals, and zone two, and you are left wondering how to put this all together? If you feel that way, then this episode is for you. And my guest today, Alex Viata, he's going to talk about how to put it all together without burning out or getting injured, because you don't just want to pile things together, and you want to do it in a way that makes sense for a busy professional like yourself, who's after longevity and efficiency. So if you don't know Alex, he's been on the show several times. He is the founder and co-owner of Complete Human Performance. He's also the guy who coined the term hybrid athlete, if you've ever heard that term on social media or on YouTube, and he's got over 13 years of coaching experience with more than 300 athletes from powerlifters, ultra runners, to special forces candidates. He's one of my favorite people to talk to, because not only does he understand the science, but he knows how to put it together in a way to get results. So if you're one of those people who's confused about all the info out there, and you want to know how to put it together, this is the interview for you. So without further ado, let's welcome Alex Viotta to the show. Alex Viotta, thanks so much for coming back on the show, man. I think this is your third time on legendary live podcast. I think so. I think so, and I know just before this, we were just trying to figure out what the last time was, but all the years kind of blend together at this point. Yeah, and we take off the dates of the podcast. I don't know why we do that, probably an SEO reason or something. So I did look up one of the previous episodes, but I was like, it was episode 145. But anyway, happy to have you back on. And, man, today I want to talk about something that I think a lot of people are starting to hear about, but they don't know your the guy who at least a lot of people credit with coming up with the term, which is hybrid athlete. Yeah. Did you make that up or? I did actually make up the term. And I made up the term. All right, just to give you the history on this, because I think it was kind of funny. And when I first started writing about combining strength training and endurance training, and you know, we can get into exactly what I mean by hybrid, I started writing about it in 2007, 2008. When I was just, you know, one of the powerlifter who was trying to run five Ks and, you know, marathons and really struggling with it. And about that time, like, you know, if a lot of folks remember back to them, like a lot of sports were very, very siloed. Like CrossFit wasn't big yet. No, we heard of the term hybrid because it didn't exist yet. And, you know, if you were a gym rat, you were a gym rat. If you like cycling and you were a, you know, somebody who loved being on the bike, like that was your thing. And you didn't dabble in the weight room, what he absolutely had to do. Like, we really went through quite a number of decades. Everything was really specialized. So that's kind of when I started writing about this kind of stuff, and, you know, the combination, and what it could do for your health, and, you know, trying to get people excited about trying new and different sports. And I wrote the book back in, like, I was putting the manuscript together in like 2012 for the book to be published, I think, about two years later. And I came up with the name hybrid athlete because I was on a deadline. And they said, we need a name for this book. We need a name for this sort of concurrent training you're doing. And I was thinking about terms that meant like combining more than one thing. And I was thinking multiple energy systems. And just say, if you know what, like, hybrid sounds like a good description. We'll call these hybrid athletes. And that's where the term came from. And that was it. Like, that was hybrid athlete. Yes. Awesome, man. And I bring that up because I don't know if you're listening right now, and you've heard that term yet, but it's becoming more and more popular to hear. And from my perspective, it makes sense why? Because we're starting to learn guys who overdo endurance, their marathoners, triathletes, et cetera. They need to be in the gym more lifting weights. If they want to do all the things that they want to, if they want to keep doing those things when they're 70s in their 80s. And probably arguably more important, the guys who lift weights and think it's really cool to be super strong, and which it is. And have big muscles. We're starting to learn now like VO2 max is something Peter Atia talks about. And others, Andrew Huberman about it being one of the best metrics to determine how long you're going to live, what type of health you're going to have. And, but man, a lot of people don't know. You, Joel Jameson, a couple of other folks that, you know, their names escaped me. You guys were talking about this stuff long before they were, right? For they brought it up. So can you talk a little bit about what it means to be a hybrid athlete? And why someone who is interested in longevity, because most of the people listening right now, that's what they're interested in. They don't just want to be in shape for a short period of time, but they want to be able to play with their kids or their grandkids, avoid preventable diseases. So why is hybrid training important to those folks? Yeah, and I think what that really hits on is, so the idea of hybrid training is it's not just like strengthen endurance. The idea of hybrid training is being able to look at all the different things that you can do physically. Is being able to say like, yeah, I like the idea of being able to go like, hike with my family on the weekends. I love getting on the bikes sometimes during the weekend. Maybe I want to do a travel, but lifting weights is really important to me too. And it's saying that, okay, all these things you want to do for health, all these things you want to do for your hobbies, for your enjoyment, this, that, the other. It's really hard to do them all. It's really hard to find the time to get them all in. And one of the things that most of us don't want to do is we don't want to just say, all right, well, you know what, I should probably lift weights, so I'm just going to find this lifting program. And yeah, I should probably run more. So either I'm just going to run a couple of miles every day. Is that overdoing it? Is that underdoing it? Maybe I'll just grab a couch to 5K program. And what ends up is people end up getting kind of confused. There's a lot to do. A lot of these ideas conflict with each other. People designing your running program may not be thinking about how much you're lifting. People will think about what you're lifting program may not be thinking about. Yeah, you want to have fresh legs on the weekend to like, you know, go for hikes and things like that. Hyper training is all about being able to look at all the different kinds of training you're doing and saying, what's really important to get me where I want to be? When it comes to lifting weights, what do I need to do? What is the best thing for me to do so that I can lift weights, get stronger, get bigger, do whatever your goal is, and not be killing myself in there with all this unnecessary work. If I want to get a better cardiovascular, if I want to get a better cardiovascular shape, how much do I need to run per week? You know, how long does each run need to be? What do I need to do to be the best runner or the best shape I can be, assuming I don't have infinite amounts of time? So a lot of it came from this idea because hyper training is all about, it's all about efficiency really. And a lot of this has taken an idea like, yeah, if you want to be the best marathon runner you can be and the best power lift you can be, you've really got to be dialled in what you do for each one. You take those same ideas and you apply them to somebody who just wants to be in a better shape. You're thinking, okay, I don't need to be in a leap power lift, or I don't need to be in a leap marathon runner. I'm not going to be spending 95% of my energy on these things. I'm only going to be spending 50% of my energy on those things because I need that 50% for other stuff as well. So how do I invest this time and energy into being healthy, being the healthiest I can be and do it efficiently, do it in such a way that I feel good after these sessions. I don't feel sore all the time. So a lot of the hybrid principles are really based around that. And I think that's what's so important to me about it, especially as I get older. Like I'm in my mid 40s now, I'm not necessarily thinking about, okay, I'm going to go out there and set world records and anything. I'm just like, hey, I just, I want to keep feeling healthy. I want to keep feeling good. Yeah. So important. And I want to get into some mistakes that people make because I think you already touched on it with all reference Peter and T again, he's got, he's one of the people who and Ron DePathric, they have you thinking about like or have the average person who's listening to podcasts and they're thinking about like, okay, so they're confused about, okay, so I need to lift weights, but how strong do I need to be? Do I need to bench press two times my body weight? But oh, also, I need a high VO2 max and man, how do I do that? Because I know there's zone two and I need to do that, but I need to spend a lot of time to get the results. But then there's high intensity interval training, but how do you, I could only imagine listening to all these different people talking about this stuff, trying to put it together on, trying to type it all into chat, GPT and spitting out a program and you do it and you're just getting crushed, right? Yeah, exactly. And it's true because there's so many things and it's like, it almost feels like every week we think about something else that we should be doing throughout the month. And like you're saying, like, okay, should I be doing Norwegian 4x4 VO2 repeats twice a week? How many hours does zone two do I need to be doing? Okay, I should be lifting. Should I also be doing like, you know, plyometrics? You know, because I hear those are good. How much mobility work should I be doing? How many days old should I lift upper body? How many days a week should I lift lower body? And it all, it does. It becomes overwhelming. And I said, well, hybrid was originally a method that was designed for like performance. When it comes down to it, it's really, you know, I was having a discussion with, you really was Spencer Nibelski. Spencer, he's been on the show a couple times. Yeah, he's a great dude and I had discussions with him very early on and I always referenced this because I was doing some of his programming for a while. He was interested in doing a triathlon and some other stuff. And he said, you know, this program is exactly what I would give my clients, my patients, just for optimal health. Right. Because it gives them just a little bit of everything that they need. It tells them how much high intensity work to do, how much zone two work to do, how to fit it all together. Like, that's kind of takeaway. Is that how do I do enough of each to get better without just grinding myself in the ground? Yeah. And I just want to take a moment here for a shameless plug because one of the reasons we got you back on the show is because you have this book. It's not even out yet. It's coming out on December 2nd, 2025. In case you're listening, it's called the ultimate hybrid athlete, a definitive guide to achieving peak athleticism across all disciplines. And let me tell you something. I don't read books about training very much anymore. Most of them suck. The diet ones are even worse, but I can't wait to get my hands on this one. The last book, I read your last book. It was many years ago and really looking forward to the updates. So let's get back to this idea. And well, I forgot. You should buy this book. If you're listening to Peter Tia, Ron Patrick and Andrew, all the people talking about all the stuff and how to put it all together and you're trying to figure that out, I think you got something like 20 training templates or 20 programs in the book. And the program is like, I've definitely tried to make them accessible. Like lots of substitutions, mix and match. I almost choose your own adventure sort of thing. Like if you find a program you like, you want to just do your basic strength training and running, there's a whole battery of different types of running workouts. You can do all battery, different types of lifting sessions, movements you can do. So I think the whole idea is always, again, reinforcing what I'm saying. We want to make this accessible for people. It's meant to be like, hyper training is basically a way of saying it was always my idea to just get people doing more different things and feeling good about it. Love it. And Alex, you brought up, I want to hear your thoughts on this because you brought up the Norwegian 4x4, which if you're listening, it's four minutes of, it's a well researched, high-intensity interval training program that a lot of people keep bringing up, Ron, to Patrick, Peter, and then people parrot it, right? There's all the people who say it. I tried it with, you know, back when before Peter, it had his podcast, you know, we were doing this stuff with clients. I remember a client telling me like, if this is what I have to do to live longer, I think I'm okay with dying younger. I think I'm okay. And if you have never done it before and you don't know why we're laughing right now because if you just read that and say, oh, I need to be doing this and you're, you don't have much of a cardiovascular base. You're just kind of lifting weights and you do it. It might make it puke or even if you finish it. Can you talk about like, talk about your thoughts on the influencers and talking about, you know, the Norwegian and how should someone start off with hit training? Yeah. So, the thing about the 4x4 is, you know, your VO2 max, just in practical terms, one of the ways you can actually test your VO2 max power or pace is by just seeing how hard you can go all out for like 10 to 11 minutes. You know, because you've heard about like, you know, your, like, let's say your VVO2 max is like the pace you can run at where you'll be running at your VO2 max essentially. And that's usually something that lasts about 10 to 11 minutes in the best case scenario. So, if you think about it, 4x4 is 4 rounds of 4 minutes at a pace where normally after 10 minutes of doing so, you'd be on the floor absolutely shatter. You're doing 16 minutes, granted with short breaks, but 16 minutes at a pace that after 2 minutes probably leaves you feeling like death. So, it's really, really tough. It is absolutely crushingly difficult. So, but what's interesting about it is the whole point of the 4x4 and the whole point of all of that VVO2 max and VO2 max training is to get your system operating as close as possible to your VO2 max. From oxygen utilization, that is your aerobic system is absolutely maxed out. Your body is your all your muscles and circulatory system are using as much oxygen as possible. It is a huge stimulus to all of those pathways responsible for aerobic health and development is very putting stimulus. The point of 4x4 is to say, okay, this is one way we found of being able to get an athlete to spend 16 minutes at their VO2 max in a single session. That is a huge stimulus. It's fantastic if you're an elite athlete, you can do that protocol once a week and get a lot of benefits from it. In addition, it's all the rest of the training. But at the same time, there are a lot of different protocols that achieve the same effect. There are microaderables, which are 30 seconds all out, 30 seconds rest, 30 seconds all out, 30 seconds rest. You'll have people doing 15 to 20 rounds of that. Much easier in a lot of ways. Still feel horrible, don't get me wrong. But the point of that is you do that 30 seconds all out and then the 30 seconds rest, your system is still operating at max efficiency. Try to get all that oxygen out to those absolutely depleted muscles and everything else. That works too. There are 40/20 intervals. 40 seconds all out, 20 seconds rest. There are surge and hold intervals where you do 30 seconds at your VO2 max or close to all out and then like two and a half minutes at a slightly lower level of intensity. There are a lot of ways to do it. But the point of all of this and if somebody practically wants to say, "Okay, 4x4 sounds horrible. How do I improve my VO2 max without doing something that is going to make me want to just curl up into a ball and die?" You say, "All right, let me try the 30/30. Let me try 4 minutes, 3 rounds of 4 minutes of 30 seconds all out, 30 seconds off. I'm not going to care about power. I'm just going to go as hard as I can for 30 seconds, rest for 30 seconds." That works really, really well and it's a lot more manageable for people. The other thing is to say, "All right, I just want to spend 2-3 minutes as close to my VO2 max as possible. 2-3 minutes all out, I'm still going to feel rough afterwards, not going to feel great. I'm going to need 5-6 minutes just to get my life together after every round, but I'm going to try to do 3 of those in a session. That's still going to give you a pretty big stimulus." The point is just to say how many minutes total in a session, once per week, can I spend at that really high level of intensity and still get it done? So there are a lot of ways for people to do this and if you're relatively new to of that kind of training, you can say, all right, this week I was able to do three rounds of a minute and a half at that intensity, five minutes in between, I was crushed. You know what? That's, that's still a good stimulus. The next week you try a minute and 45 seconds each time. Just keep trying to up it just a little bit every single week. Give yourself a lot of grace with it. This is tough training. Four by four is meant for elite athletes who are, you know, they drink glasses of, you know, acid for dinner. Like that's, that's what they do. So it's, it really is. There are a lot of ways to get it done. Even within the Norwegian system, there are a lot of coaches who use those different methods, those micro intervals, those longer, longer and slightly slower intervals, you know, three by eight minutes at just over threshold intensity, things like that. So the whole point really is to say, hey, let's get people accustomed to working hard and thinking about accumulating total minutes of hard work, not necessarily all I want to go. I think that's kind of what's key. Yeah. And just to, to restate that it's the four by four and all the other intervals, it's just a way to accumulate those minutes at that intensity. It's not about like a lot of people, I think, oversell the idea of these intervals that have research on them. So man, there's so many questions I want to ask you, Alex. And, and I guess the one of the first ones is because a lot of people say a lot of things about this stuff. And I'm not, I consider myself a world class expert in what I do exactly. But when it comes to a lot of this interval and the endurance stuff, like, whoa, I have a lot to learn. So it's so good to talk to you. But let's start with this. You mentioned something interesting when you were giving examples. You shouldn't be paying or you didn't say this, but you hinted at it's not so important that if you're, if your power drops off, let's say you're on a bike and you're measuring the intensity of your intervals by wattage, right? And the power stops dropping. I've seen people on Twitter because that's where I, or X, where I spend most of my time these days, social media wise. And I've seen endurance guys more school than me on this particular subject talk about like once you drop off a certain percentage, maybe 10%, I forget what it was. Like you should stop because you're, it's kind of like when you're working a muscle and you're like, okay, I hit failure, but let's do some forced reps and pull, it's have someone pull the bench press up and then I'll try to you're right. Like, what do we need to know about tracking our performance during intervals, whether we're running, biking, rowing, et cetera? Yeah, because I think there are two people who need to track their power very, very carefully and they're out, but very, very carefully. One are very, very high level athletes because at that level when you're so dialed and you're training, you're not just training to be better, you're also training for a specific type of output. Like if you're a cyclist, you need to know how much power you're putting out for how long you need to know because all of that's important for planning your season. You're, you know, you're a pro cyclist or a pro runner. You've got a race coming up and you're saying, wow, after seven and a half minutes, my power output drops by seven percent. That is two percent higher than usual. Something is wrong. You're like, in that case, yeah, sure, that matters. That's telling you, okay, hey, something's going wrong here. I should stop this interval. I'm pushing too hard. You know, the other thing, the other person who needs to track that is if you are relatively new to this and you're learning for the first time what it's like to actually modulate your output. And what I mean by that is something that's kind of important to hybrid training as well is realizing that not all of your hard work needs to be super hard. We have our VO2 max type intervals, right? Our high intensity, like going nearly all out, crushing yourself, something you only hold for a couple minutes, we have our low intensity, which is our zone two. And then we have a lot of that threshold type of intensity. You know, like when most of us just go out for a three, four mile run and we push it pretty hard, you know, it's like our five K pace or 10 K pace. There's a lot of value to being able to do things just a little bit below that threshold. And so like, let's say I can hold a nine minute mile for now. And I say, okay, I can hold an nine minute mile for now. That's like close to my threshold right there much faster than that. And the time goes down dramatically. And you know, but there's a lot of value then. And saying, okay, well, how about just slightly slower than that? A 915 pace, just a little bit slower. There's a lot of research that shows you get a lot of benefit from going just a little bit under threshold. Because you can hold it is almost the same stimulus as threshold, but it's a lot less cost. So, you know, you can let's say you can hold, okay, let's say you can hold a nine minute pace for an hour and an 845 pace for half an hour, something like that. I'm just making a sandal. You say, okay, well, what if I run three by 12 intervals at a 915? That each interval should feel pretty much okay. You can get in a lot of good work there. So that is one example too, where you want to be really careful about pace. Because you go, I am really trying to get a target level of intensity here. That's really important. Because if I do too much, I'm burning myself out. If I do too little, I'm not getting the stimulus like that. But when you're talking about like somebody who is not the super elite and it just wants to do some of this high intensity stuff for the first time, if like, let's say somebody who's never done four by four intervals or micro intervals, you know, 30, 30 goes out there and goes, all right, like I'm getting on my stationary bike or whatever, I'm getting on my airdine. All right, I just tuned out 475 watts average for that first 30 seconds. And then they rest in the second way, they go, okay, 408 watts. I'm getting you to better. And then the third one, they crack and they're like, wow, 420 watts. All right, I'm dying here. Okay, so for 380 watts, like I'm crashing hard here. I guess the question is with that in a lot of cases, was that 490 watts in the beginning just wildly overcooking it? It could very well have been. It once they get more experienced, they might be saying, you know what, if I do 420 watts on the first one, I am right at BBO2 max. I am pushing perfectly on every single one. A lot of us have the tendency to push too hard, do early on and then crash and burn later on. That's okay. And so what I tell people is, hey, just keep going a little bit. What's going to happen when you do these is you're going to push yourself way too hard. Your power is going to drop off dramatically. The next time you're going to go, and we'll start a little bit more conservative. You might last a little bit longer and then eventually you're going to kind of figure it out. Now, of course, if it's the kind of thing where, you know, like, let's say, let's say again, you're like, oh, look at this sounds good. I'm going to try three rounds, four minutes, 30, 30 sounds great. And, you know, first round, like, cool, I'm 400 watts on all of them. This is great. Second round, 400 watts on all of them. Third round, my legs are toast. My arms are toast. My back is toast because I'm doing it on the airdine. And I'm like, I can't even get to 300 watts. I'm just, you know, I'm just crushed over this thing. I can't even think about high intensity. Yeah, at that point, it might be worth saying, hey, you know what, like this isn't even just me over cooking it at this point. My arms are just exhausted. My legs are just exhausted. So it's always the question if, if you feel like you're just not recovering because you pushed it too hard, just the round before, keep going. See what happens. Use a better strategy next time. If you're just hitting that wall because of complete fatigue and you're just saying, you know what, I'm, I turn myself inside out and I am just chilled. Then, yeah, you know, you can think about, okay, at this point, I should back off. Because, you know, again, it gets complicated too because there's a lot of stuff around, a lot of discussion around, okay, well, if you're running zone two and your heart rate starts going up and you get that cardiac drift, people talk about, sure, that might be a sign that you're probably done with the section of things like that. But a lot of it's higher intensity stuff. Again, like I wouldn't worry about it quite as much because it's really, really difficult for anywhere from beginner to even advanced intermediate to know exactly how much power to put down. So you're always going to get these peaks and trust that I work out. Yeah, that's such an important lesson if you're listening because it, you learn, I think it's a really important point that you got to get in there. You got to play with this stuff. But I always, when my clients, when I have them going in to, to do intervals for the first time, I'm like, look, build up slowly, right? I want you to kind of finish the intervals. Don't blow yourself out when everyone starts, especially guys, right? I'll give them something like a minute interval. I've given three, four, one thing that's fun is giving longer intervals and say, what I want you to do is I want you to make it through the intervals because I've had clients like, oh, I couldn't do four minutes on the second round. I totally, like I stopped it like two minutes. It's like, well, you then you, you're not pacing yourself. But what I hear you saying, if you're not an elite athlete, it's okay to kind of do that and learn the hard way. And then, because I'm kind of a, I'm kind of a wimp these days with that, but I've done a lot of hit training starting, I don't know, a long time ago. So I'm like, kind of a wimp when it comes like, if I, if I see my wattage go down, I also organize things around GJ2 performance too. So that, that's another important point. If you are participating in a sport like you said, Alex, you're going to be even if you're not like super elite, which I'm not, I still don't want to gas out and have these 28 year old dudes, you know, completely dominating me on the, the match is because I went a a little too hard on my intervals. Monday, you know? It's good to say, yeah, exactly. The last thing you want is to be like, why are you all guest out? All my conditioning work. In a minute, that seems backwards. My conditioning gets me exhausted. Yeah, I think I'm with you there. There's definitely the case where, you know, if you do, if you're like, hey, you know, these are just taking it all out of me. And like I said, the other important thing is, remember, it doesn't have to be a magic dosage. Because yeah, four by four might be 16 minutes, might be what the research shows is the most you can ink out of people, but 12 minutes in a workout might be just as almost as good. Like we're talking, you know, 92, 95% of the benefits. Like, you know, if you're the kind of person who's like, hey, you know what, you've been taking a little bit conservative. Like, once my power starts to happen, like I'm being good about it. You know, I'm pacing myself early on, but when I get to that third round, like I just start tanking, it could be too much. Yeah, you said that because that's another thing that, you know, a lot of the hyper training is about is like you don't need an optimal stimulus on every single thing. You can have a 90% effective stimulus on 10 different things. And overall, you're, you're going to be better off for it because you've got so much going for you. Yeah. And I think that's an important point as well because if you're programming one of the things, well, I'm in a phase right now, for example, where I'm really focused on, I got a bit weak. I'm just going to say like I got a little bit weak because of the injuries. I focused on a jujitsu. I was having a hard time pretty achy after jujitsu. And then so I would go into the gym and I wouldn't be able to push as much weight due to chronic injuries. And I had stem cells and a bunch of other shit, you know, but so my goal has been the focus around like building muscle, building strength to get myself back up to, you know, some standards that I have for myself. And you just said, well, you don't have to get an optimal stimulus every time. And so my question would be like, how do you know your, you are like, what do you track to know that you are doing things the right way if you're taking this hybrid approach? Yeah. And that's, that can actually be really, really challenging because you know, one of the one of the things I always tell people is, and I think you know, this, you know, everybody, who's been doing this for a while knows that progress is slow. Like, you know, how much weight do you know, at this point, if I gain 10 pounds on my bench press max in six months, I'm thrilled, which is, you know, the equivalent of how many ounces per week, like it's imperceptible. There's nothing I can see. Chances are within a given month, there is more variety and there are more ups and downs between my bench press sessions than the overall difference between my bench now and six months for now. Like, you know, if I'm on a steady upward, very slow slope, the daily ups and downs, the weekly ups and downs are going to almost completely obscure that very slow long term progress line. And I think that's, that's something that's really tough for people to go, wow, I'm 3% stronger this week than last week. I'm 4% weaker this week than last week. I'm 3% but as long as that's trying to over time, you go, wow, just six months, I'm 1.5% stronger on average. You go, that's great. But of course, like you said, that's really, really tough to track day to day. And so, you know, usually the thing I tell people is that it's going to be difficult. It's going to be difficult to know if you're doing enough because you're not going to see that when you're progress. And you may find yourself in a couple of downs when you see, how am I doing too little? Is that why I'm not making any progress? You know, here I am thinking, okay, you know, three by three minutes in my high intensity session is enough, but four weeks have gone by. I don't feel like I'm getting any better. Am I getting worse? That can be really, really tough. So that's, that's one of a lot of it. You have to kind of have some trust that you're doing all the right things. You're doing all the right pieces. And you really, really are tracking your data. And I know this doesn't mean necessarily like getting hyper fixated on, you know, your garbage connect and, you know, your straw, my dad, I'm looking at it every little bit like you can do that if you want. But for the most part, I'm just like, you know, it's, it is really important more than anything that you not just track how you perform on a workout, but you track how you felt on that workout. Because that can be one of the most important things to track over time is, you know, you may be, you may be saying, okay, I've been doing the same three by three for five weeks now. And my average power output, honestly, about the same. You know what, my average effort, I started out rating as 8.5. Now I'm saving my average of effort is like a seven, seven point five. Maybe, maybe I am getting better here. I'm just not pushing myself harder. Maybe I should, you know, put in another five watts here, put it next to around here. So I really encourage people to track things on both the objective side of things and subjective side of things and be as absolutely diligent in their subjective progress as objective progress because that's one of the best ways to notice all these little subtleties in your training. And of course, the other thing is also like there are just certain trueisms, you know, you, if you're getting between 30 to 45 minutes of threshold and above per week, probably in the top percentile, you should make some good progress with that. If you're getting 180 minutes total of some form of conditioning zone two or higher, you're probably in the top echelon already. And if you can't make progress on that, consider shifting the balance a little bit. But otherwise just, you know, kind of working around with that. The biggest thing I do is like, let's just say I am in the weight room and my goal is to get stronger and the like presser's stronger the splotter, hacksplotter zone. I'm going to predict my max now in the hacksplotter, whatever it is, 500 pounds. But I'm going to use those little charts that says, okay, 500 pounds means I can do three sets of eight at 400 pounds or whatever. A week goes by, I'm going to say, okay, I'm going to say my new max is 505 pounds. Okay, now I can do three sets of eight at 402, but I'm still just going to use 400. Next time, 510, next time, 515, I'm never actually going to test that max, but I'm going to adjust all my percentages in the gym as if my max had gone up just a little bit. Just a little bit each week, same thing with wattage, same thing with paces. I think my VOT max wattage output on the bike is 450. And when I do these intervals, I'm hitting them at like 400 watts. Okay, I'm going to try to say on average, I want to hit them at 401 watts the next week. And 402 watts the next week. That's sort of weakly tracking the average up and aiming for just a 1% increase per week and everything is always the easiest way to just confirm that you're on the right track. Because some weeks you fall short, some weeks you go over, but as long as you're constantly upping that little max number, upping that wattage and upping whatever, and staying around that line, you'll know pretty quickly if you're falling above it or below it. And if you're falling below it, then you know you either need more volume or you might need more recovery. Yeah. So, Alex, you mentioned a couple wearables. I'll tell you, so I'm interested in improving my cardiovascular conditioning and taking them more, let's say data oriented approach where I'm tracking things. I got norring. It tracks my resting heart rate. It tracks my HRV. I know it's not the best way to take HRV according to guys like Mike, Mike Nelson, Dr. Mike Nelson, who I'm sure you know. But what are the best ways to track what you're talking about? And what if we, I'm going to hit you with a two part question here. So, what are the best ways to track our progress? And what if we're using different equipment? Like I'm using the rower for some things and using the spinning bike for some other things. Or the salt bike, like, or the skier. How do you recommend someone approach that? I mean, honestly, I'm a big fan of people just setting, whether they test it or they just guesstimate it, set yourself goals in every single one. And I think what, you know, because you will, you'll have to figure out a different water job, but for the assault bike and the stationary bike and the skier and the rower and possibly the different kind of rower over there that that one gym has because it's not a concept too. You know, like, wow, I'm tracking like 10 different pieces of equipment. You know, like, that's, that's okay. It can just be a little note pad on your computer, you know? It's the reason I like that. The reason I like that approach, though, is you'll start to appreciate as well that you're going to go through phases when you're going to prove like crazy. And you're going to have these newbie gangs and you're going to be excited and you'll be driving yourself and you're going to say, all right, a salt bike. I just, I have budged on that one in a couple months, but my rower and my skier are just exploding. That's great. You know, because it's, you're not always going to be flourishing and everything. And part of, part of the other hybrid thing that I really enjoy is it gives you the chance and it gives you kind of permission to lean into what you really are enjoying at that time. Because you're going to keep doing the rest. I'm going to keep doing my assault bike once every two weeks. You know, I'm using different machines. I assault bike once every two weeks. I haven't touched my water down that, but I'm really enjoying the rower right now. I'm going to keep doing it. Is it optimal? I don't know, but I love it and I'm making progress. So for that, because you do, you do have to track them all separately because every single one of them, different muscle groups, different movement patterns, different efficiencies, inefficiencies. If you are a world class rower and you do an off season where you do nothing but cycle and you get yourself from a mediocre cyclist to a world class cyclist, you'll come back and be a worse rower. It's like, you know, there's not much carryover between a lot of these things. So I really tell people like, hey, have fun with all of them, track 'em all, give yourself 20 different things, give yourself the permission to PR and something every single week. It feels good, it keeps you engaged and it really gets you sinking your teeth into new things. 'Cause one of the other things that I think is really, really important, I say I have to get older, but this is equally as important for like kids starting out, you know, high school sports, middle school sports, is developing new skills and new competencies. It's like one of the most important things you can do for your brain, for like, you know, avoiding any sort of, you know, mental cognitive decline, for, you know, helping to avoid any sort of physical climb, keeping your coordination, keeping your ability to move, keeping your ability to respond to new things, the more exercises, activities, modalities you use, the better your brain is at learning and remembering how to move and adapting and being just, capable and durable. So, yeah, like I said, we're really long-come-to-lute the way of saying like, track 'em all, do 'em all. It's like I can't lose. So, yeah. - I'm gonna say, and on the wearables thing, you know, the URUS fantastic for a lot of things, I know like they're probably some better options for this than the other. For tracking exercise, you know, there's so many watches out there, there's Garmin, the Corros, the Apple Watch, the new Amaze Fit Watch and all of that. I love Garmin's activity tracking because they're HRM plus monitor, they have the ecosystem. That's what's important to me is the ecosystem. It's so easy to just pop into your Garmin Connect and look at everything and it gives you reports and everything else I love that. A lot of other devices out there, like I picked up this Amaze Fit Watch and it is a. - What is it? - Seven. It's called Amaze Fit is the company name. This is called the BIP2. So, this is a mid-range Garmin. This is, show you, this is a high-range Garmin here. This is their Enduro, I think this is their Enduro 2, I'm holding my hand here. I'm currently wearing what is this generation's more mitt here because I wanted to check it out. And these are $800, $2,000 watches, if not more. The Amaze Fit BIP2 that I'm holding in my hands here tracks your heart rate, tracks your activity heart rate. Heart rate variability, all these other things. And I think this is $90. - Wow. - It doesn't have the ecosystem, but if you're just getting started, and you're like, I have never looked at these reports before in my life. I want to see what they're all about. Pick up one of these. It is so worth just saying, all right. For the first time, I'm gonna have a dedicated activity watch. And I'm gonna look at the reports and I'm gonna look at see what my heart rate does on all these runs and it can be really, really cool to look at for the first time. And then you decide, hey, I really love this. I would say get yourself a base model like entry-level garment and just pop into their ecosystem. And you will garment ecosystem is the kind of thing where if you just have a casual passing interest in it, you can find stuff that's useful to you. They present a lot of stuff or give you trends. They'll say, hey, look, it looks like your anaerobic threshold is improving, consider doing more aerobic work. It's actually pretty good most of the time. It's worth paying attention to. And but then if you really want to dig into it and get super over the top and dirty with it, it's got that for you too. - Great advice. Yeah. - I'm not paid by God, quite the opposite is a matter of fact. (laughing) - Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, you're helping keep them in business, huh? So me, the same thing with aura, I talk about aura all the time. I had a little bit of a relationship with them, but then the CEO, they changed the CEO. I would actually like to connect with them again. But anyway, or if you're listening, anyway. But yeah, it's so important. If you're looking to improve, if you're, if maybe tracking some of the performance on across different modalities, different cardiovascular machines might be a bit too much, but you want to get into tracking, get yourself that. But what is the name of the watch again? - The little maze fit here. - Little maze fit, okay. Yeah, get that maze fit. The maze fit. Yeah, I'll have the link to that on the show notes for this episode in case you have trouble googling it after hearing this. And then if you like how that goes upgrade to a garment, just spend the five, six, eight, 1000, so much an Apple watch cost, isn't it? So it's kind of the same thing. - I was gonna say though, you can find some of the best model garments for like a couple hundred. So it's not too bad. And like I said, one of the things that is nice about it too is the garment senses, and most of these watches, since they have 20 different activity profiles, it'll track it for you. You want to know if you're getting better at rowing, you want to know if you're getting better at cycling, like it's gonna tell you based on which one you pick, whether or not your workouts are improving week to week, like a lot of them will track your thresholds differently on each one. So really let you know. So it's a really good way of just saying, giving yourself that little bit of extra confidence in whatever you're trying, that you're getting a little bit better, a little bit worse, like what you need to do. So it's useful there. I think a lot more of these manufacturers now realizing that people like doing a lot of different stuff. So like let them do a lot of different stuff and help them do it. - Yeah, and Alex, in the past, it's all about like, when I was got into this stuff, maybe 10, 10 years ago, when I started hitting the wall in Gidgett's performance, and I thought it was the story. I don't know if I ever told you, but I thought I got old, right? Like, oh, I'm just old. That's why I'm like not performing well. And then actually it was longer than 10 years ago. It was more like when I was in my early 30s, and then I came across Joel James in his work, and I'm like, oh shit, I'm just really out of shape. Even though I'm doing high intensity intervals, if you will, during Gidgett's training, I really got out of shape. Like, my performance just started decreasing, decreasing, decreasing. Now I wasn't tracking, I didn't have an ordering and other stuff, but when I started doing zone two, that's when kind of things changed for me. So this can be super helpful to track this stuff. If you're like not sure, like you said, Alex, you can track like, hey, are you getting better? But my question was, in that time, I had to wear a chest strap. Garmin's, do they use chest straps or have the watches gotten better and not like evolved away from that? Yeah, so there's always, they have optical sensors every generation, they're trying to get better. But I think at the end of the day, there are still certain limitations to the optical sensors where they're never gonna be white as good, because they rely on the circummount of, like different wavelengths penetrating the skin and looking at changes in, basically changes in oxygen concentration of the blood. Looking at, when blood vessels swell and contract or check heart rate and this and that, the other, it's, so anytime that you have a device that moves at all, there's things between it and your skin, there's hair, there's sweat, there could be tattoos in some people's cases. They're gonna be movement artifacts like for example, if it's tracking swelling and contraction, what's really interesting is that swinging your arms too vigorously will actually cause momentary changes in like the blood concentration in your arms. 'Cause if you think about it, if you swing your hand really quickly, all that blood that would normally be getting pumped out, by Venus action is actually pulling in your hand. So if you swing your hand really hard, your blood vessels are gonna see a sudden anticipated dilation in the arm. So that could make it hard for this little optical sensor to actually track whether the blood vessels are filling because of the blood is pumping in or pumping out. So all this stuff affects it. So that's, they're trying to get better and their algorithms are spending on some of the money I'll try to improve them. Chest straps are still gonna be the gold standard. I still use a chest strap when I really care about the data. If I'm just going for like a zone two bike or you know zone two activity, I typically don't use one because for zone two, I just like being able to pass the talk test. I think that's much more reliable than my heart rate. I just think what I do is zone two training. I usually just check in with my breathing see if I'm capable of like having a, you know, have a bit of a risk conversation but having a conversation. If I think no, I'm breathing too heavily to have a conversation, I know I gotta slow down. So I don't wear a chest strap for that because I'm like, hey, you know what? If this is a little bit inaccurate, doesn't matter, I'm not going by that. If I'm doing really, really dialed in intervals and high intensity work and I'm like, all right, I'm really interested in seeing how close to my max heart rate I'm getting on this harder work. I want to make sure it's the appropriate intensity than I'll use a chest strap. But I don't think it's necessary if you're just saying, hey, like I just want to move in the right direction. I don't have any, you know, 5K race aspirations where I'm looking to get 30 seconds faster. I just want to be in good shape. I just want to get a little bit better. I'm doing conditioning as an adjunct to something else just strap. - What I love about this conversation is that you've worked with, like me, I work with people and when I talk about things sometimes on social media, people get annoyed with me because I'm always coming from the context of having worked with a lot of people. Meaning some of this stuff I might suggest might not be optimal in terms of like what the research says or what the experts say. But it's like, man, people ain't gonna do that if you ask them to do it, right? Like you, we're dealing with human beings here and not working with elite athletes and I'm great at what I do. but I wouldn't be the person to even work with when it comes to high level athletes, right? So I love this conversation. - Yeah, 'cause I think what matters so much more from most of us and for most people who are interested in this stuff, I wouldn't much rather somebody be out there and during their condition, they're tracking their effort by seeing how they feel, seeing how good they feel, thinking about, okay, am I pushing a little bit too hard? Am I pushing a little bit too easy? I wonder if you're good when this session is done. Let me stay engaged with the feeling of this exercise. That's what matters. I don't want them to be sitting there looking at their data and slavishly devoted to this and thinking, oh, do I need a new chest strap? Do I need a new heart rate monitor? What other gear do I need to do this perfectly? I'm like, if you're doing the right thing that feels good and feels right and you're doing it, you're working hard when you need to work hard and you're resting when you need to rest, you're gonna be doing so well. Like, that's 95% of the battle right there. Yeah, so important. And now I want to take things in a different direction. That's somewhat related. There's so many different, let's call them experts 'cause, you know, saying different things. For example, I had Brady Homer on my podcast. He wrote a book about Fio to Max Training and he was on "Ronda Patrick Show" not too long ago. You would be great on her show. Also on "Peter It To You" show, would love to see you there. So Brady came on the show and he said something really interesting that a lot of other people, other experts, let's say, don't say. He wrote a great book, I read it. And what he said on the show was that for people who don't have a lot of time, like don't spend your, let's say, two or three 30 minute sessions doing zone two training, right? Get in some higher intensity work because you don't have or are not willing to devote the necessary time to see significant change in your VO to Max and your cardio respiratory fitness as a result of, you know, just kind of getting a couple times a weekend. Then just today, I'm gonna hit you with a few different things that I want your perspective. So Peter Itia today talked about how like, 80% of your training should be zone two. Only 20% of it should be in a high range than zone two. Of course, he kind of went to zone five, right? And just kind of, you know, got rid of the threshold. You really talk more much about the threshold, but that's what he said. And then there's another guy, I don't know if you know his name, Allyn Cousins. I think he lives in the US. Do you know who that is? - I know of it. I don't know who person. - Okay. And he says he's on Twitter and he's saying, he's saying, look, here's what I want you to do. I want you to do zone one. I want you to do it for two hours a day. And like, I think very little if any higher intensity work for the average person, not for elite athletes, right? So can you help me and everyone listening kind of make sense of all these different recommendations and what your thoughts are? - Sure. So the first thing I'm gonna say is that there are so many different definitions of zones that sometimes you get horrendously confusing. There was some big name articles. It's a big studies coming out that were saying, yeah, like all of these elite triathletes are doing most of the work in zone one, not even zone two. - Right. - But when you looked at those studies, what was interesting was that the definitions of zone one and zone two they were using were different than the definitions of zone two and one, zone one that are used primarily in the US, 'cause there are a couple of different systems. A lot of the Swedish Norwegian, like the Scandinavian method, uses a zone one definition that encompasses up to about 70, is it 75% to 78% of maximal R-rated? Either way, the definition of zone one that they use there actually pushes well into hour, I say hour, but the kind of the Western, the American we're more familiar with, pushes into our definition of zone two. So it doesn't really differentiate between low zone two work and what we would consider zone one. So a lot of times you'll see people going, all these elite athletes are doing a lot of zone one. Killian Jornet, the famous ultra runner, incredible mountain climber, this does everything, says, yeah, I do 80% of my work in zone one every year, every training session, but if you look at it, his definition of zone one, most of that would be what we consider, oh yeah, that's zone two. So it's a little bit difficult sometimes to really, and it can be really, really confusing, 'cause you'll see people saying, oh, you should do zone two, oh, you should do zone one. I usually, that's why I use the whole like ventilator threshold. So you can have their entire papers out there discussing the merit of using lactate levels and heart rate and percentage of wattage, and this and then the other just differentiate between zones and it's all a mess. That's why I'm like, okay, let's just go for the general gist of things here. If you can't get out of sentence, it's past zone two. That's all we need to know. And if your lactate levels are accumulating and the tabletoplet levels are building up, and you go from being able to do something for 45 minutes to be able to do only do it for 20 minutes, yeah, you've probably over your over threshold, your over VT too. So like, that's it. So that's one thing there. So I think when there's some people out there saying the majority should be done in zone one, I would always caution that what they may be referring to, in fact, the research they're looking at may be using a definition of zone one that most of us would consider zone two. I say most of us listening now, not, you know, nor regions of both scientists. So, now the other thing is when it comes to saying, okay, so, you know, I'm confused. I've got three 30 minute sessions per week. Should I be doing high intensity work? Should I be doing those four by fours every single day? Or should I be doing most of this in zone two? So I think there's no question when you look at elite athletes, most of the work they do is easy. But you'll say like, hey, we're looking 'cause a lot of this was arrived up by looking at the programs of elite athletes. Okay, this elite athlete works for eight hours, trains for eight hours a week. This one trains for 16 hours a week. This one trains for 12 hours a week. You know, different sports and everything else. In most of these cases, you know, it looks like most of them are spending between two to three hours per week doing higher intensity work, you know, go to repeat, sub-threshold repeats, whatever. And all the rest of it is in that zone two, easier. So that's where a lot of 80, 20, 85, 15 and all that came from. Most of it, you know, all of this easy stuff and a little bit of harm. But they're still doing two to three hours of high intensity work per week. And you've got three 30 minute sessions. Now, the reason why they do so much of that is, if they go from three hours of high intensity work per week to four hours of high intensity work per week, they may find themselves getting crushed. It is so hard at that level to add more high intensity work without turning yourself inside out, without not having enough time for recovery. You have the Norwegians who are doing two threshold sessions per day in some cases, trying to cram in as much little threshold work here in there at high intensity work. And finally, they're like, you know, what, we can't fit anymore in here. We're just going to fill out the rest with easy work and this is what we end up with. If we try fitting in more high intensity work, our athletes suffer. So they go, all right, we can't really do any more harm to them. We would if we could, we'd be great. We'd get, we'd get, we'd get potentially even bigger gains. Some athletes are experimenting, doing cross training, totally different stuff. So the real idea behind that is the way I always liken it to this is that your high intensity work is your protein and your fat. And your zone two work is your carbs. And it's not that carbs aren't essential. It's that the most important thing in your program is make sure you're getting enough, you know, you can argue, make sure you're getting enough protein. You know, because if that goes too low, you're probably not doing that well. So if you got three by 30 minute sessions, you think, okay, could I make those whole high intensity? Probably what I want to. Absolutely not. Like I, I would like to just get on the bike one day and say, hey, look, I just got 30 minutes of easy work. Great. I can do two high intensity sessions per week. One can still be easy. That's fine. Ideally, you'd say, yeah, if you've only got limited time, the more high intensity work you do, the better. That you can recover from. As long as you're not so sore afterwards that you can't do anything else, a greater percentage of high intensity is probably better. The nice thing about zone two work is it does really interfere with things. So look, if you're, let's say, you're a busy professional. You got a lot of stuff going on. You got another sport you want to compete in, you just you, you got spend time with your family. You don't want to be sore every weekend. You don't feel like breathing fire every time you get on the exercise bike. You got four by 30 minute sessions per week to train. You think, okay, I can do a high intensity session on Tuesday afternoon. I can do a high intensity session Saturday morning. The other two sessions, I don't want to be doing it at that time of the week and I'm going to have no energy out of Friday. I'm going to make those easy. That's perfect. Getting as much high intensity as possible, up to, if you say, hey, if I do four high intensity sessions per week, I'm just dead all the time. Probably not a good idea. Most of us though, if you're on truly limited time, if you're limited to less than 80 to 120 minutes of total conditioning per week, you're probably not going to overdo it on high intensity. Because remember, a high intensity session might be 10 minute warm up, you know, five by three minute intervals. So that's 15 minutes total there, with two minutes resting between 10 minute cool down. So of those 40 minutes, I'm doing 10 minutes high intensity, 15 minutes high intensity. So I think it's important to remember, like, I am more of the camp that says, yeah, if you've got limited time, try to do as much high intensity as possible. But zone two is you're still going to be better off doing zone two than nothing. So if you got one of those days and don't feel like coughing out alone at the end of every single repeat, go ahead and do zone two. Well, I'm with you on that. And just from experience of myself, it's like, uh, it's so, so important. And you said something that is so crucial. I think it was Alan Cousins who I was re, like, a lot of people follow him on Twitter and then follow me. And then I said something like this the other day, like, hey, if you don't have time, you better hit some intensity. And then it was all the people saying, oh, all this high intensity work. It's like, man, these guys aren't, they don't even have that much time. So they're not even doing what you think, right? You're thinking in terms of, or at least these guys is coming across like, whoa, I trained seven days a week. I can't do seven for two hours a day. I can't do like that much high intent. It's like, yeah, but we're not talking about that. And another thing is also Alan said something like, well, like if the best guys in the world are doing 90% he says zone one, which, you know, to your point, he may be talking about, right, a different range. And it would be good to have him on the show to clarify that. But yeah, and 10% or 20% of that higher intensity work, but with what you just said, that's talking about hours, that 10% or 20% or whatever, that's hours of high intensity. So it's just a completely different context. So important. Yeah, because if I'm doing 80 minutes total per week, I've got, all right, I got my 30 minute session Tuesday, 30 minute session Thursday, and I've got 20 minutes on the weekend. If I'm doing 80 to 90% zone one slash two, I'm like, great. So my high intensity work is going to be one interval on Saturday morning in the middle of my workout. That's the thing is like more than that is probably still going to be tolerable. Like I can still improve the reason why we restrict the high intensity work. Yeah, there's some adaptations. I think the most important thing to remember is that the reason why we do zone two, primarily is so we can do a lot of it. And the reason why we want to do a lot of it is because there are certain volume mediated adaptations to cardiovascular. Some of the heart adaptations and all that, like it just takes minutes per week. It takes hours per week to maximize those adaptations. Every extra minute you do is just a little bit more adaptation. And for some of these things, it doesn't matter if those are high intensity or low intensity or anything else. You're an elite athlete. You say, I need 600 minutes per week of low intensity stuff to really continue making aerobic improvements. I am a world-class marathon runner. And continue to make those incremental aerobic improvements. I need 600 minutes per week of training. If I try to do nothing but high intensity, I'm not doing 600 minutes. I'm not maxing out those aerobic adaptations. So you think I'm going to do 180 minutes of high intensity work to really maximize all of those other cellular systems. And then I'm going to fill in the rest of the zone two to make sure I get a total of at least 600 minutes. Because there's that volume component. If you're like, hey, I'm not even scratching that 600 minute mark. I'm not worried about needing to fill in zone two to get my required volume. Get some intensity in there. Yeah, I'm with you on that. And so much research shows, like that's kind of what many people are missing with the metabolic dysfunction. Going for a walk and getting your steps in, it's not, unless you do a lot of it, it's just not going to move the needle in a meaningful way. Or at least it may not compare to the high intensity stuff where, yeah, if you get those muscles burning. Anyway, so this is such a great conversation. And I want to take it in a little bit of a different direction. You mentioned competing in jujitsu, something I may never ever do again. And the reason is because if I go into the adults, then I'm with all the 23 year old monsters who train three times a day and the recovery is way better than mine. But if I go into the masters, I'm with all the the divorcees who are on TRT and like have something to prove. So I'm like, I am not taking any performance enhancing drugs, specifically or peptides. But I wanted to get into like, if someone isn't ready like me, I don't feel in the future. And I'd love to even have your thoughts about this. Maybe coming back on the show and talking about this. But like in the future, okay, I might be open to taking testosterone or whatever we feel is the right thing to take to maximize performance, muscle, health, whatever. But for those of us who don't want to inject testosterone, and you know, we're interested and open to taking supplements, something like uralithin A, creatine, like whatever, beta-alaning. I'd love to hear your thoughts on supplements. And then I'd love to, if you're, we had a little bit of a back and forth about this, but peptides, which peptides, by the way, if you're listening, it's just a chain of amino acid. There's all collagen peptides. But when people say peptides, right, with the quotation marks almost, right, with the error quote marks, we're talking about these, like the BP157, the MOTC, the TB5000 or whatever the hell, I like, I've lose track of all the names. Can you talk about supplements for a guy listening right now, who's 40 plus wants to maintain their edge? And then maybe we can talk a little bit about peptides and your thoughts on them. Sure, yeah, so I mean, I'm going to start with all the boring ones, obviously, I think creatine is fantastic. One of the things I appreciate most about it is actually it's neuroprotective effects, especially, like I said, as you get older, it's, you know, if you ever have a history of things like, you know, potential head trauma, head injury, which I do, I know, so it's a concussion back in high school and all that. You know, creatine does have neuroprotective effects on all that stuff, it can help, it actually help with awareness and alertness, especially on low sleep. Basically, the fact that it's an energy source for cells just gums with all the good stuff that comes along with that or it ups the size of the fuel tank. So I'm always one of those who's like, hey, it's so cheap right now. If you're not taking it, you know, and I know there's a lot of back and forth, oh, how can you say people need to take a supplement? But it's one of those that's just, it's like a free money sort of thing. It's a cheap supplement that helps everything. So I'm like, hey, you know, and if you're one of those people who's like, oh, yeah, I sometimes take it. I'm not consistent. The beacon system about it, you know, just get on that because it needs to build up its data critical low. What about dosage? Because the original dosage was low for 20 grams for five days and go to a five day. But now there's research showing that might not be enough. And I don't think we know for sure maybe you're aware of research that I haven't been exposed to. But like maybe 10 grams because the muscles are greedy, right? So might need a bigger dose to get into the brain. What do you, what can you share with us about that? There is some evidence that a lot of the neuro protective effects affect on things like cognition and, you know, any sort of improvement in various neurological assays and things like that show that doses of 7.5 to 10 grams a day actually seem to be a little bit better. Whether or not, you know, I usually tell people to just split the difference. 7.5 grams a day, you know, basically heaping teaspoon of monohydrate is probably about right. You know, much more than that because there are so many delivery forms. And, you know, I tend to just say, look, when you start getting into, oh, well, this is creating sitrate and this is creating this on the other. I just say, take a heaping teaspoon of monohydrate every day. It's not 7.5 grams. You're probably getting 95 to 98%. Yes, theoretically, some of the other forms and going up higher end may show some better benefits. For example, some of the other benefits, you mean, or like some of the other forms? No, no, the other versions that create teen. Oh, gosh. There was, you know, there was what's citrate and, you know, HCL and all of those, I gotta remember, I used to take so many different kinds. There was one kind that had the wonderful effect of it, supposedly so fantastically easy to absorb and it tasted like ground up aspirin with like lemon juice in it, like that awful chalky and whatever you added into tastes is nothing like that. So, yeah, those are some of the other forms that came out. So I'm just like, hey, just just stick with them on hydrate. It's fine. So that's one beta-alene. I think it's fantastic. Beta-alene, I really appreciate just for the slight boost it has on most oxygenation and a time to exhaustion parameters. I'm endurance exercise. Now, even if your goal is not peak athletic performance, the fact that it lets you push yourself just a little bit harder and a little bit longer on your conditioning work means, hey, if someone was like, hey, I can make your conditioning work two to three percent more effective every single day, would you take it? Yeah. And the nice thing about beta-alene is some people get a flush if they take too much at once. You don't have to take too much at once. It builds up over time. So if you're like, yeah, I try beta-alene and it made my base feel a little tingly and I hated it. Take smaller amounts, take a thousand grams or if it depends on your absolute amount of that. That was a take a thousand milligrams three times per day. Divide endoses, you won't get that flush, you get the same benefit. So the the effective dose is three grams per day. - So it's about three grams. 3.5 grams per day is about where? Yes, 3.5 grams per day, not milligrams grams. - So there's no point in taking like six or something like that? - It's, again, it's one of those things where I've seen some research saying, yeah, six to 10 grams, you get like more immediate potent effects and things like that, but I really find some people have difficulty tolerating that. Even people who aren't prone to like flushing at lower doses, and if you're taking 10 grams a day and you're doing it in three doses of three grams a day, you might start to experience some level and come to the side effects. That's just been my experience. I've had pretty bad level. - It doesn't bother me for some reason. I'm not that tough when it comes to various sensations, but my face is itching, if it's an actual itch, that'll drive me insane. But I don't know, I'm just like, oh, I feel like answer crawling. I should probably shouldn't say this because if someone hasn't taken it before, but people, actually, I'm joking because people have gone to the emergency room because they took a supplement, their skin feels like it's crawling and they think they poison themselves, but it's completely normal. It's not as bad as it seems, but even if you do have that experience, like you said, Alex, you can just start with a little radose and work your way up. - And the other thing I love are various metrics. If you're taking beetroot, beet juice. - Oh man, I've got beetroot powder right now. I try to keep a straight face when I drink it. It is the nastiest supplement I've ever had. Maybe citrally malate of formicitrally malate that I tried, but I think this is worse. I really have to stomach it. The juice is probably better, but I can't get it where I'm in Brazil right now. - Yeah, okay. 'Cause sometimes if you can find pickled beets, like cans of pickled beets, that's honestly my go-to for a long time. I would just have a can of pickled beets and I would just have one of those. And they're great because you can just slice it up, put a little bit of whether you want to put some kind of like just like a little bit, not what kind of cheese, a little bit of feta cheese on it, and some cucumber slices. Oh, it's fantastic. So anyway, all of that, but any format pretty much does, you can do the root extract, you can do plain old beet juice, you can do pickled beets, canned beets, whatever you want. I think that's a great supplement as well. Some of the similar benefits to oxygrapher. - Is that pre-workout or everyday? - Yeah, but so there's actually interesting research that shows different benefits with the media pre-workout, like there's some acute effects from it, and there's some chronic effects from it, both of which show marginal improvements in certain parameters of aerobic fitness. So if you really want to ideally time it, you can have a beet pre-workout, or if you're like, you know what, I can't stomach death flavor right before going for a run or going for the gym. You don't want beet burps in the gym. You know what, I'm just gonna make a point to get some beets in my diet. Great, that's huge benefit from that. And again, like the reason I recommend these three is 'cause they're all relatively easy to incorporate. I guess you don't need, it's not a huge other thing to remember. It's all depending on the format, relatively easy to get, and some of the more profound impacts. Like that's the kind of thing if somebody said, what are three things that you think everybody could do to make their exercise a little bit more efficient and help them recover a little bit better and perform a little bit better? It could be those three. - How about let's go a step further. What would be the things that are maybe a little bit more expensive, or what would you recommend if someone was open to that? - So actually it's funny because you wanted the things, and this is even going a little bit for the mention peptides. So BPC157 a lot has been written about, and there's a lot of stuff around it, and healing, and joint healing and all that. So it's origin is it's a gastric peptide. It is derived from the gastrointestinal tract. And what that means, first of all, is that you can take it orally and it resists breakdown. So it doesn't have to be injected. And the other great thing about that is some of it's most potent healing effects and some of it's most potent effects on improving like vascularity, epithelial cell, migration, and things like that can actually take place in the gastrointestinal system. What I really like about that, a lot of things, exercising general, stress, certain kinds of diet, all of those have an effect on our GI tract. Has an effect on nutrient absorption, nutrient reabsorption. I would say most of the population has, or has experienced some level of abnormal gastrointestinal, whatever you want to call it. There are a lot of colorful words we can use out there. What it looked at, just seems to say the last month. One of the nice things about BPC is that it seems to be able to help with a lot of those issues, by helping to heal or at least helping to promote the healing of a lot of aligning, like the brushboard membrane, a lot of the other writings about the small intestine and stuff like itself, but primarily the small intestine. In terms of one peptide that I think is very safe to use, can be taken orally and can actually improve your health, or even just improve the quality of life in a marginal way. I've had a lot of people who have things like IBS symptoms or have issues with digesting certain foods or just have constant upset stomachs, so things like that, we say that, yeah, doing a run of two to three weeks of just small amounts of BPC 157 orally has really shown positive effects in just helping to, from lack of a better word, stabilize their gastrointestinal tract. That is-- How much is a small amount? Like what would the milligrams, if it's in milligrams? I think 500 micrograms is pretty much the recommended dose all of that, and depending on who you talk to, there are 100 different recommendations on amounts and all that. I will say that for the most part, you can buy BPC capsules on Amazon at this point. And they actually contain a decent amount of the active ingredient. Because it's not under any kind of-- what you would call it, patent right now. So it's easily available. So that is just one thing I would say. If anybody really wants to just play with something that is-- I don't know if I can technically recommend it. I don't know if it's ready for human consumption or not, but that's one thing that I know a lot of people have benefited from. Yeah. And you're someone-- there's very few people who I'd listen to about that. And you are one of them. Because I even saw these guys. Because I don't know if you're on-- actually, I know you're not on Twitter, right? Because I looked you up, actually. And you haven't posted since like 2017 or something. Yeah. And it was your company. It wasn't even you. But I saw, guys, you're saying it's active early. I saw these guys saying, oh, well, I use injectable for this and oral for that. And you've got to use them differently for different things. And there's so much BS. I mean, I don't listen to any of these guys. I pay attention to what they say so I can ask someone like you about it. But I'm just-- and I just have a quick aside. If you're following some of these people, right? And you think they know what they're talking about because they use some sciencey words that they've got chat GPT to help them spit out. These guys are just talking about their own personal experience. They're not-- again, do what you want. I'm not here to tell you what to do with your life. I'm a big fan of that. But if you want expert advice, go to experts, not Reddit forums or the guys on the anonymous peptide guys, the peptide bros on X. I agree with that. I think to a certain extent, it's almost like a cargo cult. Because you have a lot of people who stumble across peptides. And you're like, let's see what these do. Like I heard, these do different things. And they don't really know why it works. They just think they do. So they kind of come out of that drift. Not to say they're on some great ones out there. But that's always the tough thing, isn't it? Sure. Because you're like, OK, most of them are terrible. Some of them are right. They're dead on, no. It's always difficult figuring out which is which. So I'm just-- just approach everything with a healthy level of skepticism. And when in doubt, just take the most conservative approach that you can think of. Take out the hyperbole. Take out anybody who says, this is the best. Anything, take about anything, use Arkansas's razor. If anything is complicated, sound and go with a simpler solution. Yeah. And man, I think about it. Because some people have said, oh, it's better than stem cell injections or PRP for injury healing. And I'm just like, I don't know about that. I have it tried it. And perhaps I will report back. I'll see if it's available here on Amazon. Because I'm in Brazil at the moment. But I will be going back to the state soon. So I can pick some up. So 500 micrograms, you said, for two or three weeks to see how you feel afterwards. And then would you just last question? I know we're really pushing this over an hour here, closer to an hour and a half. But when would you do that? How many times per year would you do that? For me, that's almost an as-needed sort of thing. And the reason is, since it's not really disruptive to any natural ongoing processes, it doesn't cause the down-regulation of any other enzymes. It doesn't cause the down-regulation of hormones. It's not one of those things where you necessarily have to be cautious about taking too much. I mean, you were taking it too often. I've not seen any signs of any sort of build up. Sometimes even various anabolic peptides have a drawback. If cells live too long, that causes problems. If cells grow too quickly, that causes problems. This is a very well-known condition I'm going too quickly. But with BPC, that-- doesn't seem to be the cancer. - It's cancer folks. - Cancer, yes. It's amazing how many different compounds and longevity compounds are you're like, wow, that worked as advertised, that would be good. But with that, with PPC, it doesn't seem to be that much of a big deal. So for people, I say like two to three weeks at a time, give yourself a week off or two in between, not because there's danger in taking it too long, but because you really wanna know if it's making a difference or not. If you're experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms or even if you know, like let's say you are dealing with some sort of injury or tendon injury or open-lasturization, anything else that you wanna heal, take it for a time and then wean yourself off it so you know if it's actually effective. Because people who stay on it all the time think, oh my God, well I need it now. This is like my edge, this is what gets me healing fast. You never know, that two weeks you took it, that three weeks you took it may have been enough to get you some making gastrointestinal system back to normal. Let yourself come off it, trust your body and do the right thing and only go back to it if you know you needed, just do practice and do. - Wise advice, Alex Viotta, thanks so much man, just a great interview. We cannot wait years to update. There's so too many things to talk about. And again, if you are listening right now, listen, I don't push books, but you need to read this book if you're interested in, if you're hearing all the stuff that's going to run a Patrick, Peter and Tia, you're like, how do I put this all together? And you hear what Peter is doing and you think it's too extreme because he spends like six hours a week just doing his own two work, then get Alex's book, ultimate hybrid athlete, a definitive guide for achieving peak athleticism across all disciplines. It's going to be available December 2nd, 2025, just in case you're listening to this much later. Get the book, read it, you're going to be so far ahead of all the other people talking about this stuff and trying to figure it out. Alex, man, just a pleasure. You're a great human being. You're an incredible source of knowledge. Thanks for your time today, man. - Thanks so much, man. Really appreciate it. Always great talking to you. - So how good was today's interview? And if Alex's insights helped you rethink how to train for strength, endurance, and long term health, make sure you subscribe to the show because we've got more episodes on mindset recovery, VO2 max, and staying powerful in your 40s and 50s and beyond, really excited to bring this information to you. We're going to have even more guests. So again, hit that subscribe button, have an amazing day and speak to you soon.