Episode 386: Dr. David Heitmann - Couch To 100 Mile Check In

Dr. Dave will be challenging himself to complete the Javelina 100 mile in 2024, going from the couch to the 100 mile distance in a years time. Dave has an extensive background as a medical director, treating thousands of patients, including: Olympians, National Champions, sports teams, and professionals. After losing his own health in the pursuit of helping others find theirs, Dave and his family embarked on a wild journey that included living in a bus, working on organic farms, traveling the country before ultimately landing them in Austin, Texas.

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Episode Transcript:

So we're starting the third block. I should specify I work on four week blocks, so. Oh, yeah. You're starting your third block, I believe. So week nine of training. And we're going to catch up and see kind of how weeks one through eight went and everything like that with the ultimate goal of the javelin 100, which is still a ways off, but as I'm sure you're experiencing, it comes in, it starts coming at you quick. Once you put it on the calendar and the day, start shipping over to Training Peaks. And I put it in there for the first time, showing that it was only 33 weeks away. I was like, huh? Yeah, oh yeah. Okay. It's like that. That 52 week goal gets down to 33 pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It's been an unreal journey for sure. Yeah. And thankfully I think uh for you specifically like you've seen some what I would consider pretty impressive progress from an eight week time frame. So I think today's podcast will be a lot of kind of looking at what that is, how you got there, and then go over some questions you have as the kind of newbie to the ultra world, uh, and make sure you're heading in the right direction and continue to see some of the success you've had so far. Yeah. This is going to be fun. Uh, yeah. Yeah. So we're still the nice thing, it's like we're talking about coming up quickly. But really from a timeline standpoint, you picked a pretty good general timeline as far as preparing for races go. Granted, you're coming into the world sort of without an endurance background. So yes, you probably yeah, you probably were wise to pick a longer timeline, but still, it makes a lot of sense because it gives us time to focus on some of the other things you're chasing along the way. Before we get into like what I said before, hit record here, the fun stuff. Yeah, yeah. And for you so far, it's been a lot of kind of base work. And it's been something where you're kind of, I don't even know if it's called base work. And the first like six months of pre deciding was like pre pre base of just trying to become a normal human being. I was so out of it. I was so unhealthy. Yeah. Yeah yeah. You had a ways to go I guess so um yeah. Maybe we can um refer listeners to our first episode too, because I know we chatted about some of that, but yeah, you were fairly broken, I would say, coming in and looking to kind of turn things around. And that was, uh, javelin was kind of maybe the, the. The targets to put on the calendar to help kind of guide that path, I would imagine. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was a commitment. It was a slow progression to a commitment. It was three months of just thinking about trying to do something with my life around, getting back into shape, like I just knew I would be driven by setting a date with something, but I didn't know if that was running, if I should get into mountain biking, if I should get into kayaking, you know, whatever the case may be. And I explained this in the first episode, it was I was hiking a mountain and I saw two, like, 60 year old dudes run past me going up the mountain, and it just clicked in my head. I'm like, I want to be those people. Like, yeah. And so then I was like, okay, how can I, how can I do this? And I thought of the silliest, craziest thing that would not be consistent with what would be easy for me. I tried to pick the hardest thing for me, and I've never ran long distance before. So even though I was a competitive athlete, growing up, everything was football and rugby. Yeah. And so I had never done past, you know, 13 miles. I'd never done over a half marathon in my life. And so I said, 100 miles sounds pretty hard. Let's do that. Yeah. No doubt. I like the motivation side of coaching too. So over the years I try to kind of collect stories that I find that will be fun ones to share with specific coaching clients. When I think they're kind of thinking like you are right now. And the one I have for you is, uh, last year at the USA team, I don't know, I don't think I've told you this, but last year at the USAtf Hunter Mile Road Championships, you know, they do that. Everything at USAtf does. It's got like the overall winners, male female categories in the age group categories and all that stuff. And you know, age groups are kind of what they are. You have the bulk of participants who are usually in that kind of 20 to 40. Yeah. Yeah. And then it sort of tapers off. And there's always this kind of narrative of like, oh, if I stick around long enough, eventually I'll all beat my competition because they just won't be here anymore. Yep. And so they had, uh, they had some participants in the 80 plus group last year and it was four of them. So it was like I was thinking about that. I was like, man, when what if I'm imagining myself in my 80s if I'm still running 100 mile ultramarathons? At that point, I'm assuming if I sign up for a race, I'm winning that 80 plus. Yeah, I'm. And you're getting the goal on the podium from the nation. Like I'm thinking I'm at least going to be on the podium by finishing. And there's one guy in that group who wasn't going to be on the podium, uh, of the 80 plus division, because we had four people there. And it was just funny to look at it because I mean, people caught wind of that. It actually was probably one of the bigger stories of that year's event. And like, people want to know, like, well, when was their first hundred miles or how did they get into running? What was the story there? And it was like it was just funny to see. I think one of them was like their first hundred miler was Western States in 1971 or something like that. Gosh, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. So like when you tell the story about seeing the 68 year old guys going up the mountain, I think those, those 80 plus year old guys out there on the, on the loop thinking, I'm going 100 miles today and. And, uh. Yeah. Still checking that box, so. Well, it's funny that you bring that up, too. Is, uh. This past weekend, it was my kids. I have two girls, and it was their very first ever track meet. And my wife and I were sitting in the stands, and I was, uh. I'm getting addicted to this, like, I haven't I haven't told you yet, but, like, I'm really enjoying this training. I'm really enjoying the long distance. I never, ever thought that I would. And for some reason, I'm sitting there and I brought it up with my wife. I was like, I wonder if I should, uh, start training and do a ten year timeline to do the decathlon. Yeah, because it's the same concept of like, once you start to reach 55, there's no one doing that type of thing. And the decathlon is, like, considered the world's greatest athlete as kind of the slogan. I was just like, I wonder if I give myself ten years of training after I do this hundred that I could actually, like, go somewhere with it. Yeah. And it's just a funny thought process. It's a fun exercise to think about. I would imagine that event too, as far as events go, in terms of not being able to do them as easily, the further away you get from like a collegiate system or some sort of structured type of thing you're already doing anyway, the decathlon has got to be high. Like, you know, there's just so many, like how many high jump pits, pole vault and pits, right? Javelins do you have access to as an adult outside of a university system or something like not trying to fight off the kids during track practice? Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. So no, that's awesome. And I think like in terms of just overall fitness, like that's got to be the, the, the king of them all. You kind of have to be a jack of all trades. Yeah. It's long, it's short, it's fast. It's, you know, sprinting. It's you know, chucking stuff, throwing stuff. And uh yeah I don't know. We'll see which way the world turns after this. Like I said, I have a feeling that I'm going to get really into this. Mhm. Um, I mean, I'm not even a part of the culture yet because I am still working on my base. And so I prefer to run alone right now. I haven't experienced those events, but I've done sports medicine for the events. And when I used to own my office and I love that feeling now I can only imagine how good of a feeling that will be being the athlete in it, huh? Um, and I have a feeling I'll probably get addicted to it, but I'll probably turn it into some sort of like stupid, crazy adventure thing after this. Like where I'm going to go 200 miles through a mountain range and like, part of it's going to be swimming through the Amazon or some stupid thing like that. Yeah, that's the side of the sport that's getting more, more attention these last few years is they had like the onset of the 200 mile races and they did exist, but they just didn't really get a lot of attention. But, you know, people like the kind of, uh, I hesitate to call it the freak show element, but it is kind of the freak show element of, I mean, ultrarunning as a whole is kind of that. But when you get into these, like, really long ones, it's like. People like watching that. They like hearing about it. There's a fun storyline in it, and it's just what I would say, like the household person who knows very little to nothing about ultramarathon or someone who's casually observing the sport of endurance. They sort of follow this trajectory in most cases of like, the further you go, the more impressive it gets versus like the faster you get at a specific discipline, the harder it gets and things like that. So like you have people saying like, oh, I did this 200 mile race or they have they're planning this 300 miler in Arizona right now. So it's just getting ratcheted up. It's just gonna keep going. Yeah. And when we're partially cyborgs later down, down the road, it's going to be like the 500 mile race. It almost feels like. Yeah, we're just like finding ways to destroy our physical, uh, being because in the not too distant future, we're going to have like, yeah, this is probably a short timeline on how long we have where physical feats at the biological level, or maybe something that we're even doing, who knows. But, um, or the inputs that can help improve that are going to be such that it's not as much of a oh, now you broke yourself down entirely and can't do this anymore type of scenario. Yeah. So. But yeah, I mean, let's jump in to just kind of the, the stuff because I would say like, um, the part of training you're in right now is the one when I'm working with someone who's kind of got a similar situation as you, it can be kind of the the hard sell, I would say, is we have a fairly long timeline. In fact, your timeline could end up being half to more of the actual training is just a primary focus. And by half I mean like where the primary focus is you'll always be doing low intensity stuff from day one to the finish. Uh, due to the nature of the event you're doing. But like, we're really doing very little outside of low intensity stuff right now. Yeah. And I like it that way. Yeah. That's good, that's good. Yeah. But it is one of those things where it kind of feels like it's just rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. So I haven't had any boredom yet. You're still getting excited about that? I'm still getting excited. I'm choosing different routes and things of that nature to me, it's a new journey every time so far. So I've been happy with that. Yeah. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this because I think, like for you, you're seeing very big kind of quick progress, right? Yeah. So I find that when you have boring input, it becomes infinitely more motivating when there is something that's moving that you can track. Oh, this is working versus I've been doing this for three months. None of these data points are changing. What am I doing wrong? It just gets frustrating and kind of incentivizes that. Okay, I'm just going to give up because this is a worthless type of mentality. Yep. You've had anything but that so far. Right. Well and I'll, I'll bring the user or the listeners back on my journey if this did start technically before October of last year. Is that the last time this year actually a year ago when I had my triglycerides go up to almost 700. My eyes got foggy and I went in and I was experiencing basically a type of pancreatitis that I should have been hospitalized for. And I started immediately making some changes then. And that's when I started a walking program, and I just started walking for three months. And there's no change in your health when that happens, like you don't feel it, it gets boring very quickly. But thankfully, like I'm a person, I love audiobooks and I love listening to things. So to me, I always journey into another space while I'm doing it. And I like dreams and all of those sorts of things. It's like a form of meditation for me. Um. But yeah, there was no progress for like three months other than the fact that instead of severe pain with walking 20 minutes, I could walk an hour, you know? And that was my progress. And then October, when I declared, uh, my back was still going out, um, I still had just tons and tons of health issues, but I started making that progress of I went from like, being able to do two minutes of running to maybe four minutes of running, and I could start to feel that compounding effect through those three months, uh, up until December. And then when you and I started, like, really actually planning and getting my base and doing actual base training, it was like, every single day I felt like I was making progress. But had I not done the 6 to 9 months before that of not making much progress, I wouldn't have been ready for January. And January is when I switched over. And so for those listening, uh, I lost £25 in 30 days, and it's one of those I, I massively increased the running. I switched over to the modified carnivore diet, and I wouldn't have been able to have done all of that had I not done the prep work. So it makes it feel like I amplified really quickly. Um, but it was a long journey to get there, and I just, I want to make sure that this people don't think that this was like an overnight success, but you weren't in a coma and woke up and just started running all this. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the transformation has been phenomenal. So overall since Christmas I've lost £30. Overall my cholesterol has gone from 300 down to 90. My triglycerides went from that. I think it was like 677, uh, down to like 70, like it's just been this massive shift and all of my biomarkers, my body fat percentage went from 31%, uh, down to now, like 24% already. Um, uh, I've been gaining lean tissue, you know, so I've been gaining muscle mass while doing it as well, because I'm hitting the gym like a powerlifter three, three times a week. Um, and so all of these transformations happened there in an amplified way, but because I did all that work beforehand. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you said a lot of stuff there I think we want to dive into. Yeah. So let's start with, um, let's start with some of the metrics that we've been using and kind of track your progress. I think there's the, the more standard ones that I'm kind of doing along with you from the coaching side of things, where we are looking at things like how much volume can you tolerate, how much of this run is spent walking versus running? Like what is the intensity? Or I guess in this case we're pinning the intensity. Pretty static for the most part. We're not deviating from it a lot, I guess I could say. But what is changing quite quickly actually, is your pace at that. So your efficiency is improving quite a bit. I think that first session you did, you were like around an 18 minute mile or something like that. And now, how fast are you going for that same intensity down in October? Uh, down in October. Back in October? Uh, yeah, it was definitely hovering between that 17.5, 18 minute mile because it was just so much walking. And then now like, uh, two weeks ago, I did a two hour run, hit ten miles. I did 11.5 minutes on average for my pace. And so I think overall I've been averaging right around 12, but just significantly faster. And like, I'm recovering fine. And I'm not even feeling that like I. Yeah, it's increasing that much without me having any detrimental effects. Yeah. It's interesting too because I think it draws. And if this continues it becomes even more apparent where you see all sorts of stuff when it comes to exercise and weight loss and you look at some kind of theories, it's like, oh, well, exercise really doesn't make that big of a difference. It's like, well, it doesn't. If your input is like 30 minutes a day, five days a week. And to some degree, I'm not. I'm not like scoffing at that because a lot of people, myself included, not that long ago would have been potentially insurmountable. Yeah. So for you to even be able to 1s employ an exercise regimen that would actually be a meaningful mover. Weight loss wouldn't have been an option you had available to you. Right? So it's like it's one of those things where it is kind of more like a more of an advanced stage in terms of how it impacts weight loss to the degree where now your workload, what you're able to tolerate and what you're able to actually do in terms of how much energy you can expend and say, I give an hour at a relatively low intensity has changed drastically. I mean, if we just look at the numbers like, you know, in a, in a 60 minute session now, like you're going to get closer to five miles, whereas you were closer to three. So exactly. Yeah, you've almost doubled your workload. Uh, it gets to be 50% if we go 18 and a 50% increase in your workload. Yeah, but I mean, you can see where that's going, right? It's like so from a weight management standpoint or within your weight loss goals, you've inherited essentially a 50% improvement in what that is going to do for every hour you spend per week exercising. So your ability to do more duration and the amount you're getting per minute or per hour from that has improved. So you're kind of getting this exponential progress from exercise that wasn't available to you before. Right? And when we pair that with everything else we're going to talk about. Well, I think it'll probably make more sense as to why you've seen the progress you have. Well, and I love the thought process of it. It's so critical that time based, you know, like when you and I first talked about that time based training versus metric based training was just so much more powerful for me. Uh, and this comes into it. I love talking about this as, uh, the difference between science, uh, of performance versus the science of habit change. And, you know, you were talking about the 30 minute thing. Most people can't go 30 minutes. And so therefore they're not going to be able to make that hour. But, um. It's the transformation that has to happen. And that's why in the beginning, I was talking so much about the nine months before. Getting to the hour is that you have to do the behavior change science first. You have to ignore what's best from a science standpoint, like peak performance. And in getting that in, you have to get your habit changed first. You have to get your everyday being able to tie your shoes and actually get out the door. Yeah. And that's the hardest step that most people miss out on, myself included, that I ignored for years about my life. And so to me, like the beginning of this, just doing time based thought processes and ignoring all of the science about what's best about training is just doing the habit. Change, to me, was the most important thing, and that's what I focused on. It was getting my shoes on, getting my shorts on, getting out the door. Yeah, getting that first 5 to 10 minutes in and then suddenly my brain would be like, okay, I'm doing this. And it's that the hardest struggle is to just get out the damn door. Yeah, yeah. When you're first getting started. And then we started to refine. And so that's where we're at now, which I'm excited for, up until this month. If you would have told me to do different places, I don't know if I could have done it. Like, yeah, I just had one pace, like, yeah, I could barely go. That was my one pace. Yeah. And so now we're finally after all this time getting into those types of strategies. Mhm. Yeah. That's interesting because it's you, you definitely kind of laid the foundation of the routine for months leading in. So then when we just change the inputs to match what your goals were, it wasn't something that foreign to you. It was just, all right I have this scaffolding of what my life or my day looks like or my week looks like. Now we're just going to put these inputs into what was there before. And it's funny, the training peaks comment that I made yesterday. Yeah. When you upvoted me. So yeah. So my new routine this month is added on a day of training. Yeah. And I was like ah f me. Like I was so used to my routine of like I had, I had every my whole life designed around the four days a week of getting my kids to homeschool, getting my kids to, you know, all of that stuff and now are okay. Well, I hadn't had it in my mind like that. It was another month and that my plan was going to be changing. And when I saw it, I was like, oh God, I gotta switch up my routine again. Yeah. So it was not that I was worried about the extra hour of running and doing the things that were more so like, uh, my days switched and my habits now have to switch. And to me, like, that's what I'm so focused on is my habit development. Okay, we should talk about that actually, because I read that comment a little differently. But this makes sense. So yeah, then this is a great topic because this is something I have a conversation with all my clients at some point, which is let's look at it through the lens of. There are different ways to get the same result. So most people I'm working with, pretty much everyone I'm working with are professionals somewhere other than running. So they have families, they have jobs, they have schedules that they have to kind of work around. They have non-negotiables, right? These are things they can't sacrifice for their running pursuits. So the way I look at it is like when I'm thinking like, what do we want out of these four weeks? I'm thinking, what are the goal intensities and what is the amount of volume we want to spend at those goal intensities? And then how do we maintain the highest amount of quality within that framework? So the way you actually distribute the time spent at those goal intensities can vary a lot. And I usually put the parameters in whatever can maintain the quality on the table. Because the big change or the big, the big adaptation you're going to get is from just doing that framework. There's maybe some very small variances in terms of like, let's say rather than having you do like a 45 minute run on Monday and then a 45 minute run on Wednesday. If I took those two 45 minute blocks and put them. Back to back days. You might see some small improvements from putting them closer together, but it's very, very tiny relative to just doing that volume of work at that intensity we have programmed. So for your plan, to me it doesn't actually matter. But I like where you're going with this. Yeah. Yeah. So when, when, when I hear you say, oh, it kind of messed with my schedule. My coaching brain goes, okay, well, maybe we revert this back to a four day plan the way we had it before, but we maintain the volume goals that I have on the current five day plan. If that's what's going to match your schedule better. I'd rather do that. I personally would rather do the five days. Yeah. Oh you do since we're talking through this in real time. Yeah. No, I'm excited about the transition in my brain. I had it as next month we were going to be starting the transition because okay, you and I talked about the three month block. For some reason, in my head I was just like, oh, okay, for three months, I'm going to be doing four days a week at yeah, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday. Yeah, that was my routine. And so I'd kind of just it was uh uh. Like it was like that quick shock to my brain of like, oh yeah, I'm thankfully in a position because I purposely designed my life the way that I want to. We homeschool our kids, I run my own businesses like I can do whatever I want, and that's why I'm doing all of this is like I can fit it in however I want. So to me, I'm excited about the change. It was just like that culture shock of like, I wake up and I look at training peaks and the whole new program is out there and you're like, ah, 1s so you're on cruise control? Yeah, yeah, that's actually another good topic though, too, in general is the way I look at it. And this is why I pick four weeks in terms of what kind of showcase for a client is, I mean, there's plenty of potential moving parts within those four weeks. But when I share kind of like a 12 week plan or, I'm sorry, a 12 month or a six month or whatever happens to be planned, I look at that as a scaffolding and then like, if the progress suggests us, like the steps are going to be pretty much the same regardless of how much you improve or don't improve to to a large degree. But when we kind of do, some of these steps can change based on your progress. So, um, with you specifically, like we got to week eight, uh, probably probably even maybe a little ahead of where I anticipated you to get by week 12. So one of the reasons why that for day to five day model shifted four weeks versus what you were anticipating from what we talked about before you started. Yeah, it's because you've made really, really good progress. And it was like, yeah, exactly. And the way I look at that is, um. For one, it's like you do want to be mindful of getting ahead of yourself in terms of like you're trying to line up to peak at a specific date. So like if we had a situation where, like, I'm programming in a way that's aggressive enough that all of a sudden you're peaking in August, and then we're in this weird situation where, like, we kind of want to just kind of hold that fitness versus like build up to it. That can be depending on the person in the situation. That's not always ideal. I think for someone who's new, though, it gives us more options. So if we're checking things off the list of what, um, what you want early, it just gives us more time to play around with other inputs or lean into certain inputs that are still going to be important, or adding more of them can add value. We just maybe don't have time for them. If you hit like the standard protocol or our predetermined protocol. So getting ahead at this point, I think is a really good thing, because what it does is it allows us to kind of reserve more time and space to do things that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. So it opens up a new category of things we can do that will help you get to the finish line quicker at Javelina. And uh, yeah, and it also is just a nice buffer too, because it's like, you know what? If you get a little dinged up somewhere along the way and need to take a little time off or do some cross training or something like that? Uh, yeah. There's definitely yeah, there's, there's my body is like, yeah, there's stuff that happens. You know, it's not always a lot of dysfunction in my body that can go wrong. Sure. Yeah. Or like you were saying before, like what if you throw out your back and you can't run for a week? It's like we have a buffer that we can play around with that it's not nearly as compromising in that situation. Then. In fact, in your situation, it probably would be. At worst, it would just put us back to like our original timeline versus having some flexibility within it. Oh, cool. That's good to hear. Yeah. So yeah, we hadn't had a chance to talk for Dave. Awesome. I feel good about the report cards after the first two months. 1s Oh super cool. Yeah yeah. So let's talk about some of the other stuff you've been tracking to, uh, and I just, I guess maybe before I ask this, I'll just say, in general, I think the biggest value of tracking. If you're putting yourself in a position to recognize wins that you maybe wouldn't have recognized otherwise. So there's a balance that everyone is going to enjoy. I mean, like, I love data, so like just the collecting of data and analyzing it is something that motivates me. I get excited about it. Whereas like Nicole, she's sort of she definitely has that side to her, but she puts so much of that attention into her day job that when it comes to running, running's more of a like, tell me what to do. Yeah, I've been doing this for over 30 years. So like, if you tell me an intensity to run, I know what that intensity feels like. But I don't want that watch to tell me every minute. If I'm on pace or off pace, I don't want to have to sit down to a GPS file and analyze it. So like it is, it is different from person to person to some degree. But I think when you're looking for the stuff that you're looking for, which is kind of a multi-tiered goal in terms of there's the running component, there's a health component, there's a nutrition component. Everything that we talked about in that first episode is like, the more stuff you can track, the more access to small wins. You can build into this approach and it shows you, are you going in the right direction? For sure? Yeah, I totally grew up to be an intuitive athlete. I was very in tune with my body. I could control my heart rate with my mind like I could, and when I was as I was in wrestling, I was in football, I was in baseball, as in track. Like I did all the things, right. Um, and I could control my body very, very well. And I had a lot of spatial awareness with doing, you know, foot control, whatever the case may be. I never tracked metrics back then. And just because I was such a naturally gifted athlete at that point for what I was doing now, I've actually found I'm still that intuitive athlete. But having that confirmation of just that quick check of like, I can feel my body and then I'm confirming on the watch reinforces my intuition. And so it's amplified my intuition while I'm running, like feeling my heart rate increase too quickly, knowing how to like it, as I visually see an incline coming up, I'm able to prepare my body's heart rate better. Like, it's just it's a really cool feeling of what I'm starting to realize by having the data. Yeah, to empower my intuition towards running and then the perspective data afterwards. Like. Okay, so I have a Garmin Fenix six Pro AI so that it tracks sleep fitness. I have this broken down into all the activities of my life according to my energy bucket thought process. So I have strength training, I have sauna sessions, I have farming time here because I own a farm and I do farming time. Uh, I have walking time, running time, and uh, recovery time. So that's like stretching, uh, reading a book while I'm stretching, foam rolling, that kind of stuff. And so I break them all down into time frames and being able to have that access of data where it's all fractionated out, that afterwards I just get to look back and see the trends of what I'm doing is really empowering for me, because I can look back on my three month segments and see the different time allocations flipped. I can see the progress made, and it's just super motivating for me. Um, and then on top of that, I'm doing blood work every month. So I'm getting comprehensive blood work. Uh, and I'm getting my Dexa scan, which is a body composition scan. And both. Uh, well, mostly the Dexa scan. I feel like the Dexa scan is another accountability coach for me. Yeah, because you can't lie, right. Like, and it tells you so much more about your, your body fat and especially around your visceral organs, which is the most important. So like, I actually don't care about my weight and I care a little about my overall percent body fat. I care most about the body fat around my organs, because that was my main issue of, uh, you know, pre-diabetic and all of the things that normal people, 45 years old experience. Um, so I care most about losing the body fat around my visceral organs and around my lower abdomen. Mhm. Um, sexual performance and everything like that is increasing, right. Like, yeah. All of these, these good things that are going in the right direction, that body scan allows me to see on a monthly basis, even though it's not necessary to get that scan, I could do it every three months or every six months. It just is like that monthly check in to be like the week before. I'm already rethink being like, okay, where am I at? How am I keeping me accountable that I never thought I would? Uh, so it's kind of cool that way. Yeah, yeah. The frequency can matter because it's like something where if you're doing it every three months, you could be three weeks off of your last one and track. Yeah. And you just like you had good improvement. So you're like, oh well, maybe I'll just deviate from the plan a little here and there, treat myself a little more than I normally would. And, um, there's not, you know, there's time and place for that stuff too, but generally speaking, like, yeah, if you have the Dexa scan coming up in five days, just your mind is probably going to think more like, I need to be on point versus I can have I've got a lot of flexibility to kind of it's kept me spot on with the diet. It's kept me spot on with the motivation to get out and exercise. It's kept me spot on to keeping my bedtime at a regular and consistent time. Seven days a week. Yeah, and it's like I've never been able to do that in my life before. And I think it's because of the power of data that is driving me to keep these habits, because the data doesn't lie, whereas I could easily lie to myself before like, oh, I'm fine, or or I'll go drinking over the weekend because I know that I can recover quickly, right? Like all those BS excuses that we all tell ourselves, yeah, yeah it is. Yeah. And you get, you get a pretty good sign of what happens when you drink versus when you don't when you look at Harvard and Resting Heart and things like that. So it does kind of let you know, like that wasn't uh, that wasn't free, right? Yep. Yep. Exactly. Um. You cool. So yeah. And I think just generally like. The lesson that running teaches a lot of times is it creates that sort of foundation for the routine, and then you start recognizing, like, you probably had these habits to some degree through other disciplines in life. But like, generally speaking, like you take that process and you can plug that into just about anything and it fits and it's really amplified on each other. Yeah. So work has improved. You know, relationships have improved with my wife and kids. You know all of those factors like you just become more disciplined by doing it. Yeah. Has the family gotten into some of your activities I know. Yeah. So both my wife and I have been losing weight like crazy. We're both doing the modified carnivore. Uh, and the kids, you know, they've always naturally eaten that way, which is kind of fun because we raised them very young to not eat processed foods, so they rarely like it. It actually used to be a treat before we were strict the past two months. It used to be a treat. We would actually take them to McDonald's like once every two months. Yeah, and that was like. A fun date night, but we would never normally eat that type of food. Um, and so they used to like it when I cooked these big steaks now, and I typically cook 2 to 3 of them at a time. It's just everyone eats off the cutting board. We kind of had this really cool, like family dynamic where the meat and everything just gets slopped down into the center of the table. And we all kind of just, you know, and they're still eating their fruits and yogurts and all the good stuff that way, and vegetables and, um, yeah, it's just like it's become this fun little community time where we sit down together and we talk about our day, we talk about things that we're doing, talk about our passions, uh, and, you know, catch up on the day kind of thing. Yeah. So it's kind of a community hub, but yeah. Yeah, that has to be pretty powerful to have the family on board, to have kind of a similar. Yeah. Uh, or I suppose their goals are probably quite different, but they're still kind of within the framework of some of those inputs they match. So you can all kind of enjoy the process together. And feel like you're all doing something that has a similar kind of target. Both my kids are getting into athletics and starting to understand, and it's honestly like, you know, we talked about the two guys who passed me on the mountain. I would say the much bigger driving force was that I saw my kids growing up, and I was not leading by example for how I thought that their life should be. And to me, that's a real driving force is like to lead by example for my kids. Um, and so to see them in the transition that they've made without even talking to them about it, they're just naturally doing more stretching. They're naturally getting outside and going for more walks and skateboarding and, you know, doing all the things on the farm that we have. And, um, so it's just a daily reminder of why I need to keep doing what I'm doing, which is really, really meaningful. Yeah, yeah. And you said your kids are on track now. They are. What are they? They're 11 and 12 and, uh, you know, so we homeschool. So it's a homeschooling track, uh, club that we were a part of. Oh, really? Uh, and it's super, super fun. Super cool. Uh, a whole bunch of other homeschooling kids. And, uh, my older one, so 11 to 12, the 12 year old is doing shot put discus, uh, the 100 and the 200, and my younger one is doing the 204 hundred. In long jump to start off with. Awesome. Yeah and they're loving it. A nice spread of different events to watch when you go to these meetings. Mandatory. We were trying to get them into as many things as possible. Mhm. Um, and basically, you know, my thought process with them growing up in the sports medicine world, I've seen kids get wrecked by specializing too quickly in their sport. Uh, it's mandatory for them to do as many events as possible, especially these first two years of development of. We do not want them specializing. Even if, like we're not focused on winning, what we're focused on is what do you like? What do you not like? How are you moving your body? What are the routines that you're setting up? And that's how we're training our kids to enjoy the sport for the sport overall, not for winning the gold medal in the 100 kind of thing. Yeah, I love that. I think one of the more beneficial things that I was exposed to at that age was my parents kind of had an unwritten rule of like, we don't care what you do, but you gotta be doing something. Yeah. So it was like every kind of season had its own options. And I was like, I don't have to do any of these, but I need to do something. Yeah. And that kind of led me to just get curious about, well, I wonder what this is like. Try it for yourself. Maybe I love it and keep doing it. Maybe I don't, and I try something different the following year and then, yeah, it just exposed me to the variety of sports and different exercises out there that are available. And I learned which ones I was both better at, naturally, and ones that I enjoyed more. And, you know, sometimes there were ones that I enjoyed that I wasn't great at. So I just worked hard and kept doing them anyway for fun. And there were other ones where I was a little more naturally gifted at, and it was like, okay, this is one where I can maybe express my competitiveness a little more. Yeah, and yeah, it was one of those things I look back on. I'm like, yeah, I'm really glad I was exposed to all that stuff because who knows, maybe I would have never found running had I. Right. Um, or if I did, maybe I would have found it later on in life as like, well, what? What's available for adults and running sometimes pops up early with, in that scenario, such an interesting conversation too, that we have this with our kids. It's like, you know, something like a football. Yes, you can continue on, but it's not likely, right? Like running, kayaking, track feel, you know, those are the things that you can do the rest of your life. And, uh, yeah. So we're not that we're mandatory. The exclusiveness of things that you can continue on into the real world. Uh, but there's definitely a, uh, leaning towards that for teaching our kids to get into those types of sports for long term rather than thinking of, okay, I'm going to go. Do x, Y, and z, and it's only good until college kind of thing. Yeah. So I'm curious. The homeschooling track club. That sounds like such an Austin thing. Haha, yeah, homeschooling is really big here. Yeah, I mean, there are so many things that we're in. We're like, it's crazy overload for us. Actually. Uh, they're in a national science competition called Science Olympiad. Uh, they're in this track club there. You know, they do all these sorts of crazy things like that that are available for homeschooling kids here. Um, Austin has one of the biggest homeschooling populations, and especially for, uh, people who don't want to put their kids in the traditional, uh, system, and they don't want to have them go through the Montessori or something like that, because there's still a lot of restrictions with Montessori, like the, you know, it's a pick your poison kind of thing. Right? Uh, there's advantages and disadvantages to every type of schooling. And, uh, here there's just a huge variety of homeschooling. Uh, you can find every type of homeschooler here in Austin. Yeah. Uh, and so we're, you know. Yeah. Track club. There's science, there's Stem, there's. Arts and crafts. There's math clubs. There's all that stuff we do. Mhm. There was a homeschooling method that I hadn't been aware of when I was teaching that I heard about during the pandemic, which was like these pods that they were doing where it was like it was, it was, it was more or less you'd have like a fam, a group of families that they had like maybe amongst like 3 or 4 of them, you know, anywhere between like probably 8 to 10 kids or something like that. And they had kind of a rotation with the parents where it was like, this parent has Monday, that one is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And they sort of had them take kind of like the teacher role for that one day per week. And then, uh, just worked with that small group. I thought that was a really cool setup because it was like, you can lean on the strengths of the parents because, you know, every parent there, they're like, anything, right? You could be a jack of all trades and try to teach every subject matter. But at the end of the day, you're probably better at someone, worse than others in the time requirement too. Exactly. Yeah. Even, you know, teaching. It's just like you can't teach your kids everything. And even though I'm good at a lot of stuff, I just. I don't have time either. Yeah. Um, but, yeah, pods and co-ops were how we started. Definitely. Where you have those rotations and, and it's like an actual like, I don't want to say actual classroom, but like. You know, here's the hour and we're going to study Greek mythology. Yeah. You know, like that kind of approach to it. Yeah, yeah. The biggest myths in traditional education, I think, are like, it's not necessarily a myth. It's just really hard to apply at a systematic, systematic level of like, we're going to take every kid in town and jam them into one building, which is like, how do you take a subject that really has no connection to a specific discipline, but embed that discipline in it? And when you can get that right, it's just so much more rewarding because then you can start leaning on the things that kids are actually interested in and building some of the skills you want to teach them inside of something they're actually care about versus, you know, opening up the dusty old math book and figuring out how to, like, work this algebraic equation. Everything is play based for us. So the thought process of whatever the kids are into, that's how we try to amplify their learning. And so there's the core skills that when they're young you have to teach them reading, math, and writing. But above those three skills, it's like right now my daughter, well, so a while ago, my daughter self taught her, um, language skills. She learned Japanese with Duolingo, right. And she because we set a goal that we would take her to Japan if she became fluent. Oh, wow. Also, like in a year or two, we're going to go to Japan because she actually started learning six different languages all by herself. We didn't even know that she was doing it. It was something that she was passionate about that she just got into. And so, like, the power of homeschooling is that you can amplify the learning of all the same stuff, but it's putting it into the framework of what the kid is most excited about at that given time. So now she's into filmmaking. And so we're learning like we watch YouTube channels together and we watch educational content, but then we dissect like, how did they make that content? What was the production like? How did they write that script like it's. So crazy that all of this information is out there. Yeah. And that you can teach your kids now all the different fractions. And this is what the real world is going to be like for them. By the time that they're working age. They're going to have to constantly learn new things every two years. And so this is what they're already doing, which is what we love about homeschooling. Yeah. Yeah. Like the school framework isn't. It really doesn't incentivize you any longer to get into a routine that stays static for your career because like you said, that's going to be moving at a fast pace by the time they're looking for jobs and things like that. So the old framework of like, how do we get kids organized enough to go and work their 9 to 5 or whatever it happens to be? It's now like, how do you prepare someone to like, just know how to learn, right? And when they get given an assignment, they know what to look for and how to kind of solve the problem. So problem solving determination and grit. Mhm. That's what we're really after. Yeah. Yeah. Stick with it. Solve the actual problem. You know, don't give up on it. Yeah. Those sorts of things and whatever that case may be uh it's just you've got to have those founding principles which is just the same as, like what I'm doing with my running. Right? I've got to work through my problems. I've got to keep going through it and be determined, like I have a goal. And in order to achieve that goal, I can't just give up in January, around a few workouts. Like, to me, there's this aspect of um, especially leading by example with the kids, like, I'm not going to miss a workout, even if I have some pain, I'm going to modify it, but I'm not going to miss it. And teaching that consistency is really important for me. Yeah, yeah, you're doing the same thing they are. You're learning on the fly, huh? Yeah. Um, awesome. I want to kind of hit on just, uh, the nutritional component that you're working on here, which is part of the fun. Yeah, part of the success is always going to be in that world. So you picked a modified carnivore diet as the king of the input that you were going to use for this, this project. Was there anything specific that led you towards that way? Yeah. So last year when I first started getting all my health issues, I, uh, again, going back to data, I put a continuous glucose monitor on, and, uh, I went through a two month process of really learning what works well in my body, what controls my glycemic index, what what controls my sugar spikes, all those sorts of things. Uh, what gives me better sleep? And, you know, the old school meat and potatoes, which is what I grew up on. Yeah. And I instinctively knew that that worked. Well, um, so to me, it was I. I'm a person because I've been in health and wellness for 30 years. I've tried every single type of diet you can imagine other than carnivore style. Um, and so I was like, I want to give this a try. So for me, my modified carnivore, I, I modified it to my liking. And this is really important that I think a lot of people don't talk about is that I know that I do really good with dairy and cheese and meat, and so for me, the modified carnivore is I did honey, yet I did maple syrup. I made raw sauerkraut, raw kefir, raw milk, raw cheeses, and then meat. And that was it. And that allowed my metabolism to transition over, uh, to keep my energy levels high, while my genetics had to make that flip. Right, because we need the materials in our body to have that metabolic flexibility. If we just go into the modified carnivore and we're used to eating crap all the time. Yeah. Uh, you know, then we're in for a really bad crash and headaches and all of the things that people, uh, experience. And so for me, I wanted to do this for two months. And then yesterday I started the true carnivore diet, which is just meat, salt and water. And so I'm doing that for 30 days. Um, but this allowed me to never be hungry. I was constantly eating, uh, and it sounds counterintuitive because of all the narrative out there in the world of, uh, you have to lose weight by cutting calories. Technically, I still was in a calorie deficit, but I was always eating all day long. Sometimes it would be three times a day. Sometimes it would be 5 or 6 times a day where I was eating because I was chasing my energy levels. I always wanted to feel like I wanted to have energy, uh, and especially to get recovered from the one day and make it to the next. So to me, on my days where I was running, I was eating those 5 to 6 times a day. And the days that I wasn't, I was eating the three times and I was just monitoring it that way. But I never counted calories. I just constantly ate and I ate a lot of fat. I ate a lot of the cream off of the raw milk. Right. Like all of those sorts of things. Uh, and it just works well for me. So to me, that was like. I never went to bed hungry. I slept really well and I was really satisfied with it. Yeah, I was always interested in that question because I find it to be something where for long term success, you sort of need to find something that does what you described where, yeah, there's an energy deficit or you wouldn't be losing weight. Right. But what inputs are going to create an environment where you feel like you can kind of just intuitively do it? Yeah. And deviating it actually feels weird versus like trying to stick to it feeling weird. I find like the diets that tend to not work are ones where like, I mean, you can force yourself to do anything, but if by doing that it feels like you're constantly making compromises and constantly fighting that, like what your body wants. Yeah, it just usually fails in the long run. Right? So it's like eventually you kind of got to get around to finding something where you like. When you start doing it. Maybe you're tracking in the early stages or who knows, but intuitively, you're kind of more likely to kind of hit what your body needs versus what your desires may lead you, leading you to every option on the table. Yeah. And I think it's interesting to hear what paths people find because I find it to be pretty wide ranging in terms of what ends up working from one person to the next. But when they find that they talk exactly like you, where it's like, oh, yeah, I feel like I'm eating way more. I feel like I'm not restricting myself, but energy, everything. Yeah, everything's heading in the right direction. So it's kind of like a chicken or an egg thing, right? Where it's like, what what what what what food is going to get me to my goal versus, um, what food is going to provide me with the satiety and the energy that is going to make the things that will actually drive that goal stuff on the table and able to be able to be done. Yeah, yeah. And I found, you know, and touching on that, it's like, I love eating real food. I love eating potatoes. I love eating veggies, I love salads. Um. But I'd stay hungry with that. And I didn't realize that until I had the counterbalance of one doing the modified carnivore, that I now understand that about myself, that I could eat a big baked potato with a steak and it would make me more hungry than if I just ate the steak and had, like, a little milk. It's just like, so counterintuitive. I would have never guessed that about me. Huh. Um, you know, I'm still eating real food. I'm still trying to eat healthy. Yeah, but it was still making me hungry. Like those carbs and things just might not be the best for me at this given stage in my life. Now, once I lose another £30 or something, by the time the race day comes, that'll probably be a different scenario. My metabolism is going to be completely different, and I'll probably be just fine eating a potato with my steak kind of thing. Well, you'll get to a point where the goal shifts, where the goal will go from I need to lose weight to the goal means I need to just maintain where I'm at. And when you get there, you're fighting the opposite battle. You're you. Maybe I will give you a five hour long run on Saturday. Yeah, like I know I'm still thinking about that equation. Because even on this two hour run that I did two weeks ago, I didn't have water with me. I didn't have a gel pack with me. Like, I'm still at that very strict stage where I don't need to fuel during my training. Yeah, I know, like I'm wondering about this equation of like, okay, how is my body going to handle this in two months when I know that I'm going to be out on that three, four hour run? Like, am I going to be able to digest my food? Like, I'm excited to get to that stage with you and explore? Yeah. You'll hit a point where now all of a sudden, the thing that would have been problematic becomes a tool where like. You need to get a certain amount to maintain weight versus lose weight. And maybe that potato allows you to eat more and then you bring it back. Yeah. Um, yeah. It's just like it just kind of shines a light on the context of the situation and how much that actually matters, and the goals and how they shift along the way. For me, these three months I knew I needed to lose a ton of weight in order for the running to improve. And so for me, like it was, it was just as much of a priority around eating as it was running. And, uh, you know, I just constantly reminded myself of that. And so it became very easy to follow. Mhm. And not to mention the beauty. I can't wait to tell the world about this homemade ice cream on the modified carnivore. Like because good ice cream is actually just egg yolks and raw milk and a little bit of honey. Yeah. And it blows your mind how amazing homemade ice cream is. And it fits within the modified carnivore. So every Sunday we were making our own big bowl of ice cream. Yeah. And just getting that feeling of like, having that nice treat and dessert kind of thing. Mhm. Yeah. And that's another thing the family can do together and enjoy. Right. So it's like an activity that's actually I'd be curious your thoughts on this like cause your, your mind probably always is thinking about like where's the lesson in here because you're homeschooling your kids. So you're thinking, how do I essentially get more efficient by teaching them something while we're doing something we would've been doing otherwise? I always think of that like if I were homeschooling some, if I were homeschooling kids or just teaching kids in general, like when I'm really firing on all cylinders, it's like, how do I turn everything we're already doing into the lessons where they can do it? So massive amounts of chemistry in ice cream. Yeah, yeah. You really have to understand thermal equations. Like there's, you know, the, why do we add salt to things. Well lowers the freezing point. You know, all these sorts of things. Like you can teach the chemistry behind all the molecules and the interactions that they have. And yeah that's a lot of fun. Yeah. No, that's really interesting. So okay. So modified carnivores. Running at low intensities. Uh. Tell me about the family farm that's new, right? Or have you been doing that for a while now? It's been three years. So how's it going on? Four years now? Yeah. So right before the pandemic, um, we bought a piece of property in South Austin and, uh, two acres. And in the back, there's this beautiful natural spring that comes up there. It's part of Slaughter Creek that turns into a lake. Um, and so the back half of the property, I call it, like the Louisiana jungle. It's got, like, the big saw palmettos and, uh, two little streams that go through it. And then the front half of the property is, um, just like normal. Uh, it was completely overgrown. Uh, so I actually cut down over 90 trees that were invasive. We're going through the process of planting a food forest there for our own food production. Um, and for those of you who don't know, food forest is anything that's native that grows really well in what you do is you plant a tree. So let's just say we plant a persimmon tree, and then around that we plant berry bushes, and around that you plant like little garlic scapes and things like that. Everything is meant to regrow itself and feed itself. So you're not like tending soil. You're not. It's the low, easy, lazy farmer way of doing things, right? Uh, you're not tilling ground or anything. We do have a little fenced off. I built a fenced off garden for us where we grow some peppers and some herbs. The big thing is herbs. We put our own herbs on our own food. And that is the one. Uh. Thing that we did is that I forgot to say, in the Modified Carnivores, we add our own herbs, fresh and dehydrated to all of our food because I figured I I'm okay. I know there's no chemicals on it or anything like that. I'll give myself permission to throw my own, you know, parsley and, uh, that kind of stuff. Sage. So we grow sage, oregano, chives, parsley, cilantro, all of that kind of stuff. Yeah. Um, lots of education in that process, too. Yeah. We we garden. We. Yeah, we we do all of that. Um, we're in the process. I'm building a podcast studio, uh, in my backyard. Um, eventually the the end of the summer goal is to build a big chicken coop back there. Uh, we compost everything, so that's really fun. Uh, I prefer to call it soil making. So, like, there's an actual end result of, like, all the food scraps that we have going to this, this soil making bin. And the kids really understand that. And it's like this now goes into growing our herbs, which then we eat and, uh, they see that whole cycle of life. Um, so yeah, that's that's why, that's why it's called a hobby farm. You know, we're not like, there's no cows or anything of that nature. You know, my wife always teases me that she's going to get a goat one day. Um, and I'm adamantly against it, but, uh. Um. Yeah. So it's really low maintenance. It's meant for me because I know that I really do well in nature and that when I'm stressed, if I go out and I chop wood, or if I put my hands in the soil like that is the number one way for me to decompress. And I didn't have that in my life before. And that's one of the reasons why I burned out so badly, it's like I was in the inner city. I couldn't have fires. I couldn't, you know, be outside barbecuing the way that I wanted to and all of those sorts of things. So when I say we designed our life with intent and purpose, we really designed our life with an intent and purpose. So I've studied permaculture, I've studied food forest, I've studied hobby farms, all to make this a reality of part of my integrated life that every single day I get out into nature and I touch nature. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose when we talked about that in the first episode, your bus trip, when you guys were all working on organic farms and stuff along the way, part of the whole intent of it. Yeah. We took a year off, traveling the country to all the different farms to learn all the different types of permaculture, to see what works best for different areas. And, you know, what are the positives and negatives? And we really learned very quickly like, no, we don't want the rabbit farm. No, no, we don't want the goat farm. No, we don't want the, you know, whatever the case may be, um, because we saw firsthand like that was not for us. Yeah. It's just way more labor intensive to have the goats and all that dirty. Smelly. Yeah. Labor intensive. Like, we want the lazy farm. Like us, we love our vacations. We love, love going and doing stuff. Uh, I run a business that, you know, requires me to leave. And. Yeah, as it grows, I'll be more and more gone. So it's. It's with the intent of having a long term sanctuary. But it's a low maintenance sanctuary. Mhm. Yeah that's a good point. I think that's probably the biggest holdup for me is like there's a lot of stuff I'd like to do from like a backyard farm type thing. But it's like yeah you have to be around for that. Yeah. It's always and it's a funny joke. There's a meme that goes around because we look at all like one of our favorite things on Instagram is to look at all the homesteaders. Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And it's, uh, the meme is I'm super stressed about X, Y, and Z. I think I should start, you know, doing sourdough and, you know, like, it lists off ten more things that the person should start because they're stressed. Yeah. And it's like, that's totally our life. As we go from making our own kombucha to making our own sourdough, we make our own essential oils, like we do all these creative things as part of our fun of things that we're doing. But it can be stressful. And we go in these little periods of we're doing a ton and then we don't do any, and then we're doing a ton, and we make all of our own stuff, and then we don't make any of our own stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's probably good to be able to turn it on and off when you can. So you have that flexibility to do some of that as well. Eventually you got to go to Japan. Right. So yeah. Exactly. Yeah. We've got Japan on the list. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that we want to do. Awesome. I want to dive into the strength training component too, and then maybe parlay that into talking about the Dexa scan a little bit because, uh, I find that to be an interesting input for a variety of reasons, just purely from the coaching lens. I think strength work is a valuable add-on for, uh, people who are participating in endurance sports or have a goal in endurance sports. Uh, it has got the added benefit of when you're actively trying to lose weight, kind of making that skew more towards, uh, losing non lean tissue versus losing non lean tissue as well as lean tissue, which I think you can see when you look at these big weight loss uh like situations. It's like a lot of times when there's no strength and put going into it. You lose there. Lose? Yeah, yeah. And to me, like the overall conversation, I've come into a new age. So a little bit of my background, like I said, I've, I've been in this business for 30 years. And when I ran my office, I was very much a person that was much more into rehab and things of that nature. Now that I know that the science is very clear about longevity and overall health, that muscle mass is the number, you know, like one of the top indicators of overall health. I'm in a much different perspective of time allocated towards rehab and being functional versus just pure muscle strength. And I'm much more in this leaning into the category of growing some darn muscle. And when you lose weight, try not to lose all that lean muscle mass because it's heck trying to get that back. You know, even if I were to lose another 30 or £40 and it would be all of it, and I wasn't doing strength training, then I would have like a two year outlook of strength training afterwards to try to regain that muscle mass to be healthy. Whereas if I incorporate the strength training now, it's just easy. Like I'm gaining like a couple of periods where I dip down on the Dexa scan where I did lose some lean muscle mass, of course. Um, but for the most part, I've been fluctuating and I'll gain, you know, like this past month, I gained £2 of muscle. Mhm. Um, and it's because I'm in a more dysfunctional state in my old office, I would have started doing a rehab program. Now that I'm a little bit older and wiser. I actually started a traditional bodybuilding program with this because I knew that the faster that I could build muscle, the better my functional capacity would be. Regardless. And if I do it right where I warm up properly and all those sorts of things, it takes care of most of my dysfunction while I'm doing it. So I purposely chose three days a week of hitting every single muscle group, all three days of heavy squats, heavy benches, heavy curls, you know, all the traditional basic powerlifting type of stuff, bodybuilding type of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And you're so you're doing like a warm up that sort of doubles as like a mobility routine. Exactly. Yeah. I'm very functional when I warm up. So I, you know, it's like a lot of trunk rotations and deep squats and astro grass and. Yeah, trying to get your knees to crack and get that ankle mobility. And I've just done so much rehab over the course of my career that I have it really down to and under five minutes. You can work every single joint in the body from a rehab standpoint and then actually get to the deeper lifting, whereas some programs, you know, you'll do oh, medicine ball twist and you're spending ten minutes doing rehab exercises kind of thing. Mhm. Um, purposely choosing not to do that. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really interesting topic and I suppose it's probably a strength for you giving your background in chiropractic. So it's like you have an eye for that where uh, you know, you probably are noticing things where. A lot of runners. Maybe something starts bothering them and it's like, oh, I can do this. Yeah. And I was talking to a couple coaching clients this last week who had a small, like, uh, small little injury that more or less resolved itself after a few days. And I told them afterwards, the lesson here is you alerted me the day you started noticing it versus doing kind of the sometimes more traditional running move of, oh, I can still run, therefore I will. And then it's, it's not that it's banging on that dysfunction for weeks and weeks and weeks. That typically leads to the long term overuse injury used to make my money. That's right. All you silly runner's out there ignoring your pains. Yeah, yeah. We get to Taipei about it, and it's like, I can't miss that 60 minute run. I'm going to do it anyway. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. For me it's because I am intuitive. I feel when things aren't working right. So like I've torn my right knee meniscus twice in the past two weeks, I can feel that. It's like the scar tissue is stuck in there a little bit. So like I immediately stop and I go and I crack it and I open it up and I do like two seconds of rehab and then I get back to running. So I don't ignore things. I embrace it and I attack it with a ferocity or ferocity. Ferocity? I don't even know how to say that word anymore. Yeah, something of that nature. You get it? Yeah. Um, where I'm really diving into it right away. Like I'm not letting anything build. And so therefore for me, like, I, I'm not doing the overall rehab exercises like I used to prescribe in my office because I'm cutting things off at the pass and I'm not letting them get bad at all. Yeah. Even though I have tons of dysfunction. All the new updates I forgot to tell you. So I got X-rays of everything. Turns out I have three compression fractures in my neck, which is why my arm was going numb. Oh, wow. Uh, three of my vertebrae collapsed onto each other and closed the gap off my low back. Uh, has bastrop's kissing spine disease, which is where the back end, uh, impacts each other. And then they create a ball of inflammation. And I have so much arthritis down there that the left side has completely grown closed. And, uh, I was born with a facet joint that was at a wrong angle. And that's why my back would just keep sliding out, because there would be no stopping the sliding from happening. Uh, so that's that. And then, uh, two hip impingements. It looks like fingers growing down through my hip sockets. There's so many arthritic hooks growing through my sockets. Um, so, yeah, those are the fun updates that I found. Uh, and going through this process of just collecting more data about myself that I didn't know that I had. So these are all the things that I'm dealing with, sure, on a daily basis. But I've dealt with them for so long that it's. Preemptive rehab is way more important than letting it get bad. Rehab. Yeah, yeah, it's a really interesting point. I know, like when I had my sacral stress fracture, I sort of, like, took a deeper look at everything during that process and sort of learn some habits that I think were important, which was like when I was younger, it was like, oh, there, here's some daily exercises you could do that amount to like three minutes. And I was like, what is that going to do? Yeah, like that's not doing anything. It's like the one session might not do anything, but the fact that you're doing it every way and you're keeping those pathways and those ranges of motion open and not forgotten by your body. And the best way I find to describe this is like if you look at just the number of positions you'd put your body into, if you had to sit on the floor versus a chair all day. Yes. It's like hundreds versus like a few. Yeah. And there's nothing. It's not that the few you're engaging in the chair are bad. It's just when you do only them. Yeah. You lose the ability to kind of move in those other planes and people develop the habits around it. This is a big thing that I used to dive into with people in my offices. I would just watch them sit down and I would watch them walk up and down stairs. And statistically, like 95% of us only do 1 or 2 things. And so, like we always cross our legs the same way. We always use one dominant foot to go up the stairs and we leave the other one behind. And so it's really easy to see, like, are you a glute activator or are you a quad activator like all of those things? They in itself are not bad, but when you do them for 30 years in a row and don't do anything else, yeah, they become very detrimental. Mhm. Yeah. And then when you find yourself in that situation where you're engaging one leg versus the other there, um imbalances begin to occur. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's very obvious once you become aware of it, like how people sit and, and how they do. But then you can directly see it, like if you go to stretch that person as an example and they always cross their right leg over the top of their left leg. Mhm. Well of course yeah. When you go to stretch their hip sockets one is going to move really well and one's going to move really crappy. But then you amplify that when you're running for an hour or two hours, three hours, suddenly you get like an inch difference in your stride from one side to the other, and then that just works its way up the spine. It works your way up to core activation, and all those problems start to persist out of it. And that's how you end up with the sacred stress. And that's how the sacral stress fractures. It absolutely is. Yeah. It is. It's interesting. It's interesting stuff. And yeah, it's never I think I think what you told me, um, when we were talking last was I had, I was I think I was just talking to you about the sacral stress fracture and kind of what I learned, I was like. One of the things that maybe was partly responsible for it was, I have a torn right hip labrum, and it's like I probably have learned to kind of operate with that in a way that is potentially problematic for my right sacral area. And we talked about your toes. And that's what you told me. You were like, well, yeah, but you said you should take it another layer deep and say like, well what? Why did the hip labrum issue was probably originally a foot and ankle issue. So it's like, yeah, it's funny like you can always go further back and find something probably at the point of impact, which is going to be the feet when, when people by the time they're 15 to 20 years old, the big toe starts to get tight. And because modern day shoes squeeze in, we're supposed to be out like a duck's feet. Yeah, it was supposed to have webbed feet. Uh, when we look at tribes across the world that have never worn shoes, they're anywhere from 20 to 40% wider than shoe culture. Yeah. Um, and so, like, it's very common by the time you're 15, 20 years old, that big toe starts to freeze up. And then that changes the way that you roll off of your foot, which doesn't matter at that time. But by the time you hit 40, your knee actually can't rotate the way that it's supposed to. And oh, why do we have the highest rate of knee meniscus surgeries? 400,000 knee meniscus surgeries every year? In America while we wear these damn shoes our big toes get stuck. And then over 20 years of walking funny on these big shoes like our knees don't rotate the way that they're supposed to. So yeah, they just grind out that cartilage and tear it open. Yeah. Um, and so it's actually common sense, but it's way too simple and way too common that people don't even realize it or talk about it. It's like none of the doctors that you go to, it's like, oh, they're going to just fix your knee, right? They're just going to go in there and scope it out and clean it out. They don't talk to you about things like, oh, your toes are stuck and you need to just get that loose and then that knee will feel better. Yeah. Yeah. That's actually an interesting kind of point too because I was talking to some of the development team at Ultra Footwear because they've been around now for what are they? I think 2010 was when they officially kind of were a brand that was selling. So, you know, we've been around now for 13, 14 years. It's like they started around like year five, six, uh, some of the kind of the early adopters to their stuff were starting to request more foot shape like or I guess models that have a more aggressive foot shape. So like wides within a foot shape because they had started out in the original model was fine, but now they're toe splays actually increased, like you said. Yeah. Uh, and they just were wanting even more room yet. Yeah. And I was a big fan of their progression back then because I used to have all the shoes hanging on my wall. So I used to do shoe clinics in my office back then. And they were one of the brands that I would always try to like, get people into, because they did have that wider toe box. And yeah, the funny thing is, as they've grown too, they've just reached a wider market where like early on, it was basically people who wanted to like. Pretty aggressive foot shapes the way I described as a foot shapes a foot shape. No matter whether you have a low volume foot or a high volume for somewhere between. But the volume of your foot will maybe dictate how either the rest of the shoe is designed or how much you actually like to build out that foot shape design. So they got to a point where in the early days, there would be people who are like, I really like the idea of this, but I have a super low volume foot, and they were kind of the early stages, so they needed something that was a little more foot shape with lower volume in it. So then they start adding those options and it's like, okay, now that customer is happy, they have an option. The traditional ones like, why did you make that shoe? That thing sucks. Yeah. The mass market problem. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's whac-a-mole to some degree. And eventually like you get around just kind of saying like, look, we have a big enough customer base now where our catalog is trying to capture everyone along their stage of natural footwear. And like you may be at an end stage and you want our tour wide where it's foot shaped, wide versus someone who's new already has a low volume foot, they may be better off in the Riviera or something a little lower volume. So yeah, it is funny when you see that though, because everyone's kind of thinking about this catalog as my catalog. It needs to have a shoe option for me. I have come across the whole thing. Yeah. Um, but yeah. No, it's a Brian backstage on the podcast who's one of the original founders of ultra for that one. Yeah, yeah. He's fun, fun to talk to because he's got the full scope of everything. He's heard it all. It's fascinating. Like we there's there's unfortunately a big mismatch between science and commercialism. And so what I mean by that is even, you know, this is very prominent in health care. But even when it comes to shoes, like we knew early on, Nike has even been reported of this. So all the way back in the 70s that when they tried to make shoes that looked like real feet, people didn't buy them because they thought it looked static. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, so there's this mismatch between what people buy versus what we know is good for us. And unfortunately there always has to be this balance. Play that as a company grows they always start with a great mission, whether it be a food company, a shoe company, you know, whatever the case may be. But they start hitting the mass market and they can only get so far, but their investors require them to keep growing. Yeah. And so they got to give in to, you know, the thing that makes the most sales. And so it's always this fascinating conversation of, yeah, of how do you grow a company and still stay within your scope of I want to fix x, y and Z. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a moving target to a large degree. I find it interesting to run too. And you won't have to worry about this with your goal with a javelin 100 because you're kind of safe from it on the trails and things like that at this point. But one of the biggest shifts I've seen is the super shoe. I'm sure you've probably at least familiar with the, the, the, the path of this where historically. On race day. Like the lower profile, lighter, firmer. Sure, you could get away with keywords, but getting away was the better option. So if you could get down to something that was like a couple ounces or a few ounces, super responsive, super firm, great, you're probably going to get better performance out of that shoe. But if you're doing something like a marathon or an ultra marathon, you have to be able to tolerate that loading of that type of footwear. So you have to work at it. You have to really build up that lower leg strength and that durability. Uh, whereas now with the super suits, essentially, I mean, there's there's some synergy between like the carbon plates and the foam, but really the foam is the big mover here, where now you have something where essentially the more foam you add, the more efficient the shoe gets to the degree where they've had to put regulations down as to how high you could stack a shoe. Yeah. Because they had it's going to get crazy. Yeah. They put a limit on it. It's 40mm on the road and 25mm on the track. So they've sort of capped the development of that okay. But when you think of it, did you follow at all when Kipchoge did the sub two hour like exhibition race? It wasn't an actual event. They like to build it out as fast as possible. They gave them windshields. Pacers no I didn't okay. Yeah. So he sub-two hours hasn't been done in an actual event. But it has been done in an exhibition. And he did an exhibition. And the shoe he wore for that was actually I think 52mm if I remember right. Oh wow. So that one wasn't able to be sold to I mean you can. You can still make a shoe that goes outside those regulations. You just can't take it to a competition and expect to come away with an award, I guess is the way to explain it. Yeah. Goodness. Yeah. So to get back to, it was a time well before the market shifted from brands that almost always had some version of a low profile shoe on their catalog because they could justify it as a racing flat. Right. And then, like when the minimalists and the, the people who were more in line with that sort of a product, they could always kind of lean on a brand, having a racing flat of some sorts to kind of get that experience, or a brand could say like, okay, we have these couple pairs of shoes that kind of fit both those markets, parts of the market, whereas now they've sort of eliminated the one where like people are going to use that on race day for the most part, because most people are going to wear super shoe on race day. Yeah. Um, but we're also seeing growth in the have you seen this? There's been good growth in the minimalist footwear market. But I think if I remember right, it's less runners and more just fitness people. So yeah, so like the original boost it was like you had the Vibram five fingers, the minimalist like the New Balance Minimus and all that stuff. There was kind of a running movement. Yeah, I was born to run all that stuff. So the big market there was the runners. And then I mean, it's like anything no one has the patience to actually put that process into place. So they go from there, big built up support, you know, how to get down probably for this. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. It could be, it can be like a 6 or 12 month process. Yeah. And even then you're probably not running in the five fingers all the time either. Right. So it's like it is one of those things where yeah, if you throw out your support shoes and go right into the five fingers and just resume. It's the classic argument of fixing yourself versus sports performance, right? Yeah. It's like you, if you want to fix yourself, you go to a minimalist shoe. If you want sports performance, you do whatever application you need for whatever you're doing. But yeah. Yeah. And an interesting way that I and I think this is probably what people who are really thinking about what you just said will end up doing is they will use the super shoe for the race because they're going to want that couple extra percentage of efficiency. Well, they'll need it if they're a professional. If they were smart, they would train without it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So you won't have a situation where I think there's probably a little nuance there, I would say because like to some degree it's like a little bit of almost like an altar treadmill effect with the shoes where it kind of protects you. So like, let's say you're in a marathon or you're historically hitting 120 miles per week in a normal pair of shoes before things start getting a little wobbly. Now maybe you can do one 3135 140 with a super shoe all the time, but you're not extending your tendon very long, right? That's where all the tendon injuries come from. Exactly. Yeah. So there's that balance there between can I still increase my training load or my reps more or less, but maintain the lower leg strength and integrity. Yeah. And there's a balance there. So it's like how do you kind of figure out where that is. And it's gonna probably be different one person or another. So it just adds another layer of complexity to performance, which is just the way that works. Yeah, exactly. And it's fun. Yeah. We always have to bring perspective. And that's what people forget, especially in the influencer world. We forget to bring perspective. And so we talk about, oh, this is the best shoe or yeah. Or this is the best tactic. And it's like, no, we got to bring perspective to the other user. The person that's doing this or do they have a long tendon? You know, I used to treat a lot of patients, especially female clientele, who had to wear high heels during their job or chose to wear high heels. I don't think anyone has to, but they choose to wear high heels and they shorten that tendon, and then they go out and they try to do their marathon training, and they constantly would get, you know, shin splints. Tendinopathy. 1s Achilles bursitis. You know, all of those things because their tendons were so short. Like, we need to have that perspective before we start recommending shoes for people like where they're at, where they 're going, what they 're doing? And you just always have to ask yourself that question. Yeah, this is off topic, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Helpful since I guess since I got you, let's lean into some of your background. Maybe, uh, with hamstring tendinopathy. Did you see that a lot when you were okay? I was the weird guy that everyone referred to that type of stuff in all of Madison, okay? Because I was the one person who did everything. So I did rehab, manual therapy, deep tissue grass and taping, and sports performance. You know, I did the full scope in my office. Okay, maybe we should. I'm going to ask this question anyway, but like, we should do an episode where we just dive into some of these common running injuries and maybe like the origin of why they usually occur and just unpack a lot of that stuff. Uh, because I have been getting listeners asking more about, hey, can you do a deep dive into like some of that stuff? I think it would be awesome. So because the way that I like to approach that is there's. There's common practices of treating the thing, and then there's always the much better discussion of why does this happen? Like we were talking about your toes with your sacral impacts. Like there's always more to the story than the quick solution. And in a podcast format like this, I mean, we could probably do a whole podcast on just one injury. Yeah, we could do hamstring tendinopathy. Yeah, exactly. Series where we do each one because not only is there the why is it happening, but there's also the full spectrum of treatments of how you are supporting nutritionally regenerative medicine versus biologics versus communication and your your thing versus manual therapies versus chiropractic physical therapy. Like, there's all these tools that are available to us that are easily accessible now. And so how do you go about programming your, your recovery? Uh, as an intelligent person who wants to perform well, how much money do you have? How much time do you have? And so there's that side of the equation that I love talking about as well is how do you blend all of that together. Yeah, yeah. Because there's always going to be a case where it's different. So in hamstring tendinopathy to be quite honest, like okay, maybe a third topic is misdiagnosis. So I just had this conversation today because my daughter is getting shin splints. She is like part of the root, uh, she is a toe walker. So she is just always up and she's I had to explain to her and her coach, and I'm actually going to be doing a shin splint clinic. There's actually no such thing as shin splints. It's actually just a make believe word that just means lower leg pain. It's an umbrella term. It's an umbrella term that we all try to use. And so we get massively confused. But your doctor has no idea. Your doctor has never, ever been trained on shin splints. Even if you go to that sports medicine orthopedic doctor, they've never been trained on shin splints. And what the different Osis versus iris is. Is it a degrading tendon or is it an inflamed tendon? Is it, you know, all of these sorts of mechanical things that make a massive difference on how you're supposed to treat them? And so like the misdiagnosis happens all the time of, you know, tendinopathy in your hamstring, is it a tendon gnosis? Is it tendonitis? Is it actually your meniscus that's just referring to pain in the hamstring insertion? Like, oh yeah, you know, there's all these things that it can actually be driving from. Hamstring pain can be coming from your back. Yeah. Can be coming from you know, you may have a vertebra that shifted too forward and irritates the nervous system like so it's a fun conversation. Deep rabbit hole. Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of front and center of my mind because I had a guest not too long ago who had really bad hamstring tendinopathy for a couple of years actually, I think. Yeah. And he tried all sorts of stuff and it wouldn't go away, wouldn't go away. And it was kind of that, you know, to the degree where like you'd sit there for an hour and he could feel it if he sat there because it was just, it was, it was in a rough spot and you couldn't get anything to move it until he got a running form assessment. And they worked on some things on his running form and essentially fixed whatever it was that was engaging that area in a way that was, I guess, probably overworking it. Yeah. So he gave it a little relief. Now the same activity typically. So the hamstring, pelvis and low back are three plex that have to work together. And if your low back and pelvis don't move properly and you don't know how to activate your core properly while you're running, your hamstring has to try to pull too hard and so it can continually grind away. And that turns into an Osis situation where it starts as a tendonitis, which is just inflammation over time, because he's had it for several years that it actually turns into an oasis where the inflammation actually eats away like a little gravel road into the tendon. Okay. And then so then you've got little pockets in the tendon. And that's why it creates a chronic pain situation as you're constantly overloading those areas because you don't know how to activate your core while you're running. And so yeah, it's fascinating that it's always about the root problem. And then how do you treat it? And yeah, so in that situation it would be practicing how to activate your core in order to yeah get away. And also how do you teach that person to activate their core. Because there's a couple of different ways. It all depends on your body. So like some people just simply putting the tongue to the roof of their mouth, they'll activate their core. It'll take care of their hamstring problem. Interesting. Some people, it's just telling them to gently squeeze their shoulder blades down and back while they're running, because they get this posture forward, sitting at computers. Exactly. And then that deactivates the core. And so you actually lean forward in that good leaning form. But because your posture is rolled forward, you're amplifying the weight forward. And that hamstring has to work harder to pull. So if you just get them to like to open up and you do this perfectly, like you're a great example of keeping your arms open and running like this. This is one of the reasons why you can run so fast. I used to teach people like you're pulling a ski rope, and so you get the little lightly touch your fingertips to your thumb and you're pulling like this, and you squeeze down and back with your shoulder blades, and you immediately see their stride length improve, like, it's a really crazy thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really , really interesting. I think you, you actually probably answered my question better than I anticipated. Based on what I was thinking, I would my, my original question actually was like my, my understanding with I guess this is maybe too basic. You can tell me if I'm thinking about this wrong. My understanding of hamstring tendinopathy is that stretching can actually make it worse, whereas strengthening is usually the first kind of mode that they'll try for something like that. Is there a reason why that would work that way? The cause of the injury was overstretching to begin with. Okay. Yeah. So just a general rule of thumb. So if you have like Achilles bursitis, which is an inflammation between your heel bone and where your Achilles uh, attaches, that's usually because it's getting overstretched. And so like you're going to minimalists too quick. Yeah. Kind of thing. Right. So you're not going to stretch that to fix it. You're going to strengthen it to fix it. So the same thing with the hamstring a lot of times if the hamstring is an overused chronic issue, most of the time it's because it's getting overstretched to begin with. And so therefore you can start if the pain is really bad, you start with eccentric loading, which is. I'm sorry. Isometric loading, which is great for tendon strength. So tendons are very much an isometric or eccentric loading type of mechanism. And so we can design isometric exercises. We can design eccentric not concentric as the contracting. So like the easy one to understand is your calf. Uh I would stand two feet on a step I'd use say my, my right leg is the problem. I would lift my body with my left leg and then hold my heel up with my right leg, and then try to let it down as slowly as possible. Also, an eccentric isometric is just you put your heel flat both in, you're hanging it in the air off of the step. And then you, you lift your left leg up and you try not to let your heel move. So that's isometric just holding that pose. Yeah. And both of those are what are tendons. If it's an actual tendon problem that's where it strengthens the tendon loading capacity of that. Yeah. Not to mention like there's manual therapies that you can use in conjunction with that neurostimulation acupuncture like different things that can help stimulate that process. Yeah. Yeah that's really interesting. So for like hamstring tendinopathy with a static like glute bridge be something that people would want to use or. Yeah, glute bridges are great because a lot of times the glutes aren't activating. And that's why the hamstring has to over activate. So that's your strengthening the solution. Um, the hamstring component of it. This is where it's getting into like modified deadlifting. Sure. Like I'm a huge fan of deadlifting for hamstring issues. But you just can't do it deep. You can't do it like a gym rat. Yeah. You gotta do it more from a rehab standpoint. So there's like specific instructions based on the shape of that person's body starting with a kettlebell. And the kettlebell is on like yoga blocks, maybe 3 or 4 yoga blocks and they're only going like two inches. Yeah. Kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's interesting. Do you, uh, do you like, uh, hex bar deadlifts for runners versus traditional deadlifting? It really is just depending on the programming that you're doing. I'm a big fan of the way that I like to describe things is that there isn't a right or wrong. There's only an application. And so it comes down to what is your goal and what are you trying to do. And so there's no wrong form whether you're sumo wide grip in grip, you know, there's 20 different types of squats you can do. Yeah. Like it doesn't matter. It's all application of what type of muscle you're moving. So in general. You can take something like in general, let's say hamstring. Uh, which side of the hamstring? Right. There's two tendons and they're actually two different muscles. So there is no such thing as just a general hamstring, right? It's, uh, so like, you can do a wider foot stance deadlift for the inner one, and you can do an inner foot stance for the outer hamstring. Right. So it's like all those minor variations are going to be the application that we're actually trying to fix. Okay. Gotcha. I was thinking that I was actually looking at it more from the lens of just like the advanced degree of, uh, experience that would be required maybe for like a deadlift for aggression. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Progression progresses into things based on your functional capacity as a must. Yeah, yeah, that's the science. That's why people like you exist. That's why we should always hire a coach and all these different arenas because they have the wisdom to start to know that. And if they don't fire them and get to the next person. But, uh, yeah, that's why you want to work with people because everybody's body is different, right? My wife and I are the same height, but her legs are a full three inches longer than mine. My torso is much longer. So we have very different functional capacities of how we deadlift. And so it's you have to take all of those into consideration when you, yeah, are doing it. But in general. If you progress towards heavier and heavier and more and more varieties, it's think of everything as a three month progression. So whether it be traditional deadlifting, Hecks, deadlifting, sumo deadlifting, you can do three month segments of all three of those and gain massively different benefits from all of them. Okay. Yeah. Mhm. 1s Very cool. Awesome. I can't remember why we got on that topic, but we went there. Yeah, well, we were talking about, oh, way back, I was talking about all my x-ray findings. Oh yeah. I think let's go back to that maybe a half an hour ago. 1s Let's go back to your x-rays. Did you? So, uh, I think we can just talk about some of that, the measurement stuff in general. So you were getting x rays, bloodwork, the Dexa, dexa scan stuff. Um, and my Garmin stuff in the Garmin stuff. Yeah. So I guess if we put, like, the Garmin stuff is probably, like, more like sleep and recovery based metrics. Um, the x-rays are more like, okay, this is what my this is mapping of my body and maybe what I need to work with or work around. Yeah. And then like the Dax is obviously like, all right, you're on this weight loss journey. But you want to maintain lean muscle mass. And that's going to kind of give you the glimpse into how that's progressing. Yep. Yeah. So basically I look at data as um. There. There's things that we can do and things that are just good to know. Like, there's technically no point in going and getting an x-ray most of the time. Is this kind of funny coming from a sports medicine dude? Right? In the vast majority of cases, even if you have a broken bone, like I have these compression fractures in my neck, it doesn't change my outcome. The reason why I got them is, um, because I'm documenting all of this stuff along the way is there's no technically no point for me to get an x ray of my neck, even though my arm was getting numb, because I know scientifically and through all of the different probabilities that I wasn't dealing with cancer, I wasn't dealing with all these sorts of things. I didn't have the symptoms of any of that type of stuff. So therefore, my outcome of what I was going to be doing about it didn't change anyways. Um, it's just information and a lot of people just like information. So that's where X-rays come in. And I struggled with this throughout my career. And should I send people for X-rays or not? Most of the time. And this is probably the case of a lot of viewers. They just like to know, even though it's a pointless image and you're getting x-rays shot through your body, and that can be detrimental as well. Like MRIs, all of that stuff. We know that if you MRI, 70% of the population is going to have a disc herniation. So that orthopedic surgeon that is sitting in front of you and you have neck pain and they go, oh, look at this disc herniation. Chances are you've had that there for probably 20 years and you're just now getting symptoms. And it's actually a pointless correlation to the symptoms that you're actually feeling. But because the system is designed the way that it is, it's the only orthopedic surgeon that can hang their hat on to say, oh yeah, let's do this. And so it's. Anyways, I could get into a crazy digression about that, but I did it for the sake of documenting my journey and talking with people that we have a lot of dysfunctions. We all have dysfunctions, we all have pain, we all have problems, but we all can do something about them. And it all starts with those simple habit changes. And that's the hope that I want to pass on to people, is that it does start with just tying your shoes and getting up there for 5 to 10 minutes. Even though we know the science is saying that you should be out there for 45 minutes, if you get out there for five minutes, you're winning. If you get to the gym and you only decide to do one exercise. And I had this happen a couple of times where I was just dead tired. I got to the gym, I went and did one exercise, and I felt good about it, and I went home because I knew I didn't want to push myself too hard, but I instilled that habit to get there. Mhm. Um, that is the most important thing. And then those little things I described as the little staircase to health. You build 1 or 2 staircases at a time and you keep working on those little two staircases, and then you'll build another 2 or 3 staircases. And over the course of three months, over the course of six months, nine months, you get to the point where you're finally finding yourself having energy and health, and you actually want to do more. Yeah, because before that, your brain, your brain does not want to change. Your brain will tell you every excuse not to change. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well yeah it gets and then you get into the routine and you get a program from your coach that deviates from that. And now your brain's doing the opposite thing. It's like why did. Yeah yeah. It's super funny. Yeah. But that's why I like dating until I get all my data. Mhm. Um leveling up that way and so that I can share with the world that, that. Hey you Mr. Smith, you may be having these severe problems. I get it, I feel you. I've experienced that but there's hope for you if you are small. Yeah, exactly. The process is the same irregardless of your starting point. Mhm. Yeah that's interesting. So have you done anything with the other data points that have caused you to kind of alternate things. So like when you got the Dexa scan did you notice anything where it was like oh maybe I'll change this strength thing around at all. It's all just been working out as intended so far, because I know that the habits are the most important thing. And so like for me, the data is just a confirmation of going in the right direction or the wrong. So for the Dexa scan too. Okay. Gotcha. Um, yeah. And most of the stuff I like. 1s This is a big proponent of this. Looking at individual data points can be very detrimental to your progression. Looking at trend lines is where the magic is. Yeah. And so we have to collect enough data. And that's why I'm doing the bloodwork every month. Is that when you go once every two years to get your cholesterol. Yes. Like you literally could. Yes. A snapshot that could be totally inaccurate. And we know that at least 40 to 50% of people who are on blood pressure medication shouldn't be on blood pressure medication, simply because when they went to the doctor, they were stressed that week or something of that nature because they go so infrequently. Yeah. And then the doctor sees that one measurement and then they get prescribed something in this category, and then they don't follow up with their doctor for three years. Well, you need data points, especially when it's metrics like blood pressure, sleep, and the consistency of our body fat, like even the Dexa scan, which is considered the gold standard of body composition analysis. We have to remember that all of them have a plus or minus percentage associated with them. Mhm. And so like when you go and get that scan and you get that result, it may be plus or -1% of something. And so we can get this drastically wrong idea. If we only take 1 or 2 data points, we need multiple of them to show the trend line. Yeah. And then that's where you can make educated decisions on whether I am in the right direction or not. Yeah. Yeah. For the Dexa scans I've done, I've been I started just scheduling at the same time of day, and then I try to replicate like what I did like the 24 hours prior, as close as possible, just to try to eliminate the margins as much because water weight and all that stuff affects it. Yeah. Yeah. I could go in there after a 20 mile run, totally dehydrated versus a rest day fully hydrating it. Totally different reading, even though my body count was probably the same in either of those. Like after my two hour run, uh, I lost £7 on that run. Right? Right. Like, it's just my body and crazy ways that way. Yeah. And I could totally, totally, like, make it look really good on the Dexa scan for that day. After that, oh, look how much weight he lost. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that shows. Yeah. And that would actually probably show an increase in body fat percentage. I would imagine too, if you had that much water loss. Yeah. Because of relatives. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Because that wouldn't be lean or that would be lean. Mass loss impedance would be messed up. Yeah. Because yeah but you'd be lighter. But I would be lighter. Exactly. I would be happy on the internet. Yeah, yeah. 1s All right. Cool. Um, yeah. And I think that actually I'll maybe end this if we can. Unless you have other thoughts you want to chat about. No. You had questions. Did we get through any of your questions or did we just. Yeah. Um, no, I think I'm. I'm genuinely like an animal. Yeah. We hit on all Maul. Uh, the biggest thing that I need to go over with you is, uh, scheduling some fun events. Yeah, yeah. That's right. We need to put some 50 K on and. Yeah, yeah, there's, uh, I just did a Substack post actually about training races, kind of the argument for and against them. And, um, we talked about this last time, I think in terms of the value of. The training races are like there is a uniqueness to an event. Yeah. Um, I mean, you saw it all the time when you were working in chiropractic, watching the athletes. I'm sure they behave differently at events a lot of times. Or maybe you saw them working on rituals that would normalize that situation as much as possible. So it felt more like just a training day. Any good athlete has a routine that they need to develop. So that is the biggest thing. Like you go to a race and this is one of my big pet peeves, is there's all these product companies that the race of gels and stuff that you've never tried before, and the amount of people that have puked on the race because they tried some sort of new product for the first time after six months of training for, uh, yeah. Like, yeah, you got it anyways. Yeah. But, um. Yeah. Where was I going with that? Uh oh, my race. Yeah. The race. Uh, yeah. So like, yeah, I think putting some training races on the calendar is smart. As long as you know how to go, how to behave around them. I mean, you have a timeline that in theory, you wouldn't even have to behave yourself. You could actually give a full effort and we would have, uh, enough time to recover and not lose out. Well, it goes back to what we were talking about before. You're ahead of schedule. This is a value add you can include when you're ahead of schedule so I don't have to worry as much about the opportunity cost of a training race. Cool. So like I send you out, let's say I send you out for a 50 K, and because I send you out for a 50 K, that costs us the majority of training in a week or the week of the week after. It could be like you have to start asking yourself, what inputs would you have done with two weeks that we're not doing now because of that 50 K? And then does the value of the 50 K outweigh that? So the opportunity cost there is going to be different depending on where the person's at, what their timeline is like. Now you're making me think yeah yeah I didn't think about it from that perspective. See this is why you have to hire a coach, right? And then the big mover there too is just keeping it sub maximal. So like if I had you go out and just say if I said, alright Dave, we're going to do a 50 K, I want you to bring yourself dry. I want you to cross that finish line thinking like there's no way I could have gone a second faster. That's a totally different opportunity cost than if I say, Dave, 80% full capacity at any given time. At any given time, you should always feel like I could go a little faster. If I had to. I could go a little faster if I had to. You cross the finish line. In that situation, the opportunity costs could be weeks different. So wow, that's usually the big one for people where I would have a hard time going at 80% during it. Yeah, that's usually one of the questions I'll ask coaching clients ahead of time. Like, are you the type of person who when the gun goes off, you're all out? Like, if you're that person, we need to be a little more mindful. If I haven't been running with friends, I've been trying to try to be good and stay in my zone. Uh Huh. So for you, I would say like the, the, the nuance of the situation would be you could do a training race of a longer duration at full capacity, and it wouldn't be problematic with your timeline the way it would people want to practice. At 80% though because to me and correct me if I'm wrong, but to get ready for the hundred, if I do add an 80% on a 50 K closer to race pace, yeah, that would be a race pace. I would want to try to practice race pace in a situation where I would be tempted to chase the rabbit and to resist that rabbit would be like my biggest training goal of the race then. And if it was an interesting thought, one way I'll do it with folks to kind of incentivize that is I'll just change the objective to the degree where they're like more incentivized to behave, which is just like, we want you gonna put a shot collar on me if I go over a certain pace that shocks me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I would say, here's the thing. Like if, if I have you go out and go all out for 50 K, we can still learn stuff from that. There's still value in going through the process of what entails the days leading in and following a race. But what we don't necessarily learn there is, as well as what are all the inputs that are going to be valuable for you when you're going to the intensity you will at Javelina. So if I have you going, the intensity you'll do at Javelina for a 50 K, we can learn things like fluid intake like electrolyte intake, fueling like stuff that's going to be more specific to the intensity that you're going to produce there versus something. Yeah that we're guessing on that then. Mhm. Yeah. And then there's also other things too in Austin's good with this. There's a lot of opportunities where let's say you decide well I'm going to do the capacity 10-K. It's like that's that we can take the capacity 10-K, turn it into a speed workout. And that's a lot easier to say like all right, we would have done a threshold session today. We're going to lean into that. And the opportunity cost there is going to be less impeding on something where you're really long. And it actually has a pretty long recovery process to it. Yeah. Very cool. Oh, those are all very thought provoking things. They can be good progress monitoring points to let's say you did the capacity 10-K and we just you wouldn't have to like bring yourself dry but just give it a good hard push and then um, have you do like after your speed work development phase do another 10-K same kind of situation where like give it a hard push but don't feel like you have to destroy yourself. We can compare you to see what was what we actually achieved with that speed element. Yeah. We'll have some good conversations around that then. Yeah I think we'll get that scheduled. The other thing then too, I would say is, uh, to me there's something primal and maybe this will be for another conversation because this will probably bring up a whole nother topic. But, uh, there's something primal about being able to do this while eating. Um, I make my own beef jerky. Yeah, yeah. Like, can I do this with just eating beef jerky and honey, like, it is, like, I don't know, there's something appealing about, like, that old primal, like, hunter gatherer way of. Yeah, they did it. Can I do it right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of different input. And I would say the longer the race gets, the more options there are. Work tends to be usable. Yeah. Because you just end up having a more diverse set of needs in terms of what you are going to work and be available to you. So like at Javelina, I mean, you could eat you if you ate just off the aid station, the range of things you would eat relative to what you would find on a road marathon is insane. So yeah. Right. Yeah. Watch some of the videos of the. The station's so interesting. Okay. That'll be for another time. Cool. Yeah. We got future topics. Um, but yeah, this was fun. But before I let you go, Dave, uh, share with the listeners where they can find you. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Mind of dave.com. Just go to my website. Um, I and from there you can subscribe to my YouTube channel where I'm posting most of my content. Uh, but then you can also join my journey on my email list where I'm sharing my modified carnivore strategies. Uh, you know, just basic life hacks and how to program your life around health and rehab stuff like we talked about. So, yeah, they can sign up there. Uh, so mind of dave.com. All right. And how to turn your backyard into a farm. Yeah. Well that's all part of it. So is everything interesting to me. So if you resonated well with those podcasts. Yeah. Maybe we will get some homesteaders. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the sourdough, that's all. All the good stuff. Yeah. Perfect. Well, thanks again, Dave, for coming on. Awesome. Thank you very much.