Can lifters add cardio without losing muscle? Brian Borstein joins me to break down hybrid training, endurance, and the real way to keep your gainz while building conditioning. Sponsors: Beyond Power Voltra 1: https://www.beyond-power.com/michael13 PNOE - tell them Dr Mike T sent ya: https://pnoe.com Killswitch for sleep: https://www.switchsupplements.com/DRMIKE use code DRMIKE to save $$ Available now: Grab a copy of the Triphasic Training II book I co-wrote with Cal Deitz here.
In this week’s Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with fitness expert Bryan Boorstein to dig into the idea of “Meathead Cardio.” Brian has been in the lifting world for years, but over time, he began adding more cardio into his routine—and not only did it stick, it actually improved his performance and health.
We talk about why hybrid training isn’t the enemy of muscle, how to balance lifting and cardio without wrecking recovery, and the strategies Brian used to hold onto his muscle while ramping up his endurance work. He also shares his experience training for and excelling in endurance events, and how this shift has changed his overall well-being.
We wrap up with some practical advice on how you can fold more cardio into your training without sacrificing strength, plus a look ahead at where training and tech might collide in the future.
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Speaker: [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 too. Increased performance, add muscle, improved body composition. Do all of it within a flexible framework without destroying your health. Today on the podcast, we've got Brian Borstein and we're all talking about meathead cardio.
And his transition from doing a ton of lifting to paradoxically doing a lot more cardio now why did he do such a crazy thing? Did it have to do with getting older? How does he balance lifting and cardio? What has he found as the benefit from more cardiovascular training? We talk about his experience.
I did work with him on his 2K for roving. His crazy results he got from doing that, and we absolutely did brutalize him on [00:01:00] that, but it worked out really well his experimenting with the combined of lifting and cardiovascular training why you should incorporate more other diverse physical activities and a little bit about even future technology, running zone two and a bunch of other stuff.
So if you really enjoy this podcast. I am actually giving away my, I would say it's probably been the most successful cardiovascular protocol for lifting meat heads. And it does not involve zone two. It actually involves a six minute progressive row. Or you can use the assault bike and I give you all the details.
I've got a link down below here. Yes, that does put you onto the daily newsletter also. But this has been super effective. I had a guy email me just the other day using his CGM has seen big improvements in his glucose metabolism just from doing this in the morning, and those benefits stayed [00:02:00] later in the day.
So, lots of benefits there with health, metabolic health and improving cardiovascular performance. And you can do it without a ton of time. And then we also have electrolytes from Element. So check them out below. Nothing from Teton yet. They're in the process of rebranding a whole bunch of stuff for the new formula, which should be out as of this recording very soon, hopefully within maybe a month or two.
So soon as we have more details on that, I will let you know. And then if you enjoy lifting and playing around with different strength curves and. All the craziness that goes with that don't really have a lot of room for a cable stack. Check out my friends over at Beyond Power with the RA one. I actually love this device.
I didn't think I'd really like it as much as I would, but it looks like a little winch box you can attach to different things and it allows you to change the strength curve. [00:03:00] So I could do a seated row with maybe a hundred pounds of concentric weight. And then I can have it do the eccentric, so that basically pulling back to the machine portion with even up to 150, 160 or more pounds, I can do a mode where it simulates having chains and you can play around with all sorts of stuff.
And the other part I really like is if you're a geek like me, you can have it to tell you power, output, or even velocity as you're doing it. So if you've done any velocity based training you can now apply this seamlessly in the same device. It'll give you the display right on there with each rep. So I've been playing around with this for probably seven plus weeks now, and literally every time I've gone to train in my garage gym, I've used it for something from pulling accessory stuff, some press stuff.
And even a bunch of different grip things. So, check those guys out below. I did like the vice so much that I requested to [00:04:00] be an affiliate for them, so do make a few bucks off of that and make sure to check out all of Brian's stuff. He does training and all sorts of wonderful things. So we'll put a link to all of his stuff here and enjoy this conversation about lifting.
And incorporation of cardio with my good buddy Ryan Borstein.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome back, Brian. How are you
Bryan Boorstein: doing? Doing great. Always. Glad to connect with you and excited to chat about some hybrid training today.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Thank you so much. And I know you've gone from bodybuilding ish to endurance stuff to now hybrid and doing crazy endurance stuff.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Crazy
By what standards, right? Like, I don't know. It's all relative, but Yeah. My longest endurance still has been like three or three and a half hours, so it's nothing com it's long but it's all relative, like you said. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. So [00:05:00] what sort of propelled you down that path?
Like, I think for most people listening to this, they're like, oh I just like lifting cardio. This is horrible. Why would I do this thing? And now you're probably doing more cardio than lifting. Like, how'd that come about?
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. It was a relatively gradual process, but I think there was a tipping point which occurred when I was the, literally the day I turned 40 I decided to spend my 40th birthday by myself.
I don't know why I wanted to be alone on my 40th birthday, especially with everything we know about the importance of community and relationships and everything like that and happiness. I decided I was going to go into the mountains in Estes Park here in Colorado and go hiking for the day and then get a Airbnb with a hot tub and that whole thing.
So I did that and I was sitting in the hot tub on my 40th birthday. And instead of it being this relaxing, rejuvenating experience, I just got stuck in this loop thinking about [00:06:00] how my life was half over. And like I was on a decline from here forward. And I really hope that I was around to like, spend time with my grandkids and all of the Peter Atia iss that I'd been consuming from the last year were just, throbbing inside my brain.
And in that moment I just made some really dire life decisions, such as beginning to mouth tape at night while I sleep which I still do, years later. Beginning to incorporate cardio in a much more structured manner. And so all of that started, a little before that time, but really in earnest at that time which is now about three years ago.
And then once I started doing the cardio, it became addictive mostly because progress was so rapid. And at that point I was 24 years into lifting weights. Progress had slowed down significantly, and I think in some [00:07:00] level, at some level, I was craving that feeling of progress and adaptation and being, to being able to feel like an athlete again.
So,
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah, no I've seen that more often than not in lifters as they age, that they start doing more cardio. And I don't know if that's we know a lot more about the health ramifications of that now. It's been a lot more popularized by Dr. Peter Atia and other people, which is great. Or I do think there is something to this sensation that you can feel it, like your aerobic level is going down, but it's such a slow.
Declined. I don't think people realize it, but I think when they hit something like 40, or I just turned 50 last August, when you reflect back on it, you're like, oh yeah, this kind of has been going down for a while and I've just stuck my head in the sand and not wanted to realize it also.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. [00:08:00] I agree with that, but I also think in my situation it was even more profound because I had basically just been a lifter from, the period of being a teenager after high school sports ended all the way up until 2009 when I started doing CrossFit and then being in CrossFit, even though this isn't, zone two and it doesn't train your aerobic system the same way that doing mono structural cardio would I did have a, an increased capacity aerobically through those years of doing CrossFit. Oh yeah. And then coming out of CrossFit in 2017 ish. Okay, going back into hypertrophy I began to feel that kind of decline that you're mentioning to the point where when I reached, the early 2000 twenties where all of this occurred, I was in fact feeling, a bit less proficient in the aerobic base than I was before.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you think part of that is, I know this happened for me around Covid was covid for all the horrible things that it was, I was at home, I wasn't teaching, I wasn't traveling, I wasn't really [00:09:00] doing anything else. So it provided this convenient excuse to reduce all my other excuses, right? Because it's like when you're busy, you're like, ah, cardio, I'm fine.
I'm good enough, I don't need to do that till later. And when I was home, I'm like, well, I don't really have any excuse. Like, I have a bike, I have a roller in my garage. I have time to do these things. Even though I was working more than ever, all the excuses I had told myself in the past were also. No longer really valid.
So I'd have to come up with some new crazy excuse.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, I can definitely see that being the case in my situation, which was a little unique. I had a newborn at that point. She was born in in early 2020. And so I actually ended up deciding that my time needed to be allocating by, allocated by lifting 12 times a week.
So what I decided to do was take my normal lifting volume and split it over 12 sessions, and that way I would be able to go into the basement and hit 20 or 30 minutes multiple times a day or a week, [00:10:00] depending on what, what was needed. And that was where the majority of my like free time went when I wasn't with my daughter.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And we'll have a link to your podcast. We talked about your other experiments and stuff too, but what did you, just outta curiosity, what did you find from running that experiment?
Bryan Boorstein: It's the complete contrast to the way I did it when my son was born in 2017. So I took the approach that I think more people would take in that case, which was, I started training two or three times a week where I was like, okay, if I'm gonna be at the gym, then I want to get the most of it.
So I would spend two hours there, two or three times a week. And then when I had my daughter and I had the home gym, and it was the beginning of Covid and everything was closed, I was like, you know what? Let's change this completely around and do 12 sessions a week and see how that goes. And honestly, like both of them worked quite well.
I think the two to three times a week option was almost tougher to get up and going because I knew that the session was gonna be so brutal. But once I was there, it felt [00:11:00] amazing and I was so glad I did it. Going down into the basement and knocking out 20 or 30 minutes of training twice a day felt like a breeze.
Like I never had to motivate myself to do it. It was like, each thing I worked was one muscle group. So it'd be like, hamstrings in the morning, quads at night, or like chest in the morning, back at night type thing. And so, very little warmup, got in, got like six to eight quality work sets in and then boom, I'm done.
So I think in retrospect I preferred that way than the kind of condensed two hour sessions done less frequently.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I played around a little bit with both and where I ended up, like now when I'm not traveling is my high volume days. I just find from a time perspective, I, if I split 'em up, like it's usually about two to two and a half hours of work.
So that'd be like about an hour each session. I just find to get myself motivated to do another hour sessions is not happening. So I like doing upper body volume, lower body volume, which I'll typically [00:12:00] walk to the gym at home and do for machines and dumbbells and other stuff like that.
I'll do that one Monday and then do one Saturday. And that's pretty good. And then during the week, some of the grip sessions are longer. Sometimes they'll hit two hours, but I have more flexibility and they tend to be about an hour. And then I move cardio to, to in the morning or on the, tuesday, Thursday type thing. I think if I did that, I found I had, like, you, I had to make the sessions really short, pretty basic, pretty simple. 'cause if I took the bigger sessions and started splitting up, the odds of me hitting that second session for an hour were just not happening. But if I was at the gym and I was already feeling good, I'm like, Hey, I'm already here, already warmed up.
Everything is good. I'm just gonna ride this out until like Monday and Saturday, usually my schedule's open-ended, so I'll just, sometimes it's an hour and a half, sometimes it's two and a half hours. I just go with, how am I feeling? Am I still able to get some high quality work? If I can, I'll just go until I can't anymore.
So for me personally, that's what I found works well.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, I think ultimately both are reasonable [00:13:00] approaches and you probably just need to find the one that works best with the current state of your lifestyle and your motivations and things like that.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And you also have to be a certain kind of crazy to, for me, it's like, Hey, I have more time in my schedule.
Oh, I can live more, so like when I'm home, it's like, oh, I could do 10 to 14 hours of exercise a week. Now, I don't really think that there's an exponential benefit to that compared to eight hours. But there is some benefit. And if you're crazy people like us and that's what you like doing with your free time, then you're like, Hey, this is fun.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Well, for sure. Now it's completely different where I'm training a total of two hours a week. Like for the last 13 months, I've only lifted weights probably an average of two hours a week. So, big change from where my priorities were years ago.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And all the muscle didn't fall off your body or you still, okay, you're not gonna wither away and nothing disappeared
Bryan Boorstein: on the rain in the shower.
My body weight is the exact same and my strength is basically the same, plus or minus on certain [00:14:00] movements and certain exercises. Sure. But but yeah, across the board I would say that everything is mostly as it was a year ago. And it's been a revelation to realize that I can dial back my training so significantly and not really, lose what I worked so hard for.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you think that's also because you've got decades of doing that thing? So I've noticed this like in the grip world too. Like I do think there is something to soft tissue changes also, that appears like when you cross this sort of mythical threshold where you can maintain and keep tissue at a very low cost my buddy Adam Glass has talked a lot about this.
Like, so for him, he is been picking up the inch dumbbell for God, probably like 11 years, like a complete freak. He is like, yeah, my worst day possible, I can still pick it up. But he is done that thing for so many reps for so long and I think on grip stuff it's probably a little bit more soft tissue than muscle [00:15:00] tissue.
What are your thoughts on like, your body is so accustomed to doing that I don't wanna say it becomes permanent because obviously everything's gonna adapt to, stimulus and that type of thing, but I've just noticed this in lifters who've been doing it for decades that they don't need much of anything to keep it.
And some of 'em have even taken two, three weeks off and been just fine. Yep.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Our buddy Anders Varner and I were just dis discussing this the other day. He texted me and he was like, dude, I need to have you on the pod to discuss this low volume. 'cause this is the way, like this is what all the old guys are doing now.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think there definitely is something to it. The easiest explanation is to look at the maintenance volume research and see the majority of maintenance volumes. Will be somewhere between 33 and 50% of total volume. There was even one study that showed that younger people, I can't remember what the age range was, but they were able to maintain their muscle on one ninth of the training volume, which is Wow.
Which is pretty insane. But for older people, they found that the [00:16:00] volume needs were a little bit higher, so maybe that 33 to 50%. The kind of difficult part of assessing that research is that you can't separate intensity from volume, right? So who, who knows? If you were doing nine sets of a muscle group and you were at two or three RIR for everything, maybe two sets to failure is actually like somewhat equivalent.
Like maybe that's your 50%. Right? So, so even though that's one. Fifth of the volume or one, four and a half of the volume. It's like, because you're using more intensity in those sets, you're able to get more juice from each set. So maybe your volume needs are even lower than you think they were. So it's impossible to disentangle the intensity and the volume piece, but I've certainly found that Anders has found that.
And now I'm at a point where I would say I've been averaging between either like two to three hard sets to failure or like three to five sets with a couple RIR per muscle group. And I'm, like [00:17:00] we'd said pretty much where I was a year ago. So I think that's a, at least a good end of one experience.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Do you think some of the anecdotal fear of this comes from the land of professional bodybuilders who use just a boatload of exogenous compounds? Who I. Like I think of like Kevin LA who is notorious for going up in size and down in size. And granted these are probably also genetic freaks and hyper responders that I think a lot of our fear of loss comes from these extreme outlier examples where, like you'll see even like, like Dorian once he, you quit bodybuilding, he's like, yeah, I just quit.
Steroids cold Turkey 'cause I didn't eat 'em anymore. He's like, not the best idea. I wouldn't recommend that. And so you see these radical like ups and downs where I think that kind of informs our subconscious that, oh my God, I stopped lifting. Like all the muscle's gonna fall off me right away.
When you know you're probably not using the same compounds, you're probably not that doing it as a [00:18:00] professional level either.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, a hundred percent. There's a sect of bodybuilders as well that will take two to four months off after the Olympia every year. Yeah. And then That's so wild.
It's crazy. And just like let their bodies rest and take time off the drugs and everything. Yeah. They lose like 40 or 50 pounds and then, cycle back up and do it again. I guess if you're gonna do that's probably like a relatively safe, prudent way to do it. But Yeah I agree. I think natural people are definitely less likely to sacrifice significant amounts of muscle mass, but I think there's something to making sure that there really is a quality stimulus there.
Yeah. And so I think the risk is that you get somebody that maybe isn't quite as advanced or able to create the stimulus that someone like myself or yourself is able to do. And so they like, they look at the research or they hear me talking and they say, oh, well I was doing 10 sets and I'm making, slow gains so I can cut down to three sets.
But they, they don't go there. They don't know how to build that intensity in. [00:19:00] And so those three sets become significantly less effective than the 10. Whereas like my prior example, if they were doing those three sets and everyone was like to the house to failure I would be, it would be hard for me to believe that person is going to lose muscle by giving three really hard quality sets throughout the week for each muscle group.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that's why I think it's hard to have any mental models of this stuff because it nothing's linear. Right. And we both know, and the listeners know too, that there's a world of infinite difference between doing a couple hard sets or a couple hard training sessions per week and doing like, fuck all nothing.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. We see this in the aerospace research. You throw people into microgravity and if they don't do any countermeasures at all, like they lose muscle and bone, like there's no tomorrow. Right. Because you're not even fighting gravity at that point. So we know that the body is wired for stimulus and response.
I just think it's fascinating [00:20:00] how non-linear it is that if you just give it the minimal amount, not saying nothing but the minimal amount, like you can keep a fair amount of that tissue, but the second you think, ah, I don't really probably need to train as hard, or you drop the intensity or you don't do anything for a few months, at least.
I feel, especially with aging, it feels like with aging, the older I get, the more, it's almost like spinning a wheel for momentum. Like I want more momentum with whatever I'm training, and when that stops, as long as I'm doing something, I'm okay. But the second I don't do anything at all, I feel like I just massively regress backwards faster.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. I mean it's harder for me to take time off than to train. The reality is like, the way that I feel is very dependent upon this sort of like. Addiction or rather habit, we'll call it a habit, not an addiction. Yeah. This habit that I've created. Right. So yeah, taking days off is oftentimes harder than just going and doing the thing that, that I want to do [00:21:00] to move my body.
But like, yeah, to your point, I do think like these sessions, if you're going for this kind of maintenance approach where you're gonna start incorporating more cardio and do other things outside of just lifting like those sessions, you need to still be crushed at the end. Not crushed, like demolished, like the end of a cross workout.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Gotta I you intensity there.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Like I, I could do one set of back squats. It doesn't even have to be a 20 rep breathing squat, like one hard set of back squats to failure. And I could reasonably say that was a sufficient stimulus for the day from one set of back squats, but there aren't a lot of people out there without similar experience that are able to say the same thing or implement that same style of intensity.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think that's the hard part too, because I train at a commercial gym at home twice a week on average. Now, for the past year, we're down here in South Padre. So I train at a commercial gym here while I'm here. And I don't know, you just look around and people dinking around on their phone, falling asleep on the peck deck, [00:22:00] looking like stuffed animals.
Like there are some people who train hard and I don't even care like what they're lifting. I don't give a shit like what they're putting for weights or anything like that. It's just the amount of people with any sort of focus. And it's not like they have to turn, bright red at the end of every set and yell or anything.
But I don't know, I just see like the amount of people who are even focused on what they're doing just seems to be dropping pretty fast. Yeah.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. What do you think about the so like you usually, you train in a primarily call it old man, strong man strength kind of way, right? With your work and all that stuff.
So you're taking. Pretty decent rest between sets. I would assume. Like, you're not trying to make this into a metabolic workout, it's a strength workout. So like what do you think of that whole, the culture around scrolling phones between sets and things like that? I just think it's stupid.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Like I, I, in my head I'm like, okay, so what good would become of this?
Like I don't, I just think the amount of [00:23:00] distraction you add is just too high. Most people are distracted their entire day. And I think even if it's a skillset, like I do think like plasticity is a both a positive and a negative. So neuroplasticity, I think you can train yourself. Like for example, like when I have a launch with the Flex Dieter or the ert, I try to be on Instagram more.
I try to respond to direct messages more because people have questions. It's only open for a weekend each time. I feel like on that Monday, that Tuesday after it's closed, I. I need like a detox. Like I find myself just going to pick up my phone because within a week I feel like I trained myself in the habit of doing that.
And I think like the training should be the time in your day where you get away from all of it. And we'll talk about why I think this is beneficial for cardio too. I still use old school headphones, so no one bothers me. I write stuff down in a notebook. My wife laughs at me. 'cause I literally wear, I don't have one on now, but [00:24:00] the darker and more black metal, the shirt is with the writing of the band.
You can't read like, the better it is because no one will talk to you. And literally, if I wear a shirt to the gym and somebody talks to me, I will not wear that shirt again. I won't. But not that I'm trying to be a complete weirdo, which everyone probably thinks that I am. It's like that's my time to, to get away.
I don't want to be bothered to per se by what's going on. It's my time to. Try to focus on what is going next. And then if I have time, I'm gonna, maybe do some RPR in between I'm gonna walk around, I'm gonna try to get back to a normal heart rate, and then I'm gonna try to focus on the next step.
And what I found with, by doing more cardio stuff too, I'm able to compress my rest period substantially so you don't have to spend as much time in between. And then just like anything, like the longer you do it, like I don't rest real long, even for heavy grip stuff like actual deadlift, I just do some lighter stuff in between.
I'll do some kettle [00:25:00] ball swings, I'll do a few pull-ups, maybe I'll do one other exercise, some supination pro nasia, and then I'll go back to it again. So I've actually changed my programming to more almost of old school, like a giant set type thing. But the stuff in between is very sub max, like the kettlebell swings are just to get better hip drive.
The pull-ups are just to get a few reps of, hanging and moving. So I dunno, that's a long-winded answer to your short question. Yeah, no,
Bryan Boorstein: I was just curious 'cause I actually, I do mess around with my phone between sets and even more so when I'm training to failure with like low volumes.
Because I'm finding that I take longer breaks between my sets when I'm going to failure. Got it. Lower volumes. But it's also like, I don't know I'm looking at it as I'm gonna be taking this break anyways and the best way to calm my heart down is to be seated, not to be like walking around doing other stuff.
Sure. So it's often like I'm filming my set and then I'm editing that, and then I'm posting that set to Instagram and then I'm going back and I'm doing another set or something like that. So, I, I [00:26:00] see value in both of them, but I do think that the culture around people on their phones, if they're more novice, intermediate, or just unable to keep their focus and the phone becomes a distraction, then it definitely becomes a problem.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And even my garage, like I have multiple sessions where. I have old school CDs and a CD player and I just turn the phone off. Like, I sometimes I'm so bad, like I don't even wanna record my stuff because I just don't want to pick up the phone period. But I think if people are more advanced and you're better at what I call human dynamic range, you can get up before a set and you can get back down.
Yeah. I think in that group of people it's, I don't think it's probably that big of a deal, but when I look around most gyms, I just see people who already look like they're hyper distracted and like every sense possible. I almost got hit in the head like before we came down here by a kid who was walking, doing dumbbell lateral raises as he's walking and outta the [00:27:00] corner of my eye, I had the dumbbells here to do my dumbbell bench.
Yeah. And I look and I see this dumbbell swing and I moved out of the way. Oh my God. It like clocked me in the head. I'm like, what are you doing walking around doing these things in front of the rack? I dunno. You just see really weird shit. Yeah.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. So you do you, I guess this is another question I'll have for you.
What about, you mentioned about coming down and getting back up before the sweat, the set. So we're talking about, the balance between parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. So one of my tenets, would be that I try to stay parasympathetic as much as possible, except when I'm going for like a PR set.
So even if I'm doing like my normal workouts call it five outta six weeks, I'm trying to just stay chill. I'm not trying to listen to music that's gonna get me too amped up. I'm just, staying within my, within myself, within my breath, doing my set, coming off my set. Everything's pretty chill.
I'm not like hooing and highing and getting amped up and cussing and yelling and like any of that. But I'm saving all of that with [00:28:00] the music and with all of it for, when that time comes where I wanna try to set a PR on something.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think that's very valid and I would say. The more advanced you are, the more towards that side you probably have to be or you're just going to like torch yourself.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, exactly.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Okay. For like the grip stuff, I find because grip is so binary, I don't find, if you amp yourself up a lot for it, it makes a huge difference. Like you're either gonna get it or not. I do find longer warmups help with that. So most of those sessions, I would say I am just thinking more of a focus beforehand.
But some of the volume stuff where I'm doing more rep stuff, like the upper body stuff or the leg stuff. So what I, one things I did recently is 'cause my knees got so sore from kiteboarding, from trying to land jumps, I probably shouldn't have been landing. I decided, hey, I should probably, it was about a year and a half ago, I should start to do some more quad stuff because I've never really gone to the gym and done, like hack squats and narrow hip sled and like, I don't remember the last time I even did a freaking leg [00:29:00] extension.
And the first session I did on those, I was like. Holy shit. And like doing a hack squat where your legs are, you're going all the way down, your legs are super, narrow. Making sure you have the mobility to do it. I realized, I'm like, oh my god, my quads are so weak. Like yeah, it was squatting but it was a wider stance with hip spago deadlifting.
So I was doing a lot of posterior chain stuff and when I played around with then is doing a fair amount of buildup volume, but then only one or two top end sets. So like on a belt squad I might do seven sets, but only like the top one or two are the things I'm evaluating week to week or the H squad I might do.
Then four kind of workup sets and I've only got one set that's really like a one RAR or something that's really hard. And I found that actually worked pretty good, but I think I can get away with that because I haven't done that much intensity on that. And the loads I'm lifting are just honestly just really not that impressive at all.
Just 'cause I haven't done it. But if I were to start. [00:30:00] Really pushing everything on like a grip lift, I think I would get more fatigued. So I explain to clients is take your whole session and then think about what are your priority lifts. So on the leg day, top priority is belt squat, and then he squat after that.
Like just get some work in like, you're fine, don't worry about it. That you've got a knob like on the stereo. So over the course of your second peak set, which in my case would be a hex squat, when you do that last set, that's gonna be your peak for the session and everything is gonna be below that.
Within each set. You then have that same knob that you're slowly increasing the intensity up to that one set. And I found that tends to work too. And so for most working stuff you're thinking about, okay, yeah, go to a seven or an eight right before the set and then go back down. And then obviously if it's a, a PR attempt or something like that, then you can go a little bit more.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, that makes sense. I find that. There's a certain amount of [00:31:00] willpower and focus and attention that you have per Oh yeah. Session per day, per week, per month. Yep. You can expand it out as long as you want to, and especially with the hybrid training where I'm trying to separate my attention into these different buckets and my focus and my willpower and use it sparingly in some cases the more parasympathetic I can stay and the less excited I'm able to get in the whatever domain I'm doing, whether it's the cardio or the weights or mobility or anything I seem to then be able to have more that I can apply to other things.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And to me that's a, that's an efficiency adaptation, which has been well documented in the endurance world, but is not talked a lot about in the strength world. Right. So one of the things I look at is also raising the floor. So if I'm doing like a grip lift, like I, right now, so the 1 35 inch replica.
Like last March, I had a week where I hit it every single day, no warmup, walk out, just [00:32:00] picked it up. Unfortunately over the past year of travel and everything else, it's still hit or miss, but my goal is not necessarily the next max on it, which would be great and will happen. I'm looking more at, okay, where, when do I get to that point where I could be half hung over four hours of sleep, like barely make it to the gym and just pick it up.
So I can do that with a hundred right now, but I can't do it with a 1 35. So I also look at what is that kind of, that minimum of the floor where, like you said, you're in probably more of a parasympathetic state. There's no amp up, you're not drinking, you're not snorting four grams of caffeine or anything before.
And once that is higher, then you know, if you take the intensity and you crank it up, like you're definitely gonna be a above that. I think people too often just measure the peaks, which, I measure those, I measure my clients. I think it's great. Then we forget to look at the floor and then we forget to look at the efficiency of that.
Okay, now, great. Now how many days in a row can [00:33:00] you do that thing with a minimal amount of effort, but you can still get the output. I think the endurance world has been doing this for a long time. Movement, efficiency zone two, average heart rate, even cardiac development stuff. But I think in the lifting world, it's the same principle, but just not talked about as much.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. I guess that would just go back to like the old periodization models, yeah. Daily undulating or whatever other kind of models seems to fit your needs.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think those are useful, but my bias, when I read about those, I feel like it's an overemphasis on the nervous system and the learning aspect, which is huge and definitely beneficial.
I always wanna see people, because I've had a few lifters I've worked with who came to me doing that, and the ones that were just torching themselves were the ones that felt like. If they're using A DUP, which is real popular for a while, they feel like everything had to be an eight or a nine and they make it about three weeks.
Right, right. When you look at the people who are successful, even very high level lifters, it was like, no, just kinda like the Bulgarian system. Just go in, get [00:34:00] the work done. Much of it is sub max and then you've got, your peak days here and here.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, exactly. Like the power and the strength days are sub max.
Yep. More neural based. And then your hypertrophy day in that sequence would be more like to failure. Work hard. Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. And when you added more cardio stuff, all the muscle didn't fall off your body again, so the, you didn't have any interference effect.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, I don't think so.
It's at least from the visual side and the scale side and the strength side, like those three kind of pillars they seem to, to all be good. And then so the only real benefit is that of. Got improved cardiovascular conditioning. So, I do think it's funny how people think that doing cardio is gonna like shed the fat off and make them ripped and like all this stuff, but it's like, cardio almost has no impact on aesthetics.
So I get clients all the time that are asking about, well if I do cardio, I'm gonna get abs and all this stuff. And I'm like, no, you guys are like completely [00:35:00] mixing up the idea here. Like the weights and the diet are the things that are gonna make you look a certain way. The cardio is gonna make you feel a certain way.
And I think that's been the biggest realization for me is that the reason I'm so obsessed with this cardio thing the last few years is because of the way that it makes me feel. And you just can't you can't get that same feeling from the weights.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It's a different, describe that. 'cause for me it's having had a very low VO two max and having had a better vo, O2 max.
It's, I equate it to my buddy Carl, or said that, and he used this with testosterone, but I think it applies here, is that imagine if you're sitting in a warehouse that had a hundred lights and every day you live in this warehouse and every day just one light goes out. He's like, by the end of a hundred days, you're sitting in the dark, but you probably don't realize how dark it is in there.
Right. And I feel like that with the aerobic system, it's a slow decline. And you don't really notice it until it becomes really bad. Or you do an assessment or you do a test. The flip side is [00:36:00] you do, I notice that if my aerobic system is much better, like I just feel so much better day to day.
Like my sleep is better and my energy level is better, my cognition is better. Like pretty much almost anything that I want to do feels better. So even though I don't really like doing cardio, it's getting better, but the benefits I've been able to feel and, what clients have reported is worth the investment and the time.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think there's two kind of factors of how cardio makes me feel this certain way. And one of them is during and post sure. Probably more post than during, but that's more of that acute effect where there's like the sense of accomplishment, but there's also the kind of catecholamine response that occurs, during, and then specifically after where one of my favorite moments is after a long ride or run, and I've emptied the tank at the end, if that's the goal, or just, sustain zone two, if that's the goal.
And I just I'm done and I hit end on [00:37:00] my watch or whatever, and I just lay down on the ground and stare up at the sky. And I just have like this five minutes of cathartic relief where I'm so proud of myself for getting it done. My body is like vibrating in this euphoric state that is, is difficult to compare to anything without, illicit drug comparison.
And, and it's just, yeah. It's just such a gratifying feeling. So that's more of that like acute, immediate. And then all the things that you said afterwards it's the energy, it's the cognitive, it's the sleep, but it's really like everything in life is easier. Yeah. And it's not just the comparison of, because I do hard things, that life feels easier because I think there's a piece of that too.
And that that also is from the weights, that's also from a number of things that aren't specific to cardio. But from cardio, what I mean by life is easier is that every movement that I do throughout the day, whether that's, packing the kids' bags and getting them in the car and taking them to school and all of these things.
Require less energy than they would if my [00:38:00] aerobic system was worse. So it's like that base is higher. And thus, even these low intensity activities like walking around and living life or moving furniture or I mean what, whatever it is that has to be done, it's less taxing on me and therefore I have more energy and focus and willpower to apply to other things.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I think that's why I feel like the fitness industry's gotten a little weird is everyone's like, oh, you want more energy? You wanna do all this stuff. And it always comes back to, oh, you need to increase your metabolism. It's like, that's a whole nother just topic. But if your VO O2 max is really low, like your aerobic engine is really small, by definition, everything you're doing is a higher max.
So I equate it to, you might, I dunno if you're old enough to remember like the yugos, the ones that little cars that like little three cylinder lawnmower engine in 'em for a while. Not sure if you compare that to like a Toyota Yaris. Right. I had to rent some of those things for a while. Not a lot of fun.
It's like a complacent little squirrel on a [00:39:00] roller skate and they call it a car. Yeah. Compared to a Corvette engine, which is a V eight, like the Corvette, you're barely gonna have the RPMs go up to get to the supermarket. The little Yaris, you're gonna like freaking red line it to try to get to Cub foods.
Right. Like everything you're doing is a higher percentage of your max by definition. If you have a bigger Corvette engine, like you were saying, yes, you have a bigger engine, you're creating more energy, but everything you're doing by definition is more sub max. It is literally, by the definition, easier to do because you have more capacity.
Same with strength. Like if you're stronger doing reps, all the rep work is gonna be easier because it is so much more sub max compared to not having as big of a one around.
Bryan Boorstein: Yep. Yeah, a hundred percent. I agree.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And what did you find with training in terms of time, because you're doing a fair amount of time now, so some listeners might be [00:40:00] like, oh my God, I'm not doing a three hour ride.
That guy's crazy. Like, how did you end up there and what did you start with? And the third part of that question is where do you think that sweet spot is for most people? Because again, it's not, in my experience, it's not gonna be linear. Like you're definitely more is better and then you reach a point where you're starting to plateau out a little bit in terms of benefit.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. So when it started, when I first started dedicating myself with structured cardio. I was still, in this mindset that weights needed to be the priority. I wasn't quite ready to cut my volume yet. I was very much, trying to optimize hypertrophy still. And so I followed a little bit of the Peter Atia suggestion, which was two-ish zone.
Two sessions a week that were around 45 minutes or so, and one kind of harder interval session where you try to spend, call it 15 or 20 minutes of time and zone. So that might be like a 40 minute workout where [00:41:00] 15 or 20 of those minutes are hard effort with some interval rest in between.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, like a VO two max interval type thing.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, exactly. Like for the four by fours or something like that. So that was what I did probably for the first. Six months or so of this, three times a week cardio, and I was still lifting four or five times a week. And that actually, was a pretty good balance.
It was probably too much on the lifting side as I now realize in retrospect. But I didn't know any better at the time. Then about a year into the cardio, some of my buddies and I here in, in Boulder decided to sign up for a gravel race out in Moab kind of fruit of Moab area in western Colorado.
And we had about six months to train for that. And the race was 50 miles with a little over 3000 feet of vert. So it was. It was more than I had ever done we'll call it that. Because I'd been following this Peter ATT model. My rides didn't really exceed 45 minutes at the time. And I realized that if I was gonna have to ride 50 miles, which was probably gonna [00:42:00] be three and a half hours or something that that I was gonna need to train for it a little bit.
And so that first full year of trying to do the hybrid thing, I still wasn't willing to relinquish my commitment to the weights. And so I still continued to try to train four or five times a week with weights, but I was also doing cardio five or six times a week. And at that point, the majority of my cardio was still zone two stuff.
'cause I wanted to try to keep fatigue down. And I figured if I did that, I'd be able to. Have a better chance of maintaining muscle in the weight room and things like that. So I would say of those five sessions a week of cardio, four of them were zoned two, and then I'd do one kind of harder session. This was actually fine for a few months, but as you'd probably assume it, it caught up with me around, call it March to August.
What is that, like five months, about four or five months into this experiment I hit a wall and I was just like, I don't wanna do either. I don't [00:43:00] wanna lift and I don't want to do cardio. So because the race was coming up at that point, it was, I think, two months away. At that point I was like, okay, I need to optimize the cardio and I'm just, for a short term, I'm going to cut the, I'm gonna cut the weights way back.
I'm just gonna go to two times a week full body, and I'm just going to focus on the cardio. So I then rent the cardio up to six times a week. I was doing four zone two sessions, which were now getting longer. So some of the zone two sessions would get up to like two hours, two and a half hours, something like that.
And I was doing the two, interval. Zone four, zone five VO two max type stuff, lifting twice a week. Then when we got about a month out from the race, I cut the lifting back to one full body day and one upper body day because my legs were getting pretty taxed from all the biking. Continued with the same dose of, four zone twos and two VO two max sessions.
We had the bike race in October of 23, and I exceeded all expectations. Like I, I thought perfect scenario, [00:44:00] I might be able to do this thing in like three hours and 15 minutes, maybe three hours and 10 minutes. I ended up doing it in two hours and 56 minutes. Oh damn. And ended up placing fourth overall and third for my age group, which was,
Dr Mike T Nelson: that's great.
Bryan Boorstein: Super surprising and cool for my first race. And then at that point I hired you to be my rowing coach. Yeah. And so, I, I approached you and I said, I'm gonna take this winter season away from biking. It's too cold. Let's focus on rowing. You. And I decided to focus more on VO two max because I'd been doing more of this endurance type work, and I was continuing to lift four or five days a week again as we were only rowing, I think three times a week at that point.
Yep. And so we did that for a couple months. I prd my 2K with you. I think it was 7 0 3 or 7 0 1. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. I think
Dr Mike T Nelson: your starting one, was it seven 15? I gotta written down somewhere. So
Bryan Boorstein: I did a 7 28 when we initially tested, and then we [00:45:00] tested again and I did a seven 15 or something.
Yeah. And then when we did our final test, it was like a 7 0 1 or a 7 0 3. Yeah. So yeah, really significant improvements. I was able to hold. I think it was 300 watt average for that entire seven minutes, which was way more than I ever thought I'd be able to do. Yeah. I get from
Dr Mike T Nelson: seven 30 to 7 0 3, that's a big difference.
That's way different than going from nine minutes to eight 30. Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. For reference for people who are not familiar with rowing.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Yeah. So I felt great about that and then I was burned out. I think coming from that crazy bike race situation of over training both things and then going into the rowing where I think mentally just attacking that 2K was so overwhelming.
I did three 2K max tests in like a three month period or something. Oh
Dr Mike T Nelson: yeah. We beat the shit outta you because we had you do this crazy major intervals and stuff too.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Yeah. So then when when springtime of [00:46:00] 24 rolled around, I had a much better perspective on how I was gonna go about arranging my training.
And I think this is where I've really found some peace with this process and found like a good balance between the two. So at that point I was like, you know what? The two times a week full body worked so well for me, and I was able to create such great adaptations in cardio that I think my plan going forward is gonna be to train two times a week full body for the warmer months as I, bike a ton and make that the priority.
And then in the colder months, I'd ramp up the lifting again, dial back the cardio. Well, that was the plan. I got through 2024 with that whole thing. I never trained more than two times a week in the gym. I was doing four to six sessions of cardio a week, mostly on the bike. And then bike season ended this year and.
Instead of switching to four times a week, lift four to five times a week lifting, which I was, my plan initially, I was like, I'm really enjoying this two times a week, full body thing. And I'd also like to incorporate running [00:47:00] now that it's getting colder. So I was like, I'm just gonna keep two times a week full body, an hour a session, and now I'm gonna pick up running in the colder months.
And that's what I did through the end of 2024 and into, where we are now in early 2025, we're finally in April. I'm not sure when this thing's gonna come out, but bike season has back upon us and I'm pretty much committed at this point for the long term to either be doing two full body workouts a week or three split routine workouts a week where each session is 40 to 45 minutes.
And so that's actually what I'm experimenting with this year. So instead of the two times a week full body, I'm doing this three times a week thing where the sessions are no more than 45 minutes. I have one day that's lower body focused with abs and calves and stuff. I have another day that's chest and back basically.
And then another day that's shoulders and arms. But on the shoulder and arm day, I'm making sure to include pull-ups and dips and pushups and kind of other stuff where you'll get a little bit of [00:48:00] auxiliary work for the back and the chest in there. So I'm essentially hitting all the upper body muscle groups twice a week while hitting all of the lower body muscle groups once a week, continuing to do the cardio, four to six times a week, depending on how long and how intense the sessions are.
Kind of autoregulation that. And I honestly don't foresee myself going back to anything more than that amount of lifting any time in the near future.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Very cool. And then that's just because you feel a greater sense of accomplishment from doing cardio. Feel better after. Just overall something to strive for.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. I mean it's that, but I think it's also just that I realize that I'm not losing anything from lifting this. Yeah. And so why give so much more to something that's gonna produce trivial or even nebulous results in the long run? Like if I can train two or three times a week for a total of two hours a week in the gym and have similar aesthetics and strength to where I would be if I was training double or triple that.
Yeah, it just makes sense to me to [00:49:00] spend that time more on getting outside, being in nature, going for walks, hikes, bike rides, running, playing sports, whatever it is that I want to do. It just opens up the playbook so much more when you're not committed so much time to being in a gym.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that's why I think having a flexible approach and having people, like even clients, I want them to do something else other than lifting.
It's like, take up a sport, even if it's an endurance sport, or go learn to surf. Go learn to kiteboard. Hell even play pickleball. I don't even care anymore. Like just do something else too, because I know even cardiovascular exercise is good, lifting is good, but I just think like if we were to teach a robot to catch a ball, like how hard is that?
Like have one robot throw something to another robot and have 'em catch it. But like for humans, like those kind of skills I just feel like are deteriorating. So just do something in a semi chaotic environment. Even if it's just on occasion. Go [00:50:00] snowboarding in the mountains, go at least go mountain biking.
Go put yourself in an environment that's a little bit the same, but yet you can't 100% predict exactly what's gonna happen. I just think that's like a huge missing component. And you can work that into fitting in your routine also.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. The difference between being on like a Peloton stationary where you don't even have to worry about core control or anything like that.
No balance stability going out to like. Mountain biking is an extreme example, but yeah, like I've, my wife does Peloton multiple times a week, and then occasionally we'll go out on a Friday and I'll take her on some like gravel trails. And initially you'll always hear her being like, whoa, this is like, so different than the Peloton.
Because she's having to like balance and control her core and stuff like that. But yeah, to your point, I think. Lateral movement and explosiveness are also two pieces that get really unfortunately ignored in the scheme of like, you gotta train your heart and your cardiovascular system and you gotta train your bones and your muscular system, [00:51:00] and those are the two most important things.
Then it's like, yeah, you should be able to do these things working in different planes of motion and you should be able to like jump and land and descend and climb. And all of these different aspects as well that go into it. So using unstable footing on things like, like I'm a huge fan of going out into the mountains and doing hiking as well when the weather's warmer because you get these boulders that you have to traverse and there's little rocks and pebbles on the ground, and anytime you're descending down a mountain, there's eccentric control where you're having to actually keep yourself from like sliding out and falling on the way down.
And so these are skills that just get lost in this focus on the two paradigms of health.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah I agree with that. How is your cardiovascular training set up now? Is it still mostly zone two with some interval work or what does it look like?
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, so now I am pretty much auto-regulation, the cardio training on how I feel on a given day with on, with an understanding that there's certain things I want to achieve within each [00:52:00] week.
And so in each week I wanna have at least one session that takes me above zone two. And this doesn't have to be like a zone five interval VO two max type workout. I'm perfectly happy going out for like an hour long zone three where there's like, a little bit of elevation and I'm constantly sitting at 160 beats per minute, but it's like very sustainable,
Dr Mike T Nelson: that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. And what's your max heart rate for reference?
Bryan Boorstein: My max heart rate is 180 6 1 8 6.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Okay. So that's a pretty high sustained output too.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, I can hold like low to mid zone four. I. For, yeah, for an eternity. Yeah. Like, it's not fun, but like, no, but yeah. Yeah. But that, so one, my zone four, I have set up from 1 58 to 1 72, so I have zone four pretty wide.
And I like to just hang out in that, like low to mid range of zone four when I'm doing a ride like that. And then the rest of the days are generally zoned two. But. I've been messing with duration, so like around my leg day. This is the other thing I [00:53:00] like about the split, instead of it being a full body workout, is that around my leg days, I can do less intense cardio.
I can do shorter cardio sessions, but still get the stimulus. And then when I get further away from the leg days and I'm doing more upper body stuff, I'll generally take a zone two session and I'll push that out to like two hours-ish. That'll be plus or minus, depending on how far I am into the season.
Like right now, I haven't hit a two hour workout yet. I'm still at 1 40, 1 45. Eventually that'll get up to like two and a half hours. And then maybe that'll also be where I put one of those interval workouts, around the upper body days a little bit more, so that I know that when I'm getting in there for leg day, that my legs are as fresh as they could be reasonably.
So yeah, I would say I'm hitting. As far as timing, I'd say I'm spending six to seven hours a week on cardio, and that doesn't include walking. I walk on top of that. But six to seven hours a week of dedicated cardio and then, two hours a week of weight training. So call it, eight to nine hours a week of dedicated training.[00:54:00]
Nice.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And you don't consider walking cardio? I'm actually making a joke.
Bryan Boorstein: It depends. Could be
Dr Mike T Nelson: cardio for some people. Right. I saw, we'll say very fit people posting that you don't need any cardio, bro. You just need to walk. And I'm like, really? That's your cardio. Like to me walking is a different thing.
Yeah. Like you should just do it. It's a good thing to do. But for most people who are in reasonable shape, I don't think cardio is gonna discover their cardiovascular needs.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, I agree. One of the things that you and I have talked about a lot in the past and I think is getting more attention is number of breaths per minute during different types of cardio that you're doing.
And there seems to be a lot of. F people coming out talking about how, your breath rate is a true physiological sign even more than your heart rate. And so there was a guy on your podcast, I can't remember who it was, who was saying that whenever he has his athletes do zone two, he wants them to always be at or under [00:55:00] 15 breaths a minute.
And that, obviously walking is gonna be less intense than zone two, so your breath rate would be significantly lower there. And so I've been spending time actually trying to calculate my breath rate until they come out with these, like, apparently there's technology in the works that's going to calculate respiratory rate for you and you can like, see it on your screen, like you can see your heart rate.
But until that point, when I'm doing my zone two. I'll take a 32nd period or a minute period and I'll just count my breaths as I'm doing it. And it's always right at that, like 14 to 15 breaths per minute mark. Nice. And and so I've found that to be extremely useful with clients too, when we're trying to determine what the right intensity is.
And they're like, well, it could be heart rate or it could be RPE or it could be output or like any of these number things. It's like, hey, just count your breath. And I think that gets you pretty close to where you want to be. What do you think about that?
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I think so. I played around with a device, I think it's called an Oxo, OXA.
It's a little strap you put around and I just started playing with it. I brought it down here to play with it. Again, [00:56:00] it's a bugger to put on because it has to fit really tight. So it's looking at ribcage expansion as to try to determine respiratory rate. You're like a Garmin, like other watches will do respiratory rate by looking at that pulse pressure that comes by, there's a way of using math.
You can figure that out. But they don't display it live. And so I was talking to a guy the other day that it would be nice in the future if we have a device, like a NOx or a Moxie or something that's using nearest technology to look at a muscle. We've got one heart rate strap on or maybe no strap device.
It gives us heart rate and then it also gives us respiratory rate at the same time. So you could see local SM O2, maybe nitric oxide, respiratory rate and heart rate, and it would all be just on one little app that you just hit start and it just does everything automatically. Yeah. Because I think without that live feedback it's very hard.
So I've done sessions with a Garmin where I've done zone two [00:57:00] and I'm like, okay, I'm really gonna work on pacing my breathing. And what you realize then is at least I do, eh, 20 minutes into it, I'm like, Hey, what about this or that? Like, not even looking at my phone or anything. Like I completely zoned out.
Right. Lost complete track of my respiratory rate. God forbid if I try to answer, messages or do anything else. But I didn't know that until after because I would look and I would see, oh yeah, okay. I was like, 20 minutes, what happened there? So I think the future is having those things live again, not that you would use it for every session, but like you were saying, to give yourself one, a baseline marker, give yourself a calculation, and then you get the feedback just like velocity based training or anything else of what you're doing, and you can adjust on the fly.
Just by watching that feedback, you will get closer to doing the thing. And then you can work with your coach to be like, oh man, that was too hard or that was too easy. And so you, I think especially for these people I have that have really high respiratory rates overnight, like 16, 17, 18 breaths per minute, I [00:58:00] want them to do some breath rate control, some zone two stuff, some walking and yeah, we can use RPE and we can use some other things and.
It's useful, but I think having that feedback and having a way to measure it before and after it will be super helpful.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, I agree. Have you messed around with the VO two master at all?
Dr Mike T Nelson: Not too much. I have a PIN NOI device, so I've used that a fair amount. And obviously respiratory rate, all that stuff will show up on that.
VO two master will do the same thing. Also, full disclosure, I'm an affiliate for PNO if people have any questions, but it definitely works great for that. The problem is I don't wanna wear a frigging mask when I'm doing my training rides.
Bryan Boorstein: Right. There's a lady that runs around my neighborhood every single day.
I see her with her VO two master mask on. Oh wow. Every day. I just assumed that it was gonna be one of those things where when you're going out testing that you're gonna wear it, once a month or once every couple months. But every single day I see her out and she's just doing her endurance work with this thing on, and I wanna ask her about it, [00:59:00] but I don't want to interrupt her workout.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And even then, like. It'd be useful. And I've done crazy shit like that for a while just to get data. But even then, I think it's limited because if you're not getting that live feedback, she wouldn't know unless she's looking at an app or something during to figure out where she's at. You would get all that retroactively at the end.
And that's still useful, right? That's better than no data whatsoever. But I just think having to be minimally invasive, having to be live, especially when you're biking or something where you're just, it's very easy to look at a screen, running. Maybe you just have it on your watch, it just displays it or something like that, or biking.
Yeah, I just think having that live feedback would be useful. So yeah, I agree. Someone invent that device and let us know.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, I think Peter Atia was saying in that episode he did with the Christian Blumenfield coach. He just did Oh yeah,
Dr Mike T Nelson: the Norwegian guy. That was amazing. We,
Bryan Boorstein: yeah, he, I think in that episode he was talking about how they're working on one, that it's gonna have it like a appear in your headset or something where you can just see it right there.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, they're trying to [01:00:00] do some stuff too, like the Google Glass, not Google Glass. What is the Ray Bands glasses where it'll display like heads up displays and stuff like that. Because in theory then you could run into your phone, you could Bluetooth it to the glass and it could, give you indication of where you're at again.
I think that's super cool. I would, I think it's useful, but we're back to how do you use heart rate, so when I did the volunteer for the Race Across America, two of the, three of the riders used heart rate exclusively, and one of 'em didn't. And I was like, what? Okay, wait, and he's like, no, I just use heart rate so much.
Like I know where my heart rate is almost all the time.
Bryan Boorstein: That's fair.
Dr Mike T Nelson: And he was actually correct. Yes. Like he didn't crash, he didn't burn out. Like he knew what was high intensity, what was moderate, what was low. And so advanced athletes, I want them to use the technology, know about where they're at, and then.
If they're competitive, a lot of times I'll have 'em take all technology off. Like, don't measure your pace, don't measure your heart rate, because if you're in a [01:01:00] race and something shits the bed, like, you still gotta figure this out. Yeah. Right. And so I think that's, I remember something Dr. Cobb said years ago, like, do the drill.
Forget the drill. Like, use the information, get it to where you want and get it so you can repeat it now take it away and see if you can still repeat it.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Over the first few years of my cardio thing, I was obsessed with data. I could not get enough data and I would have like my watch and I would have my phone, on the handlebars, on the quad wax.
So I could see that the whole time. I could see all of the information I needed in real time and then. This year, now that I feel like I'm really understanding, through my breath rate and through the way that I feel my RPE, I'm able to determine where I am. The last few zone two rides I've done.
I've hit the thing, track the data, but I turned my phone off so that I can actually see it and cover my watch. And I just went through this entire 90 minute zone two ride and there'd be moments where I would, be like, okay, I think my heart rate's getting a little high right now. Like maybe it's in the low one forties, but I think I'm still in [01:02:00] zone two.
And then, okay, now this was easy. I think I'm at 1 22 or whatever, and then at the end I go back and look at the data and literally my low was like 1 22 and my high was 1 41. And I was like, I fucking nailed that. Like, no, that's awesome. That feels so good. So I do think that makes a ton of sense and it also makes the experience more enjoyable.
Yeah. Like to be able to be out in nature and actually absorbing nature and being enveloped by it instead of feeling like you're operating in this way where like nature's there but you're hyper-focused on the data that you're receiving. It definitely takes away some of the kind of enjoyment of that experience.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And also just trusting your body of when to adjust intensity and when not to, right. There's a time for eustress versus distress and knowing where that balance is. And I don't think maybe it's some point we'll have technology that can guide us through all of that, but I think we're still really far away from that even.
As much as I love using, heart rate [01:03:00] variability, heart rate and respiratory rate, all this stuff, I, there is a time and a place I think to decide, okay, my goal was to make this more eustress session, so I'm gonna back off. I don't think it's there, or, nope, today was the day I said I'm gonna go for it.
I made this mistake a couple weeks ago. I did a one K before my lifting session at home. Started off, I'm like, oh, this is great. I haven't done a hard one K in quite a while. Ah, this is awesome. So I decided at that point I'm like, alright, today's the day balls out, here we go. And then halfway into the row, I was like, this is horrible.
I hate this. My lungs are on fire, my legs are burning so bad. But I have this little rule that once I decide it's go time, it's go time. Like I have to finish this thing as hard as I possibly can. And it still was only like, two seconds off my pr, which I was pretty happy about. Yeah, my lifting session was absolute dog shit.
Right. Don't do that. Exactly. Don't go to an RP of a nine and a half before your lifting session. Yeah. But I think those times are useful. I don't regret doing it, [01:04:00] so I do think you have to have those times where it's gonna be hard and the goal was just to do the thing to all of your effort.
But those are also extremely infrequent too.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, for sure. We did a back in like 2012, we were trying to qualify for an NLI, which was a CrossFit competition at the time. Oh, nice. And and then one of the workouts was a I think a 500 meter, as hard as you can go or, and it was a thousand, it was a thousand as, as hard as you can go.
So I, it was the exact same thing. Like we were supposed to do this second workout of the qualifier like two hours later, and I did that thousand meter all out and spent the next two hours, like literally crumbled. Yeah. And I was like I don't think I can do this second workout right now.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It's crazy how, three and a half minute, four minute, whatever your time is, it's just, there's something about that three minute all out time zone that it's just miserable. Like Yeah. The wing gates, the 32nd wing gates they're miserable. There's no question, but there's something about that [01:05:00] 62nd to 180 second range when you're really trying to go all out.
Yeah. Just
Bryan Boorstein: fucking miserable. Yeah. It's the anaerobic with mixed with the aerobic, like that, that, that intersection of the two kind of, yeah. It's awful.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. When you were doing more running pun intended, did that really impact the rest of your cardio? Because what I've noticed with some people is just the impact of the more leg strikes and things like that, it takes a little bit more to recover from, even if we tried to normalize it with heart rate.
Bryan Boorstein: Yes. Especially at first. So I don't know if it was a mistake or not, but I've been walking around in my zeros for years. I have been wearing zeros and everyone always said, if you're gonna run in, in these minimalist shoes, make sure you really start slowly. And so I did. But there's, Achilles tendonitis was really gnarly in the beginning.
Especially because I'm really trying to focus on my stride length being shorter and getting a higher [01:06:00] cadence of steps per minute. Like when I first started running, my cadence was under 150. Like I, I, now, six months later, I can't, I don't know how I was running et cadence that, that slow, but I'm able to cadence at like the high one sixties now pretty consistently.
And and it makes such a big difference in the impact that it has on the soft tissues in your body, taking those smaller, more succinct steps. So I think I did some. I think part of the longer stride length where I'm putting the brakes on thing. Yeah, you're like
Dr Mike T Nelson: Overriding had that eccentric.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. It had that impact on my Achilles. And so now, even though I've been running now for like six or seven months, I still have Achilles tendonitis. It's getting better, but it's been really hard to get rid of. So that's for sure. One thing I'm even debating stopping running in my zeroes, even though I've now conditioned to it.
I want to feel what it feels like to run in something with like a little bit more cushion and see if that feels better. But yeah I had to be more cognizant of putting, running around my lifting days, especially [01:07:00] the lower body days, because if I would do a hard run or a long run, one of the two, and by the way long runs for me, were like 45 minutes.
Like we're not talking about like a two hour run. Yeah. That's so long
Dr Mike T Nelson: for meat heads. That's way longer than I've ever ran. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. So. Yeah, if I did a hard run or a long run, I just I would notice the impact on the leg day, way more than I do with biking. With biking, I don't notice any impact on leg day unless I'm climbing hills.
Like I can even go up to like zone four, zone five, intensity on flat ground and it's fine, but it's like climbing hills has a serious impact on my ability to recover in proximity to leg days. With running, it didn't matter. Any sort of running around leg day had a bit of an impact.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that, that's what I've noticed too, which is why I'm a big fan for most meatheads to start, like use the rower, use the bike.
Like if you feel comfortable running and you can run with even acceptable gate, I think it's fine. I think you should get to the point where you should be able to run. Not saying you have to do it all the time, [01:08:00] but. Man, most lifting meatheads, if they run, I wanna throw battery acid in my eyes instead of watch that.
It's pretty miserable.
Bryan Boorstein: I actually like, have thought about wanting to record myself or have somebody record me running, because in my mind I'm like, yeah, I'm taking these short steps. I just, I look like a runner now. Like, I got this, but I feel like if someone were to film me from the outside, they'd be like, what's this lumbering 200 pound idiot doing right now?
Like, overstriding, like breathing like a rhino. So, yeah, I
Dr Mike T Nelson: don't know. Yeah. Well, if you look at like, the amount of muscle mass and most lifting meat heads have compared to runners, like, that adds up. Like if you're talking an additional 20, 40, 50, 60, or more pounds per impact in the amount of hundreds to thousands of impacts you're doing, like the physics adds up over time.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, absolutely. And I feel that for sure. Like I, I read the book Born to Run, and that was my initial impetus to start getting into running. I thought it was amazing. That's why I started in the Minimalist Love shoes as well. Love book. It's a great book. So, so good. Awesome. So entertaining as well. Oh [01:09:00] yeah.
But I absolutely do not feel like I was Born to Run. And the argument in the book is that everybody's born to run. Right. And I'm like, I've been doing this now for like six or seven months and I still don't feel that way.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Does someone ever write a book called Born to Lift? Someone must have written that by now.
Right? If they didn't, then that's my life right there. Yeah. Last question as we wrap up. Have you found zone two work, assuming it's true zone two work to be effective for recovery? So one of the things I played with is, if you look at like, Sandra Milan's work with high intensity bikers, competitive cyclists are just crazy.
Anyway, I just wonder, and we've talked about this before. How much of the benefit they saw from zone two is changes like mitochondrial density, all these other benefits for aerobic base? Or is it just they're crazy racers and if you tell 'em not to do anything, they're gonna go ride anyway. So you're just taking [01:10:00] down the intensity.
And it's so sub max that it's almost more recovery work. Than beneficial, if that question makes sense.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. I think the way that I would interpret that is that it's more about zone two being less than the other zones than it is about zone two on its own being recuperative. So it's like, like even people like myself not, we don't even need to use a professional cyclist, but if I were to go out of my own volition and go ride my bike, every time I go out, I'm gonna see a hill and I'm gonna be like, I need to attack that hill.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah.
Bryan Boorstein: And so that's my natural inclination, right. Zone two by saying I'm going out for a zone two ride, it pulls me back and it keeps me from doing that. So I don't think that zone two in itself is recuperative. Like I still think there is a tangible fatigue cost to zone two. It's not like, oh, I did zone two, so now I can lift more because I did my zone two, I'm now recovered more.
Like maybe in a novice that's the case where like you and I were saying it's, you're decreasing rest periods [01:11:00] between sets. You're decreasing the cost of living life outside of the gym. So maybe initially you do get a little bit of that recovery from zone two. But I think once you get to a certain point, you can't say, zone two is helping me recover.
It's still a fatigue cost. Like you're still working above resting state. So I think it's more about dialing you back and keeping you from going harder than it is about actually being, recovering, facilitating recovery itself.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I'm trying to think of better. Terminology for this.
'cause my hypothesis is, and people like yourself who are doing a fair amount of cardiovascular stuff, their zone two rates are a little bit higher. They put in years of work at that area. What I have seen is that there's definitely a cost to doing that versus not doing it. The conversely, what I've seen in lifters who haven't done much of any cardio, as long as you can keep it very [01:12:00] sub-threshold, up to a point, it actually seems to enhance their recovery.
And my thought is they just don't have enough blood flow. Like they're total aerobic work per week is maybe an hour. Right. So I'm talking to people who are not necessarily training for endurance. But I feel like it's a different thing and I feel like it needs a different word.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. No, I know what you mean. It's a different. Impact on somebody that's untrained or less trained than it is on somebody that's more trained.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Right. Yeah. Especially on a bike where it's concentric only.
Bryan Boorstein: Right. Right. And then I would say there's also a component of duration as well, because definitely even zone one for seven hours is still a very fatiguing workout.
Even though individually in any given 10 minute period, it's not fatiguing. Right. Like when I zone two, if I were to go out and do a 30 or 45 minute zone two Yeah. I could see that being something that facilitates recovery. Yeah. But when I'm going out and doing a two hour zone two ride, the last [01:13:00] 40 minutes of that, I'm oh man, like my legs hurt.
There's a lot of like, fatigue. Like, and my power is diminishing, even though my heart rate is the same, there's that cardiac drift. And my power is decreasing. Like, I think once you reach a point where cardiac drift is occurring and power is decreasing, like at that point you can't say that it's facilitating recovery.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And these are all probably max 60 minutes. Most of 'em are probably sub 30 minutes, sub 45. Yeah. Right. And you're not seeing any cardiac drift. You're not seeing any of those. Most of the time it's a dude riding a bike in their garage, like the temp is relatively controlled, that kind of thing. So yeah, I would agree with that.
'cause that's what I've seen. And I think that's some of the issue. When you talk about zone two, is it in someone who's more advanced, highly trained, are they intermediate trained or they just get a benefit 'cause they're just pushing more blood around without a high cost, so
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Yeah.
Like, as you, it's like the parallel would be drawing to weightlifting where just [01:14:00] because somebody can do a 200 pound back squat for 10 reps to failure, that's not the same as someone doing a 500 pound back squat for 10 reps to failure. Like same cost on that person individually in that moment, but the actual like cost on the fatigue is significantly higher in this, in the latter example.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that's why we like you wouldn't use like exactly. Using percentages of one RM breakdown. Like if you've got a guy who's a high level powerlifter and a squatting 700, they're probably not doing a lot of 90 plus percent of their one rm. If your back squats 1 35, you could probably do 90% of your one RM a lot more.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. So if you're like pcha and you're putting out yeah, 345 watts for your zone two work like that's literally my two minute max or something like that. Yeah. So.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Awesome. Well thank you so much. And where can people find out more about you? I know you've got a website.
I know you work with clients, you got the podcast.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah, there's a bunch going on. I got some general training programs for 29 [01:15:00] to $49 a month. All that stuff you can find on my Instagram buyout at Brian Borstein. I have a podcast Eat Train Prosper, where we mostly talk about optimizing hypertrophy and physique and things like that.
Started a new podcast. We have two episodes out called Life Reflected. Very cool. Which is not as fitness based, it's more kind of exploring, eh, philosophical parenting. Definitely some aspects of movement and exercise in there too. But trying to explore some of the things that make life more than just exercise.
So I have two episodes of that out. And yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Cool.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Well, yeah, I'd highly recommend people check out all your stuff there. And yeah, thank you so much for sharing all your experience and all your knowledge and everything here. I really appreciate it.
That was great.
Bryan Boorstein: Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. Thank
Dr Mike T Nelson: you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Huge thanks to Brian for being on the podcast and telling us all the wonderful stuff he is [01:16:00] doing. Make sure to check out all of his great stuff. Also, check out his podcast, which I've been a guest on. If you're a meathead, you will love a lot of the training information that he has there.
Really great stuff if you're looking for electrolytes during your lifting or even doing more cardio stuff now. Check out our friends over at Element Below Teton. We'll be back once we have everything sorted out with the new formula and the rebranding, everything else that's going on related to that.
So make sure to check out more from Teton Ketone Esters very soon. If you like playing around with new gym equipment, check out my friends over at Beyond Power with the V Ultra one. You can play with different strength curves. I know you can get automatic feedback on everything. It does go up to 200 pounds, which I know doesn't sound like a lot for lifting meatheads, but because it's direct drive, there's no pullies running through it.
So even something like a press down, I think the meathead math gets a little bit distorted, where you're always running [01:17:00] through a cable, which is gonna cut the weight in about half. So if you're doing press downs with say, 150 pounds for reps. It's actually probably closer to 75 pounds. So that's one thing I realized after I was using the device.
Of course if you are using it for heavy deadlifts or squats or bench press they have something where they have a twin mode where you can hook up two devices and obviously you're gonna get, instead of 200, you would get up to 400 at that point and they will work simultaneously together. So if you really wanna be advanced and get aggressive with some barbell stuff.
They have that mode and they have you covered, so, check them out. It is an affiliate link. I do affiliate stuff for them. I liked it so much. I requested to be an affiliate. Check out the link below. And then also, I'm giving away my most, probably the most successful cardio program I've done for lifting meat heads.
So biggest complaint they have is it just takes too much time. So I have a six minute progressive and I've got all the details and everything below in the link here. [01:18:00] And this literally, as the title says, it's six minutes. It was done with a high frequency, so ideally six to seven days per week. But some people have gotten a lot of benefit out of it.
Even doing four to five days per week. Whatever you can do is gonna be better. And it literally is just six minutes. And if you do it in this specific way that I outline, we've noticed big improvements in a VO two max, even people's cognitive function and like I said, doesn't require a ton of time. Because as of this recording, the meta cardio courses are currently closed, but we'll probably have 'em open again and this will also put you onto the newsletter as soon as they open.
We'll give you all of the details there, so get that protocol for free and you also get access to the Insider Newsletter. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast, as always really appreciate it. Any feedback, anything I can do to make this a better podcast, please let me know. Please download, leave us whatever stars you feel are appropriate.
If you've got even a few seconds to leave us a review, that's a huge [01:19:00] help on the old YouTubes. If you can hit subscribe, that also makes a massive difference. Thank you so much. Thank you to Brian. Check out the six minute Progressive cardio and we'll talk to you later.
Speaker 3: There's something wrong with his hearing aid. Yeah. What's wrong? I can't hear with it. Oh, no wonder. It's too far away.
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