In this solo episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I’m letting you know that the Physiologic Flexibility Certification is tonight at midnight PST on March 24, 2025. If you’ve been thinking about joining, now’s the time. I also dig into the core of what the cert teaches: how to train your body’s homeostatic regulators like temperature, pH, oxygen, CO₂, ketones, and lactate to improve recovery, build stress resilience, and boost performance. We’ll cover tools like cold water immersion, breathwork, and heat exposure, and I break down the concept of cross adaptations—how training one system can benefit another. I share some cool studies, personal experiences, and walk you through how the cert works. If you want to push your physiology further and build a more adaptable body, this is the episode for you. Sponsors: Tecton Life Ketone drink! https://tectonlife.com/ DRMIKE to save 20% LMNT electrolyte drink mix: miketnelsonlmnt.com Physiologic Flexibility Certification Course open through March 24, 2025: https://miketnelsons.samcart.com/products/physflex/
In this solo episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I’m letting you know that the Physiologic Flexibility Certification is tonight at midnight PST on March 24, 2025. If you’ve been thinking about joining, now’s the time.
I also dig into the core of what the cert teaches: how to train your body’s homeostatic regulators like temperature, pH, oxygen, CO₂, ketones, and lactate to improve recovery, build stress resilience, and boost performance. We’ll cover tools like cold water immersion, breathwork, and heat exposure, and I break down the concept of cross adaptations—how training one system can benefit another. I share some cool studies, personal experiences, and walk you through how the cert works.
If you want to push your physiology further and build a more adaptable body, this is the episode for you.
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Dr Mike T Nelson: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Flex Diet Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. On this podcast, we talk about all things to increase muscle, as in hypertrophy performance, improved body composition, do it all within a flexible framework without destroying your health in the process. Today is just a very short solo cast here from yours, truly nerdy.
Wanted to let you know that the Physiologic Flexibility certification is closing tonight, Monday, March 24th, 2025 at midnight, but there's still time to get into it. You can enroll in the free newsletter. I'll have some newsletters going out about it. I'll have a link in the newsletter to the sales page and all of the information there.
So if you get in before Monday, March 24th at midnight, [00:01:00] you can still get in. The next time it'll open will be this fall 2025 probably October timeframe is where it looks like it's slated right now. The physiologic flexibility cert is like the level two to the Flex diet cert.
A Flex Diet cert is primarily on nutrition with, we do have some exercise component in there and neat. We do have a component on sleep, so if you're getting to be an exercise, sleep, and nutrition, you're wondering what you would want to do next. The physiologic flexibility cert would be for you.
Side note, the Flex Diet cert doesn't open again until June, so you've got some time if you're interested in that. Within the physical exert, what I did is looking at the things your body has to hold constant. These things are what are called homeostatic regulators, and in the cert we talk about temperature, pH, oxygen and CO2 and [00:02:00] expanded fuels ketones and lactate.
Why this is important is what you adapt to matters. And everyone's familiar with lifting and cardiovascular adaptations and even adaptations to the amount of carbohydrates and fuels that you take in. But I think we're just starting to appreciate the adaptations to environment. For example, we know that if you start doing sauna.
Or heat. I just got an email from someone in the phys cert right now that you will adapt to getting better at the heat. The question is, well, what do you really want to get better adapted to? And I think if you are training those four pillars, there's some pretty cool transfer. And so by transfer we can take a lifting example.
If you wanna get better at deadlifting, the [00:03:00] fastest way to get better at deadlifting is to deadlift, right? Shocker. But you're probably not gonna deadlift five days a week, especially if you're been at this for a little while. So then you're looking at, okay, what are some other exercises that would have a positive transfer to my deadlift?
Maybe I'm gonna do heavy kettlebell swings. I've been reading a lot of Paval stuff. He says, that works well. You can try heavy kettlebell swings for a while, put it into your program, and then see if your one M or your amrap on your deadlift goes up. If it does, the kettlebell swing is obviously not a deadlift, so it's not specific, but many times there can be positive transfer to making your deadlift better by, oddly enough, not deadlifting.
Which seems like a weird paradox that you can do things such as a deadlift to get better at a deadlift or do things that are not a deadlift and get [00:04:00] better. So the transfer area is a little bit more unknown and sometimes you have to play around with it with yourself. I think there's a lot of cross transfer.
What's in the literature is called cross adaptation between the different physiologic stressors that we talk about in the FS Flex Cert. So, for example I talk about this really cool study they did where they expose people to an hypoxic environment. So hypoxia is just a low oxygen concentration. But before they did that, they had one group do cold water immersion, the other group did not, and then both groups got the same level of hypoxia.
So a very low oxygen concentration and hypoxia is a stimulation. To feel very nervous and stressed, right? Because your body is regulating oxygen. It's actually CO2 that is a primary, regular, and oxygen is more of a backup system. But oxygen is super, super important. So if we stick [00:05:00] you in a very low oxygen environment, your stress levels are definitely going to go up.
So in this controlled experiment, the group that did the cold water immersion beforehand. Reported that the hypoxic condition was less stressful. So at first blush, like our deadlift and kettlebell swing example, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, what the hell are you telling me? Like, like whole water immersion, at least temporarily may make you more resilient to hypoxia.
And it turns out there's some signaling things in the background that there are some overlap between these different systems. So a lot of things are more connected than what we realize now. There isn't a ton of literature on cross adaptations. I find it fascinating. I'm always scouring the old PubMeds to look for more.
But there is a few key studies that make it very interesting. And if I were to crawl out on a limb and speculate, I do think there's gonna be more cross adaptation [00:06:00] effects from these homeostatic regulators in the future. So that's the basis of the FEX Cert. If you wanted to learn about how to use cold water immersion I've built my own cold water immersion since 2020.
So I've been doing it with clients got all the research in the cert and whenever I've been home, like I'd say more times than not I've been doing cold water immersion, all from super cold to moderate temps to. Before exercise, after exercise. It's been tested on almost any combination you can think of.
And I do still think it's useful. Just did one the other day. But again, like all things, there's some caveats. There's some times where you may not want to do it and there's some times and protocols and methods you do not want to do. Same thing for pH changes, expanded fuels O2 and CO2 regulation.
So. That's my little rundown for the [00:07:00] Fiz Flex Cert. And if you have any questions, hit me up. It is open until Monday, March 24th at midnight Pacific Standard Time. Hop onto the newsletter link below. You'll have all the details being sent to you there. And if you have any questions, just hit reply there. I will do my best to get back to you.
I am traveling on Monday, but I will try my best to get back to you in a timely fashion. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Really appreciate it. If you enjoy this concept of different types of stressors to be adapted to you will love the podcast that is coming out later this week with Dr.
Sharon as we talk all about this. Also, and she's got a great brand new book that is very much related to this topic, so stay tuned for that. Thank you so much for listening. Really appreciate it. Talk to all of you again very soon.
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