Podcast #100 from http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/2010/06/episode-100-

bengreenfieldfitness-turns-100/

Introduction: In this 100th episode of the www.bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast: a trip

down memory lane back to the very first podcast, how to make your

kitchen healthier, calories burnt walking versus running, how long it takes

to burn off caffeine, how long it takes to build tolerance to caffeine,

whether caffeine after a workout helps, is aloe vera a scam? How to

determine how much salt is in your sweat, how to know if you’re running

hard enough and how often should you train in hot weather?

Ben: Well folks, you finally made it to the 100th episode. I know some of you

have actually listened to all of them. I don’t know how you made it

through 100 episodes, but if somehow you did, congratulations. Give

yourself a big hand. Now, in today’s episode, a little bit special on the

featured topic. We’re actually going to go back to the very first podcast

ever. It’s a little bit entertaining actually to hear the difference between

that podcast and this one. But there’s actually a lot of really great

information in there. Workout of the week, some information on research

at the National Trainer’s Conference, recipe for healthy chocolate peanut

butter ice cream and a little bit more. So about 20 minutes worth of

podcasting there for the featured topic in today’s episode. Also, remember

that all the questions this week were listener call-in questions. So a little

bit different there on the Listener Q and A and we will do our special

announcements, go on to the Q and A and then move on to that featured

topic. And remember, everything that you hear about today, I will put

links in the Shownotes to. So just go to the episode Shownotes for episode

100 at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and thanks for your support of Ben

Greenfield Fitness.

Now if you subscribe to the free www.bengreenfieldfitness.com newsletter,

you already know all about this upcoming Web cast that’ s on June 30th.

It’s a healthy cooking Web cast put on by the highly entertaining Chef

Todd. He actually did a great video post for us earlier this week that you

should definitely check out at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com where he

walked us through a farmer’s market, showed us how to get fresh produce

delivered to our house and at the end of this week, he will be showing

what he does with a fresh produce box that he gets at the Farmer’s Market

or has delivered. The whole theme of this month with Chef Todd is how to

cook with fresh, healthy ingredients. So I would definitely check out the

link in the Shownotes to go sit in on Chef Todd’s free Web cast on June

30th. You can actually listen to it after the Web cast has been recorded but

to get the listening link you have to register for the Web cast beforehand.

Now in addition to that, the podcast over at the Get Fit Guy this week was

on how to actually burn fat the fastest – which workout actually works to

burn fat the fastest. And remember those podcasts are only about five

minutes long but they’re kind of jam-packed with snippets and they’re

really, really dense in terms of the amount of advice that you get in five

minutes. And just like this show, they are completely free. Now the

Marathon Dominator for you running fans out there is still available at

www.marathondominator.com as well as a 30 minute video that I shot to

tell you a little bit more about how to actually train for a marathon

without getting injured and how to put together a four day a week running

program. So check that out at www.marathondominator.com and finally if

you want to join me in Thailand this winter for a double triathlon trip,

there are still a few slots left for that trip. You need to email me very soon

if you want in on that trip to Thailand. So if you’re a triathlete and you

would like to have a vacation organized for you to go race, then send me

an email ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com and I can still get you into that

race in Thailand which is sold out, but which is one of the best races in the

world of all that I’ve been to in terms of triathlon. So check that out. We’re

going to move on to this week’s Listener Q and A. Remember that if you

would like a Ben Greenfield Fitness T-shirt, you can either donate to the

show or order one or I’ll tell you during the Q and A how you can get a

Ben Greenfield Fitness T-shirt for free.

Sue asks: Hi, my name is Sue and I was wondering – it might be a strange question

but I think maybe you could help me out – we are remodeling our kitchen

and I was wondering if you had any recommendations on how we could

design our kitchen to better facilitate health, fitness and maybe even self-

control and eating habits. I think maybe you might have some good ideas

before we get started here, so if you could address this soon that would be

great. Thanks a lot, Ben. Bye bye.

Ben answers: Well Sue, that is a great question and I wish more people put a little bit

more thought into not only how they design their kitchen but how they

approach their kitchen in terms of the way that they’ve worked it into

their lifestyle. So let’s talk about some things that you can do with your

kitchen and with your eating habits in your kitchen to actually help you do

things like control your weight and eat healthier. Now, the first thing is

that there has been research that shows that when people off of dinner

plates that are smaller, they eat 22% fewer calories per meal. And in

addition to that, since the 1970s, dinner plates have grown by 25%. So

what this tells you is that if you stock your kitchen with smaller dining

platters then you’re going to enable yourself to eat just a little bit less.

That’s actually one of the things I’ll do when I eat lunch. I used to grab a

big plate and pile it with a huge salad or really big wrap, and what I find

now is if I use a smaller plate, I’m actually prone to eat less even though it

kind of fools my brain, because when I put a bunch of food on a small

plate it looks like I’m eating a ton of food. So, by making sure that the

larger plates are kind of more towards the back of your cupboards or more

inaccessible, maybe saving those for some of your bigger holiday meals

like Thanksgiving or Christmas, what you’ll do is enable yourself

psychologically to eat less. That’s essentially a way that you can trick your

brain. The next thing I would consider in the kitchen is that a lot of

kitchens have a ton of lighting in them. What research has shown is that

the higher the wattage of the lighting, the higher your stress levels. When

your stress levels are high, your appetite gets stimulated and you tend to

eat faster than usual. But on the other side if your kitchen is too dim,

research has shown that dim light actually reduces your inhibitions. That

might just be because you really can’t see what you’re eating or how much

you’re eating and so you eat more of it or eat some of the foods that you

normally wouldn’t. So, the trick is to light your kitchen in a comfortable

fashion without using too much light. So, the recommendation from

lighting experts is to not use more than 240 watts in your kitchen design.

So that’s the equivalent of four 60 watt bulbs. Or you could use six 40 watt

bulbs if you’re doing a bunch of different lights. For compact fluorescent

bulbs you could use a few of the 75 to 100 watt compact fluorescent bulbs,

but lighting actually affects your eating habits. So not too light, but also

not too dim. Now the other thing that’s very important is you not put your

kitchen or set up your kitchen in a way that it becomes a dumping ground

for things like your mail, for things that you have to file, for things you

haven’t gotten around to yet. Essentially the more organized and the more

clean your kitchen is, the more likely it is that you will engage in less

chaotic eating patterns. So they’ve done studies on this and they’ve

actually found that when people are distracted by things going on around

them they tend to eat about 15% more. So if you’ve got a bunch of mail

that you’re surfing through and you’re being distracted by a bunch of

other things going on in your kitchen, you’re going to end up eating more.

So what I would do is make sure that you reserve a space in your kitchen

that’s really designed just for eating and not for doing a lot of other

activities such as watching TV or surfing through folders that are on your

kitchen counter. In addition to the dinner plate issue, I would also pay

attention to the issue with the glasses. Studies have also been done on

glasses. I talk about this in my book 100 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism,

about how people tend to drink more when they drink out of large glasses.

When people drink their calories in general they tend to drink more. But

by using smaller glasses in the same way that you use smaller plates,

you’re going to basically enable yourself to drink a little bit less. In

addition to that, with large pantries that tend to have lots of bulk food

stored in them in huge packages, you will tend to eat more. As a matter of

fact, what research has found is that people will eat 23% more food when

they’re cooking from large containers and they’ll eat twice as much candy

from big bags as compared to little bags. So while it can be helpful from a

budget standpoint to shop in bulk, you may want to consider adding a

space in your house outside your kitchen, outside the place where you’ll

be snacking such as your garage or your basement where you store a lot of

your bulk food and the food that comes in big bags and then you can

transfer that into your kitchen and put it into smaller containers and

ensure that you don’t have large bulk sections of food cluttering up your

kitchen. Because you will be more likely to eat more when you’re eating

out of big packages. So here’s an interesting tip as well. If you have snacks

and you keep your snacks in clear jars, that actually makes you far more

likely to eat, because when you see the snacks you get this trigger that

goes on in your brain even if you’re full that you want to grab that snack.

So if you tend to keep things like cookies, mixed nuts, M&Ms, Trail Mix,

things like that in your kitchen – you actually do yourself a favor by

making sure that if it is in a clear container, it’s kept out of sight. And even

better yet, put it in a container that’s not see-through. So none of your

cookie jars should be clear, big, glass jars. And then finally, interestingly

on the same note as dinner plates being 25% larger than they were back in

the 70s, kitchens are about 50% larger than they were back in the 70s. So

again, a lot of things happen in the kitchen. And what you may want to

consider doing if you’re creating a huge kitchen and that’s the way your

kitchen re-design is set up, is ask yourself whether you actually need all

that extra space especially if any of that extra space is being devoted to the

type of activities that are going to detract from your focus on eating and

cooking. So for example, if you’ve got a space for a big TV or

entertainment center in your kitchen, you may want to re-think that. If

you’ve got space for bookshelves or magazine shelves in your kitchen, you

may want to rethink that. Essentially you want your kitchen to be a place

for cooking and for eating and not for entertainment. So great question

Sue, and I hope that helps you out. Best of luck.

Daniel asks: Hi Ben, this is Daniel calling from Switzerland. First of all, I wanted to

congratulate you for your qualification for Hawaii Ironman Gold

Championship. Cool job, man. Now my question is about following

formula. How to measure how many calories you burn during a run

session. My buddy gave me the following formula which goes like body

weight x distance which you meet for your run or your race, which will

equal into calorie burn rate. For example in my case this would be 70 kilos

which is 154 pounds x a marathon, this would equal in calories 2954. Now

my question, is it really the same calorie burn rate no matter whether you

run the marathon in three hours or three and a half? Your input or

clarification would be highly appreciated. Thanks Ben and have a good

one.

Ben answers: Okay, so first of all before we get to the meat of Daniel’s question,

essentially that equation that he’s referring to is an equation where you

could take your body weight and you can multiply it by the distance that

you travelled and that will approximate the amount of calories that you

burned during that distance. Now this works for the metric system. So

that would be the amount of weight that you weigh in kilograms x the

amount of distance you travel in kilometers and that’s supposed to give

you an equivalent of the number of calories that you’ve burned. Now,

according to that equation Daniel is correct, meaning that if you run a

marathon in three hours or if you run a marathon in say three and a half

hours, you’re still going to burn the same amount of calories because you

covered the same distance. Now from a purely mathematical standpoint,

that’s true but what the equation does not take into account is the

dynamic nature of movement. Now, if you’re listening to this and you’re

wondering how you could burn more calories with your training, this is

going to be important information for you to know. Because even though

you would technically burn the same amount of calories, say walking a

mile versus running a mile, the type of movement required to make your

body run makes you breathe harder because you have to push your body

off the ground. You have to swing your arms harder and you essentially

have to generate more movement if you’re going to run a mile versus

walking a mile. Now, when that occurs – when that increased movement

occurs, you generate what is called oxygen debt. Specifically, you have a

post-exercise oxygen debt. That means that when you finish exercising for

a certain number of hours, you have to consume more oxygen than you

would normally consume. When you consume more oxygen, that oxygen

is used to burn calories. So while you may burn the same amount of

calories walking a mile versus running a mile, after you’ve finished

running you will continue to burn calories resulting in a run generating,

for example, an extra 100 or 150 calories after the workout. In addition,

when you run you cause your muscles to create a greater amount of force.

So you stimulate the ability for your body to grow new muscle and you

also stimulate your body to produce hormones such as growth hormone.

Both of these will not only help you to stabilize your blood sugar levels a

little bit more, but they’ll also ultimately raise your metabolism. This is

why whenever you have the choice to go hard or go easy, you should go

hard unless you are recovering or unless you’re doing a very scientific

based triathlon periodization program where there are a lot of reasons to

go easy versus going hard. But ultimately what it comes down to is that

you always burn more calories when you run than when you walk. So

there’s more to the equation than first meets the eye. So great question,

Daniel.

Chuck asks: Hey Ben, this is Chuck. I had a question for this week’s podcast. They’re

kind of four questions all based around caffeine. And I wanted to ask first,

I know about how much to take before a training session or before an

event, but is there any point at which I should re-dose if I was, say, doing

a half Ironman? Would it be a good idea to take in some more halfway

through the bike? Also, how much really makes a difference? I know we

talk about 200 to 300 milligrams more or less depending on body weight,

but using a lot of energy, should you also take 25 or 35 milligrams, and

does that really make any difference? Next, can someone build up a

tolerance against caffeine where it becomes less effective and they have to

take more? And lastly, I’ve read some research regarding taking caffeine

post-workout with the recovery supplements and supposedly it helps it

get into your bloodstream faster and circulate around more to your

muscles and I wanted to see if there was really an validity behind that and

if it was worth doing or whether or not you would recommend it? Thanks

a lot man, I really appreciate it and I’m looking forward to the podcast.

Thanks Ben.

Ben answers: Well, as Chuck already knows and as you know if you’ve listened to this

podcast, caffeine can help you quite a bit with exercise. It helps you to

spare the use of carbohydrates as fuel so you use more fat and it also

makes you feel as if you’re not exercising quite as hard so you can usually

push harder and feel less pain. Now, what Chuck is first wondering is

exactly how much caffeine is actually going to make a difference –

basically he’s wondering whether the caffeine in something like a gel is

going to make a difference. Well, most of the studies find that the amount

of caffeine that’s necessary to really stimulate you to have a good what’s

called ergogenic or a sports performance enhancing response range from

3 to 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. That’s a lot of caffeine. For

example, for some of the average guys who weigh 70 kilograms, if you’re

looking at 3 milligrams per kilogram, that’s 210 kilograms of caffeine.

That’s a few cups of coffee. If you look at a lot of these sports gels, many of

them contain 30 milligrams or 40 milligrams of caffeine. Well, sure, if you

just took one of those gels, you’re not going to feel it too much. But the

idea is that if you are taking say 300 calories an hour and each of those

300 calories is coming from a gel-based source and the gel has 40

milligrams of caffeine for every 100 calories, well suddenly you’re getting

120 milligrams per hour and that begins to take effect. Especially if you’re

taking in this caffeine during a long event like a five hour event or a 10

hour event. You end up dumping a lot of caffeine into your body. Now

while caffeine does have an ergogenic sports performance enhancing

effect, it can do things like draw water into your colon and over-stimulate

your central nervous system. And chronic caffeine loads over a period of

10 hours even to the range of 120 milligrams per hour will leave you with

things like diarrhea halfway through and the jitters. Eventually what

happens is the central nervous system stimulation almost causes you to

wig out. You start to feel really jittery and very moody, almost in the same

way as you would get if you experienced low blood sugar. So just think

about what would happen if you sat there during the day and drank eight

cups of black coffee. You kind of start to feel the same way when you’re

exercising. And that’s where you need to use caution. A lot of these studies

that have been done on caffeine have been done on people exercising for

60 minutes or 90 minutes and not out doing 10 hour Ironman events. So,

that being said, let’s move on to the second part of your question to

investigate this even further. And that is the actual rate of burning of

caffeine. So basically any molecule has what’s called a half-life in science.

And the half-life of caffeine or the rate at which it’s metabolized is about

4.9 hours in a regular adult. Now considering the fact that your

metabolism is going to increase as you’re exercising you could generally

give yourself a range of about three to four hours for caffeine to work its

way out of your system and for its effects to begin to disappear. So, if you

were doing a long distance event of say 10 hours, you basically have a

couple choices. One is you can take in a bunch of caffeine about 30 to 45

minutes prior to that event, which is how long it’s going to take caffeine to

hit your system and then you can continue to take smaller amounts of

caffeine the entire time such as by using the gels that I just talked about. If

you incorporated this strategy, what I would recommend is that you only

take in about 40 to 50 milligrams of caffeine each hour after you’ve taken

that initial load of about 200 milligrams. That will allow you to still

experience the effects of caffeine without getting very jittery. There has

not been research done on this but this is actually based on anecdotal

evidence with myself and with many of the athletes I coach. We’ve kind of

figured out the exact amount of caffeine that lets you continue to do a

longer distance effect without actually burning yourself out in the process.

Now, option two would be you take that initial dose of caffeine. You wait

three hours and then you take another dose of caffeine. And I’ve done this

before and it works pretty well. In that case, you’d want to make sure that

you were taking in uncaffeinated gels or uncaffeinated sports drinks and

then after about four hours you would load with caffeine again, using say

a pill or an energy powder or something of that nature. You’d load with

about the same amount as you would use for that initial load three hours

prior. So at least around 200 milligrams. So that answers that question.

Then as far as your question about caffeine tolerance – your body

definitely can reach a tolerance to caffeine. Basically what studies have

shown is that complete tolerance to caffeine can develop after about 18

days. So after you’ve taken caffeine for about two and a half weeks, you

begin to develop a tolerance to it. That’s according to research. Now, the

issue with this research and my issue with it is the research had people

consuming 900 milligrams of caffeine per day. So they were drinking

eight cups of coffee a day in order to develop that tolerance to coffee after

about two and a half weeks. So I haven’t see any studies that look at how

long it takes to develop a tolerance when you’re just drinking, say, one cup

of coffee in the morning. I can tell you from personal experience that the

effects of coffee begin to kind of wear off for me if I quit taking coffee and

then start drinking it again after right around two weeks. So it could be

that even the studies that use higher doses of caffeine still have an effect,

or still have a relevance with the lower doses of coffee that most of us

drink when we’re not in a research lab, being a coffee-guzzling guinea pig.

So my recommendation ultimately is if you’re going to use caffeine to

make yourself a better athlete, you abstain from caffeine for seven to 14

days prior to using it and that will ensure that you’ve actually de-loaded

from the caffeine and that you’re not tolerant to its effects when you

finally do decide to dose up. And then finally, you ask about whether you

should take caffeine after a workout. There’s actually been interesting

research on this. This is fairly recent research that shows that when

individuals exercise and then they consume caffeine post-exercise, they

can get up to 66% more carbohydrate in their muscles within four hours

after exercise. Now that may seem like a breakthrough concept, but here’s

the deal. Most of us are going to achieve that level of glycogen absorption

within a day after a workout anyways. So the only people who should be

consuming a caffeine tablet or a cup of coffee post-workout along with

their post-workout meal would be someone who’s going to exercise again

four hours later or a couple hours later or maybe in the afternoon after a

mid-morning workout. If you’re exercising every morning and you have

24 hours to replenish your carbohydrate stores then there’s no need to

dump a bunch of caffeine on your central nervous system because you’re

probably going to reach that same level of carbohydrate absorption just

through your day to day fuel. So it’s not like the caffeine is going to help

you store more fuel. It’s going to help you store the same amount of fuel

but at a much faster rate. So it increases what’s called your rate of

glycogen re-absorption. So, great question Chuck.

Listener asks: Hey Ben, this is a question for your podcast. It’s about a product that

(inaudible) a jar of Life Force Nutrition Greens with MSM. I was just

wondering if you were familiar with the product. I like the product but it

costs like $50 a jar for 90 servings. And I was just wondering if this is a

good value for this type of product and is it necessary for someone who

needs to be taking three servings a day of this, and what is MSM? Just

what function does that have to do with the product? Also if you have time,

my wife has been approached to use a product from Univera company. It’s

called Ageless Xtra and they make some great claims and I was just

wondering if you ever heard of it. It seems like it could just be some

money-making scheme. But alright, hey thanks a lot and you might want

my email address. Thanks Ben, love your program.

Ben answers: Okay, so this is basically a supplement question and I looked into this

Light Force Nutrition Greens and first of all Light Force does not have any

information about their ingredients on their Web site. If anybody from

Light Force is listening, let me give you a little hint here. You want to tell

people the ingredients of whatever they’re ordering if you really want to

make it in the nutrition industry because you’ll only get so many people

who are going to put something into their body and have no clue what it is

that they’re putting into their body. So, ultimately it looks like Light Force,

once I dug into it is used by a lot of these martial artist type of fighters,

mixed martial artist guys, UFC guys and some of their big names use this

Light Force High Energy Greens. Like many other green supplements, it

contains a range of different herbs – spirulina, barley grass, Kamut

powder, alfalfa leaf, lemon grass, dandelion leaf – so kind of both a

cleansing and what’s called an alkalinizing product. All of these are high

alkaline foods that would tend to help your body be in a less acidic state.

Now in that particular product, they’ve also included something called

MSM, which interestingly I discussed on the podcast recently. MSM is a

naturally occurring sulfur compound. And while it’s precursor DMSO has

been banned by the FDA, MSM still appears in a lot of primarily lotions

for helping with muscle soreness. Now the interesting thing about MSM is

there really have not been any studies that have shown that it’s done

much for people in terms of soreness. Most of the evidence on MSM is

primarily anecdotal. There was a big meta-analysis done on MSM. A

meta-analysis means they looked at a bunch of different studies of studies

and no clinical significance was found that showed that MSM would be

helpful in the reduction of pain for osteoarthritis. Now, that being said,

tons of athletes swear by this stuff and kind of like glucosamine

chondroitin, say that they can feel almost immediately that decrease in

joint pain. Most of those claims I haven’t seen with oral intake of MSM

such as what you’re getting with the Light Greens, but with like a lotion,

topical intake of MSM. So, the MSM is one of those things where if you

find that it helps your joints. Then use it. There’s not a lot of evidence that

it could be harmful. That’s not medical advice, I’m just basing this on

what the evidence shows. Not a ton of evidence to show that it helps, but

not a ton of evidence that shows that it’s going to kill you or that it has a

toxic effect either. As far as all the other ingredients in the greens, I’ve

told people this before – if there’s one supplement in my entire

supplement protocol that I could take, it would be the EnerPrime capsules

or the EnerPrime powder. That’s a greens supplement. Now I’ve taken a

lot of other green supplements and I’ve never found one that I can

actually feel the same way that I feel the EnerPrime. I’ve actually had

quite a few upset customers in the past couple of months because the

spirulina used in EnerPrime went out to back order and the company that

makes EnerPrime refused to go with any other source of spirulina because

what they were using was such a high quality source. So this company

really doesn’t cheapen its product. It uses ingredients that are very high

quality and it doesn’t cut corners in order to substitute ingredients if

something happens to be out of season. I think this was due to floods in

the area that they were getting their actual spirulina. So that being said, I

am a big fan of green supplements but I can’t guarantee that this

supplement is as good as the EnerPrime supplement that I’ve talked about

before. So, that Light Force High Energy Greens could be something to

look into. I’d also check out the EnerPrime for sure. There’s my shameless

plug. Then you also ask about this Univera supplement and that’s really

interesting. It’s put out by a company called Univera. It’s a multilevel

marketing company that has several patents on a few different forms of

aloe vera. Aloe vera has been something that’s been touted as medicinal

and a health product for a long period of time. Most of us are familiar with

using aloe vera on sunburns to help with just the pain from a sunburn,

because it has soothing, moisturizing, healing properties on skin. But it’s

also been used in herbal medicine for a while. No, you don’t take the aloe

vera lotion that you buy at the grocery store and chug it. Aloe vera is

actually just like any herb. It can be put in a capsule format or it can be

put in a liquid format to drink and it’s supposed to have anti-bacterial and

anti-fungal properties. It’s very high in amino acids. It’s very high in a lot

of different nutrients and minerals. And like many of these fringe

nutrition products, it is a little bit overpriced. I noticed that the company

Univera actually kind of owns some patents and also has sponsored much

of the latest research on aloe vera and so it’s tough to see some of the

latest research as unbiased. But I did find one research paper that was an

unbiased research paper and it concluded that oral administration of aloe

vera could be effective in stabilizing your blood sugar levels and reducing

your cholesterol. And it also could be very useful as a treatment for genital

herpes and for psoriasis which kind of suggests that it does have these

anti-fungal properties. So, in terms of whether or not the patented

formulation put out by Univera is superior to a basic generic aloe vera

that you could get at the grocery store, I can’t say whether or not it is,

because I’ve never seen any studies that compare the two and any studies

that have been done on it have been sponsored by the company that’s

making the product. So, very tough to say but ultimately there is some

research to back up aloe vera. Just not necessarily to back up the high

priced stuff that you’re going to find, for example, in that Univera Web

site. Any time that you’re looking into a supplement from a multilevel

marketing company, a lot of times you are going to get a higher quality

product but sometimes to even out the extra that you pay for it, you

almost have to join the company and make it part of your business so that

it’s supporting your investment in the product. So, good question. And I’ll

put a link to the EnerPrime in the Shownotes.

Patrick asks: Hey Ben, this is Patrick from just outside of Nashville, Tennessee coming

at you with another question. Now that it’s starting to warm up a little bit

and I’m sweating a lot more during my workout, I got to thinking if there

was some way that I could measure my sweat for specific salt content –

I’m not talking about sweat rate per se but I’d be really embarrassed if

Bioletics offers this, but some way that I can measure the amount of

sodium and the amount of chloride, the amount of potassium, magnesium

and calcium in my sweat so I can better know to replenish it. Thanks a lot

Ben.

Ben answers: So, this is a really interesting question. I actually used to direct a sports

performance laboratory where we did sweat sodium analysis using a

protocol from the Gatorade Sports Science Institute. What we would do is

take a series of patches and put them at strategic locations in your body

and each patch was a specific size. You would then sweat on a bicycle or a

treadmill for an hour and we would determine not only how many ounces

of liquid you lost during that exercise period but we would also measure

the amount of sodium that ended up in each of those patches from each

different site of your body. Then we’d take the algorithm developed by the

Gatorade Sports Science Institute and essentially based off the surface

area of your body, determined how much salt you were losing for each

ounce of liquid or fluids that you lost, or for each pound that you lost. It

was really interesting, most of the time people were losing anywhere from

1 ½ to 2 ½ grams of salt per hour which is what you would expect. But

interestingly, based on that is essentially a formulation that you can use to

determine approximately how much salt you use per liter of sweat or per

ounce of sweat and that can help you to determine your sodium

replacement rate if you were going to just go to a lab and get tested. So,

what we know is that for every liter of sweat that you produce, you have

about 2 ½ to 3 ½ grams of salt that’s lost in each liter. So if we were to

round that up to 3 and say that you were to lose 3 grams or 3000

milligrams of salt for every liter of sweat, the next thing that we would

want to do is figure out exactly how many liters of sweat you are losing per

hour. And if you assume that most of what you lose is salt and you go

weight yourself after exercise, essentially for each pound of weight that

you lose you can assume that the conversion to number of liters lost is

about half a liter. So, if you lost one pound and that’s half a liter and we

know that there’s three grams of salt in one liter, for each pound that you

lose, you’d be going through about 1500 milligrams or 1.5 grams of salt.

And you can generally replace salt at about anywhere from 30 to 50% of

what you’ve lost. Really, really heavy sweaters are going to be wanting to

replace closer to 50%. So, you would be taking anywhere in the range of

right around 500 to 750 milligrams of salt per hour if that was the state

you were in. So, that is how you would go about doing it. You would want

to weigh yourself before and after exercise and then you would want to

use the fact that a liter of fluid lost is going to be the equivalent of losing

about 3 grams worth of salt and then replace your salt at about the 30 to

50% rate loss. And that’s when it comes down to experimentation. I would

start with 30%. If you’re still cramping, ramp it up a little bit. If you’re still

cramping, ramp it up a little bit. Kind of get to that point where you can

take in enough salt. If your fingers start to get puffy, if you start to see a

lot of white salt on your pores or your armpits, etc. that probably means

that you’re taking in too much of it.

Luke asks: Hey Ben, my name is Luke and I’ve been competing in triathlons for

about two years now. My question has to do with race performance. I hear

a lot of people talking about how they’re running through pain during the

run portion of a race and how they are sore for several days or weeks after

a race and when I’m running I don’t get that feeling during a race. I feel

like I’m pushing pretty hard but I don’t feel like I’m running through pain,

I don’t collapse at the finish line. I guess my question is should I be feeling

those things? Should I run to the point where I’m in pain during a race? I

don’t know if it’s just a mind thing or I’m not training hard enough to

know what it feels like to exert myself that way during the run portion of a

triathlon. So, I’ve done everything from sprints to half Ironmans. I don’t

know if the distance varies makes a difference on how hard I should push

it. So I guess that’s my overall question. Should I be running in pain

during a race? Should I be pushing it that hard?

Ben answers: Okay, so Luke as a coach, my short answer is yeah you should be hurting

during the run. If you’re not hurting, you’re probably not pushing yourself

hard enough. But I don’t want to leave you hanging with that. So, one of

the things that can occur in individuals is they can either have lungs that

are overpowering their legs or legs that are overpowering their lungs. Now,

in the former case if you have lungs that are overpowering your legs –

what that means is you’re one of those people who is very aerobically

gifted but you don’t have much leg strength, and so while you can run all

day long and feel like you’re breathing just fine, you can’t run that fast

because you’re not able to generate that much force. You usually don’t do

that well on the hills. You essentially don’t have the musculature to be

able to push yourself to that speed. So, if you’re a real, real skinny guy – a

lot of times that’s the case – and you can benefit from doing things like

hill work, lunge work, plyometric work. Now, if your legs are

overpowering your lungs, you’re typically somebody who’s come into the

sport with a background of power or explosive or strength sports and your

aerobic system is not that well developed and in that case you would want

to sacrifice too much weightlifting type of work or explosive sports type of

work and do a little bit more aerobic type conditioning like doing five to

10 minute tempo repeats on a treadmill at a slight incline or doing two to

five mile repeats on your bike. So the training can really affect how your

body responds in terms of getting the legs to catch up with the lungs or

the lungs to catch up with the legs. Now this can be very mental as well.

I’ve got an article coming out soon in Triathlete magazine about mental

tactics for getting yourself to push harder during exercise. What I find is

that people who grew up playing sports really don’t have any trouble at all

getting themselves to push to the next level. But sometimes people who

didn’t play a lot of sports – who never really were at that point in their life

when they had a coach pushing them to the point of puking – they don’t

know what it feels like to push hard or mentally they haven’t really taken

their body to that stage and so it’s tough to get to that stage in a race later

on in life. Now, that’s just simple practice. That’s a lot of times something

that’s improved by going out with other people who are going to push you,

going to a Master’s swim group, getting out on the road with a group of

road cyclists or other triathletes. Joining a track club or doing your

workouts with runners who are faster than you, who are going to push you

– if you have a lot of intrinsic motivation, that can help you quite a bit.

Now if you’re not intrinsically motivated, if other people pushing around

you don’t really tend to make you want to take it to the next level, then

sometimes you have to use some intrinsic motivation to push yourself.

You have to ask yourself why are you doing what you’re doing? What is it

that you want to achieve? Do you want a podium slot? Do you want a PR?

Do you find that the increased fitness that you gain when you push

outside your comfort zone is something you like? Both in the way that you

look and the way you feel. And you can use some of those elements to

actually convince yourself to push a little bit harder. But ultimately what it

comes down to is that unless you’re for example doing a really, really long

event like an ultra-distance 50k, 100k, 100 mile type of ultra-marathon

then your intensity should be such that you are feeling it quite a bit. The

feeling of pain or discomfort is always relative to the distance. In a 5k road

race, you’re going to be running a lot faster and harder than you are going

to be in an Olympic distance triathlon, than you are going to be in an

Ironman triathlon or a marathon. But really there’s always a level of

discomfort that you should feel during the race. And when you get to that

point, you’ll know it the next day. You’ll be sore after a race and you’ll

think okay, I really did give it my all. So great question.

Toby asks: Hey Ben, my name is Toby Hunter. I’m from Clarksville, Tennessee. My

question is for your podcast. I’m training in the south. In the last two

weeks it’s been 95 degrees with 90% humidity. Heat index about 105.

Unfortunately the only time I can do my run is about high noon and my

question is, training in that heat – is there any benefit to that? Because

I’m obviously slower. My heart rate zones are all out of whack. I blame it

on the heat, but is it affecting me that much? I’m about 10 beats higher

per minute. So, I just don’t know how to train in that heat and am I

getting any benefits and do I need to change my strategy in that kind of

condition? Most of my races are not going to be that hot, but triathlons

are generally hot but usually not heat index of 105. So, I listen to your

podcast all the time so maybe this will make it. Thank you.

Ben answers: So training in the heat can be tough. Not only do you force your body to

shunt a lot of blood volume to your extremities to cool you off so your

heart beats a lot harder. But you tend to lose a lot more salt, deplete

electrolytes. Mentally it’s much more difficult. You tend to have a higher

rating of perceived exertion, so you feel like you’re working a lot harder

when you’re out there in the heat and you are correct, it can really feel like

you’re beating up your body when you’re going out and training in hot

weather every day. So the question is, if there are diminishing returns – if

you get to that point where mentally and physically, the amount of

dehydration that you’re experiencing and the amount of mental strain

that you’re experiencing by daily training in the hot weather – the

question is can you get to a point where you just have to do that every

once in a while? And the answer is that studies have shown that once you

acclimatize to heat – fully acclimatize to heat – which actually takes 14

days of exercise in the heat for anywhere from 90 minutes to two hours,

then you can retain those heat acclimatization benefits for about one week.

And then you start to lose those and almost fully lose the heat

acclimatization after three weeks. So, if you were to spend 14 days, two

weeks and you were to get through those two weeks, technically after

those two weeks if you were able to even go out and just do a weekly two

hour hard effort in the heat, you could sustain your heat acclimatization

pretty well. Now I’ve found for myself with personal experience and I’ve

read that a lot of coaches – there’s not many studies done on this, but a lot

of studies have done this – they’ll generally get their athletes out there

every three days at least in the heat to exercise. So what it comes down to

is if you were to exercise, you’ve already been exercising in the heat,

you’ve gotten a couple of weeks under your belt, you could get away with

going out there just once a week or a couple of times a week. And if

mentally, you’re able to get yourself to workout with more consistency

when you’re exercising, for example, in an environmentally controlled

gym or something of that nature then you may actually do yourself some

favors and also help yourself from a recovery standpoint. Now, I

personally when I’m, for example, getting ready for a Hawaii Ironman

Triathlon and I live in Spokane, Washington where it tends to be a little

bit chillier through September and the October leading up to that race – I

will every two to three days do a session indoors either on the treadmill or

on my indoor trainer with the heater and a humidifier. That’s as frequent

as I do it. I don’t go out every day and beat myself up in the heat for

multiple training sessions. I just get in there every two to three days and

do a session and typically I don’t even go 90 minutes to two hours – I’m

usually right around 1 hour that I get heat acclimatization in. I generally

feel okay with that. I’m sure it would feel even better if I was going 90

minutes to two hours like a lot of the studies do, but ultimately it comes

down to how long you can sit your butt on an indoor bike trainer with the

heater and humidifier on. So, great question Toby. And then we have a

little bit of feedback from listener Chris.

Chris asks: Hi Ben, my name is Chris. I’m a frequent questioner of the show. I just

wanted to call you and tell you how much I appreciate your show and the

wonderful information that you give. You just do an amazing service and I

can’t believe that you do it for free. This next part, you can take off the air.

You don’t have to put this on your show if you don’t want to, because I

don’t want to seem like I’m bragging. I just did the road race at the Para-

cycling National Championships in Bend, Oregon. I went from being a

couch potato one year ago to placing third in a field that competes

internationally, and I owe a lot of that to the great advice from your

podcast. I just wanted to thank you personally and there you go.

Awesome, Ben. Take care, bye.

Ben answers: Well, I thought that’d be a fitting call to end the Q and A section on and

Chris don’t worry, you didn’t appear to be too hottie in your bragging

there. I’m happy for you. I’m happy that you found value in the podcast

and I thank you and all the rest of the listeners for supporting me. Every

week I receive a donation from at least one person who decides to support

the podcast which is fantastic and helps out quite a bit while I’m doing the

research and the preparation to get these out to you. You can actually

donate yourself. If you go to the Shownotes for any episode and scroll

down, there’s a little button there that allows you to donate and anybody

that ever donates more than $15, I always send a T-shirt to. A free Ben

Greenfield Fitness T-shirt. Now this week, the other way that you can get

a T-shirt is to ask a question in a new way. This is a new thing that we’re

doing, but I’m going to send a free T-shirt to the best question of the week

that is asked through Twitter. Now, if you’ve not been on Twitter before,

you can click on the link that I have in the Shownotes to go to Twitter and

check it out. Sign up for free and it’s always free. My Twitter name is Ben

Greenfield and all you have to do is go to my Twitter page and there’s a

little button there where you can leave me a message or you can use the

“@” sign bengreenfield to leave me a message. And you need to make sure

that you’re following me in order to leave a message. So make sure you

push the “follow Ben” button and then leave me your question. And the

best question of the week that’s asked through Twitter and you got to be

creative because Twitter questions can only be 140 characters long, I am

going to get your address from you and send you a T-shirt. So I’ll put a

link to Twitter in the Shownotes along with a link to everything that I

talked about. So a few different ways to get your T-shirt there. You can

either donate to the show and you can also ask a question through Twitter.

So we’re going to move on to this week’s featured topic which is the very

first podcast ever released from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Enjoy.

Welcome to the www.bengreenfieldfitness.com podcast. This is your

weekly free audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, diet and wellness news.

Whether you’re an Ironman triathlete or you’re just trying to shed a few

pounds, this podcast is going to present you with the latest exercise and

nutrition content from the nation’s top experts. My name is Ben

Greenfield, I’m a personal trainer, certified nutritionist and exercise, diet

and wellness guru. Each week, I’m going to be bringing you cutting edge

fitness, nutrition and wellness advice. Stay tuned for this week’s podcast

from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com.

In this week’s podcast: a preview of the interviews that are lined up for the

weeks to come, workout of the week “round and round” with an

accompanying exercise video, book review of the brand new title Run

With No Pain, healthy recipe for chocolate peanut butter ice cream and a

special preview of the National Trainer’s Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Before I let you know about the interviews that we’re going to be featuring

in the next several weeks at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com, let me point

out the fact that I did include in this week’s Shownotes that there was

going to be an interview with Brian Rhodes, pro triathlete. Unfortunately,

en route to the venue where I was going to be interviewing Brian Rhodes

at a triathlon in which we were both competing, I stepped on and broke

my headset, microphone piece that I use for interviewing. So that

interview never happened. I’m going to be interviewing Brian Rhodes via

Skype however sometime this week or the week after. I’m primarily going

to be asking him questions about injury prevention, rehabilitation, and

nutrition. So in addition to that interview, some of the other interviews

that are going to be coming down the pipeline are a massage therapist

interview on the four different types of massage therapy that you can have

done as an athlete depending on the time of the training year that you’re

in. We’re going to have an interview with a naturopathic physician from

Corti’lane, Idaho on the differences between naturopathic and allopathic

medicine. We’ll be interviewing a representative from Mt. Capra

Nutritional Products on the benefits of probiotic supplementation and

also a type of protein that might be absorbed 20 times faster than current

whey proteins on the market. We’ll be interviewing Dr. PZ Pierce on

exercise as medicine. I’ll have an interview with a couple of podiatrists.

One on how custom orthotics can help your knee, your hip or your back

pain. Another podiatrist on high performance bicycling orthotics and how

to get them. We’ll be talking to a chiropractor about common low back

injuries and what chiropracty actually does to help them. We’ll be talking

to a dentist about dental health and immune system integrity and the link

between those two factors. And then finally, we’ll be talking with a

certified dietician on why your nutritional habits may be setting you up

for diabetes. So the next few weeks, we’ll have all sorts of content and

guests here at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. So be sure to subscribe to

the podcast. You aren’t going to want to miss a lot of the content that’s

coming down the pipeline here at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com.

Book review. If you go to www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and click on

books and DVDs, each week we’ll be featuring a different book and DVD.

Because this is one of the first podcasts that we’ve put out, I actually am

going to talk about one of my recent books that just hit the Web. It’s called

Run With No Pain. I based this book off the past decade that I’ve spent as

an endurance athlete and coach. Dozens of my cyclists and runners have

at one time or another experienced this debilitating low back pain,

primarily limited power production on their bike, stride length and push

off while running. Usually the origin of the pain is a little bit mysterious

and it couldn’t be traced back to a single episode of acute injury. It was

typically described as kind of a radiating discomfort typically located on

one side or the other and a lot of these athletes would feel it when they

were cycling or running and the pain and the slight weakness or tingling

tended to manifest more significantly when they were sitting for long

periods of time especially with their legs crossed, and riding a bicycle

when they’re bent over in a time trial arrow position. Or when they’re

running especially on a hard surface for a long period of time. There were

certain activities that kind of relieved the pain. I noticed that when they

did hip flexor stretching, hamstring stretching, yoga, non-weight bearing

exercises that improved blood flow to the low back, lying on their back

with their feet up especially on a heating pad and then side to side

movement – a lot of these activities were seen to relieve some of the low

back pain. But I basically – since I’m not a medical professional or a

sports medicine physician, coached a lot of these athletes through their

pain without providing specific rehabilitation protocols. That was

basically until I actually injured myself in the same way and it was during

a deadlift exercise that I actually injured my bike. I spent several months

rehabilitating my low back and avoiding running, cycling, any type of

heavy lifting and eventually that acute pain disappeared. But over the

course of the next several months I noticed myself experiencing a lot of

the same symptoms that my athletes were complaining about – tingling

on one side, a little bit of weakness while running or bicycling, pain with

extended periods of time in the seated position and kind of a popping

sensation in the low back with a lot of rotational stretches that I would

perform. So that discomfort kind of severely affected my training, my race

performance and I started to research what exactly was going on. So, I

learned about the SI joints. The sacroiliac joints, and how they’re

considered a source of most of low back pain that occurs in athletes or any

individual and a compression of the pelvis or an asymmetry – meaning a

rotation in one direction or the other of the hips can cause joint

dysfunction and it causes the pain we feel in the low back if the low back is

out of rotation. So this development of asymmetry actually causes

different muscles in your low back to actually assume a new proper

muscle length. Primarily your hip rotator muscles. So usually what

happens is your lateral rotator muscles shorten and your medial or inside

hip rotation muscles actually lengthen. When the lateral muscles shorten,

the entire hip bone is pulled posteriorally towards the short side and that

can cause nerve pain that originates from the sacroiliac joint, which a lot

of runners and cyclists and athletes actually feel. One really good resource

that I found on this was a book called The Malalignment Syndrome by an

author called Wolf Schamberger. It’s a really big book. It’s about 450

pages long and I can’t just give that to people to read without actually

giving some more specific advice that might be a bit more practical and

quick for you. So what I did was I actually gleaned the most practical

information from that book that I could along with a lot of information

from discussions that I had with sports medicine professionals, physical

therapists, chiropractors and massage therapists. And so what I began

doing was designing an exercise routine that I could do everyday to

actually bring my hips back into proper rotation. So for four weeks on

about four to five days of the week, I performed the exact routine that I lay

out in this new book Run With No Pain, and my pain began to disappear.

My back quit popping, the weakness and the tingling on one side of the leg

while I was running and cycling was no longer present. And so I basically

put the routine together in about 10 simple stretches and exercises and I

began to recommend then to my athletes. And within a couple of months

almost every one of my athletes had not only reduced or completely

eliminated their low back pain, but the power meters on their bikes and

the lap splits on their runs were starting to show PRs. So basically their

pain disappeared and they got faster. So what I’ve done is actually created

a Web site called www.runwithnopain.com. I filmed all the exercises,

created videos for them and then put together a little bit of an e-book that

lays out the exact exercise routine that I designed for myself and for these

athletes based off the research that I did to eliminate low back pain during

running, cycling and basic athletic movements. So check it out. The Web

URL is www.runwithnopain.com. And the book, the videos are all

accessible on that Web site. www.runwithnopain.com. Check it out.

Alright fitness fans, this week’s workout of the week can be found at

www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Click on “videos”. You’ll get instant

exposure to a video there that will show you how to do each of the

exercises in this week’s workout. It’s called “round and round.” This one

starts off easy and gets a little more difficult as you go through. You’re

going to shoot for anywhere from three to six rounds of the round and

round workout. What you’re going to start off with is five swing squats per

side. You’ll move on to 30 to 60 seconds of a maximum cardio effort of

your choice. That can be biking, running, rowing, elliptical trainer,

jumping jacks, whatever you can get your hands on. After you’ve finished

that maximum cardio effort, with minimal rest you’re going to drop down

to the floor and do five super slow pushups. Modify those to knee pushups

if you need to. Once you finish those five knee pushups or regular pushups,

you’re going to move on to five mountain climbers per side. Then find a

pull up bar, assisted pull up machine or lat pull down machine. Complete

five reps and then finish with another 30 to 60 second cardio effort of

your choice. Alright, once you’ve finished those stations you’ll move back

round to the beginning and start with six swing squats, another 30 to 60

seconds of cardio, six pushups, six mountain climbers, six pull ups or pull

downs and again a cardio effort of your choice. If you go six times through

this circuit, again you’re going to be looking at about 10 reps on

everything by the time you’re doing. So you can check out the video for

this workout with the instructions for each exercise at

www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Click on “videos.” Have a great workout.

Today’s recipe can be found at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Just click

on “nutrition.” And this recipe in particular is one that has saved a lot of

my nutrition clients from committing dietary suicide when they get their

sweet tooth. Basically it’s a way to get chocolate peanut butter ice cream

without getting all the calories and the saturated fat and the sugars.

There’s a Web site that I mentioned in this podcast and I’ll put the URL

for this Web site in the Shownotes but it’s www.nutritiondata.com. And if

you go there you can get the exact nutritional label for just about any food

on the planet. I haven’t checked to see if rattlesnake or alligator or any of

those types of things are on there but for the most part if you can eat it,

it’s going to appear on this Web site. What you want to do is check out

what you’re actually getting if you type in something like “chocolate

peanut butter ice cream.” You’ll come up with about 400 to 500 calories.

About 70 to 80% of that from saturated fat and anywhere from 35 to 45

grams of sugar. Pure sugar. So basically that means for about a three

quarter cup serving or about 10 spoonfuls of ice cream, you are getting a

boat load of calories. One of the things that you can do is to make your

own substitution for chocolate peanut butter ice cream at home. What you

want to find is just plain regular fat-free yoghurt. I know it doesn’t taste

that great but you’re going to make it taste good. You want to take about

half a container of that which is right around 60 calories worth. And then

take some almond butter or some peanut butter. Make sure if you’re using

peanut butter that it’s the stir style peanut butter – far lower in

hydrogenated fats, much better for your heart. Anyways you use just

almost a tablespoonful of that. So we’re talking anywhere again from

around 60 to 70 calories. You’re going to add that to the yoghurt and then

you’re also going to take either about a quarter of a dark chocolate bar or a

tablespoonful of Hershey’s chocolate or you can use a little Ovaltine or hot

cocoa powder as well, depending on what you like, what kind of texture

you want. You add all this together, you stir it, you put it in the freezer for

about 20 minutes. When you take it out, you get something that closely

resembles the taste of a Reese’s peanut butter cup. Try it out. You’re

looking at about 200 calories, far less saturated fat, far less sugar. Much

healthier for you. Helps you satisfy that craving that you might get for

dessert every now and again and it tastes great. You can check it out again

at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Click on “nutrition.”

As promised in the introduction of this podcast, I’m going to be giving you

a little preview of the National Personal Trainer’s Conference and

Exhibition happening this July 9 through 12, 2008 down at the Paris

Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. I will be traveling down there to

listen and participate in some of the latest, greatest news coming from the

fitness and nutrition industry. Every day while I’m down there I’m going

to be sitting down and giving you a fresh look at some of the new topics

that are coming at us from a fitness and nutrition perspective and quite a

bit of helpful information for you to achieve your personal goals, your

weight loss goals, your nutrition goals, whatever the case may be. If I have

the opportunity, I’m also going to be trying to get some interviews with

some of the top fitness professionals in the country to get their

perspective on crucial issues in the exercise and nutrition industry. So on

Thursday, a few of the more interesting topics of the day are going to be:

secrets of the Navy SEALS goal setting and training methods. We’ll also

be looking at nutritional supplementation during resistance training,

some of the latest science and some of the latest recommendations to

maximize the anabolic effects of resistance training as well as the post-

workout nutritional recovery. We’ll be looking at some interesting recent

research findings on calcium and weight loss. The role of fitness and the

treatment of eating disorders, how resistance training differs from

endurance training in its effect on the cardiovascular system specifically

arterial compliance which is basically blood vessel wall elasticity. Then

finally, we’ll be looking at the influence of dexterity training on injury

prevention and common musculoskeletal compensation patterns for basic

movement mechanics so that you can determine essentially if for instance

your knee goes in front of your toes on the squat – might be compensating

and what might be weak when something like that happens. So let’s go

ahead and move on to Friday. Friday we’re going to be looking at some

ways to introduce screening and corrective exercises for problem

shoulders that essentially don’t respond to conventional exercise and

stretching. So I’ll be talking about how to use trigger point techniques and

free weight techniques to help rehab your shoulder or strengthen a

shoulder problem. We’re going to be talking about performance training

for the aging athlete, which is basically going to look at a new sport

conditioning paradigm called the twist sport conditioning protocol and

it’s going to teach how to take an aging athlete and actually reintroduce

the aging body to high performance athletics. We’ll be looking at some

ways to actually apply power research into your training and then also an

interesting discussion will be on resistance training for hypertrophy which

is basically muscle growth – why some people’s muscles grow fast and

some muscles really don’t grow that much at all. One other thing, the

effect of the length of the rest interval between your exercise sets and how

that’s going to actually affect the effectiveness of your exercise training

program. So let’s go ahead and move on to Saturday and check out what

we’re going to look at on Saturday. So, on Saturday we’ll be looking at

functional training and what functional training actually is. We’ll define it

and talk about how to implement it in your own training protocol. We’ll

also be looking at periodization programs and this would basically be how

to split your year – your fitness program during the year into different

periods of time where during each period you focus on a different aspect

of your fitness so you constantly grow fitter from week to week and month

to month. We’ll be looking at plyometric training. One interesting talk will

be on how to train 12 to 16 year old age groups and that should be

interesting. I don’t know if any of you have children but we’ll be talking

about psycho-behavior development, lifestyle management, literacy,

musculoskeletal and energetic considerations for the 12 to 16 year old

athlete population. One of the other real interesting things that we’ll be

looking at on that Saturday session is how to train the endurance athlete

in the gym, and basically how the strength training protocol of a

marathoner or triathlete or road cyclist – whether recreational or

professional is going to differ from the type of training protocol of a

strength athlete. And then finally we’ll be looking at some recovery

techniques to prevent overtraining, to maximize the actual response to

training and allow you to train day after day without actually getting

injured or ill. So Thursday through Saturday of next week, there’ll be

some real interesting stuff coming down the pipeline from

www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast,

it’s free. You can do it on iTunes if you go to

www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and you click on “how to subscribe” if

you’ve never subscribed to a podcast before or a blog, I lay it out right

there, make it real easy to understand and you can get started right away.

So tune in next Thursday for news from the NSCA Personal Trainer

National Conference.

Hi podcast listener, this is Ben Greenfield. That’s all the content for today

from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Obviously this first podcast gets a

little rough around the edges and we do have some work to do a and a

little bit more content to present in coming podcasts. What I would like

you to do if you get a chance is just to go to iTunes and click on the “write

a review” button underneath Ben Greenfield Fitness and you don’t even

have to write a review. Just click on five star. Give us a good rating so we

can get to the top of iTunes. Get as many people as possible to listen in on

Ben Greenfield Fitness. The more support that I get for this podcast, the

better and better it’s going to become. I have to tell you I’m really, really

excited about the things that we’re going to be presenting on Ben

Greenfield Fitness. I know that there’s a lot of people out there that are

into kind of the ideal combination of healthy nutrition, weight loss,

performance, outdoor sports – that’s the type of person that’s going to

listen to this podcast and that’s the type of content that I’m going to bring

to you. So I will speak to you on Thursday night from the National

Personal Trainer’s Conference in Las Vegas. Until then, this is Ben

Greenfield, over and out.

This also is Ben Greenfield about a year and a half later, but it’s still me.

So, that’s going to wrap up our show for this week and remember if you

have questions you can email ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com. You can call

toll free to 87772099439 or you can Skype Pacific Fit. Remember to check

out that free healthy cooking Webinar on June 30th and you access a link

to that in the Shownotes to this podcast. Remember to check out the Get

Fit Guy and for that podcast or this podcast, leave a ranking in iTunes and

feel free to donate on the show page as well if you’d like. Leave your

question to the Twitter page at www.twitter.com/bengreenfield to be

eligible to win a free T-shirt if your question is the best question. And then

remember who wants to accompany me to Thailand this winter for a

triathlon, then you need to email me very soon if you’re a triathlete and

you like adventure travel. So, until next time this is Ben Greenfield hoping

that you’ll stick with me and learn with me through the next 100 podcasts

from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. Have a great week. z

For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s

from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at

http://www.pacificfit.net