In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I catch up with my good friend Jason Brown to dig into the intersection of strength training and aerobic development. We talk through how to implement aerobic conditioning in the real world, what zone two training actually is (and isn’t), and the pros and cons of different training methodologies. Jason shares his thoughts on concurrent training, functional movement, and how to improve performance without sacrificing long-term health. We also get into the realities of online coaching and how to structure training programs that support sustainable progress over time. If you’re looking to improve body composition, build muscle, and boost performance within a flexible, evidence-based framework, this episode will give you plenty to work with. Sponsors: Rogue: https://miket.me/rogue Beyond Power Voltra 1: https://www.beyond-power.com/michael13 Meathead Cardio Course Level 1: Aerobic System https://miket.me/cardio Fitness Insider Newsletter: https://miketnelson.com/
In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I catch up with my good friend Jason Brown to dig into the intersection of strength training and aerobic development. We talk through how to implement aerobic conditioning in the real world, what zone two training actually is (and isn’t), and the pros and cons of different training methodologies.
Jason shares his thoughts on concurrent training, functional movement, and how to improve performance without sacrificing long-term health. We also get into the realities of online coaching and how to structure training programs that support sustainable progress over time.
If you’re looking to improve body composition, build muscle, and boost performance within a flexible, evidence-based framework, this episode will give you plenty to work with.
Sponsors:
Episode Chapters:
Episodes You Might Enjoy:
Connect with Jason:
Get In Touch with Dr Mike:
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 to improve body composition, add muscle, improve performance, and do all of it in a flexible framework without destroying your health today on the podcast, my good buddy Jason Brown. And we're talking all about things related to strength and even diving, uh, deep down some rabbit holes related to aerobic development, how you would do aerobic development.
What would you do? Both of us are probably pretty similar on aerobic conditioning, although we probably differ on a few things. Uh, what is really zone two training? Are there benefits? Are there negatives to it? How about incorporating functional movements? Uh, talking to the stories [00:01:00] about what West side, uh, people do at the high end, uh, concurrent training.
How would you set up your training? Jason's known for having really good programs and program education, uh, and just some final thoughts and, and resources of. How to set everything up so that you can win at your own training. So I think you will enjoy this wide ranging conversation. Always love talking to, to Jason.
He is always got a lot of great stuff from both the research side and also working many, many years as a practitioner. So I like the combination of both of those. And sponsors for the podcast today, we've got our friends over at Rogue Fitness. So in the podcast we talk about the Rogue Echo bike. Also the concept two rower.
Rogue has their own rower now too, [00:02:00] although, which is actually pretty darn good, although I'm still a little bit biased towards the concept two rower, which you can also get from rogue. So if you're looking at getting some cardiovascular equipment, or maybe you just need a old school power rack and some weights.
Uh, you can get it from Rogue Below. Uh, it is an affiliate link, which does, uh, help us support the podcast. Also, in terms of training, check out our friends over at Beyond Power with the VUL Ultra One. Uh, I love this device. I've still been using it almost every day. I've literally trained in the gym. The great part about it is it literally replaces a cable stack and allows you to do things that you can't do with a cable stack, such as programming, heavier, eccentric loads compared to concentric.
You can program a chains mode, you can do an inverse chains mode, you can do isometric testing, even ISO kinetics. So one of the things I've been playing with is you have a sticking point that hasn't really wanted to improve. [00:03:00] I've done some stuff with, uh, different speeds of iso kinetics around that, uh, sticking point, and then go back to a faster concentric after that in the same set.
And the sticking point seems to not really be a sticking point anymore. I've to play around with that more. I just started playing around with that. But, uh, again, one of the many things you can do with the Programmable Vulture one device, which I love, uh, and it is an affiliate link for them down below.
So I do make a few bucks off of that to help support the old podcast show here. I also have my meathead cardio course, level one, the aerobic system. You can check that out there with the link. Basically a full breakdown of everything from the theory of why you need aerobic training for meatheads.
So even if you're just lifting, how would you set up your aerobic training? What would you do? What are the principles you need to understand? And then I give you a ton of different protocols. We talked a lot about some of the protocols actually even in this [00:04:00] podcast and a bunch more there. And then my newsletter, which is free, you can hop onto it, get a whole bunch of stuff for literally no cost.
If you don't like it, well I guess you can unsubscribe, but it's completely free. So there you go. There's our podcast, uh, sponsors. Thank you so much to all of them, and sit back and enjoy this conversation with my good buddy, Jason
Dr Mike T Nelson: Welcome to the podcast. How are you today,
Jason Brown: sir? Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's, uh, it's, it's great to be on and, and reconnect. I know we connected, uh, a while back in, geez, must be what, four or five years ago now?
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I feel like everything is before or after COVID. It's like in my brain how I like differentiate stuff. And I think it was before COVID. It
Jason Brown: was, it was before COVID.
Dr Mike T Nelson: You're right. Yeah, I was out at, uh, Mr. Russ's house there.
Jason Brown: Mm-hmm.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that
Jason Brown: was fun. Yeah, that was a good time.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And so I know you're [00:05:00] doing all your online stuff and you primarily work with people online.
Do you do any in-person stuff at all anymore or not?
Jason Brown: No, I said goodbye to in-person back in 2016. I, um, owned a gym for five years and, and prior to that, you know, did the whole intern strength conditioning personal trainer at a commercial gym trained a lot of people when I was in the military. And then when I got outta the military, I opened my own gym and I started in the online space around 2015.
And it kind of just took off very, very fast. So my wife and I made the decision to focus solely on that and, and sell the gym that we had to an owner or to a member at the time. And that was the last time that I. Really was training anyone in person, which, I mean, it seems like a while ago now, but, um, yeah, it doesn't feel like that long ago.
Really?
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I, I did the in-person thing for a while, worked at a gym, then went to another gym. Then the gym I [00:06:00] was at, filed bankruptcy on me. Didn't bother to tell me, even though I was training people outta their facility, I found out by going to train there like one night by myself, and they said, uh, we file, we were closed.
We filed bankruptcy. Uh, if you're a trainer who works here, please write to this number. And I was like, dude, I was here yesterday. Wow. Like, I get it. You don't want to tell No notice everybody in the thing, but you could pull me aside and be like, uh, hey bro. Yeah. Like, we're closing tomorrow or in two weeks or something like that.
So I did the follow all my current clients around at whatever gym they ended up at for a while. And I was like, this sucks. I hate this. I'm trying not to be their trainer, but I sort of am and you're driving every which way. And so I ended up, um, calling up Jim Wendler at a lead FTS through Eric Cresty, put me in touch.
Mm-hmm. And bought a rack, bought a bar, bought a trap bar, flat bench, made my own platform. Stuck that in my gym, started training some people there for a [00:07:00] while. And at home I was like, oh, at home. Yeah. Yeah. And my whole backup business plan was, I don't know if this fails horribly. I have a really nice gym in my garage, so this is, this is my whole backup plan.
Yeah. That's a good backup plan. I mean, you can't lose on that. No. And then I realized, like even general population, I was surprised like how many people you forget, like in the gym, like don't want to go there. They think everybody's looking at them. They've never really done much exercise before. Because I was thinking like, uh, no one's gonna wanna come to this crazy guy's garage.
But it actually ended up working out better for a while. And then I ended up going back and just doing everything online probably around the same time you did again, like Yeah, probably 2000, yeah. 13, 14, somewhere in that point, so, mm-hmm. Yeah, it's, uh, I like it. Yeah.
Jason Brown: It's
Dr Mike T Nelson: kind of funny.
Jason Brown: I, I remember writing training for friends and family and, you know, this is like back in the [00:08:00] days where we didn't have really anything.
It was just through email, you know, you sending Yeah. Sending off their training in an email to them. And that was kind of like my first, online, if you will. And that was, I mean, that was like 2007, 2008. Mm-hmm. And then, um, you know, when I started in the online space, I, I was writing programs for CrossFit gyms and.
I was using a Google, uh, Google Sheets to deliver, yeah. A hundred plus programs. And it was over time it was a hundred plus programs. But I think when I hit around the hundred Gym Mark, I realized, okay, I need a better system here. Because Google Sheets for a hundred plus people and updating them every month is just not efficien at all.
You know, so we, we, um, I ended up fi finding some web development in, in building our platform. But needless to say, we, what we have today is obviously far and away, away from Google Sheets or, and I know, I think there are still some people that are using that stuff, which, uh, I'm not sure why at this point.
But maybe just kind of like it's [00:09:00] been the way, you know, some people are very old school. They want to just continue doing it the same way and. I get that, but I think that there is obviously a lot that we can do with tracking and, and obviously video, including demo videos and whatnot into, into a training program through an app that it just kind of makes sense to do it that way.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I probably resisted doing apps too long because I had all the Excel spreadsheets and then once you had phones that had video in it, oh my God, that made it so much easier. I remember having the old flip phones where you had to plug the thing into your computer and that was a revelation at the time point of like, oh my God, I can get video and it's a grainy as video or whatever.
And then when my links kept getting broken, like, because you would miss a space or it would be off or they couldn't get to it. And yeah, I ended up switching, but at that point it's just the pain of disconnect and, and reconnect was immense, but it did also force me to go back through all my old programs.
And I was like an idiot [00:10:00] because I was like starting brand new with every single person being, I'm gonna be hardcore, I'm doing all this customization or whatever. And when I had to start importing stuff into a platform, I realized, oh yeah, like ev, like 60% of the people almost started like the same point.
Mm-hmm. So I forced myself to build out like probably like 12 different templates. Mm-hmm. And they would kind of start with that, but at least you had something to start with. And then you could modify it. And then there's kind of like they'll go off on their own journey with what they have going on and it'll end up being different, but,
Yeah. I wish I would've done something like that sooner, but I guess I didn't really know what I was doing initially either. So maybe it would've been a disaster.
Jason Brown: Yeah. I mean, that's always kind of like, hindsight's 2020, we could have done it that way and maybe that would impact how things are right now, but I think at the end of the day, everything goes the way it's supposed to go.
I think we. Are supposed to go through those trials and tribulations in order to get us to where we're supposed to be. Yeah. [00:11:00]
Dr Mike T Nelson: Now I feel like, not spiritual, but Yeah, totally.
Jason Brown: I do think there's a lot to that.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Now I feel like it's, I saw something the other day, I won't say any names, but supposedly these trainers were making a hundred thousand a month training people one-on-one doing custom online programming, and I've just sat down and did okay, if they're charging a thousand a month, which, uh, that's still a hundred people.
I don't know. I have, there's maybe there's some freaks that can do it, but it seems almost impossible to track that much stuff. They're, they're absolutely not. And be customized.
Jason Brown: They're absolutely not. No, it's, it is impossible. I think, you know, at the peak for one-on-one and one-on-one for me is, is one off.
So. Yes, they're on a custom program. It's very specific to their needs, their goals, their injuries, and of course, you know, we go through an whole, a whole onboarding. But what I teach coaches is [00:12:00] having essentially 80% of your systems of programming very concrete. Mm-hmm. So if we use this system that may be biases conditioning, or we use this system that is a balance of strength training and conditioning and so on and so forth, you have those systems that are basically 80% complete.
Now the 20% is exercise selection and different equipment because they have a well-equipped home gym, or they have specific movement patterns that they cannot do. That would allows you to have the level of customization that's needed to prioritize that individual's needs. But to say that you're writing a hundred programs for a hundred different programs.
I, I think that people, well, first of all, I don't think the industry standard is that anyways, even what you see with business coaches online is Yeah. You know, use one template and use one program and basically deliver that same program to everyone. Maybe make some tweaks. I would go as far as saying, I don't think a lot of them are even making any tweaks.
'cause I don't think a lot of them actually know how to make tweaks, which is another story. [00:13:00] Yeah. In and of itself. So, I think that it's certainly possible, but I think the truthfulness, the transparency is I would be very, very surprised if anyone was actually writing a hundred custom programs.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And then if you do anything on top of that, like you're making changes, you're taking any injuries, you're doing nutrition and lifestyle and sleep and stress, and god forbid you monitor anything, resting heart rate, HRV, output, performance, whatever. I'm like it, I think we are getting better as an industry, realizing that.
You can do pretty legit coaching online, you know, depending upon the population. But I think we're, on one hand, I think we're doing a better job of realizing how much work that is. And on the other hand, I still feel like there's people just trying to sell this dream of, ah, you know, if you only had 50 clients online, you can just retire to the beach and put your feet up.
And I'm like
Jason Brown: yeah, no, I mean, it's, it obviously, you know, the, the more you charge there's obviously more touch [00:14:00] points and then, you know, if you take into consideration things like you mentioned, resting heart rate variability, then that adds another layer to what you're potentially doing on a day-to-day basis.
So I do think it can be done. I, I, I do a high level of, of, um, I, and I have one-on-one co clients, but. It is not a highly scalable part of my business. Yeah. My scalable part of my business is my training subscription, which you can sign up for right now, and you get access to, it's a program written for the masses for a very specific avatar, but, um, you know, that's $39 a month as opposed to 700, $800 a month.
Mm-hmm. So very, very different in terms of price point.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And with your high-end clients, do you do nutrition, sleep? Like, what do you kind of look at with that? I'm always curious in asking other trainers in the industry I, I like and respect because I, and I probably do a poor job of this too. I live sometimes too much of my own ecosystem and have no idea what anybody else is doing.
Jason Brown: [00:15:00] Yeah. No, it's, um, it's a good question. So I do a full assessment with everyone that comes in. To my world, and that assessment includes, and it's, I think it's funny, I think you might've asked me about it when I spoke at the Real Coaches Summit about
Dr Mike T Nelson: I did actually, yes. Different. Yeah. Yeah. Now it
Jason Brown: just, it just kind of jogged my memory.
But, um, when, when someone comes on board, I do a full assessment, movement assessment, you know, so their foundational movement patterns, even how they walk. Um, and of course looking at different postures, which I think is, it's, you know, you've got the movement side of things, which is its whole thing. And then you have, things potentially like heart rate variability, which I think is a great way to look at someone's level of fitness, but also how well they're recovering between sessions, resting heart rate, obviously another great metric that we can use and, and leverage with certain things, certain modalities in the training.
And then, getting kind of a, a really concrete view of what they can do, because I think that at the end of the day, a lot of coaches just make the mistake of saying, this person, they're paying a premium to work with me so they can train five days a week. [00:16:00] I tend to see that most people, whatever they think they can do, is not what they actually can do.
Oh God, no. It's not easy. Music close. So they, you know, people hold onto this, this model in their heads like, Hey, when I was in my twenties, I trained six days per week. I was in the best shape of my life, and I wanna get back to that.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.
Jason Brown: The reality is, is that they're not in their twenties anymore.
Their life is completely different. They have responsibilities. They don't have the same bandwidth that they used to have. So people hang on to this version of themselves as like, this is the standard that I want to try to adhere to. When in reality it's not realistic. So I try to go probe as much as I can for what someone can actually do, and I actually test them a little bit in their initial programming to see how compliant they are.
So movements conditioning, I do a a few different conditioning tests. I do, you know, some of the ones that I, I use for my own you know, kind of that's more unique to what I do with the individuals that come on with me is a 62nd recovery test on an air bike and then a 10 minute test on the [00:17:00] air bike for calories.
And that's something I have kind of just used as a whole. And I think that, you know, you ever have variety of people that say like, oh, the Cooper test is 12 minutes, why not just do that? And there are a lot of things that go into that. If I'm gonna have someone run for 12 minutes, most of the people that come on board probably not gonna be a good fit for doing that.
Most people that come on board with me though do have access to an airbike, so I've kind of tailored some of the assessments that I deliver. Based on the ideal client, that's the fit for me. Which again, may be very different than yours or someone else listening. But having that information about what they move, like their training history, obviously injury, history, all of this stuff allows me to understand what is the best path forward and that path forward might evolve over time.
Let you know the first eight weeks we might go a certain direction. It's funny, I have, I've had three new guys come on board with me all over, you know, 40 plus years of age over the last few months. And they've kind of all fit into the same [00:18:00] model of training, which is a model of training I teach that's more biasing, aerobic conditioning 'cause they're a high stress B, their HRV score is really poor.
Um, c the resting heart rate is relatively high. And then, and then d would be, their lifestyle is very high stress. So you have all these things as kind of like the perfect storm for saying, Hey. We probably don't need to add more stress into an already stressed out system. Let's try to bring you back down.
And what I usually see is that those individuals and, and these guys actually right now, a few of them are now starting to hit like personal records on their, their squat. They're squatting more weight with more ease. They're able to do the conditioning at a lower heart rate. I mean, so all these things physiologically just start happening when we can prioritize what the needs are, based on their stress levels, based on those metrics I mentioned.
And, um, you know, that's kind of an ongoing process. But the initial intake, we gather all that information and then we use systems that are already prebuilt. I use [00:19:00] systems of programming as far as like how I'm going to bias different qualities, and that's kind of the path forward for at least the short term.
Um, most of the people that I, I bring on come on board usually for a year, which, um, is really nice because I think you probably would agree with me that. People that are over 40 years of age. This stuff is, this is a slow process. We're not doing 12 week transformation. If you want a 12 week transformation, I'm not the coach for you.
I'm a lifestyle. I'm gonna help you live better for the long term. More sustainably help you get in shape for the beach next year. But Rome wasn't built in a day. We have to do it slow. We have to ingrain these patterns. We have to ingrain these habits. And the way we do that is we take this approach of being more of a marathon as opposed to a sprint.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I agree with that. And I bet you find that those people's VO two max is dog shit. That's what I find too. And it's shocking to them. And again, it's no disrespect to them because I ended up in that same boat of, yeah, I lift a [00:20:00] lot, I'm relatively active, blah, blah, blah. And I kept, couldn't figure out, I'm like, why can't I recover?
Like everything feels harder. Like my lifts aren't going up. Mm-hmm. And then it was my buddy, Dr. Kenneth J, went to one of his talks. I've known him for years. He's like, why don't you just do your aerobic assessment? I'm like, oh, I'm sure it's fine. It was horrible. Not just bad. It was horrible. And then he looks at me and he is like, there you go.
When's the last time you really did like dedicated aerobic training? And I'm like, 15 years, you know? I was like, oh, no wonder. No shit. Yeah.
Jason Brown: Yeah. I mean, that's telling, and I think that there's a lot more ways of getting this tested. I know local to me, I don't know if you have the same thing, but there are places where you can get a VO O2 max, you can get a metabolic test.
Mm-hmm. You can get a DEXA scan actually just went recently. Yeah. Um, DEXA on the main chains. Yeah. Dexa fitt. Mm-hmm. So, that's certainly powerful. I haven't got my VO two max done yet. I actually, that's next on my list. But, you know, I, [00:21:00] I wear a Garmin watch and I don't know, and then you could probably speak to this better than I can, but as far as the accuracy of that and you know, looking at various.
Things such as your heart rate variability score, your resting heart rate, um, how that differs on a day-to-day basis. And of course calculating your VO O2 max based largely off of that. I know I get a reading of around 50 and some of the stuff I've actually done in some of my my PhD work has put me right around the 50 mark.
But I'd be interested to see if it's, if it's uh, if that's what it is, if I went to, to, uh, you know, a DEXA fit and got an actual concrete reading.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I found with the Apple watch is horrible. The new one they stuck on. Aura is okay. If you're unfit, if you're fit, it's a disaster. I think they used some bastard form of the Rockport walk test, which isn't very good if you're fit a, a client of mine, Ryan Baxter, he got the new Aura when they rolled out the algorithm.
It's [00:22:00] like, it's like, yeah, it says my VO two max is 31 and. He has a metabolic cart, like we've measured him literally in like the, probably mid fifties, easily. Yeah. Right. Whether it's doing a 2K on a row or whatever test. Um, the garment I find, generally is pretty good in the ballpark across the most populations if I, and there's some data to support this, but again, the data is always very population specific, so it's hard to extrapolate that data.
Um, so I'd say Garmin is probably one of the more accurate ones for a semi-active population, and that might be just because of their marketing and who has their devices. Also, I think Aura is trying to appeal to probably a wider audience that maybe isn't as trained. So it's gonna be harder to get an algorithm to go across that whole swath of people too.
But Yeah, good point.
Yeah, no, it's definitely, you know, it, it I, again, I, I would like to go and get an actual reading because. [00:23:00] If I'm basing it largely off that, and I do, you know, most of my clients do have Garmin watches, so we're wearing it, you know, you're wearing it 24 7, you're getting pretty good readings.
But I will say the heart rate, unless you're using a chest strap, is, you know, tends to be a little bit inaccurate. I find it to be low sometimes, and then I find it to be high sometimes. So it's kind of like mm-hmm. You know, I put a chest strap on and this thing might have me at, I mean, I'm sitting here right now, I'm at 50 beats per minute which seems a little bit low for me, probably about, you know, usually I'm sitting here doing work.
I'm usually in the high 50, low 60 range. But needless to say, I think, um, having something is certainly better than nothing.
Yeah. And that's what I found too. I found Garmin in general is okay at rest and low heart rates. If you've taken an average like a snapshot, it could be off a little bit. Mm-hmm.
But especially if you're doing high intensity stuff, like even the new ones with the optical are much better than the old ones. But they'll still miss those short peaks of max heart rate. They'll miss, basically they have to do a lot of smoothing and averaging. Mm-hmm. [00:24:00] So they're gonna miss those high points and the drops.
So even with pretty much anyone doing exercise, we're using heart rate. I'm like, yeah, I know you hate the chest drop, but just put it on, it's gonna be so much more accurate. 'cause I've, mm-hmm. Probably similar to you, I've lost count of how many people like have just started or as a one-off console or like, I can't believe I did this test and my max heart rate was only like, you know, one 50.
And I'm like, let me guess you're using an Apple watch and it was an optical and you didn't have a chest strap and show me your output. Is it really. Okay, that's probably legit output. Like so you did a real, probably close to a max test and they do it with a chest drop and they're like, oh yeah, it's 1 71 now.
I'm like yeah,
Jason Brown: yeah. A little bit different. Little
Dr Mike T Nelson: different. And then they, yeah, for sure they get hose because here I am telling them, like to use an actual shown max heart rate for calculations, which I'm sure you're probably in the same boat. Mm-hmm. Which they are trying to do to their credit, but they're like, nothing's working.
I'm like, yeah, 'cause your max heart [00:25:00] rate was off by like 21 beats. Mm. You know? So like that'll make a difference. Yeah, no it does for sure. And what do you, have you found any good aerobic tests for like the assault bike? I mean, I've got two that I, I use, but it just appears like, at least on the literature, I know you have your own test, which is great.
The standardization on those things just seems to be horrible. And I've done, my buddy Ken today has done this too, like. Just some one-off measurements on a few of 'em, and they just seem to be so far off. Like I highly doubt some of the Cal calorie output from a couple of 'em. Mm-hmm. Again, if you're using the same bike and you're, you're relative to that machine and it's a comparison, I think that's fine.
Like, it doesn't matter, but it, it just seems like it's kinda the wild, wild west, or at least concept two. We've got at least one study. We've got some data running, walking, we've got pretty good data. Even cycling if you can get power output or speed. But it just seems like [00:26:00] assault bikes there. It, I don't know.
It seems like there's a big gap in the data.
Yeah, I mean, it is kind of tricky because they're all different, right? So like the Rogue Echo bike is very different than an assault air bike. Yep. Um, one's chain driven, one's bell driven, so you have to take that into account. You have to take into account someone's, um, body weight, their absolute strength.
I mean, someone, a bigger guy is gonna do potentially a lot better than someone that's untrained and lighter. So there are all these things, and again, I, I use it more from the standpoint of test, retest and then ongoing looking at, again, we do track heart rate, you have to track heart rate. So I think, you know, there's, yeah, and there's a lot of people out there that are, that are against heart rate.
I actually, someone recently just said that all heart rate training, and it was someone, the PhD person, so it wasn't just anyone, um, that said all heart rate training is, is bullshit. Um, I wouldn't agree with that. I think that's, yeah, I don't agree with that at all, actually. So forget where I was going with that.
But there's just, there's so many things, there's [00:27:00] so much information that we have at our fingertips and whether or not it's applicable to the people we're working with is another question. So I think that, for a coach that's listening to this, it's like, all right, well how do I move forward?
Well have a have something that you can test in the beginning and test, say 16 weeks down the road so it's apples to apples. Use heart rate variability, whether it's a Garmin watch or whatever. I don't care what you use, just use something because it's, even if it's, you know, like you said, like I, I like the Garmin watch and I've, so I don't have anyone use anything that I haven't used myself.
Yeah. Which I think is important because if you don't know Oh, huge how it works or if it, whether or not it's working for you, I, this seems to be relatively accurate for me. Someone that's been using a GARMER watch now for about four years, it seems to be pretty accurate. But like I said, I'd love to go do the VO two max, which I'm, I'm, uh, slated to do pretty soon and get that comparison because then I can say, okay, this is pretty close or maybe it's way off, but something that you can use as a gauge ongoing.
So we can start comparing day to day, week to week, month [00:28:00] to month. Then of course, you know, doing test retest is your best gauge of whether or not someone's improving. Now I oftentimes, those people that I mentioned that I bias conditioning with, because they have all the markers of high stress. I often get this comment from them, and this isn't something I can track.
It's probably, this is more qualitative, right? I feel better, yes, I am less, uh, on edge. I am more present with my family. I don't feel, I feel like my patients have grown. So those are all things I'm like, well, that's, I mean, that's great. That's your quality of life is better. You're, if you're more present with your family, you're less on edge and you have more patience, then you're winning at life, right?
So how do you quantify that? How do you put that more into a quantit quantitative, um, value? And obviously you can't, so I think that, you know, as, as coaches in the industry, so many people are so focused on the metrics and did your squat go up? Did your bench press go up? And so on and so forth. But we lose sight of [00:29:00] the fact that you have a human being on the other end.
And my goal for the people I work with isn't necessarily. To make them squat or bench more, it's to have them live a higher quality of life, to have them be more present with their family. And as you get older, you realize these are the things that mean the most anyways. Right. It's, you know, in my twenties and thirties, metrics were everything.
Now, yes, I still care, but I care more about being present with my family. I care more about having lower stress and living longer and having a higher quality life outside of the gym. Um, so these are all things I think that when you, you bring some light to the power of that stuff and then show how that connects to qualities of fitness.
Well, okay, well now let's actually look at your, the quantitative aspect of what we're testing here. And we can see improvements there. So I, I tend to see that there is really some pretty concrete connections between these things. When I have someone say that they're feeling better and more present, typically, you know, it's, it's mutually exclusive where they'll [00:30:00] start seeing other things in their fitness improve as well.
I, which is, which is basically what I'm doing in my dissertation, which is kind of cool, um, to have autonomy, you know, which I'm sure you can relate to in the PhD process of, of being able to investigate things that, that are important to you and things that may be more applicable to your own interests.
So I think, um, there's really a lot to be said about that.
Yeah. And, um, one quick comment I'll ask you about what you're looking at in your PhD does. For me, it feels almost sort of weirdly full circle, like, 'cause when you do exercise phase, like you get beat over the head with cardiovascular physiology, which is great, like everyone should know it.
Super important. But part of me was like, eh, where's all the lifting studies? Where's the hypertrophy studies? Like, where's the athlete studies? You know? And then over time you realize, oh, well we had treadmills, we had metabolic carts with Douglas bags. Like we were limited on, you know, what we could actually study going back, you know, many, many decades, [00:31:00] you know, a hundred years all the way back to AV Hill and people like that.
Mm-hmm. And now I'm one of those weirdos is talking about aerobic health as a thing to do again, and I'm like, whoa, this is like, so surreal.
Jason Brown: I mean, I, I'm with you. I never thought I would be, I would be discussing the things that I'm discussing now. I mean, back 15 years ago, strength training was just, seemed so much cooler.
And, you know, I think a lot of people were under the impression that strength training and aerobic conditioning didn't mix and that you shouldn't mix them because they're different pathways and the interference effect. Oh no, the interference effect guys. Oh no. Watch out for it. It's, it's, um, especially
Dr Mike T Nelson: you do, bro, that chains trains three days a week and it's, you know, people are still saying
Jason Brown: that.
And there's, there's still podcasts that are staying this stuff. I won't name any names, but. They're talking about muscle blunting signaling and I don't think anyone needs to actually know the pathways and know the difference between a and PK and mTOR, but I do think that trying to take the information of [00:32:00] potentially one study and then say, well, this is the end all, there's context, there's so much context to that.
I, I do think a lot of people are doing that on social media. It's like they're taking a study and kind of paraphrasing it and making it kind of fit their own narrative. And then you get this whole other just scene of, of bad information and people are potentially taking action on
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I moment they named the guy's name, but it's happened.
Not just him, there's been a couple people who've tried to make the argument to me that aerobic training doesn't matter at all and there really isn't anything really as aerobic training. And I'm like, what? What are you even, is that the Olympic lifting guy? 'cause I had a paddle that was one of those guys too.
Yeah. And I'm like, well, you cited
Jason Brown: Arthur Jones. I
Dr Mike T Nelson: think, yeah, they all tend to come from that line. If you go back far enough, almost all the people I've had this type of interaction with go back to that sort of beginning. And I'm like, I, on [00:33:00] one hand I'm like, I am trying as hard as possible to see your angle and it just doesn't compute.
Like I, I have no idea.
Jason Brown: Well, I, so I mean, I think, you know, we could unpack that. I mean, why, yeah, why does someone think that aerobic training doesn't matter? Well, I think the first thing is, is that they just don't understand how it works physiologically. How it differs from weight training. And I think you and I both know that there are just the differences between the two are very distinct in terms of mm-hmm.
In terms of, and I think you did a post, did you do a post about preload after lo of contractility? Yep. You were talking about mechanisms of the heart, which is, which is. I, it's funny not to shit on your post, but I feel like we're social media now is like, I wish people would appreciate that stuff the way they used to.
Like five years ago when, you know, you and I used to write like 3000 word articles Yeah. For teenage and get paid for 'em. You get paid for them. I wish that stuff, like I saw that and I was, you know, obviously I, I geek out on that stuff the way you do. But, um, I think [00:34:00] that, you know, the first piece of this is that people equate heart rate to being like, all things are equal.
If heart rate is, is the proxy for aerobic or just improving overall fitness conditioning, then we can do that any number of ways, right? We could swing a kettlebell, we could push a sled, we could get on a treadmill, we could do 20 rep sets of back squats.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. But my heart rate went up, bro. It's aerobic training.
My heart rate went up well. So let's, let's play devil's advocate. Well, you could also do cocaine and your heart rate will go up. Oh yeah, right. You could take a, have a hard bowel movement and your heart rate will go up. So does that mean that, you know, you do cocaine and your heart rate's at one 40, does that mean that you are gonna get better for your 10 K training?
Probably not, because there's no, well, you know, that all the mechanisms of the heart that you just mentioned we're not, it's very, very different, right? Yeah. Physiologically, it's very, very different. You don't have the same amount of, uh, cardiac output. So I think heart rate gets confused.
It's funny, I had someone [00:35:00] not that long ago was like, wanted they wanted proof. They were like, oh, um. I don't need to do conditioning because my Apple Watch says that I'm actually in zone two, zone three with most of my weight training. And I was like, well, it's really not the same thing and here's why.
And he said, well, what's your proof of that? And I said, well, this is cardiac physiology. There's no, I don't need any proof. That's a principle, bro. I don't need a study. I mean, we know that, you know, if you, if you lift weights, you increase intramuscular pressure. And when you increase intramuscular pressure, you have this whole cascade of things that happen.
So trying to compare and say like, alright, well we're gonna get the same efficiency, the same cardiac output as if we went for a jog, a 30 minute jog. You know, again, they're, they're two very different things and they have specific places in a program. And if we just kind of just take that alone to say like, okay, well heart rate is one aspect of it.
But how, how hard the heart works is another aspect of it. And then if we have any type of isometric contraction, you know, what does that do to blood flow? What does [00:36:00] that do to venous return blood back to the heart? Um, what does that do to stretching, um, of, you know, creating more cavity volume? So again, all these things which I can see, you know, now where this gets confused.
Yeah. And I do think that it's it's becoming more and more known, more and more people are saying like, Hey, they're not the same thing, so don't confuse because your Apple Watch says you're in zone three. You're not doing, you're not really doing zone three. And then, you know, I think the other part of it too is, and you, you could probably, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, but there was, um, what was the study on the, it was like a 10 minute kettlebell study, I think, and I can't remember now.
I'm, I'm doing a terrible job of, of, um, paraphrasing it. But there was a study that was like basically equating. Kettlebell work. Um, and the effect of 10 minutes of kettlebell work to, you know, cardiovascular improvements and a lot of people extrapolated. They took that, that one study and they said, okay, well if it does this, then it probably does [00:37:00] this and it's a better, you can do all the same work and get the same effects in a lot less time, which is what we all want.
Right? Like I'm, yeah, I want the same thing. I wanna do five minutes of aerobic and that's enough. Oh, yeah. But it's, but it's unfortunately not the case.
Yeah. And I think the, uh, Dr. Kenneth J was actually one of the authors of some of those studies and had published some VO two max protocols, and it's ironic that he was the one coming out a few years after that.
Well, many years later. Like champing, like old school aerobic stuff, you know? And he is like, yeah, it probably went too far in that direction. He is like, the study's not bad, it's not invalid. He is just like, there's some assumptions in there that I probably, you know, now I would do training a little bit different.
He is like, you can still do that. You'll still see improvements in that. Um, but he is like, it's not the exact same thing as aerobic training, which is hilarious because he's the one who did some of those actual original studies, like saying that, so
yeah. Well I think that [00:38:00] the time component certainly, like we, we all want the easy way.
We all want Oh, for sure. We want the same effect in less time. And I do think that some of the guidelines that are out there for how much I will, I will tell you that I have not gone to the, like, the end of the guidelines. Like, so I typically don't do more than two and a half to three hours of zone two.
Work. And, and you know, just to clarify zone two, I use carbon in, and this is probably another topic that we could, we could you know, discuss, but I use a a, a formula to figure out what, what my Yeah. Explain what that is for listeners. Yeah. So a carbon in method essentially takes into account your max heart rate and resting heart rate to figure out what zone two is.
So if I just do zone two, 60 to 70% of my two 20 minus year age, I fall in, I'm 42 years of age. I fall, I tend to fall like in the 1 21 25 range. So relatively low, [00:39:00] pretty easy. Right. Which is, which is great. I actually, I enjoy that range very much. So, I mean, I can go for a walk with a way to vest and get into that range.
Yeah. But if I actually take into account my level of fitness, which I think is important, knowing someone's, you know, resting heart rate of, of 50 versus a resting heart rate of 70 are two very different things. A max heart rate of 180 5 versus a max heart rate of 1 75 or two very different things.
So, um, that puts me into the 1 34 to 1 44 range, so significantly higher, right? I mean, that's a very different workout, right? To going for a jog on the treadmill or getting on the air bike. Very different range, very different level of output. So, that to me is, is something that has really allowed me to improve my fitness and, and decrease my resting heart rate.
Right now I'm sitting at 45, so, so for anyone that doesn't know, it's pretty damn low. And I'm not an endurance. I'm, that's, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, uh, I'm more of an explosive type, so it's taken me a really long [00:40:00] time to to become better aerobically. But much like you. I was always impaired by my ability to recover and, you know, just kind of like dying out.
Like I, I'm like the light bulb. I burn twice as bright, but I burn out twice as fast. So that was always my area of weakness was the ability to recover tolerate stress. I don't do well with high volume training, and I think it's was largely because I, you know, didn't have a great aerobic system.
It was something that I never developed. And now that I have worked on it extensively over the last, you know, really over the last decade I get more from less training. I recover faster. I'm almost never sore. I feel better generally, like in my life. I feel better, I feel more recovered and more, less stressed out.
Um, everything just feels easier. Everything feels easier. So I think it's, uh, it's been one of those things for me. And, and you know, people often say like, well, aren't you, aren't you, you know, not as [00:41:00] strong. I don't focus on strength anymore, but I, I will tell you that my, my body composition's better at 42 than it was at 32.
And the main differentiator is, is how much aerobic work I do. And obviously, I train a little bit different too. I, I use full body training now. I used to use more of a classic conjugate style split back then. Now I use more of a full body conjugate split, which is, again, similar, yet different. So all that stuff again, evolves over time.
Like, you know, we're not the same people 10 years ago. It's a different person, different mindset, different person, different goals. Now fast forward to present day, these are the things that align better with me. Um, I get a lot from doing prioritizing a little bit more conditioning than I do strength training, which I, I never thought, you know, in a million years I'd be saying that, that I am gonna do more cardio than I am strength training.
But here we are. Yeah. Uh, you had mentioned zone two and I was like going through all your stuff and I've known your stuff and we've chatted many times [00:42:00] before, and so I was trying to find stuff. I'm like, God, is there anything like I actually kind of disagree with? And maybe it isn't. Like I am not a big fan of zone two.
I'd much rather that the average meet had to zone three. I'm not saying zone two is worthless. I mean, anytime you can do movement versus no movement, by all means, like please go move. Like I, but I, my biased opinion is I think we've kind of oversold the benefits of zone two unless you're a crazy elite athlete.
And even in those situations, I, I wonder how much of it is just getting the crazy elite guy to not go, pound their dick into the dirt every day and make 'em do zone two. Right. What are your thoughts on all of that?
Yeah, I, I mean, I, I think, um, well, first and foremost, I think that. The, the prescription zone two, there's more to it, as I just mentioned, using an actual concrete formula, the, um, the [00:43:00] carbon in formula, which again takes into to account your resting heart rate as well as your max heart rate is far more accurate.
And it's gonna be a very different range. Like, as I've said, it's, you know, 10 to 15 beats per minute change for myself, which is two entirely different things. So that considered, I think that is a very clear distinction for the people that I see that come into my world. The people that are on my training, people that are working me one-on-one.
I have yet to see someone come to me that has like no stress. Almost everyone comes to me as high stress. Ev and I, I mean everyone. And I have thousands of people on my training right now. My training subscriptions, you know, I've got about a thousand people on my training that are training with me on a regular basis.
So I get a lot of data there. I see. Um, you know, I have a private community with all the individuals that are on my training, so I hear a lot. Um, and, and literally I have thousands of testimonials from over the years. Um, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have literally folders of testimonials.
And [00:44:00] the thing that I tend to see with these folks is that they are more Type A. So they come from the world of more competitive sports. A lot of them did CrossFit because CrossFit was very competitive, and it kept them in the space where they could scratch that competitive itch. And now their training has to align more with their lifestyle.
A lot of them are, are very similar to myself. So I can, I can relate to them, um, on a very deep level. And I, I see that these people need some form of stress inoculation and the aerobic training, albeit, there are a lot of ways to skin the cat with that. So I don't program it just to traditional way that you'd see most like, Hey, just do cyclical.
Which cyclical is great for anyone listening. Cyclical is a great way to go. I do bias more cyclical 'cause it does keep blood pressure lower. You know, there's not as many muscular contractions, so we still have the ability to have it be sustainable across longer durations and of course get all the great adaptations that we're looking for.
But I do [00:45:00] mix in a lot of other things. So it psychologically looks different. It looks like a training 30 to 40 minutes of cardio that's boring. Like my, as my kids would say, my, uh, my 9-year-old daughter would say boring. No one's doing 30 to four minutes of cardio. However, if I have, you do a 45 minute as many rounds as possible of air bike ski erg, rotational, kettlebell swing, single arm farmer carry, maybe a couple body weight movements.
So five or six things where it kind of looks like a training session. People are excited, they're motivated to do it. So they do these things. I trick them into doing the things that I want them to do. By doing that and having, being able to control the things that are in that training session, again, biasing more of the cyclical component.
They get, not only do they get lower intensity work, but they get some other broad peripheral adaptations that we wouldn't normally get if we just did cyclical. And on top of it too, it's a way to kind of like bridge the [00:46:00] gap between their higher intensity sessions. So I think that programming is art, but I also think that it is, it is a, you know, a science and an art, and there's a, there's a combination of those two.
So you have to understand the psychological aspect to the way something looks, the way it feels. So I think, to answer your question the way I do it, I think that the benefits are just endless. I think people, the more and more they buy into it, and the more and more they see the results, how it carries out on their life outside of the gym, as well as their fitness, it sells itself.
And now I look at the metrics on my training of you. You know, thousands of people, and I see compliance levels on the aerobic days, just as high as the strength days. I know that, all right, there's something, something good happening here. People are doing this stuff because typically you would see the aerobic days being much lower compliance.
Like, and I've run, it's funny, I run a test on this where I gave the, um, the option, I said Do 45 to 60 minutes of cardio, cyclical cardio. And I gave them the option. I laid it out. You [00:47:00] could do air, bike, whatever cardio piece you have access to, just do it or pick a, pick three or four of them and do it for 45 to 60 minutes at a conversational pace.
You don't even have trek your heart rate. Just do it conversationally. The compliance was drastically lower for those days. And I mean, like, you know, you'd have, uh, on one training program you'd have 550 people and on a strength day you'd have say 300 or so, complete a strength session. On an aerobic day, you'd have like 45 complete.
Now when I plug it in, something that resembles, like what I mentioned, where it looks like a training session, they don't know physiologically how it's different, but they know that it looks like a training session. The compliance was drastically higher. You know, you'd have, um, you go from 45 to like 280 on that same physiologically.
It's like this almost the same thing, but psychologically it's entirely, it's an entirely different ball of wax. Yeah. So I don't know if that answers the question, but [00:48:00] I find it to be the context of it. If you can trick people into doing it, and it's, it's a kind of a bridge between their higher intensity work and it brings them down, it kind of gives them some easier stuff within their week.
I find the benefits to be just, again the reputation of it. What, the way I do it, it is, um, it is really an integral piece of this puzzle.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I, I like that and that's why I like. Having shocker conversations with real people, not yelling at each other over Instagram, over a ten second clip you saw of, of, of whatever.
Mm-hmm. And, you know, I would actually agree with that. Like I, you know, like some of the stuff I got from Cal Dietz, I, I do some stuff I call peripheral heart action, like, which is, goes back many, many decades. So he has like little circuits where you would do, step up on a bench with your right leg, press a lightweight overhead with your left, or do a row here, do a press there, do this rotation, that rotation, and you look at it on paper [00:49:00] and it looks kind of confusing.
And I, cow's a crazy man, so he is got, you know, 60 stations set up. So I'll simplify it to like 10 or 12 or six or something, maybe. Mm-hmm. And it looks simple when you, when you do it and you're like, this is lame. Like, and. But surprisingly your heart rate goes up more than what you would expect, but not into zone three or zone four or anything like that.
'cause the weights are pretty light. But you're moving the whole time. You're getting contralateral movement, you're getting rotation, you're getting all these movement patterns that you're probably not getting exposed to at all. Like I think the average person who is very stressed has an issue of their stress in a normal physiology should be coupled to movement.
And for like 10 hours of their day, they're sitting at their computer stressed out of their mind, not coupled to movement. So any movement I think we can inject into that system is gonna be a beneficial, and if you can get some heart rate adaptation from it, you can get different [00:50:00] movement patterns. Like I'll have people do that and then go do the goat drill a couple times.
Crazy drill where you're running around cones, passing balls around yourself, like just anything to get more. I think complex, just old school play recreation into their training, I think is gonna be like a huge win overall.
Jason Brown: I mean, I love that idea. I, I think you mentioned something about that to me years ago, but I never, and I read Cal's book and I don't remember that being in there, but um, maybe it was 'cause that was a long time.
Now it's in the
Speaker 3: second one now, because I was the co-author's
Jason Brown: second one. Yeah. Well you gotta ha you have to send me some of those because I mean, I think I'll send you one that's a, I mean, that's a really interesting point because, you know, if you think about if someone has three days a week to strength train, you know, you've got, and it's, I always, I always tell people that it's much harder to write a training program for less days.
So someone only has two days. Oh, for sure. Which I see. You know, it's like you have to really hit the nail on the head. You have to really dot all your i's, cross all your T's and not miss anything. It has to be really, [00:51:00] really precise. And then when you, when you think about like movements, like you mentioned, y you know, it's kind of like we have such a limited amount of time.
Where do we fit these things and Right. You know, some of them are certainly high value, but the question is, is where can we sneak And that, and that's kind of what I do with the conditioning and it's, it's sounds similar. That sounds like you've got some ideas that I'm, I'm not thinking of, but I do try to sneak in some of the rotational stuff and kind of some of the unorthodox things like rotational kettlebell swings or snatches and things that are just kind of different in nature and challenge people in a way where they're not gonna load it super heavy.
It's not gonna really, you're not gonna be really bracing the way you would for a heavy squat. And it does have some value. Those are always things for me that I'm looking to get creative with because I think the creativity piece is certainly an important aspect to getting someone to be compliant with their programming long term.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I've noticed. If [00:52:00] I'm allowed to program it within, like you said, the constraints of what the client expects, right? Because at the end of the day, you have to deliver on what you both agree is the direction, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, sure you can go the other extreme and go too far down the, I don't know what the hell they call it now, functional patterns, whatever, where if you're not only training this rotation thing, whatever, it's like, okay, like there's no overload in your program.
Like, I don't know what you're trying to accomplish there, but you got some cool novelty. I'll give you, you know, bonus points for that. But you can go too far down that rabbit hole and not get the person, the result that they want to.
Jason Brown: Well, you know, and I think that's just it. And I, I see people, I, for whatever reason, I've been seeing a lot more, as of recently, people fighting on Instagram and functional patterns always comes up and I.
I don't think I know enough about it to really comment. I don't either. I just need the
Speaker 3: crazy clip.
Jason Brown: But what I will say is that those people that are like, fighting with them and going back and forth [00:53:00] and calling them snake oil salesmen, that's fine. That's, if that's way you wanna do it, that's fine.
But I think there is, I think the functional patterns might have something beneficial. Sure. And you know, maybe it's one of those weird things that we include on a conditioning piece. Now, is there, is there any mechanical tension? Are we gonna get stronger or gain lean tissue? Probably not. However, I think, you know, some of the things that I've seen some of the landmine stuff I've seen and, and functional patterns, you know, just kind of moving in an unorthodox way and like kind of what you mentioned, doing the step up and then pressing on the opposite arm.
I think, you know, if I wasn't open-minded, I never would've went down the aerobic system rabbit hole. I would've just said, you know, everyone told me don't do all the strength coaches. I had said, we don't do any endurance training 'cause it blunts power adaptations. And again, you saw that from one study and then people said, this is the end all.
But I knew that there was more to this picture and that to me, like being open-minded I think is important [00:54:00] because there might be something in functional patterns that I can derive value from, even though if I don't agree with their whole philosophy as a whole, maybe I can grab a couple of their movements and inject them into an aerobic piece.
And now we have some novelty, but we have some beneficial kind of movements that are gonna help people get outside of the, the sagittal plane box, if you will.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, I, I also, and I'm sure you're probably similar, I also think about the client's mindset and what their expectation is. If they're totally open and they trust you a hundred percent and you could probably be more creative and you can get away with more crazy shit.
If they're like, you know, I kind of like this and that. 'cause everyone has their own, you know, preferences and what they want. So you're kinda, initially you kind have to operate within their belief system and try to expand that belief system out over time. And when you can do that, like the first thing I'll do is just, [00:55:00] just more, it's just simple rotation.
Like I have a drill where I use an eagle loop. So you're holding on the end of your fingers high cable pulley split snaps and you're doing a row, but you're starting face palm, face down and then you're finishing face up with torso rotation and leaning. Mm-hmm. Just to try to get some of that three dimensional movement in.
And usually I can get some buy-in on that 'cause it kind of looks like a one arm row or, split stance like a flat, like a waiter press or a plate in your hand. Rotate one direction and then press the land on one side. Mm-hmm. Right. So some of those I'll try to sneak in a little bit, but you can't go too crazy either.
'cause like you said, if their goal is I wanna increase my lean body mass and I want bone mineral density and I want these other things, again, you're gonna need some old school overloading your program or you're not gonna have any reason for your body to change that much.
Jason Brown: Exactly. Yeah. And finding that balance is, is key, but, but I definitely like the idea of, [00:56:00] um, being able to sneak some of that stuff in there.
It's, it is beneficial for, and people are always kind of surprised, you know, anytime you have rotation, rotation, oppressed, that type of thing, where they're like, wow, this is super awkward. And then they get better pretty quick.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And especially I think just having new motor patterns. I mean, in a perfect world, I'd want somebody to do some recreation.
Like, just go play a ball sport. Go learn to surf. Go learn to kiteboard, play Christ. Even play pickleball now for, for all I care. Yeah. Like, just go put your physiology in a semi unpredictable environment where you get immediate feedback. Like, oh, I hit the ball, I missed the ball went in, the ball went out.
Oh, I, I rode that wave. I didn't, oh, I got my ass beat again. Oh shit. Mm-hmm. I, I just think that there's so many benefits to that, but knowing that some people may not be able to do that for whatever reasons. Okay. How much of that can we try to get into the program to get around that a little bit as we can?
Jason Brown: Yeah, no, it makes [00:57:00] sense.
Speaker 3: And back to concurrent training, like what are your thoughts now? Like if somebody said, if we take both extremes, like one extreme would be, how often do you think people need to worry about concurrent training? The other extreme being. If I wanted to design a study where I would have an interference effect, what would that study look like?
So if I'm going from one extreme to the next, like, does the average person need to worry about this interference effect with concurrent training to, okay, you're gonna be paid a whole bunch of money and this is unethical, but we want you to design a study to probably try to air quotes, prove that there is such a thing as the interference effect.
What would that study look like?
Jason Brown: Well, to me, it'd be pretty straightforward. We would just do conditioning, aerobic conditioning and strength training in the same session. We would do a aerobic training first and strength training second. I mean, that would be a very classic way to, to [00:58:00] have interference take place.
Now if you use something like running as that form of conditioning and then you do strength training, power training, there is an effect of doing that. And this research has shown that yes, the research has shown that. Order matters. Where it happens in the week, where it happens in the day, is it the same session?
And you know, again, there's, there's so many studies in my literature review in my, in my dissertation now. I went through a lot of great stuff and I think, you know, you can point to any number of studies but everything that I have seen as a whole points to the frequency, the intensity, the order where it happens in the day.
Is it in the same session? Is it in the same day? How many hours is it in the same week? Is it on a different day? Are you doing strength training, then conditioning or conditioning? Then strength training. I mean, so again, what is the modality? Is it running? We have seen, you know, running tends to attenuate power gains more [00:59:00] than an air bike.
Um, so again, we, we know that there are certainly a lot of different caveats, right. What I have seen over the years, and I, and I always credit Louis Simmons because I think Louis Simmons had this model of strength training and conditioning, and he didn't, I don't know if he actually knew that he was building, I mean, he knew that they were building a base of fitness and he always talked about GPP, but I think physiologically, I don't know if he knew exactly how it was playing out aerobically, but you know, they knew that they felt better when they would do max effort lower on Monday, and then they'd drag a sled on Tuesday Yep.
For a long duration. And they would do hundreds of reps of, of band work. And, you know, they would do these kind of mini workouts he used to call it, and then the next day do max effort upper, and then the next day they would drag the sled again and do again, high volume band work or reverse, you know, things that don't have a lot of axial loading.
And so he was using those mini workouts, those aerobic sessions, I mean, [01:00:00] dragging a sled, a light sled for a mile. That's an aerobic event. People now. Mm-hmm. If you keep the load light enough where it's consistent, you can go at a steady state. I would be willing to bet that those powerlifters that were doing, that were probably in the one 30 to one 40 BPM and I.
The times I went to West Side, I was always shocked by the level of fitness that these guys had. You know, people think that powerlifters are just fat and can't walk upstairs, and I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there that fit that mold, but those guys there didn't fit that mold. They were, they had, you know, they were pulling the sled for a mile.
They were doing a wheelbarrow for 800 meters time trial, and they were doing, again, aerobic events. You know, doing an 800 meter time trial with a wheelbarrow that is an incredible level of fitness. They would walk in the belt squat for five minutes. Someone that's done that knows that it is, it's a different level of fitness.
Speaker 3: That's in the context of the only thing Louie gave a shit about was winning power lifting events. Exactly. He wasn't doing it to aerobically condition. People like he did it because [01:01:00] it worked.
Jason Brown: They weren't worrying about longevity or being present or having patience. No. They were worried about their lifts.
And, and I, again, I think that's telling, and I, I, I probably don't tell that story enough because I think it is a really, really interesting story to, when you look at Louis Simmons as such a strength and power coach, but the conditioning was equally as important and he knew that it was important. And if you read any of his books or you see him in any of his podcasts or YouTube videos you'll hear him say that.
But I think that, all this stuff matters. So where it's executed matters, the type, the type of modality matters. If you are running. Ungodly amount of distance a week, could that interfere if you're trying to also improve your squat, benched deadlift? Yes. So these are things that we know to be true, we can selectively choose.
Now, what I will say is that I have trained, for whatever reason, I've trained a lot of marathoners. I I, I have never done a marathon just for the record. Um, but I have trained a lot of marathoners over the years, and I [01:02:00] have always had the marathoners that work with me. Um, and I actually worked with this woman who was really high level a couple years ago, and I had her dragging.
We did a lot of longer duration sled drags, two full body strength sessions per week, and she was getting a DEXA scan done at the time. And in conjunction with doing a fair amount of road work. She actually was doing less road work when she started working with me, because I had her doing some things to, to, um, you know, build strength, but also give her some aerobic benefit.
And she hit PRS without losing any lean tissue. She actually gained lean tissue working with me and hit a PR on her Boston Marathon time. So, even in the, that's an extreme, right? Sure. Like no one I know is doing that much road work. No one I know is doing four to five hours of zone two work a week.
No one, I mean, I'm, I'm hard pressed to see people do two hours a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Jason Brown: So I think with that said, if you're doing two to three hours a week of zone two and you're, you know, doing some strengths, dedicated strength [01:03:00] sessions, and maybe you have a heavy, you know, you're working on you know, some more heavy sub maximal or maximal effort, maybe you do some speed work, some dynamic effort, some, some ply work.
And of course, you know, hypertrophy work fits in there. You can improve lean tissue, you can get stronger, but also build your aerobic system. But you have to consider all of those things, right? It's not just, I just throw all this stuff in and expect the outcome to be there for me. It has to be done strategically.
It has to be done, ordered the right way. And, you know, all of this stuff is important and I think that programming is. As I said, it's, it's, it is very, very important. People that are just throwing out programs and having the clients do the same program like that, that's the wrong answer. It should be unique.
It should be done with a level of detail, and you should be able to manage all of those things. And by doing that, you can get someone in a position where not only is their longevity improved, but they can also see improvements in whatever quality fitness they're going after.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And if you have that [01:04:00] client come up, you should be able to justify every component that you stuck in the program.
Not just because, eh, I don't know it Yeah. Sounded cool. Like whether that's experience, whether that's research, whether that's anecdotal, but you, you should have some level of logic of why you did each thing that's in there, or you don't put the thing in there.
Jason Brown: Exactly. Yeah. And I, I, I think that. There is such a disconnect these days with, and even, kids that went to exercise science, got exercise science degrees, you know, even in, when I was in grad school there, there wasn't really a whole lot that was really definitive with program design.
No. Almost fun. You know, so yeah. Some of the, some of the kids that I graduated with you know, we're going and working at, you know, division one colleges and they had no idea how to design a program. A lot of 'em didn't even know how to do a dynamic warmup. Yeah. Let alone design a program. So I think that they're not like the, this, the world of exercise program design is not well [01:05:00] prepared to do this stuff.
And interestingly enough, I came from a strength and conditioning facility, but they were conjugate based. So they were, uh, very much influenced by Louis Simmons. And I learned, I've seen that the power lifting community. So many of these guys, they might not even know anything about physiology, but they can write great programs.
'cause they've been in the trenches. They've strained, underweight. They know what works, they know what doesn't. They might not know anything about research, but they know what works. And a lot of these guys tend to be very good at writing programs. And you know, I've scoured all all over Louis Simmons' books over the years.
I've read every single book. I went through his certification, back years ago. And what I tend to see is kind of this commonality between the volume being very realistic, you know, four or five, six exercises per session. More quality, very, very logical exercise order, very sound fundamentals of programming.
You know, you're not seeing seven sets of 10 lap pull [01:06:00] down. Like you see in some programs where it's just like an ungodly amount of volume for, for local movements. Like you might have someone doing, I've seen programs that I've reviewed programs on YouTube, and it's like five sets of 20 bar dips. It's like, who the hell is doing what, a hundred bar dips, you know, unless you're a gymnast like who's doing that many dips.
But you'll see programs like that out there. And the programs out there like that, the people that are writing them, they haven't trained enough to have experience. Know that? That's not practical. Yeah. No. So I think that the power lifting community as a whole, I, I tend to see a lot of great programming come from that world because those guys have just an intimate level of knowledge as far as what is realistic and what actually works.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And now this is my new complaint. You're seeing people who I may love their, their research and they're well intentioned and usually very well educated. Mm-hmm. But they've never trained a single person in their entire life. Which is fine, just for God's sakes. Don't give out [01:07:00] protocols then like talk about principles, talk about studies.
That's cool. But I hear one more person say that Tabata was the best thing ever. Or everyone needs to do the Norwegian four by four. I like the Norwegian four by four. But if you read that study and you look at the actual output. Those people aren't hitting four rounds, a hundred percent of VO two max.
Like look at the Tabata, say 170% of VO two max. That study was designed for elite people not to make it through. Like, so you, you can't, that's like my new pet peeve of like, it, I get it. That looks good on paper. Like, yes, that was done with a real population. But anyone who's ever tried to take a direct translation of that to something that wasn't, that population will find out within rep one that wasn't the best idea.
Well, you know what,
Jason Brown: and they haven't done it themselves. No. So do it yourself because they would know. Right. And that's, you know, how much learning do you get by doing? I mean that's, oh, I think so much, such an [01:08:00] important piece of the puzzle is like you can go get a PhD and never do any training yourself.
You might be book smart, but you've gotta be, you gotta do the training. You have to be in the trench, you gotta experiment. I mean, I think everyone should be a Guinea pig first before you're writing programs for anyone else. Guinea pig for, five, six years. Which I know like by today's standards, that's probably too long.
Dude, that's an eternity now. I mean, that's an eternity. But like I was, when I went and worked as a, went from a, being an intern and working at a facility where all the programs were already written. I didn't have to write anything. And then I went to a commercial gym and was a trainer there. I wrote all my own programs for myself, but I took all the programs I had from the facility and I extrapolated, I took a lot from those programs and wrote my own programs.
So I had a, I had like a template per se that I used to write programs. And then from that is where you start learning about other things and you start learning, oh, well this worked and this didn't. And this seemed good on paper, but it actually was terrible. Um, and then of course when I owned, you know, I was programming for [01:09:00] CrossFit gyms.
I mean, that is like a, the ultimate lab to test things. 'cause you have sure, a window of time, you have to get things done. And you have 60 minutes to run a class and everything's gotta be perfect. You need to know how something feels, you need to know how something, how long something's gonna take. How much time people have to do this and get their equipment and so on and so forth.
So, I think that there's just an incredible level of knowledge to be gained from, from doing it and being your own Guinea pig and just practicing what you preach.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think it's, as someone who's a trainer, I, I always go back and forth on this myself. Like I, I know I've probably cost myself progress in terms of my own performance by trying other stuff, but my higher priority is to try new things because that's where you're gonna learn and that's what people are paying me money for.
Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. So even if it kind of derails my own training, or, I mean, most of the shit that I do doesn't work out. Let's be honest. Like, yeah, I've gotten a little bit better [01:10:00] over time, but even like I played around with doing a six minute progressive for cardiovascular stuff, it sounds super simple now, and you're like, yeah, just do six minutes, no warmup, do it on an air bike or do it on a rower.
Try to do that six days per week if you just want to drop in some basic aerobic programming, like the minimal amount of value. I think I played with the variations of that for like a year and a half, you know, because if you go too hard, you fry yourself, you don't do enough, you don't get the adaptation.
Now you're doing work and people are pissed and you know, something that's like, is as straightforward, simple as that. And again, there's nothing magical about that, but it's just trial and error of working on it. And you get pretty close. You tried on a few clients, you get their feedback, you know, but that to me is also the fun of the profession and where you learn and where you figure out new stuff that's, that's going on.
Like, that's what's fun.
Jason Brown: It is, it is. It is totally fun. And that's, I think, if we're prescribing this stuff, we should be able to do it. I, I got a lot of my education [01:11:00] from doing programs on ation back in the, oh yeah. I dunno if you, if you, if you wrote a program for ation, I probably did it.
I, you know, went through. You know, back in 2004, 2003, 2004, you know, I was reading, there was an Art one article, I don't if you remember it was one article Te On Teenage. Yeah. I'd wait every day for it and it'd be like a 12 week program by Chad Waterbury. I would do the program. Yeah. Or Joe. Yeah. I did a lot of Chad's programs.
Yeah. Eric, Eric Pressey, like I would do their programs and by doing the programs you learn, you learn an extensive amount. I mean, like I said, I, I always joke that I got more knowledge from Tation than I did from a postgraduate degree in exercise. Yeah. So if that's not telling, I don't know what is.
Yeah.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think that gives you the ability of what I call it, like the paper translation. Right. Because we've all written programs and I've done this and you look at it and you're like, I don't know, seems too simple. But if you've done enough reps, you know, [01:12:00] oh, okay. That's not as simple. Or I always have to kind of even not so much sell new clients on this like.
Same but different, like mm-hmm. Your program looks almost identical now, but I promise when you go through and do it, it will feel a little bit different. Yes, exactly. 'cause until you get that reps, you can't look and see, oh, this rep range was different. This handle was tweaked, this exercise is modified a little bit.
It's just enough because you're making good progress. But we don't want you to stagnate and it will feel different. But if you just look at it on paper, you're like, oh, this coach, why'd I pay him so much money? That lazy son of a bitch. Like, he didn't change anything. But it's taken me a while to get to that point.
It's
Jason Brown: too, too, it looks too easy. Yeah, too easy. I get that all the time. It looks too easy. This is less than what I've been doing. And, you know, all those people come back and say the same thing. Oh, I'm getting better results now. Yeah. I got the best results of my life. And like I said, I've got boulders of 'em.
I, I'm so tired of social media, like trying to play the game. I'm like, I'm just gonna post testimonials for the next year straight. 'cause that's so many of them I have. And it's [01:13:00] like, you know, results are king. I always say that results are king. So if you're working. Less hours and making more money, then you're going in the right direction.
But people, for whatever reason, they wanna work more hours and make less money. Yeah. You know, and that's what training is like. It's not about maximum dose, it's about minimum effective dose. So what is the minimum effective dose? Well, I don't know. I, I know what works for me. I know what works for people that are on my training, but everyone is very different, right?
So the way we figure that out is we gotta be intuitive. And then you have other tangible data points like HRV and you can retest conditioning metrics and, and obviously gauge, you know, more qualitative how you feel on a, on a day-to-day basis. But there's just so many, there's just so many variables.
And at the end of the day, the best possible thing is just being consistent. 365, you know? Yeah. Be consistent. 365. Don't worry about your intensity. Worry about your consistency. 'cause people are always majoring in the minor. It's like. They want the special secret squirrel [01:14:00] protocol, but they don't even walk.
They walk 3000 steps a day. They eat a hundred grams of protein a day. They sleep six hours a night, but they wanna do the secret squirrel program. It's like, dude you don't, not even like doing any daily movement. You eat like a 2-year-old, you know, you're eating, like drinking half your calories. It's like, there, there's a whole world of results with just fixing some of these simple things.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's like, I'll take a, a poor program violently executed over like the perfect program that nobody ever did, like all day, every day.
Jason Brown: Yeah, for sure. No I'm with you.
Speaker 3: Awesome. Last question, uh, rapid fire. What would you say are four things people should know about concurrent training?
Jason Brown: Concurrent training is, you know, I think a lot of people don't even really know what that means.
But there's so many different, like catchphrases, hybrid, and. Obviously CrossFit, so concurrent training is you're just training different qualities of fitness. You're training for strength, you're [01:15:00] training for endurance in the same program. Now there's a number of ways that you can do it, but if you were to take anything from this episode, do those things on separate days and don't go to the extreme end of intensity and volume.
Just do it slowly. Like I said, Rome wasn't built in a day, but tr do some days that are easy, do some days that are hard. It's like that's the simplest way to do it. You do some easy days with conditioning or doing some cardio and you do some harder days with strength training. Simple as that.
Dr Mike T Nelson: Awesome. That works. We're gonna, people find you, I know you've got a ton of programs. Tell us about everything you got going on.
Jason Brown: Yeah, so Jason Brown coaching.com. I, um, I teach this, uh, the model of functional conjugate training and how to. Write programs to coaches and I also have training for, you know, end users if someone is just looking to, to train live better be Fit 365.
I've got some great programs for that on Train Heroic and um, yeah, social channels are all Jason Brown coaching, so feel free [01:16:00] to, uh, reach out there.
Speaker 3: Awesome. Well thank you so much. It was great to chat with you again. I really appreciate you sharing all your knowledge and everything else here. That was awesome.
Thank you so much. Thanks brother. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it. Huge. Thanks to Jason for taking this time to come discuss all these wonderful things on the podcast here. Make sure to check out all his great stuff. We'll put links to everything down below. You can get his programs, check out his stuff on Instagram, his website.
Lots and lots of really, really great stuff and I really enjoyed our conversation. This was super fun to get ideas about. How to program aerobic stuff, functional training, uh, concurrent training and everything else, uh, in between. So check out our sponsors. If you're looking to pick up some conditioning equipment because you're a meathead looking to increase your aerobic capacity, check out.
My friends over at Rogue Fitness highly [01:17:00] recommend their Echo bike or the concept to rower. Those would be my, my two choice pieces. From them, but I maybe if you wanna just lift some heavy stuff, they got lots of bars and, uh, great stuff there. So check them out. Speaking of lifting heavier stuff, check out our friends over at Beyond Power with the V Ultra one.
You can literally bolt this to your power rack or I've got their floor platform also, which is great for doing curls and just other simple stuff. Uh, we brought it down to South Padre when we were down there, and I got to do some grip lifts down there with the rolling Thunder handle and a bunch of other stuff.
And it was really compact. Didn't up take up much room in the, in the vehicle. And on days that I was super busy and wasn't able to make it to the gym down there, I still was able to do a lot of just basic stuff, uh, with a platform and just sticking the VRA one device right onto it, which was great. So check them out.
Uh, newsletter if you wanna get on there for free, if you enjoy this content. And then if you want to go deeper on the aerobic side, if you're a meathead, check [01:18:00] out my Level one Flexible Meathead Cardio course. There also huge thanks to Jason. Uh, make sure to check out all of his stuff, his social media, everything else.
Big. Thanks again to him for sharing all this time and knowledge and coming on the podcast here. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. If you could do us a favor and hit the old, like, and subscribe and leave us a review, a comment, all those wonderful things help us go really far with the old algorithms.
And help us get more amazing guests onto the show. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. Talk to all of you next week.
Speaker 5: Did you see that? Yes. The frog is certainly taking a beating on this show. Yeah. It's hard to feel sorry for him. We take a beating every show.
Speaker 7: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The podcast is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use the information on the podcast [01:19:00] for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, or prescribing any medication or other treatment.
Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider before taking any medication. Or nutritional supplement, and with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it. Because of something you have heard on this or any other podcast, reliance on the podcast is solely at your own risk.
Information provided on the podcast does not create a doctor patient relationship between you and any of the health professionals affiliated with our podcast. Information and statements regarding dietary supplements are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests.
This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to therein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.