Dr. Ben Skutnik (PhD, CSCS*D) joins the show to separate fact from fad in aerobic training, debunking zone 2 hype and explaining why VO2 max matters but isn't everything. We also dig into the psychology of performance, why anecdote often outruns research, and how 'closing the loop' with clients beats chasing mechanisms.
Dr. Ben Skutnik, PhD, CSCS*D, NSCA-CPT*D, is an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Human Performance Lab Director at Butler University and Head of Nutrition Coaching at Power Athlete.
Dr. Ben Skutnik joins the show to separate fact from fad in aerobic training, debunking zone 2 hype and explaining why VO2 max matters but isn't everything.
Expect to learn why reading scientific literature is its own skill, how uncontrolled variables quietly derail hypertrophy and menstrual-cycle training research, why treating people as fragile backfires, why anecdote in human performance often outruns the research, how "closing the loop" with clients beats chasing mechanisms, what the Norwegian 4x4 method gets right (and what most zone 2 research gets wrong about training zones), and how to actually build VO2 max with the critical power model, and much more.
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Episode Timestamps:
[00:00:00] Ben Skutnik: Yeah
[00:03:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Hello.
[00:04:00] Ben Skutnik: Hey, Mike. How we doing?
[00:04:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Sorry about that. I don’t know what hap- oops, now I’m echoing. What do I got? Two people on here? Uh, what the… Let me see if I can Hold on a sec here. I might have to go back out and come back in. I think I’m in here twice for some reason. Let’s see. I’ll be right back.
[00:04:29] Ben Skutnik: All righty.
[00:04:30] Ben Skutnik: I’ll be here.
[00:04:31] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Okay
[00:06:14] Dr. Mike T Nelson: All right, there we go. Sorry about that. I don’t know what the, the heck happened. You didn’t have the code, and then I was in another Zoom meeting, and I’m like, “Well, this is weird.” And then the Zoom meeting wasn’t on my schedule, so I’m like, “Well, I’m Smart Monkey, I’ll fix this. I’ll create a new one.” And then I think in the meantime I was logged into two Zoom meetings, and and then the wrong one.
[00:06:34] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And so apologize for that.
[00:06:37] Ben Skutnik: Not a problem. You’d think, you know, 2020’s been a long time from now, you’d think we’d be experts in this, but, uh, we’re still learning.
[00:06:45] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I know, and each time I’m like, “Ah, I got it figured out this time,” and yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:51] Ben Skutnik: I get it.
[00:06:52] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Uh, how are you doing? Thank you so much for doing this, I appreciate it.
[00:06:55] Ben Skutnik: No, I’m excited. I’m doing well, yeah. Um, you know, Hunter, Hunter hit me up I think when he was down at the ISSN and he was talking- Yeah … he was gonna sit at, he said he was gonna sit for some talk, and I thought it was, it was like a zone two talk, and I asked if it was you, and he’s like, “No, do you know Mike?”
[00:07:10] Ben Skutnik: And I was like, “Well, I know of Mike.” But, um, you know, follow his stuff, and he’s like, “Oh, I gotta, I gotta introduce you two,” and so here we are. So yeah, I’m
[00:07:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: excited. Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. And are you good for about an hour or do you have a hard stop? Just so I know if you’re good for-
[00:07:24] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, I’m, I’m good, uh, good for the day.
[00:07:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Okay, perfect. Um, yeah, my thought was he said you’re the man to talk to about cardiovascular and aerobic programming and adaptations and all that stuff. I was like, “Oh, perfect, that sounds amazing.”
[00:07:37] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, I d- I don’t know if I’m the man to talk about it- … but I do have some thoughts on it, and, uh, and do have some experience with it.
[00:07:44] Ben Skutnik: So yeah, no, I’m excited for this. Well- ’Cause like I said, I, I’ve watched your stuff and, and I think we’re- Oh, thank you … in line with a lot of the same, um, thoughts. I think there’s a lot… There, I think, I don’t think, I know there’s a lot out there that confuses, like, the everyday person because they- Oh, yeah
[00:07:59] Ben Skutnik: don’t know this stuff, and so I’m excited to chat with you about it ’cause, yeah, we share a lot of the same philosophies and, and I think understanding of what, like, the literature actually says, uh, and, and not necessarily what’s being pushed by the masses.
[00:08:13] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, that’s my pet peeve is that it’s even worse now.
[00:08:16] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, nobody reads anything. Mm-hmm. Even, like, people, I don’t know, it sounds like maybe never put your heroes too much on a pedestal, but, like, people I thought were updated, and I think they were, but they were updated, like, seven years ago. Mm-hmm. And it’s totally fine if they said, you know, “Ah, you know, I haven’t looked into that now,” or whatever.
[00:08:32] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Cool, like, I don’t have any problem with that. But it’s like y- when you’re still trying to pass off data that’s, like, 12 years old, it’s like, ah.
[00:08:41] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And, and that’s just it, right? And, you know, you and I both know having these degrees, it’s, it’s, like, really the whole point is to know, I know up to this point, and then from there on I just say, like, “I’m not sure.”
[00:08:52] Ben Skutnik: Like, oh, you know- Yeah … and, and I can speculate, but I have to say like, “Hey, I’m speculating right now.” And that’s what frustrates me is there’s a lot of people with similar degrees, or at least similar levels of, uh, education, and they don’t say that. And then, and, and that’s where the problem is because, yeah, just like you, it’s like I can’t keep up with all the literature, right?
[00:09:12] Ben Skutnik: Oh, God, no. And, and, and so when these people state so matter-of-factly, like these, y- you know, someone once told me only Sith speak in absolutes, right? And it’s like they speak in such absolutes with this stuff, and it’s like, man, that’s not the training I got. That’s not what I’ve seen in the lab. Like, th- it’s very rarely can I be so absolute about something.
[00:09:31] Ben Skutnik: And so it is, it’s frustrating ’cause the, again, the everyday person doesn’t know. You know, they-
[00:09:36] Dr. Mike T Nelson: No …
[00:09:37] Ben Skutnik: if, if they haven’t gone through this type of training and, and education, then they just assume, like, oh, you guys know everything. It’s like, well, the reality is we don’t know much about anything. Yeah, I know.
[00:09:46] Ben Skutnik: Like, I know, I know, I’m pretty confident about a very small scope of stuff. But even within that it’s like, man, I don’t know for sure. So yeah, I get frustrated by it quite a bit.
[00:09:55] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And even when you’re speaking semi-confidently, you should at least then base it on, well, here’s the data, here’s how I got to that.
[00:10:02] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So it’s based on this point, this point, and this point. And, and I agree, I’m probably guilty of this to some to point to- ’Cause on Instagram, like if you’re doing a reel, you only have three minutes at the most. Mm-hmm,
[00:10:12] Ben Skutnik: yeah.
[00:10:13] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Right? And y- I always feel like I’m walking this tightrope of I wanna say stuff that’s true, or at least as I understand it to be true.
[00:10:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I want it to be applied and useful, but there’s no way I can cover… Even when you try to specify context, there’s no way you can cover every possible- Mm-hmm … outlier or possible exception. And it never fails that you get, “Well, what about this or this or that?” And, and those are all good questions, and maybe the part of it is just to have a discussion, which I’m, you know, totally fine with it.
[00:10:45] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I get annoyed when people then are mad that, “Well, you didn’t talk about this exception or that exception.” It’s like, “Dude, I had like three minutes.”
[00:10:53] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Yeah. And like, hey, there’s nothing stopping you from talking about those things- Right … so go for it. You can do
[00:10:58] Dr. Mike T Nelson: that.
[00:10:58] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Yeah. No, I feel the same way, and that’s, that’s why I go in like these ebbs and flows of social media because I get to that same point.
[00:11:05] Ben Skutnik: I’m just like, “Whatever.” Like, I’m not gonna do this because-
[00:11:07] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah …
[00:11:07] Ben Skutnik: it’s like your, your best intentions, there’s always gonna be somebody out there who, um, challenges it. And I, and my wife is in education. She’s in secondary ed at the- Oh, okay … administrative level. And she and I were talking about this because her teachers are getting a lot of pushback from parents now.
[00:11:22] Ben Skutnik: And on the one hand, I’m like, yeah, great, pushback. That’s great. It’s always good to be challenged, um, ’cause that’s when you can defend yourself. But a talk she’s been having with her teachers has been, um, when parents come and say, “Well, that’s just your opinion,” reframe it as like, “Well, no, that’s my professional judgment based off of- Right.
[00:11:37] Ben Skutnik: Oh, that’s good. I like that … all of my training. Based off, yeah, based off my education, all my experience, my training. My professional judgment is this because it’s rooted in the data I’ve been exposed to. Granted, there could be data I don’t know about, right? For sure. There could be things going on, but my professional judgment is this.
[00:11:51] Ben Skutnik: And I think that, when she told me that, it was like a light bulb moment where it’s like, oh, that’s, that’s excellent because that’s all we do, right? That’s all, when in this training space, like we’re just making our, our best judgment based off of what we know. But people on the outside want us to be so concrete and, like, so, we, they want us to, like, plant a stake in the ground, and it’s like I can’t do that because I’ll open up some table of contents email, and it’s like, oh, that changes everything I thought there.
[00:12:14] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. So, okay.
[00:12:16] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I’m already recording if that, that’s all right. That, that’s fine. I’ll-
[00:12:19] Ben Skutnik: Yeah …
[00:12:19] Dr. Mike T Nelson: leave this part in ’cause I think it is a good discussion because I think with AI and everything coming in, it’s… There’s gonna be less people reading primary literature. And I totally understand. Like, some people just, they don’t have the skill set to do it and they haven’t been trained.
[00:12:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, I could try to read the tax code and I have no idea what the hell I’m even looking at, so I pay a CPA to, to, to handle all that stuff, and I can ask my idiotic questions to him. And he’s very polite and answers them in a way a fifth grader like me for CPA stuff can understand.
[00:12:48] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[00:12:48] Dr. Mike T Nelson: But it’s the in-between where AI speaks to you very authoritatively, even when it’s absolutely dead wrong.
[00:12:58] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And if you don’t have a background in the field, you should be like, “Man, maybe I should be a little bit cautious of this data. I probably shouldn’t run to the bank with this and espouse it from the internet everywhere,” and, “Oh, look at me, I have all the answers.”
[00:13:11] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And, and there’s… I, I think you hit a really important part there where it’s like reading scientific literature is a skill set all and of itself, right?
[00:13:19] Ben Skutnik: For sure. I remember, I remember my first kinda senior seminar during undergrad, we read some papers, and I would read start to finish in order, and it’s like I don’t really know what I’m looking at. And because there’s conclusions and I trust these scientists, I assume- Mm-hmm … like this is it. But then as you get through grad school, it’s like you learn how to pick it apart.
[00:13:38] Ben Skutnik: And, and I think the real problem is it’s not so much the information. I think the general population has come a long way in learning, I’ll say, like mechanisms and- Mm-hmm … and, like mitochondria, right? 20 years ago, nobody outside of the scientific realm would really know- No … what mitochondria was, but now everybody’s talking about mitochondria, right?
[00:13:56] Ben Skutnik: But what they haven’t learned are the methods. They don’t understand the measurements, um, that happen in the lab. They don’t really, I think, have a good understanding of the level of control that lab settings have, right? There’s not a lot of ecological validity in a lab test. Mm. And then they really don’t…
[00:14:14] Ben Skutnik: And, and I say they, this is also me to an extent and some of my peers, when we get into the statistical methods, then it’s like- Oof … what does this really mean, right? People are conditioned to like, oh, P of .05, that means it’s true, and it’s like that’s not what the P value means. Yeah. And so,
[00:14:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: so
[00:14:30] Ben Skutnik: there’s all those other parts about it.
[00:14:32] Ben Skutnik: It’s not just about the actual physiology of it. It’s, it’s everything that goes into the study design. And how would I expect Joe Schmoe to learn that when they’re doing a 40-hour-a-week job and something else and all that, right? Like, I wouldn’t expect them to.
[00:14:44] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah.
[00:14:45] Ben Skutnik: But it does make it difficult to communicate this stuff because there’s a lot of nuance, like you know.
[00:14:50] Ben Skutnik: And again, a three-minute reel or a tweet or whatever, that’s not enough room to get into all of it.
[00:14:56] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and that’s why I do like having podcasts, is you can have longer discussions- Mm-hmm … and you can have, you know, people you might agree with on stuff, people you may disagree. And, you know, a vast majority…
[00:15:05] Dr. Mike T Nelson: This has happened in person all the time too, of most of the time you realize, oh, we actually agree on more than we disagree, even if you face value looks like you don’t agree on anything. And I even- Mm-hmm … you know, some of the people who vehemently disagree with me, it’s usually the people you barely know, like…
[00:15:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And so my little rule is, okay, if you wanna have a discussion in person, we can do that, but at some point there’s no, there’s nothing further either one of us are gaining by going back and forth online or in DMs or, or things like that. And if like, if you wanna sit down and have a beer and a dinner and like, yeah, I’ll talk to you for three hours.
[00:15:41] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I don’t care. I love this stuff, you know? Mm-hmm. ’Cause I just find that those, those conversations are worth the time and are actually productive. Yeah. Where a lot of the back and forth, especially when it’s someone that you don’t know, there’s no… It’s almost like there’s no skin in the game. Like, there’s no…
[00:15:57] Dr. Mike T Nelson: They could be extremely offensive, and they don’t really know you, so they don’t really feel bad about it, and it’s just a, just a different dynamic, I think.
[00:16:04] Ben Skutnik: Well, and the… Yeah, that dynamic and, and kind of just the tone of the disagreement. ’Cause, you know, in science, right, we’ll use like capital S science here, that’s all we do is disagree, right?
[00:16:16] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. We go to conferences and all that. Ever been to a
[00:16:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: conference?
[00:16:18] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And it’s like that’s what we do. That’s what we’re trained to do, actually, is we’re, we’re trained to essentially poke holes and, and ask the questions about it. And but we’re trained in a way where even, even the people who are diametrically opposed on stuff, they do it with a certain level of respect and, and understanding, and not like a personal attack.
[00:16:37] Ben Skutnik: Even though this work, you know, if you get… You know, I think about like, um, you know, like George Brooks. Yeah. But how, how important is this? This is probably his life identity, right? Is what he does. When people disagree with him, he doesn’t take it personally ’cause they don’t come at him personally about it.
[00:16:53] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm. Right? It’s just about the work. And what I find on social media is it’s just like 0 to 100 right away we’re going personal ad hominems- Yeah. … and it’s like, hey man, like I… First off, you’re just like a, you could be a bot for all I know. Like, I’m, I’m not- Yeah … that invested in it. But it’s like if you wanna have those discussions, sure, they come off maybe a little terse because, again, the language that we’re trained to use.
[00:17:16] Ben Skutnik: Like, I’m not- Mm-hmm … I, I’m not going to use definitive language. I’m going to speak in a, a little bit of caution. And, and people, again, if they’re not trained in that or understand that’s what we’re doing, then they can get, you know, defensive or they, they just come at you too harshly, and it’s just like, man, this…
[00:17:34] Ben Skutnik: For somebody like you, like I love this stuff, I could talk about it for hours, it’s also not that important for me to get that heated about it. Like- No. You know? It’s like, cool, man. Like, if you’re, if you really believe that, you know, whatever is so true, then great, go for it. Like, I, I just don’t care that much to, to argue.
[00:17:50] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That’s the thing at the end of the day, it’s like I’m… Unless you’re paying me as one of my clients, like- I’m just not that hyper invested in you as an individual if you’re hellbent on doing whatever it is you’re gonna do.
[00:18:04] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:04] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Cool. Whatever. You do you. Like, if y- if that works for you and you’ve got data and you think it’s great, yeah.
[00:18:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What… I’m, I’m not here to change your mind unless you have questions about it, and I’m not here to try to spend hours convincing you to do something different when you don’t really wanna or have any reason to do anything different either.
[00:18:26] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And i- ’cause it’s like in reality you don’t exist to me, right?
[00:18:30] Ben Skutnik: Like you, like you’re, you’re-
[00:18:31] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It’s like I… Y- just do what you’re doing. If you’re happy, woo-hoo, great. Yeah. I don’t care.
[00:18:36] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And, and on top of that, the reality is it’s like in, in our field, it’s like, well, if you’re doing something, I mean, that’s still better than nothing, right? So it’s like your- For sure
[00:18:45] Ben Skutnik: y- y- your net result’s gonna be positive. Is it… ’Cause that’s the other thing right now, the current, like- But
[00:18:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: it’s not optimal, bro.
[00:18:50] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Like, that’s, and that’s the thing. It’s like- … everybody’s so hinged on like, “Well, how do I optimize?” It’s like-
[00:18:57] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, I
[00:18:58] Ben Skutnik: hate that word
[00:18:58] Dr. Mike T Nelson: now …
[00:18:59] Ben Skutnik: well, you can start… Like, the first step would be go get new parents, right?
[00:19:01] Ben Skutnik: ’Cause it starts there. Yep. And it’s like if- … that’s gonna dictate, what, 70% of everything. So it’s like- A
[00:19:07] Dr. Mike T Nelson: lot …
[00:19:07] Ben Skutnik: you know, don’t… I- it’s… But again, in the field, those of us who are in the field doing the work or whatever, we’re not really concerned with optimization because it i- like, it’s such a vague, like- You can’t test
[00:19:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: it in a lab.
[00:19:19] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[00:19:19] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, what is that? They could give you $4 million to your lab and you could not test the optimal protocol for mitochondrial biogenesis, right? Yeah. For aerobic training. You could test protocol A and protocol B, and based off of some measurement of mitochondrial function we can argue about what is best, but you could determine from that context, that group of people, those protocols, if A or B was better.
[00:19:43] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, that- Mm-hmm … you could definitely give an answer to.
[00:19:45] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Well, and, and I had a discussion on social media with somebody about this. Um, they were talking about hypertrophy training, and like, “Oh, you don’t actually have to lift to failure ’cause there’s all these other, uh- … pieces of literature that show, um, if you lift close to failure you get similar results.”
[00:20:02] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, well, yeah, but, like, let’s unpack that. You get similar results.
[00:20:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Right.
[00:20:06] Ben Skutnik: So it’s not the same. And, and they’re like, “Well, and, and really it depends on, like, your ability to recover.” And it’s like, yeah, but none of those studies controlled for recovery, so we really can’t- Correct … say, you know, it’s like you, you would have to control for so many things, and they were kind of like, uh, you know, Apple pinwheel of death when I brought all that up-
[00:20:22] Ben Skutnik: ’cause it, but it’s like that’s the thing. That’s why we won’t ever say this is the optimal protocol, because we understand I would have to control for about 95 different things just to test this one variable, and that’s impossible. It’s just impossible.
[00:20:35] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. That’s why I’ve tried to… I was just talking with one of my clients the other day.
[00:20:39] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I’ve tried to stay out of all the- biomechanics hypertrophy arguments online just because I, I feel like it’s just a never ending spiral. And one, do I spend all my free time reading the hypertrophy literature? No. No. Am I relatively updated on it? Eh, relatively. Am I gonna really argue with people like Stu Phillips and Brad Schoenfeld and Dr.
[00:21:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mike Roberts? No. But I can just call them up and be like, “Hey, man, I got a question about this.” And Mike Soko is like, “Well, you know, man, we looked at this in this room, then we did this and we did that.” And he’s like, “At the end of the day, like, I don’t really know, man.” You know?
[00:21:15] Ben Skutnik: And that’s, and that’s everybody who’s done- Yeah
[00:21:17] Ben Skutnik: a lot of the work settles on that. Like, “Nah, I don’t really know.” Yeah. And-
[00:21:21] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah …
[00:21:21] Ben Skutnik: and that should be telling, right? That should, to me, and it’s tough to say, but I feel like if I was a person who didn’t know anything, right? Kinda like your CPA example.
[00:21:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:30] Ben Skutnik: If I went to my accountant and I had a whole bunch of issues, and they came back with like, “I don’t really know if it matters,” I would just be like, “Cool, you’re the professional.”
[00:21:36] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, I’m not gonna
[00:21:37] Dr. Mike T Nelson: worry about it.
[00:21:37] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Like, you’re telling me don’t worry about it, so I’m not gonna worry about it. But in our field, for whatever reason, people can’t handle that, right? They can’t handle, um, the idea of just, like, doing something is infinitely better than nothing. Like, you’re gonna- Mm-hmm
[00:21:52] Ben Skutnik: get in a better position. They… It’s like, “No, I need to know exactly what should I do.” And it’s like, I- like, even, even my clients who do pay me, it’s kind of like, I don’t know if it matters enough to dive into that. Like, let’s just try and check the big rocks and, and move on from there.
[00:22:07] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And even with, like, women training to their, you know, status of, you know, where they’re at in their hormone cycle and-
[00:22:14] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm
[00:22:15] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I honestly tried doing that seven years ago. It was eight years ago now. Like, most of my clients are actually female, even though I write to dude bros, which is kind of crazy. Um, all, every other email was about her cycle and where they were at, and they’re not really so sure, and is this associated? And what I realized was even if this mattered a lot, which I don’t think it does- I screwed up because now I was putting the focus on something that is probably incredibly minor, if it all matters.
[00:22:47] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:47] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And then you figure, go feed forward through time. I’ve seen a fair amount of high-level females training, especially in a collegiate setting, and even in private settings, and even at the Olympic level, I didn’t know of one single coach that was changing the training based on where they were in their cycle.
[00:23:07] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Now caveat, I will have clients change based on how they feel, how their performance is, how their HRV is, all that stuff, and that is definitely influenced by their cycle. There’s absolutely no question about that. But to predetermine the next four months based off- Yeah … their cycle, and we’re gonna do aerobic stuff this week, and strength this week and that week, and it’s like, ah, I, I just, I don’t think it matters.
[00:23:30] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And then again, you, you say something and people are like, “Oh, so you’re saying, like, women’s hormones and the physiology is the same?” It’s like, “No, that’s not what I’m, not what I’m saying at all.” It’s definitely different, and I’m definitely not an expert in that area. It’s just, is this parameter that we know is different, that we know has effects, in the grand scheme of things, is that gonna replace sleep and nutrition and how you train and all these other factors?
[00:23:56] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, with the data we have right now, it says probably not.
[00:24:00] Ben Skutnik: Well, and that’s, uh, when we have those conversations, what I always go back to is these op- either i- whether it’s the optimization conversations or women talking about training with their cycle and, and all those things, it’s like what we’re doing is we’re reducing us down to these very fragile beings.
[00:24:17] Ben Skutnik: Yes. It’s like the human organism- Which
[00:24:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: is the opposite of what you wanna do …
[00:24:20] Ben Skutnik: yeah. The, and, and it’s o- the opposite of what we are, right? If you think about- Correct … all of the different environments that the human organism can live and actually thrive in, right? Like, that’s not just sustain, but think about babies can grow in all of these different environments with all these different levels of food and resources and all that kind of stuff.
[00:24:39] Ben Skutnik: It’s like, man, we’re pretty dang resilient, and if you’re gonna get so hung up on, like, a single potential variable, especially when we talk about cycle training, ’cause it’s like, what are you- are you gonna avoid that? You can’t avoid it. Yeah. You know? And so when they talk about these things, all I try and coach my clients up on is like, “Hey, like, you’re way more resilient than that,” right?
[00:24:56] Ben Skutnik: Like even- Yes … and like, I’m w- I’m with you. It’s like, hey, if we can get accurate measures of HRV, that’s great to help us inform maybe that day we can modify the- Yeah … the volume or the load or whatever. But also, like, if you get a bad night of sleep, but you gotta train, then you gotta train, right? Yeah.
[00:25:12] Ben Skutnik: There’s, you know, um, my wife and I, we have two kids and, and when we were having our first kid, we were pretty stressed out, kind of a big life event, right? And one of our friends, uh, told us pretty, I don’t know if it’s, like, actually true, but I assume it’s true, uh, they’re like, “You know- Women were giving birth running through the fields of Vietnam while being napalmed.
[00:25:31] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, yeah, man. Like, that’s pretty, like morbid, but it’s also like- Yeah … yeah, like we’re pretty, we’re pretty good at adapting to a lot of things. And so I think people forget about that, or maybe they didn’t know that in the first place, and it’s like that’s the whole point of all this, is to introduce the stress and adapt to it, right?
[00:25:47] Ben Skutnik: Like that’s, that’s the cycle that we work on. So I get frustrated because I think it reduces us down to like a very fragile being, and that’s just not at all what we are or what we’re trying to train for, right? I want them to be, even like my high-level athletes, yeah, you’re very specific in what we’re trying to attain as far as performance, but you should be pretty broad in your ability to perform, right?
[00:26:08] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm. There’s, there’s… You should be strong, you should be, you know, conditioned and, and all those things depend based on the specific sport, but it’s like strength, conditioning, um, you know, we could talk about mobility and things like that. Like, they all should be at a pretty broad range. We’re, we’re like m- you know, what is it?
[00:26:24] Ben Skutnik: The, um, jack of all trades, masters of none. Yeah. Like, that’s kind of, that’s kinda humans, right? We’re not the fastest animal on the planet, we’re not the biggest animal on the planet, but we’re pretty adaptable, probably more than most animals, right? So that’s, that’s my thought- Yeah … on all that.
[00:26:41] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, no, I would say that.
[00:26:42] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I mean, that’s, uh, that’s been my big thing is that humans are probably the most adaptable animal, period, whether if you include that from a, a neuro side, you include that from a physiology side, a heat regulation side.
[00:26:54] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:54] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You know, obviously I’m biased to physiologic flexibility, metabolic flexibility, all that kind- Mm-hmm
[00:26:58] Dr. Mike T Nelson: of stuff. And I, I just think that gets left out of the conversation because a lot of the stuff, and this is targeted to guys too, is that- If you want like a, a lot of social media, you just say, “Oh, well, a cold plunge for women is bad because of cortisol.” Yeah. It’s like, oh yeah, it is a stressor and, you know, have I seen people tank their training and their HRV from too much Wim Hof and crazy cold plunges every day?
[00:27:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Is that the norm? No. And if you account for that stressor, odds are you’re probably gonna be f- just fine, you know? And I’ve had female clients even currently in the past, and I’ve worked with some, who would bury most gym bros in the gym. Like- … absolutely, like no question whatsoever, but they’ve trained intelligently at, you know, some of them for decades of their life.
[00:27:49] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s the hack, right? People wanna hack their way to optimization. It’s like, well, the optimi- uh, the optimization protocol is 35, 40 years of consistent training.
[00:27:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah.
[00:28:00] Ben Skutnik: That’s what it is, right? And, and we can’t press fast-forward on that, right? And, um, and if you didn’t start when you were 15, then yeah, you’re not gonna be as well off as the person who did.
[00:28:10] Ben Skutnik: But the, the reality is it just, it’s all so simple, but like you said, in the current social media landscape, like that’s not, that’s not engaging. That’s not
[00:28:19] Dr. Mike T Nelson: sexy, bro.
[00:28:20] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Like, it’s, it’s really not engaging. And, and again, you brought up metabolic flexibility, right? That’s another one, right? The nutrition space is rife with all- Oh
[00:28:29] Ben Skutnik: these wild claims. And it’s like the… Yes, I totally agree. There are some people who maybe like a, a keto diet works because they do have- Mm-hmm … some kind of autoimmune something, or some people are sensitive to certain foods or things like that. But the end goal should not be to dial into such a restrictive alley.
[00:28:47] Ben Skutnik: It should be, I should be able to eat anything because that’s how humans have evolved, right? We, we are omnivores. We are able to handle quite a bit of variance. And so I s- I should be able to without any disruption. And so if I’m finding that dairy gives me issues or nightshades give me issues, well, that means there’s something under the hood that’s not going correct.
[00:29:08] Ben Skutnik: But-
[00:29:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yep …
[00:29:09] Ben Skutnik: it sh- you should look to fix that instead of saying, “Okay, well then I’ll just never have dairy,” right? And it’s like, no, you should… I mean, all of this stuff is good. We should have as much as possible, so improve that capacity rather than focusing so tightly on a certain lane of this.
[00:29:25] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. You should not be taken down by broccoli, of all things.
[00:29:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Like that should… And I get it. Do I have people who have issues with that? Yes. Mm-hmm. But that’s an issue we’re trying to resolve. It doesn’t mean avoid all these things the rest of your life. So the videos from, I call him the Costa Rican naked grocery getter, about pulling up random produce- Yeah
[00:29:46] Dr. Mike T Nelson: and vegetables are out to kill you, and this is the reason you’re not lean. And I’m like, oh my God, like, really? This is where- Yeah … we’re at? Like, people are afraid of freaking vegetables now? Like, does… I mean, everyone, not people who have an issue, not people who have an intolerance or digestive issues or whatever.
[00:30:00] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It’s like- Oh, no wonder people are so confused.
[00:30:04] Ben Skutnik: Well, and that’s the thing. I always joke, uh, with the, the folks I, I coach with nutrition, it’s like the number of grown adults that I have to give permission to eat a vegetable- I know. … is just mind-boggling, right? Like, like, “Hey, it’s, it’s okay to eat some leafy greens.”
[00:30:19] Ben Skutnik: “Well, I heard…” And it’s like, d- don’t listen to wherever you heard that from, because w- it, it just, it’s… Again, the individual not within the field doesn’t really have an understanding. Correct. Probably a little bit afraid. It’s like, cool, I get why you would be taken by that. Totally. But if we just step back and think of, like, the absurdity of those statements, right?
[00:30:37] Ben Skutnik: Like ve- vegetables, some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, w- why would we not wanna eat them? And then they’re like, “Well, if you cook them, that’s where the problem is.” And it’s like, oh yeah, no, disregard that the, the brain size grew immensely once we learned how to just, to cook food. Oh. Like, let’s disregard all that.
[00:30:54] Ben Skutnik: Huge difference. You know? Yeah. It’s like, what? Like, I don’t… Just, like, simple logical steps, it’s just they’re, they’re absent from some of these claims. And I think if that’s maybe where it’s like I’m not gonna teach somebody, you know, PhD level physiology, but I could sure help them learn logic, right? And like, can we follow this logic?
[00:31:11] Ben Skutnik: Does it actually make sense along the way? And once you start to analyze a lot of these folks and their claims, it’s like logically that just doesn’t make sense, right?
[00:31:19] Dr. Mike T Nelson: No. And it goes back to what you said about even just the mindset of… One thing I try to do is promote resilience, being more anti-fragile.
[00:31:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, let’s… Yes, if you have an issue with broccoli, for example, we’re probably gonna pull it out of your diet for a period of time. We’re trying to try to fix the underlying issue. But the goal is, in time, if we can, to eat as many foods as possible, to not be as restrictive, to- Mm-hmm … in essence prepare you for a world that is going to try to insult you with carbohydrates and even low-quality foods.
[00:31:52] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And again, doesn’t mean you need to live on Pop-Tarts and Captain Crunch for breakfast. But at the same point, you shouldn’t be so hypersensitive to those things. And I think once people get to that point and realize, “Oh, wow, I can do this and that,” there’s always gonna be limits to everything. There’s just a lot more- freedom of not being restrictive and, and- Mm-hmm
[00:32:15] Dr. Mike T Nelson: thinking of like, “Oh, what’s my, you know, naughty versus nice list of foods?” all the time.
[00:32:22] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Well, and there’s also that baked into it too, the stress that people have around- Yeah … if I’m doing the right thing. And it’s like, it, again, peeling that away, ’cause it’s not, it, my two big ones are sleep and diet, right?
[00:32:34] Ben Skutnik: People- For sure … it’s like the amount of stress you carry in just to the idea of these things, that’s negatively impacting everything that you’re getting out of it, right? If you’re stressing about sleep, well, yeah, you’re waking up and your sleep quality’s poor. Well, ’cause you sat in bed for 45 minutes stressing out like, “I can’t fall asleep.”
[00:32:49] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And so sometimes I’ll just say like, “Hey, what if we just go to bed an hour later?” And they’re like, ”
[00:32:52] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Well, I need
[00:32:53] Ben Skutnik: nine hours.” Why? It’s like, well-
[00:32:55] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You crazy person. Yeah. Don’t you know I need sleep?
[00:32:57] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. It’s like, well, if you’re, if you’re awake for 45 minutes laying in bed, why don’t you, like, read for those 45 minutes or something, and then try and go to bed a little bit later?
[00:33:05] Ben Skutnik: “Well, I, I just don’t think I could do that.” And it’s like, well, let’s just give it a shot. ’Cause that’s the thing. Everybody, my big beef right now is, like, this science-based training. It’s like the scientific method is change one variable and see how that works. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, download the data from that, and adjust if necessary.
[00:33:21] Ben Skutnik: So it’s like, let’s, we can’t be afraid of changing things one at a time, but also, let’s just change things one at a time, right? Let’s not try and, like, grand overhaul everything ’cause then you don’t know what the, the driver was for the change.
[00:33:35] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and sometimes when clients are new and they’ve got a lot of stuff to fix, like I actually just give them that option.
[00:33:39] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It’s like, okay, if you can, if you have the time and space and stress capacity to handle more changes, we can either do the kitchen sink approach where we’re gonna do multiple changes at once, or we’re gonna do one change at a time. The pro of the kitchen sink is you may get a result faster-
[00:33:59] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm …
[00:33:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: but you’ll have zero idea why- Mm-hmm
[00:34:02] Dr. Mike T Nelson: because we just put so many variables into the mix. And again, sometimes you have high-level athletes who are like, “I don’t care. The season starts, I’ve got four months, I don’t give a fuck, let’s go.” Yeah. Okay, perfect. Just know that you can’t come back in month five and be like, “Oh, well, what was the main reason?”
[00:34:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: We’ll have no idea, right?
[00:34:18] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[00:34:19] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Versus we can do one at a time, and then you’ll have a little bit better idea, you know, what is the overall impact. The trade-off is that it’s, it’s gonna be a little bit slower because we are doing, you know, one at a time. Where early on I would just sort of pick for them and it would always backfire.
[00:34:34] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, well, that’s the thing, right? You want them to kinda guide themselves, ’cause that’s part of it, too, is, like, building this autonomy. But, um, yeah, the, the real issue I run into, especially with newer clients, clients who’ve been with me for a while understand, but newer clients, it’s like, okay, I convince them like, “Hey, maybe the one at the time, one, one at a time is the better option,” but then that first one we try doesn’t really change anything.
[00:34:53] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm. And they’re like, “Well, what do you… You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Yeah. It’s like, okay. Like I guess not. Like, then… And so it’s, again, understanding, but if you’ve been in the field, if you understand science, it’s like, hey, sometimes we get null, null results, right? So it’s like this was just not the driver.
[00:35:08] Ben Skutnik: Um, and so it is. It’s just, it, the, it’s just a, the grand experiment, right? That you can only run once because you can’t- Yep … like try something and then go back and try it again. But, uh, yeah, I think on the one hand, I do enjoy the current landscape because people are a little bit better informed on average.
[00:35:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:27] Ben Skutnik: But yeah, then there’s the people, it’s like, well, you’re, you know enough just to be dangerous now, ’cause you don’t really understand w- either what you’re saying or the claims that are actually being made. And, um, and, and again, as long as you got a really well-curated social profile, you’ll be the loudest voice in the room, and then people will believe that you can’t touch the receipt that prints out at the store, otherwise your testosterone’s gonna tank, right?
[00:35:50] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, that’s so ridiculous.
[00:35:52] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Oh, yeah. And there’s a lot of parrots, like people who just will parrot what the next person is saying. Which, again, is fine. I don’t have a problem with it, just tell me that’s what you did.
[00:36:05] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[00:36:05] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Be like, “Oh, I heard so-and-so said this, and I found, here’s what I found.” Or if you only have experience, you know, like I’ve done a lot of work with, you know, Cal Dietz and- If- Cal’s proposed all sorts of crazy shit to me.
[00:36:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. You know? And, uh, you know, the last one was the goat drill. He showed me a video of this, and I’m like, “Cal, I think this is the stupidest thing you’ve ever shown me.” You know, but at the same point, I had to stop and be like… I said, “Well, okay, what have you seen with this? Like, what have you…” ’Cause I know he tests stuff, he does read the literature.
[00:36:32] Dr. Mike T Nelson: There’s no- Mm-hmm … randomized control study on it. But if he’s like, “Man, this is the greatest results I’ve ever seen,” in his experience, I’m like, “Okay, I, I should stop and pay attention to this.” And like, you know, six months later, I was like, “Son of a bitch, he was right again.”
[00:36:47] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Well, and that’s, and that’s something that gets lost in all this, too.
[00:36:50] Ben Skutnik: People wanna say like, “Well, show me the RCT. Like, show me the peer-reviewed literature.” Yeah And it’s like, well, you know, in human performance- Good luck … that’s important, but the, the anecdotal evidence is oftentimes ahead of the curve because they- Mm-hmm … don’t have to go through the IRB and all of this stuff.
[00:37:04] Ben Skutnik: And also, like at the end of the day, are they performing better, right? Yep. So like g- the goat drill, for example, maybe that doesn’t do anything. But Cal’s got his athletes so bought in on it that they’re performing- For sure … better. It’s like, cool. I’m not gonna tell you don’t do it, because it’s obviously working, right?
[00:37:18] Ben Skutnik: At the end of the day, their, the results speak for themselves. Now, if people wanted to drill down on a what’s the mechanism, well, I don’t know. Like that’s- Yeah … that’s where it’s like, I don’t know, but it seems to be, uh, working. So then the question is, is it causing any harm? Doesn’t seem to be causing any harm.
[00:37:33] Ben Skutnik: Seems like a fun way to warm up, if anything else. Mm-hmm. So it’s like, sure. There’s minimal risk in implementing it, right? And, and people, again, they want mechanisms, they want all this definite, and it’s like, it doesn’t really matter. In human performance, at the end of the day, all that really matters is does it work well in, in improving performance?
[00:37:51] Ben Skutnik: Because you and I both know also, I could have a, a study with 40 subjects, and the, the mean looks like a certain result, but there could be- Yeah … four or five subjects who were non-responders. And it’s like, well, if I have those individuals- Yep. … as clients, I’m not gonna convince them that they’re wrong if they’re non-respon…
[00:38:09] Ben Skutnik: You know? It’s like, there, there’s all sorts of these, again, nuances in, within the research that it’s like- D- I, I don’t know, just don’t … Y- I obviously love science, but it’s like don’t hang everything on science’s hat because, again, what’s being reported might not work for the individual and, and there’s all sorts of things that weren’t considered.
[00:38:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. I think it was Sean Casey or maybe it was his buddy Frankie who said that, “Research points the way, but me search gives me the answer.”
[00:38:34] Ben Skutnik: Oh, that’s nice.
[00:38:35] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You know, ’cause like, yeah, you should read the research. You should have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. But the experiments you set up on an N of 1 basis for you as an individual are probably more beneficial because that’s gonna give you your result.
[00:38:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Now, you can’t go back the other way and say, “Oh, well, if we took 100 people, they’re all gonna respond the same way as I did.” Well, no, we don’t, we don’t know that. But I think people forget that at the end of the day, even if they’re paying a coach to help them, like, their result is the thing that matters.
[00:39:03] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And even if you’re gonna set up, you know, studies, like I do some hands-on work and, you know, I’ll be honest, I probably placebo the hell out of people when they, they come in. Like, I try not to. I try to be objective ’cause I want to know if they’re actually moving better, feeling better, et cetera. But if they ask me, “Oh, is this the reason my left glute wasn’t working so well?
[00:39:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Is this the reason for my back pain?” I’m like, “Yeah, probably could be.” You know, it … I, I don’t know, to be honest, but if that’s what you need to close that loop in your head and your movement’s- Yeah … good, you don’t have pain, you don’t have any issue- I’m, I’m fine with that. You know, if I was to set that up as a research trial, I’m gonna do the opposite.
[00:39:43] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I’m gonna do everything possible to have it be randomized, placebo-controlled, probably have a sham intervention, all this stuff to try to not have it be a placebo effect. But- Yeah … even just those two areas, like, people lose their mind on either one ’cause they’re like, “Oh, you’re a horrible research scientist because you’re not
[00:40:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You’re, you’re placeboing people, and you’re agreeing with them, and you should show them literature about how pain can vary, and it can be up to 70%,” or … I’m like, “Yeah, I did that in the past, and you know what? People came back three days later and said their pain showed up again.”
[00:40:16] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[00:40:16] Dr. Mike T Nelson: When I gave them a reason to close that loop, they didn’t show up again.
[00:40:20] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So I, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s unethical. They moved better. They didn’t have pain. They got the result they wanted. Eh, you know?
[00:40:28] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s … It’s like, if I’m doing no harm, then- Right … it’s fine. There’s … So I did my doctoral work at Indiana University, and my advisor was an assistant coach for Doc Counsilman, famous swim coach- Oh, nice
[00:40:43] Ben Skutnik: from the ’70s, right? And there’s a story of Doc and Mark Spitz, who’s, like, one of the greatest swimmers ever- Yeah … were flying over to, like, Germany, I think, for World Championships. And Mark noticed on his leg that he had, like, these little red blotches, and he was like, “Doc, what do you think that is?” And Doc was like, “Oh, it’s probably just razor burn,” right?
[00:41:02] Ben Skutnik: Mark went over, swam the meet, won a whole bunch of gold medals, came back, had measles, right? But it’s like- … Doc was aware enough to be like … And, and there’s a saying that Doc would have of, you know, there’s 1,000 ways to screw somebody up, only one way to do it right. Yeah. And it’s like, yeah, you, you could’ve said a whole bunch of things there, but the
[00:41:17] Ben Skutnik: If the goal is to compete and perform and do well, it’s like, well, I’m gonna figure out something that gets their mind off of it, because that’s the other thing. For as, you know, deeply invested in the physiology that, that I am, I’m fully aware of the thing that trumps all of that is the psychology, right?
[00:41:33] Ben Skutnik: For sure. Whatever, whatever their mind thinks, whatever the, you know, mood state or whatever, that’s gonna matter more than any mechanism I, I can throw at you, right? And we see that all the time. That’s why they say, like, you know, VO2 max doesn’t win the race. It’s like, yeah, because if you measure the top 1,000 people crossing the finish line, their VO2 max is all pretty similar, but it was the psychological part of it, right?
[00:41:54] Ben Skutnik: The- Sure … the, the mental aspect of it. So yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s just a, it’s an interesting thing, ’cause yeah, people will say kinda the same stuff, like, “Oh, is that really ethical?” And it’s like, well, I’m not hurting them. I’m not making-
[00:42:04] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, I’m not making them worse.
[00:42:05] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Yeah. Like, they’re paying me to help them improve.
[00:42:08] Ben Skutnik: Sounds like they improved. I’m not … And I’m also not saying they improved because XYZ, right? Correct. Like, it’s … I’m just trying to get them in a better spot. So yeah, no, that’s not unethical.
[00:42:18] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And a lot of it is just … Because as you know, like- So if someone has a big event, and, and this has happened to me too, and I’ve, I’ve tried to catch myself, it’s the craziest thing that like a week or two weeks out from an event, you will have the stupidest ideas you’ve ever had about- Mm-hmm
[00:42:34] Dr. Mike T Nelson: your training. It just- Yeah … it just seems to happen, and, you know, I’m sure you’re probably similar, like vast majority of my time, probably 99% for those two, three weeks up to a big event, I’m just telling people, “Just don’t do anything stupid.” Mm-hmm. Like almost any idea they tell me, I’m like, “Nope, let’s not do that.
[00:42:51] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Let’s not add this. Let’s not add that.” Like, the, the cost to risk analysis, the benefit to risk is just not there. Like, you’ve done the work. Like, you’ve… You’re good. Like, everything is on track. Let’s just follow the plan. And again, if something happens, yeah, we’re gonna modify it. We’re gonna make slight changes, but we’re not gonna add, like, you know, Russian plyometrics- Yeah
[00:43:13] Dr. Mike T Nelson: on week two, you know?
[00:43:14] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. No, that… I mean, that’s the thing. That’s where it’s nice to know physiology, ’cause it’s like, hey, at that point, no adaptation can occur. Like nothing- Right … no tissue is going to adapt to a new stress. No system is going to adapt. So it’s like at this point, we’re just on autopilot, right?
[00:43:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yep.
[00:43:28] Ben Skutnik: But that’s the thing. You go on autopilot, and then they think about, like, whoa, what if we sh- we should have done this, we should have done that, and it’s like, hey, like chill. Like, let’s just, you know, put, toe the line, get through the event or whatever, and, uh, and then on the back end, sure, we can make changes.
[00:43:41] Ben Skutnik: But yeah, it’s, it’s a, the, the mind… And that’s initially when I first went to school and when I was an undergrad, I was like, I think I wanna be a sports psychologist.
[00:43:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm.
[00:43:49] Ben Skutnik: And then I took some psych classes, and it’s like, no, that’s like too heavy. Like, that’s like- Yeah. … a whole… It’s, you know, sports psychologists are, uh, amazing because it’s like you have to work with, and this is kinda what people don’t understand too when they think like, oh, isn’t it cool to work with elites?
[00:44:04] Ben Skutnik: And it is really cool to work with elites, but also, when the stakes are that high- Oh … it’s like, man, there’s a lot of pressure. And so those sports psych folks, it’s like you guys are doing God’s work right now, keeping them, uh, ready to go because, yeah, when it’s somebody’s livelihood, it’s like it, it seems cool, and it is a lot of fun to work with them, but the pressure is real when it gets to that competition point.
[00:44:23] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. The example I always use for people who don’t think that psychology is that important is, like, the, the NFL kicker. You’ll see this in baseball, you’ll see it in basketball, you’ll see it in all sports. Like, but, like, a kicker in the NFL is, like, the most obvious, where, you know, a guy hits everything, like, you know, 90%, 95%, and then all of a sudden misses, like, a 23-yard field goal, and then they can’t hit the broad side of a barn for, like, the next four games.
[00:44:50] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. It’s like, so you’re telling me their physiology just went off that big of a cliff overnight? Like, there’s no way. Yeah. Like, even if they didn’t train or didn’t do anything, they, they would be good enough to do, from a physiology side, what they need to. It’s a, a psychological thing. And add on top of that, you don’t know when you’re gonna be called in to do it in a game, and it- it’s gotta be super hard not to replay the negative thing that happened- Mm-hmm
[00:45:15] Dr. Mike T Nelson: because of the stakes and the priority, and this is your profession, and maybe you won’t sign with a team next year, and, you know, all the stressors that go into it to go out and just perform for, like, a few seconds. It’s crazy. Yeah.
[00:45:28] Ben Skutnik: No, it is, and, and this is why I prefer to work with, like, endurance athletes, because it’s like at least we can math our way there for the most part.
[00:45:36] Ben Skutnik: Yes. But when you get, like, team sports, field sports- Oof … I enjoy working with those athletes too, but it’s like, man, there are so many… You talk about controlling the variables. There are so many uncontrollable variables. Like, you could be having… You could show up in the best shape possible, uh, you know, blah, blah, blah, and it’s just like the guy across the line from you could be better than you.
[00:45:53] Ben Skutnik: And then- Mm-hmm … you know, and, and then, yeah, the negativity gets in their head and, and so yeah, it’s, it’s really, uh, I don’t think people… To, to agree with you, I don’t think people understand that psychology is so important in all this, and that bleeds down to the everyday person, too, like we were talking about.
[00:46:07] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, if you’re stressed about your sleep, right? If you, if you, um, can’t… If you have a few bad training days in a row, or if you’re in pain when you do deadlifts, like, then you’re always gonna be in pain as, until you can get over those things. So that’s going back to what you said about closing those loops for people.
[00:46:25] Ben Skutnik: That’s, like, the most valuable thing you can do, whether it’s mechanistically sound or, or scientifically valid or whatever. It’s like the more loops you can close for people, the more able they are to do stuff, their capacities build, and then the better off they’re gonna be.
[00:46:38] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that’s one question I’ve gotten better about asking clients is, so take the deadlift, for example.
[00:46:42] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I had someone in the past where they hurt their back on a deadlift, and it was like 405 for a single. And so they went to physical therapy, and I got them back. We worked on a bunch of stuff and, you know, slowly built their deadlift back up. And before we started that process, I asked them and said, “Okay, once you deadlift 405 for a single without pain, would you agree you no longer have this injury?”
[00:47:04] Dr. Mike T Nelson: They kind of looked at me funny like, “Well, what are you, what are you talking about?” I said, “Just, but does that make sense to you, right? You did the thing that you got injured before. You have no pain. You have no limitations now. Would you agree that you don’t have an injury?” And they’re like, “Well, yeah, of course.”
[00:47:16] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I’m like, “Cool.” Right? So that I can remind them that once they actually do that-
[00:47:20] Ben Skutnik: Mm …
[00:47:21] Dr. Mike T Nelson: they can’t have this lingering thing of, “Oh, I don’t know, I might hurt my back,” or, you know. It’s like at some point you have to sort of extinguish and close that loop because it’s, physiologically it’s just, it’s not there, but it’s very easy mentally to kind of g- carry that over and be like, “I don’t know if I could really ever deadlift again, or maybe if I go heavier.”
[00:47:41] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Or it’s like no, just- Mm-hmm … if, if something doesn’t feel good, by all means, like, don’t do it. We’re not gonna push it on that day, you know. But we have to have some agreed-upon thing where we’re gonna close the loop and be like, “Okay, we’re good. We’re just gonna start from here again.”
[00:47:54] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Well, and I think part of it, too, and this is, like I, I like your training ’cause you do a lot of like grip stuff, odd, odd, uh-
[00:48:00] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah
[00:48:01] Ben Skutnik: you know, odd diameter barbell, dumbbells, things like that. ’Cause that’s the other thing I try to talk to people when they talk about, “Okay, so you hurt your back deadlifting 405. Well, maybe we can bring the, the bar up four inches off the floor, right?” Yeah. Put it on blocks. And then they’re like, “Well, that’s not a real deadlift.”
[00:48:16] Ben Skutnik: What? I’m like, “What are you talking about?” Like, go out in nature and find this perfect circle- Yeah … and like, we’re just talking about a hinge pattern, man. And, and like it doesn’t, it, it’s not, again, it’s not that important, right? And so, um, getting people to understand like there’s a lot of degrees of freedom here, and like what we’re doing is really arbitrary when it comes to training.
[00:48:35] Ben Skutnik: Same thing with like all the, you know, the big, uh, I guess it’s been a couple years now, like the whole, oh, the Norwegian method, four by four. Oh, yeah. It’s like there’s nothing magical- … about four reps of exactly four minutes. Like the, the concept is just you’re training at a pretty high intensity for a pretty decent amount of time, right?
[00:48:53] Ben Skutnik: Like- Yep … it’s not, and, and same thing, like well how much zone two do I need? And it’s like, who knows, man? Like there’s a lot of variables- … in there, and, and I’d argue you probably don’t need it. And they’re like, “Well, what do you mean? ’Cause so and so said I need at least 40 minutes a day, six days a week.”
[00:49:07] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, oh, but that seventh day you don’t need, like it just doesn’t- Yeah … make sense, right?
[00:49:12] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and I, I feel like the zone two stuff, which I actually did have a fair amount of clients do in the past, probably two, three years ago even. And at the time, like, I would’ve said, “Yeah, I think they’re getting better.”
[00:49:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Now, the caveat was I did leave one interval day, you know, still in there, et cetera. Um, and the mistake I made was I’m like, “Well, all these smart people are saying that this is useful,” and I kind of screwed up and I only read the literature from high-level athletes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And at the time, there wasn’t as much then.
[00:49:42] Dr. Mike T Nelson: There’s a little bit more now. Um, and then probably two years ago, I started really looking at, okay, well, well, what is this based on? I did a whole course on cardiovascular stuff, and I was kind of shocked. I’m like, there isn’t really a whole lot.
[00:49:56] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[00:49:56] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You know, that in high-level athletes, there’s studies showing that they did a very polarized approach, and there’s a lot of data showing that that probably works as a method.
[00:50:05] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Now, as the mechanism, I would say we probably know even less about that than what we think we know. Um, and then to add more confusion to it, like if you type into AI, like I had this argument with AI again the other day, just I do this every so often to see if it changes. And it argues with me even on my own account about how zone two is so amazing, and then you press it for where it comes from, and it gives you all the mechanistic answers, but it can’t find the study.
[00:50:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm. And then when you finally get it to show you a study, you realize that that study was using a three-zone model.
[00:50:36] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[00:50:36] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Right? So it’s using one, two, and three zones total, not a five-zone model that everyone associates with zone two.
[00:50:43] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[00:50:43] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So I think that- further clouds the entire issue, which again, if you didn’t read the literature, you, you wouldn’t know that.
[00:50:50] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You would look even at an abstract, and if you didn’t know what you’re looking for, would say, “Oh, well, the zone two right here says shows, you know, some changes in mitochondrial function.” That’s true in a three-zone model- Right … but not a five-zone model.
[00:51:04] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, and that, and those are the things, right? It’s like there’s, again, a lot of nuance in how we assess these things.
[00:51:11] Ben Skutnik: But also going back to like that, I don’t know, like the evolutionary model or whatever, it’s like, yeah, zone two, I’m not gonna say zone two is not important, but what I’m gonna say is you have this broad signal you can send your body through these different intensities. What you should probably be doing is hitting all of that.
[00:51:29] Ben Skutnik: And I think a lot of the- Sure … ’cause I was the same way. When, when the zone two craze first hit, I was like, “Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s throw some steady state days in,” whatever.
[00:51:36] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, more movement for people? Sounds good to me.
[00:51:39] Ben Skutnik: And that’s exactly it. Yeah. It’s like, okay, you’re desk bound nine hours a day.
[00:51:42] Ben Skutnik: Right. And then you come home and you hang out on the couch for another three hours. So yeah, let’s do that because it’s low intensity, so you’re not gonna beat yourself up, uh, pretty easy to recover from, but what we’re doing is we’re just getting you moving, right? Right. Um, but what people also don’t understand when it comes from the high level athletes, it’s like, well, why are they doing it?
[00:52:02] Ben Skutnik: They’re doing it because they can’t crank out high intensity every day because their- Exactly. … high intensity is high intensity, right?
[00:52:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It’s bonkers.
[00:52:09] Ben Skutnik: But, you know, and this is kind of the, the taboo of it all, it’s like we could look at folks who’ve been known to dope and see what- Yeah … they do. They don’t do as much zone two because they have- They don’t do much
[00:52:20] Dr. Mike T Nelson: at all.
[00:52:20] Ben Skutnik: Yeah … yeah, they have the the pharmacological means to recover- Right … from the high intensity. So, you know, a- and it goes back to, um, I, I don’t know, you probably have heard, uh, Mike Joyner, the Joyner haiku. Yeah, yeah. Run a lot of miles, some faster than your race pace, rest once in a while. What people also don’t understand when I talk to them about energy system stuff, it’s like, hey, the reality is all of this stuff was originally based off of some kind of race pace.
[00:52:44] Ben Skutnik: If you’re just- Yes … an average Joe and you don’t have an event you’re training for and you don’t have that race pace understanding, then it, the heart rate side of things It’s like, the, the three-zone model maybe because it’s so variable, right? Mm-hmm. Like, you’re … If you’re going s- solely off of heart rate, but you wake up under-recovered, well, now your zone two heart rate- Yep
[00:53:06] Ben Skutnik: could maybe be what a recovered day zone four heart rate is, right? And so it’s like we have to keep all that in mind. So when I do a lot of energy system stuff, I do like to get people to do some kind of, like, pretest, so it’s like, hey, we either … If you’re on an erg, we have a wattage that we’re trying to base- Mm-hmm
[00:53:20] Ben Skutnik: everything off of. If we’re on the road, we’re, we have a time that we’re basing everything off of. So we have some more concrete outcome-based measures rather than heart rate or, or things like that, because that’s so variable, and there’s … And it’s not that it’s so variable, it’s the number of inputs that can vary it, right?
[00:53:37] Ben Skutnik: If I test your max heart rate in a 72 degrees lab- … and then I have you go bike outside right now when it’s, like, 105 degree heat index, like, no, your heart rate’s not gonna mean a whole lot after about 15 minutes out there, so. Yeah. So yeah, I think, uh, I think there’s a lot to it, but again, it’s like, hey, if zone two is what you wanna do, great, because you’re gonna be moving, right?
[00:53:58] Ben Skutnik: But I don’t want you to think that it’s some kind of, like, panacea for all things, because yeah, we don’t fully know the mechanisms involved with that tightly … If we’re talking the five zone or, like, who is it? Coggins has a seven zone. Like, when we start to- Yeah,
[00:54:13] Dr. Mike T Nelson: there’s a seven zone, there’s a six zone.
[00:54:15] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, it’s like when we delineate that tightly-
[00:54:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Ugh …
[00:54:18] Ben Skutnik: it’s pretty tough to say, like, okay, at heart rate of 159 you’re getting these adaptations, but heart rate 160- Yeah … those go away and these ones come in. It’s like, that’s not really how this works.
[00:54:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and you made a good point there. I, I’ve shifted a lot of my stuff to more output and RPE.
[00:54:35] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm. And if I can get heart rate, I’ll still look at it. I still think it’s- Yeah … incredibly variable, but, you know, it’s like if you’re gonna … If it’s a day that you’re gonna go hard, like you’re gonna go hard. Mm-hmm. And if it so happens that your output is not there, we’re probably gonna cut your volume.
[00:54:51] Dr. Mike T Nelson: So like if you’re doing, you know, a- classic anaerobic on a rower, assault bike, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, which I hate, I just leave the rest period more open-ended.
[00:55:01] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[00:55:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Um, and if you hit arbitrarily 350 watts on the first one, your second one’s 340, and your third one with even four minutes rest is like 275-
[00:55:12] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm
[00:55:12] Dr. Mike T Nelson: you’re done. Yeah. Like I don’t give a shit what your heart rate is. Like you- Yeah … you’re … It’s just not there today. Today is not the day to, to push it because what are you gonna do? You’re not getting that high output that we want. You’re not training the quality that we’re after. Mm-hmm. And we’re just adding more fatigue that we’re gonna have to dig you out of later at some point again.
[00:55:33] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, and that’s, I think that’s the hardest thing for some people to understand because they feel like they’re missing out on something. It’s like-
[00:55:39] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, they feel like, “Oh, but I’m not training that hard.” I’m like, “No.” It’s like, “Do you wanna get better? Do you wanna train hard?” Like- Yeah … and yes, you do have to train hard.
[00:55:46] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I’m not saying you never have to train hard, but you have to do it intelligently, too.
[00:55:51] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. No, and that’s, that’s exactly it where it’s like, actually we could spin this. So like when I was an undergrad, I wasn’t like the best student and I skipped a lot of classes. And I always told myself, I was like, “What I’m actually doing then is making each class more valuable- There you go
[00:56:04] Ben Skutnik: when I do go,” right? Yeah. And it’s the same way with training. It’s like, yeah, if we have, um … So I just had some folks do, it was, it was one minute, three minute, seven minute, 10 minute of pretty high threshold stuff with a decent rest, and … But I put in the instructions like, “Hey, if you drop below,” like you were just talking about, “a certain work rate, just cut it for the day.”
[00:56:23] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Like it doesn’t matter where that drop happens, like just call it. And some of the folks were really like they, they made it through the first interval and then the second interval kinda blew up, and they’re like, “Oh, I only got through the … You didn’t even get through the second interval.” And it’s like, well, you actually like- economically did better than everybody else.
[00:56:38] Ben Skutnik: Like, you got the intended stimulus- Mm-hmm … a lot quicker. Now, would we have liked to go longer? For sure. But it doesn’t, again, the body responds to stress, right? We only need to, uh, give it a certain dose, and then anything after that, yeah, if we’re just trudging through quicksand trying to get n- you know, all the boxes checked or whatever, that’s not quality training.
[00:56:59] Ben Skutnik: And again, like you said, then we’re gonna have to do something on the back end to get you back, ’cause obviously you showed up to this session a little bit fatigued already, and now- Mm-hmm … we have to dig you even further out. And, uh, and yeah, so it’s, it’s not, um, it’s, it’s just not necessarily how people think about that, where if we did weight training, right, if we did resistance training, and it’s like, “Hey, we got, uh, six sets of doubles,” but by the fourth one it’s like you’re moving too slow, people really do understand then, like, “Oh, okay, yeah- Mm-hmm
[00:57:24] Ben Skutnik: I just don’t got it today.” And it’s like, it’s the same- Yep … concept, just a different modality now.
[00:57:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And I think that’s the biggest lesson I’ve had to learn over time is that, you know, just do high-quality work first and then repeat it. I mean, I got that from Cal Dietz too. We were comparing notes- Same, same thing.
[00:57:40] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And again, it, it, so I differentiate this between a eustress and a distress model.
[00:57:45] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[00:57:45] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You know, again, that’s just primarily a eustress model, where you’re gonna show up and you’re gonna try to train the next day and, and get better. There is a time and a place for distress where, okay, today’s a competition day, or today’s a simulation day, or- Mm-hmm
[00:57:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: you know, okay, we’re, we’re just going no matter what because you can’t choose and change competition days. But those are relatively, like um, at least the model I use, are pretty infrequent. Where I feel like- Yeah … a lot of people, a lot of their training, especially now with more, you know, HYROX and CrossFit and hybrid-type things, you can get pretty far by just training hard.
[00:58:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: But at some point, g- it happens all the time, I just see people plateau, and then they start going backwards, and then they’re completely lost. They’re like, “Ah, I don’t know what happened.”
[00:58:33] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, the, what is it, Goodhart’s law, where you don’t let the- Yeah. … the test be the measure, right? And that’s the d- I, I do enjoy, I enjoy the, whatever we call it now, the competitive exercising, the HYROX, the CrossFit, things like that.
[00:58:48] Ben Skutnik: I enjoy- Oh, yeah, super fun to work with those
[00:58:50] Dr. Mike T Nelson: athletes … working
[00:58:51] Ben Skutnik: with those athletes. Yeah, ’cause it’s like you guys are very capable of doing a lot of stuff. But at some point, like you said, it’s like, yeah, you can do it by just doing harder workouts, more hard workouts, but then you have to be a little bit more sophisticated, and you have to start looking at it in a grander scale, and you can’t just do HYROX simulation after HYROX simulation.
[00:59:08] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. You have to start targeting the weakest areas to make them stronger and all that kind of stuff. And, and then, but with those athletes, those ones who are truly competing, that’s that. But then the problem I run into is just below that, there are the, the folks who really enjoy exercise, who maybe do, like, I’m just gonna sign up for a competition for fun.
[00:59:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.
[00:59:29] Ben Skutnik: Getting them to understand, like, hey, this, like, yes, we will train the best we can to perform the best we can, but you also have 40-hour a week job, plus two kids at home, plus all these other things. So with those higher level athletes, I can risk them being crushed from training and then say like, “Hey, go home.
[00:59:48] Ben Skutnik: You’re gonna need 11 hours of sleep tonight. You’re gonna- Yeah … just need to eat and, and relax.” But for you, who has to get up tomorrow morning at 5:30 to get the kids ready to go to school and then go to work and all that, I can’t have you do that because now that’s gonna severely impact you. I had a client, he was a construction worker one time, and he like really got into doing some gymnastics stuff, and that’s admittedly not my strongest suit, um, so I offloaded him to somebody else, and they were like a sole- solely gymnastics person, and he ended up tearing his pec.
[01:00:16] Ben Skutnik: Oh. And it’s like… And, and so I hit him up. I was like, “Well, what were you doing?” And he was doing like these wild reverse to support deals, and it’s like, man, now you can’t do your job, right? Like now- Oh, yeah … like now you can’t- Especially construction. Yeah. So it’s like that took you out for quite a while, man.
[01:00:31] Ben Skutnik: Was it worth it? And, and so this like prudency that I think, um, the, the client needs to understand, it’s like could we do more? For sure, right? There’s many times it’s like, yeah, we could do a lot more, man. It doesn’t hurt me. Like I can-
[01:00:43] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, yeah. …
[01:00:44] Ben Skutnik: do everything. But is it the most prudent thing to do right now?
[01:00:47] Ben Skutnik: No, it’s not. And that’s, at the end of the day, like I’m trying to make you better, but I’m also trying to protect you, um, so you can show up tomorrow, like you said, and do more quality work tomorrow rather than having one banger of a day and then being out for the next five days.
[01:00:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And even with most clients too, and even with myself, it’s like, okay, to me the, the weight room is very controlled, and yes, you do want a stimulus.
[01:01:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yes, you have to work hard. But- The risk of injury should be relatively low. Yeah. And the handful of times I’ve been injured in the weight room, which luckily hasn’t been for a while, it was always me just being really, really stupid. Yeah. You know, and again, freak things happen, especially as you get older, like Achilles pops and, you know, there, there is freak things that happen, but they’re relatively mild.
[01:01:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And I think it’s what risks are you going to assume in your life? So for me, eh, I don’t wanna take a lot of risk in the gym ’cause, eh, if I’m kiteboarding and something bad happens, like, there’s only so many things you can do to try to land nicely from 25 feet up, right? Yeah. And I, and I’m okay with that risk.
[01:01:47] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, that’s something that I’ve accepted, you know? Yeah. And back to people who have an active job and things like that, it’s like, okay, if, if you get injured and you can’t do your job, is, was, was that really worth it? So I think having those discussions ahead of time just to provide awareness so people can think through and decide, you know, what is their, their risk ratio they wanna do.
[01:02:11] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing, and that’s what all of program design really is. It’s like this r- risk/reward ratio that you’re constantly running, right? Yep. Is it worth it to do this? Um, ’cause, you know, the other thing is people, um, I think going back to the zone two, another reason why it was really nice, ’cause I think people were over-training there for a while.
[01:02:28] Ben Skutnik: I think they were- Oh, for sure … going too hard, and so it’s like this is gonna force you to, to take it down a bit. And, um, while over-training is an actual thing, like I do know, I do believe that it, there is true over-training, oftentimes a lot of it’s just under-recovering, especially in like your everyday athlete, right?
[01:02:43] Ben Skutnik: It’s not … And they, they don’t know, right? People don’t know what they don’t know. But once you’ve been exposed to like these high-level athletes and can see really like how much volume and how much intensity- No … like the, the body can do, you see these other individuals who are, you know, the everyday athlete type, where it’s like, I don’t think you’re really over-trained, I think we just need to manage your recovery a little bit better.
[01:03:02] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah.
[01:03:02] Ben Skutnik: And but that’s not to say like, I need your whatever wearable device to say you’re 100% every day. That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t, uh, ’cause that’s my other pet peeve with the current landscape. I probably, like you, have a, a device of every kind, right? Yeah. Like, I love it. Like, I love to… My wife is always like, “Do you really need that?”
[01:03:21] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, “Oh, well, yeah.” Another
[01:03:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: gadget? What are you doing?
[01:03:23] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, right? And I wanna get all the measurements, right? But I can conceptualize it and, and part of the reason I like to get them all is to see like, well, how closely do they agree and things like that. But for the average person, it’s like they wake up and their Oura Ring says that they’re under-recovered, or their Garmin’s barking at them or whatever.
[01:03:40] Ben Skutnik: It’s like, hey, like, m- uh, maybe, maybe let’s really put some, uh, onus into that, but also, like, is it that big of a deal? Like, can we… We can still train today, right? You’re not gonna, like, blow up. Your body’s not gonna fall apart. We just have to be mindful of that.
[01:03:55] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.
[01:03:55] Ben Skutnik: So you’re a little bit under-recovered.
[01:03:56] Ben Skutnik: Okay, well, we had four lifts that we were gonna do today. Maybe we cut the volume down to 70%, or maybe we pull those accessories out or, or whatever. It doesn’t mean like, “Oh, I’m in the red today, I can’t do anything.” Mm-hmm. It’s like, well, no, we should do something because your body is built to do things, we just might have to change the thing that we’re doing.
[01:04:16] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And that’s what’s hard with, you know, even general population, is that the levers I can pull for stress in an acute sense, 95% of the time it’s gonna be their training stress. Mm-hmm. ’Cause you get the opposite people online are like, “Oh, you’re just, you’re just treating these people like big pussies, and you’re just always changing their training.”
[01:04:35] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And I’m like, but if they’re legitimately showing that it’s very stress, again, you go back to eustress model, I either modify something today or I’m risking more of the long-term plan blowing up. Mm-hmm. And in a perfect world, yeah, would I tell them to go to bed three hours early, like, eat some carbohydrates, like, have some micronutrition, like, chill out, maybe do some meditation, if you have devices, use a device.
[01:04:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: But the reality is most people don’t have those options. Mm-hmm. So the option that’s most executable on the table is, okay, you’re gonna train tomorrow, but we’re gonna cut your volume by 50%. Yeah. Or we’re gonna flip your easy aerobic day to your lifting day. So do your easy aerobic day today, do your lifting day tomorrow, right?
[01:05:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I mean, in reality, that’s usually the options you’re left with in the real world.
[01:05:26] Ben Skutnik: Nope, I think you froze up there a sec. Oh, now you’re back
[01:05:28] Ben Skutnik: There you go. Um, no, I totally agree. It’s, it, it… Again, like, perfect, perfect world, I would have, I’d email your boss and say, “Hey, give him this week off.” Yeah, yeah. You’re off
[01:05:39] Dr. Mike T Nelson: today.
[01:05:39] Ben Skutnik: But, but I can’t do that. And so it, it also, I think people tend to freak out about that because they don’t understand how long these adaptations stick around, right?
[01:05:49] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm. Like, hey, if we have to, if we have to skip a couple days, especially if we’re skipping because you’re overly stressed, right? Yeah. It’s not like we’re just taking days off to take days off, but if you were showing physiological signs of under-recovery, we’re not actually skipping days. People, and, you know, it’s because the work week and everything, they have this, like, mindset of like, okay, there’s a seven-day week and 24 hours in the day.
[01:06:11] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, yeah, we have like a circadian rhythm, no doubt about that, but our body doesn’t necessarily work on that scale, right? It’s not like when midnight hits, nothing from the day before matters and we have… It’s, no, it’s this constant ebb and flow. And so, yeah, we pull, we pull the n- uh, the training stress.
[01:06:29] Ben Skutnik: Or same thing when I work with some of my nutrition clients. It’s like, “Hey, we’re gonna take a little three-day diet break here,” right? “Oh, no, that, won’t that just tank everything?” And then I do give them some carbohydrate back, and they do put on some pound, but I’m like, “Hey, water comes on with like, like- Mm-hmm
[01:06:41] Ben Skutnik: it’s not like the, it’s not fat. You didn’t, you didn’t get four pounds of fat overnight.” Um, but they, they are so concerned about, like, losing all that progress, and I would just wish they could understand, like, the, for the amount of time it takes to get those ad- adaptations, it also takes a decent amount of time of absolutely nothing to lose those, right?
[01:07:02] Ben Skutnik: But you could go touch a heavy weight once a week, twice a week maybe, and still maintain pretty decent amount of strength, right? You could go hit one, two really hard intervals, uh, a week and still maintain that aerobic capacity probably pretty well. Are we gonna grow it? Probably not. But there are times and seasons of life where it’s like, hey, right now we’re just trying to, like, get through this, right?
[01:07:23] Ben Skutnik: Get a couple of days in, work on our recovery again, maybe build in, can we block out some time for meditation during this, and all that kind of stuff to get those systems in place so then we can come back and train really hard. Uh, because- The off-season, right? The, the elites- Yeah … the elites will take a couple weeks, right?
[01:07:42] Ben Skutnik: Depending, a couple months, depending on what their sport is. If they’re on the Olympic quad, they might take a few months of-
[01:07:47] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah …
[01:07:47] Ben Skutnik: like nothing. And so the everyday person, it’s like you don’t get an off-season, so we kind of have to be more mindful of your in-season
[01:07:54] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and the amount of adaptations you can keep by just doing something, even though it’s relatively small versus fuck all nothing-
[01:08:03] Ben Skutnik: Yeah
[01:08:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I don’t think people understand that either. ’Cause y- you know, some clients tend to be all or nothing. It’s like, “Ah, well, I can’t train this week, so I’m doing nothing at all, and my butt looks like a couch cushion by the end of the week.” It’s like, dude, if you could just do one kinda crappy session of lifting and one okay session of some high-intensity intervals, even though they’re very short- Mm-hmm
[01:08:23] Dr. Mike T Nelson: like, that is light years above doing nothing at all. Even though it- it’s not enough, like you said, to maintain and gain, but it’s probably enough to keep those gains for longer than what you think. But, you know, and again, if you look at the literature, you can look at, you know, bed rest and casting models and, you know, microgravity.
[01:08:44] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You throw people in outer space and- Yeah … you start getting to that level of just massive unloading, like, yes, you go backwards really fast. But most people are not at that level. Now, if we just add some training stimulus combined with, you know, like do some meditation, take a walk, keep your nutrition halfway sane, like, you’re, you’re gonna be good for quite a while.
[01:09:04] Ben Skutnik: Well, and that’s just it. The, the big rocks, right, those last three you mentioned, if you, if you do some mindfulness work, right, and work on your stress levels, keep your nutrition relatively in check, and just move, like, just get up and move a decent amount throughout the day, you’re gonna be pretty good for the short term, right?
[01:09:19] Ben Skutnik: If you do have to take a short-term break or something- Mm-hmm … like that. And then, yeah, you add on top of it, like, shoot, go out and do six max effort vertical jumps and sprint down and back a couple times on the block, right? You’re, you’re gonna be fine for the short term, and that’s the other part of it, right?
[01:09:38] Ben Skutnik: Like, getting people to understand, like, hey, it’s just short term. But if you keep running your head into the wall, never handle those injuries, or never handle the, the issues that keep popping up, and you have to take these breaks repeatedly, well, then it’s gonna be problematic. Um, and so again, going all the way back, that’s why we might unethically just close the loop by some placebo just to get them to move on, right?
[01:09:57] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. ’Cause, uh, ’cause yeah, it’s, it’s like at the end of the day we’re just trying to get better. Um, but then also, like, getting them to understand what does get better. Like, how, how measurable is getting better, right? If, you know, people die for five extra pounds on their back squat, it’s like, is that, is that really better- Yeah
[01:10:15] Ben Skutnik: or were you just, like, showing up in a little bit better state today? Like, there’s, there’s a lot of, um, you know, kind of that fluid periodization or, like, the agile periodization that people need to understand where it’s like at a certain point, if you’ve been training for a certain amount of time, it’s gonna take a lot to truly get an adaptation.
[01:10:32] Ben Skutnik: All the stars have to align, and if you don’t have a professional athlete’s lifestyle where you have all these other things handled by other people, right? You have, you have a private chef. You have a manager that takes care of all your business stuff, and- Mm … if you don’t have that, you have to burden all that stress.
[01:10:47] Ben Skutnik: And so, um, you know- Getting, getting the idea of like, how do I measure if I got better? It’s like, well, it’s not always like, oh, I’m gonna try a one rep max today, ’cause today- Yeah … might not be the day.
[01:10:58] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. We have about 15 minutes left, and I had some specific aerobic questions for you. Yeah. Um, do you think VO2 max is all that it’s cracked up to be?
[01:11:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Uh, because I’ll se- I’ll separate this into performance and health, because we went through, and you’ve been in this long enough to know that for the longest time, all exercise phys., you know, go all the way back to A.V. Hill, all this stuff hundreds of years ago, was purely aerobic. And like even when I was doing my stuff, a lot of the textbooks, all the stuff was, you know, pure aerobic because that’s what we could measure.
[01:11:31] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Then we started having more research on strength training, and now there’s a lot more data on that. And now it seems like, oh my God, all of a sudden people discovered these studies with VO2 max and longevity, and now VO2 max is a thing, and now a bunch of people are like, “No, but it’s not the thing, and it’s overrated,” and
[01:11:47] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[01:11:48] Ben Skutnik: I, I think, I tend to think VO2 is perfectly rated, right? VO2 max is important. It’s not, it’s not not important. But- It, it’s not the most important thing, right? Sure. Even, even in the world of aerobics work, right? Again, we talked about how you go to the Boston Marathon, measure the top 1,000 finishers, their VO2s are all pretty similar, uh, within, probably within typical error of each other.
[01:12:14] Ben Skutnik: And so it also comes down to movement economy. It comes down to all these other things. So I think that VO2 max, to a certain degree, you know, they give out, like, the what? Like 35 to 40 mils per KG is, is pretty… If you can get to that, then you’re probably good, right? Because-
[01:12:30] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, for your average general population, like, you just wanna, you know, have a decent life.
[01:12:34] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. It, because there’s also the genetic component, right? Um, you know, a lot of that, if you are genetically predisposed, again, going back to if you chose the right parents-
[01:12:44] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yep …
[01:12:45] Ben Skutnik: and neither of them had a well-developed aerobic base, don’t have the genetics for it, then you’re always gonna be kind of hamstrung.
[01:12:52] Ben Skutnik: Also, what kind of gets me about it is people, they put these numbers, like, “Oh, I wanna get to 55.” It’s like, “What are you now?” It’s like, “Oh, I’m 51.” It’s like, “All right. Well, let’s lose 12 pounds.”
[01:13:02] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, yeah.
[01:13:03] Ben Skutnik: And what do you mean? ’Cause it’s
[01:13:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: relative to body weight. Yeah.
[01:13:05] Ben Skutnik: It’s like, well, that’s, it’s just a math thing then, you know?
[01:13:08] Ben Skutnik: And so, um, do I think it’s important? I, I do think it’s important to a point, but, uh, even, I mean, for, for the general population, yeah, like, be well-developed, but you don’t have to have these elite numbers because what… If, if we look at the elites who have these 75s, 80s, you know, what are they sacrificing, right?
[01:13:29] Ben Skutnik: Like- Mm-hmm … if you look at these elite marathoners, um, yeah, they’re great at their sport, but boy, I don’t think that they’re very strong, right? And if we think about all the things that you’re gonna encounter during your day, like, I might… Somebody posted on Twitter once actually, um, you know, would you rather have five more points of VO2 max or five more pounds of lean mass?
[01:13:52] Ben Skutnik: And the number of people who were like, “Oh, VO2 max,” it’s like, are you kidding me? Like, if I could get-
[01:13:56] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Really? …
[01:13:56] Ben Skutnik: five more pounds of
[01:13:57] Dr. Mike T Nelson: lean mass- That’s shocking to me.
[01:13:58] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And, and- You
[01:13:59] Dr. Mike T Nelson: know how long it takes me to gain five pounds of lean body mass- That’s just it … at 52?
[01:14:02] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. But people- … I think that’s the thing, is they don’t understand that.
[01:14:06] Ben Skutnik: Like, the-
[01:14:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah …
[01:14:07] Ben Skutnik: the ability to move VO2 is actually pretty easy, right? You give me like- Pretty
[01:14:11] Dr. Mike T Nelson: trainable.
[01:14:12] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Three, give me, like, three months and we’re gonna see some marked improvements. Yeah. But if we look at the other stuff, the lean mass and all, that takes a long time. And then if we zoom out, so there’s the aerobic side, but then there’s the whole, like, metabolic picture- If you have a high VO2 max, your, your body is probably pretty good at, uh, you know, handling fats, right?
[01:14:32] Ben Skutnik: Because you probably have a pretty decent aerobic base. But there’s also, I think it’s, uh, you know, Koutnik’s stuff coming out of-
[01:14:39] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, Andrew …
[01:14:39] Ben Skutnik: Oregon State. Yeah. There’s, there’s a lot of- He’s the man … there’s a lot of stuff about, like, those folks actually have some, some, or can develop some insulin resistance and things like that because they’re- For
[01:14:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: sure
[01:14:49] Ben Skutnik: they’re too, uh, you know, you can think about, like, they’re too aerobic, right? Their body doesn’t know how to handle this other side of things. Like, well, what does? Lean mass, right? Lean mass is a metabolic sink. So, um, so yeah, I think it’s important. Just to, to answer your question, I think it’s important. I don’t think it’s overly important.
[01:15:04] Ben Skutnik: I would put it in, like, the top five metrics to be worried about, but I don’t think it’s the number one metric to be worried about.
[01:15:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And like all things that people assume that it’s linear, so they’re like, “Oh, man, you know, if I go from a VO2 max of, you know, relative, you know, 45, you know, milliliters per kg per minute to 50, that’s gonna be amazing.”
[01:15:22] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, it’s probably better, but it, it’s not, it- you’re, you’re starting to get to that point in the curve where, in my opinion, it starts to kind of flatten out- Mm-hmm … for the average person for health benefits and for what you wanna do with your life. Like, again, you’re gonna be a high level aerobic endurance athlete, yeah, 50 is pretty low, right?
[01:15:39] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. But a- again, even those, like, you look at the Tour de France, like, you know, how many variable VO2 maxes there are, and I can’t remember if it was… It was one of the Norwegian triathlon coaches, you can find this in the literature that- The people who have these ridiculously high VO2 maxes, they almost always invariably have a lower, like basically breakpoint.
[01:16:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Like, so if we’re looking at VT1, VT2- Mm-hmm … lactate threshold, all that kind of stuff. So the percentage of how much they could use that VO2 max for many hours tends to be lower. Yeah. Where you have people who have a lower VO2 max, that sort of threshold, again, depending on what you look at, tends to be, be higher.
[01:16:23] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And so their race pace a lot of times ends up being relatively close again. And then th- there seems to be this also physiology trade-off, that you, you just can’t have both. You can’t have this VO2 max of like fricking 81 and have this massively high threshold too. It just doesn’t seem to work that way on the extreme high end.
[01:16:47] Ben Skutnik: Well, and also it’s like the question, if somebody asks like, “Oh, should I work on getting my VO2 up?” I’d also kind of ask, “How old are you?”
[01:16:56] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah.
[01:16:56] Ben Skutnik: If you’re f- if you’re 15 years old, hammer it. Dude- Oh, for sure … hammer it. Yes. Please. Because your body is able to really do it. But if you’re 45 years old, you know, there’s a, there’s quite a few different things that I think would be more important for your either daily function or your general health than really hammering VO2 max.
[01:17:11] Ben Skutnik: Again, get it up to that, yeah, 40-ish, you know. If you can touch 50 at that age and you’re like an everyday person, you’re golden. Right? Yeah. Now it’s about really just maintaining it. But yeah, if you’re 15, 16 years old, yeah, go out there and train your butt off and try and hammer that VO2 max as high as you can because that’s, you know, that’s what the data shows.
[01:17:30] Ben Skutnik: The higher you are in your younger years, the higher it will be forever. Like, the- Mm-hmm … the age-related decline, you’re just always going to be higher. So yeah, there’s also a timeframe to this.
[01:17:41] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Do you think the body’s more plastic when you’re younger to developmental windows? This goes back to a lot of the old Russian literature that they, they did with, like, their Olympic-level athletes.
[01:17:52] Dr. Mike T Nelson: They realized that, I think it was the exceptions were gymnastics and ice skating, I think, because of the, the timeframe was different because of body size.
[01:18:01] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm.
[01:18:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I think for almost all the other sports they realized there’s a certain window to really push aerobic stuff. There’s a certain window to do a lot of, you know, rolling and gymnastic stuff.
[01:18:10] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And even if you were gonna be an Olympic weightlifter, right? They realized that there’s times and places to really push these adaptations that sets you up just to be a better well-rounded athlete later that has all these capacities, and then we can make them more specific.
[01:18:28] Ben Skutnik: I do think that, and I know there’s some people who will contest that.
[01:18:31] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. But I just, a- again, kind of the logic train of it for me is we know, for instance, we know that you’re not gonna be able to really put on a bunch of lean mass until your androgen profile is ready for it, right? Mm-hmm. So prior to that, why would we try that, right? Well, if we’re not gonna try that, what other qualities can we try?
[01:18:48] Ben Skutnik: And, and same thing, we did… You know, I’m, I’m 6’3”, my wife’s almost 6 feet tall, so our girls are not gonna be gymnasts. But you, you bet when they were four years old, it’s like, we’re gonna put them in gymnastics- For sure … because of that, that limbic system. We can start training that. We can start getting them to understand, um, you know, perceptual, kinesthetic perception in, in space.
[01:19:07] Ben Skutnik: And so I absolutely do believe that, and that’s kind of the problem. Uh, or not, not the problem with the people, but I think the problem that’s causing the stress with folks is a lot of folks didn’t really do much when they were younger- Mm … in terms of athletics. And now they’re getting to it now, and they wanna do everything.
[01:19:25] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, yes, let’s do a lot of it, but let’s also recognize father time’s undefeated, and so there’s a lot of stuff we just won’t be able to do because it didn’t happen early enough. But I absolutely think, like, yeah, if you get, n- no matter what sport you want the kid to do when they’re an adult, gymnastics or, like, grappling sports or things like that where they have to move through space- Yep
[01:19:44] Ben Skutnik: in, in odd kind of positions. And then, yeah, when they get to, like, 10, 11 years old, start to really look at r- running or swimming or things like that. Now, I don’t like, coming from a swimming background, I don’t like having an 11-year-old kid doing six training sessions a week.
[01:20:00] Dr. Mike T Nelson: No, that’s
[01:20:01] Ben Skutnik: insane. You know, two…
[01:20:01] Ben Skutnik: It’s like- Yeah … we don’t need that-
[01:20:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: No …
[01:20:03] Ben Skutnik: because they are very plastic at that age, but they also don’t need a lot of stimulus at that age.
[01:20:08] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yes.
[01:20:08] Ben Skutnik: But get them a couple times a week to do some running or some swimming or some kind of aerobic thing, and start also incorporating the higher register stuff, the sprinting, the jumping, the, the plyometric side of things at that age, ’cause we still can’t build lean mass, but neurologically we can start to wire some of those patterns up.
[01:20:25] Ben Skutnik: So yeah, uh, I think the Russians, uh, figured out quite a bit of stuff in terms of that kind of long-term development.
[01:20:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and they had the, you could argue from a pure sports performance standpoint, ethics aside- Because of the way they were set up, they could do all sorts of stuff that would be highly unethical.
[01:20:44] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, yeah. Much more than just placebo effect, right? They were- Yeah … they could actually break some ethics. Um, and you know, unfortunately that’s, uh, unfortunately that they did that kind of stuff, but also that’s where we get a lot of good information from because now they’re able to breach controlling things that we can’t control now because it would be unethical.
[01:21:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.
[01:21:04] Ben Skutnik: Yeah.
[01:21:05] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Last, last question as we wrap up. If someone is gonna train for VO2 max, let’s say their VO2 max is 35 and they wanna get to mid-40s, will the body size, they wanna keep around the same body size, so their absolute, you know, liters per minute wants to go up. What would you set up in terms of the priority of their training?
[01:21:24] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And let’s say they’re gonna train, maybe they’re lifting some weights two to three days a week. Mm-hmm. Um, but they’re willing to put more time and effort and put a priority on aerobic development. Well, how would you kinda set them up from, like, a weekly thing? Like, what would be things you’d wanna make sure that’s in their training?
[01:21:40] Ben Skutnik: I mean, I’m, I’m a big believer of hitting those high register intensities. So, um, you know, the… And, and I don’t mean high intensity like the Tabatas, right? People think like, “Oh, I’ll do a Tabata.” That’s, that’s not- You
[01:21:53] Dr. Mike T Nelson: mean you gotta go more than 20 seconds with 10 seconds rest? What?
[01:21:56] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Like, that, that’s not what I’m talking about.
[01:21:57] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. What I’m talking about is, um, you know, let’s do, like, d- like a 45-minute, a series, like maybe five… Not 45 minutes. 45 seconds, um, of, like, lighting yourself on fire, and then four to six minutes rest in between, right? ’Cause we mentioned heart rate earlier. I’m not such a fan of measuring heart rate during work, but I really like to look at heart rate recovery.
[01:22:19] Ben Skutnik: I think that’s, like, where heart rate’s most valuable. Um-
[01:22:21] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Super underused, too.
[01:22:22] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And, and ’cause to me, that’s, that’s the indicator of how fit you are. Mm-hmm. Like, you can have a high maximum heart rate, but if it takes you 15 minutes to come down to that 100 beats per minute, then you’re not really fit, right?
[01:22:35] Ben Skutnik: But if we can come from max heart rate to 100 beats per minute in a minute or less than a minute, like, well, you’re freaking fit now. Like, your body can- Oh, yeah … can come back down. So, so that’s why I think these high register intervals are so important, ’cause the 45 seconds is, if you’re hammering it for 45 seconds, your heart rate’s gonna get up there, you’re gonna be taxing yourself.
[01:22:52] Ben Skutnik: But then that recovery window, you can start to see, like, oh, now we’re really be able to come down. So that’s, like, my big, um, yeah, the 45 seconds, four to six minutes off, uh, I really do like that interval. But then I’m also a fan of, um, doing, you know, kind of the one-to-one work to rest, but looking at, like, a, a minute 30 to three minutes, um, of work.
[01:23:15] Ben Skutnik: So we’re not hammering it, ’cause we can’t hammer it for that long. If you came out the gates in a full sprint, at that point you’d die off. But we’re pushing it. People call it, like, threshold or aerobic power. And that’s probably part of the issue with-
[01:23:26] Dr. Mike T Nelson: It’s almost like a VO2 max type thing. You’re probably at an intensity that if we measured- Yeah
[01:23:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: it is probably around VO2 max, would you say?
[01:23:32] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And, and that’s the thing, right? To improve VO2 max, you, you- I don’t wanna say you can’t, but you’re not really gonna improve it by not going at it or above it. Mm-hmm. Just like lifting weights, right? If I wanna get stronger and my max deadlift is 405, I’m not gonna be able to deadlift 500 pounds if I don’t start lifting more than 405, right?
[01:23:53] Ben Skutnik: If I keep- Yeah. … lifting sub, and, and there’s some wiggle room there, right? But, um, so the, the 45-second sprints, the one-to-one at, like, that VO2 level. Um, and then I also, one of … A- and it’s kind of like a test and training. I’m a big fan of the 10-minute test, right? I know in cycling they do- Hmm. Explain that. So in cycling they do, like, the FTP, the 20-minute test, right?
[01:24:15] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Mm-hmm.
[01:24:15] Ben Skutnik: I tend to think that for cycling probably works ’cause those races are so much longer. B- for the average person, 10 minutes trying to, like, put air quotes, “get as far,” if you’re on an erg trying to complete as much work as possible, because that, if you do that, will span to me that the, you know, kind of fast component of VO2, and then you start to get into some of the slow component of VO2.
[01:24:39] Ben Skutnik: So again, we’re above those intensities that are required to build, but for more than anything with those individuals Sitting on a bike or on a rower or whatever your erg is and pushing it for 10 minutes, that gets to that psychological side of it too. Sure. Because what I found with most people, yeah, like four or five minutes in, your heart rate is pretty dang close to max, right?
[01:25:02] Ben Skutnik: Um, and so then getting them to understand, and I talk about like divorcing yourself from heart rate, you can sit at max heart rate for quite a while, right? That’s, that’s just one indicator of what’s going on under the hood. But understanding how to sit and, and you know, like I, I hate the people who are like, “Oh, you’re just gonna suffer.”
[01:25:19] Ben Skutnik: It’s not necessarily that I want you to suffer, but I want you to feel that there’s a big difference between when the burn comes in and how long I can burn, right? Mm-hmm. And, and so the 10-minute test for me is kind of one of the foundational tests that we do. Um, ’cause I tend to… I- I’m sure you’re familiar with it, I like to subscribe to like the critical power model- Yes
[01:25:37] Dr. Mike T Nelson: more than like the, the zone model or things like that. And so-
[01:25:40] Dr. Mike T Nelson: I would agree. If I’m looking only at the literature and I could do whatever I want and athletes will do whatever I tell them- Yeah … it’s just harder to interpret that and to get athletes to wrap their heads around it.
[01:25:52] Ben Skutnik: Right. And, and that’s, and um, and that’s the thing, right?
[01:25:55] Ben Skutnik: So there’s a lot of education up front to get them to understand it, because it is… Like, once you explain it, it’s like, oh, that kind of makes sense, but then when you try to apply it, they’re like, “Wait a second, what?” You know? Yeah. Um- I get
[01:26:03] Dr. Mike T Nelson: cyclists to do it ’cause they’re nutty enough to measure all that shit already, but- Yeah
[01:26:07] Dr. Mike T Nelson: everyone else, it’s a harder sell.
[01:26:08] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Um, but, but that’s the thing, like I… So that 10 minutes to me is… It, it kind of checks all the boxes, kind of go through those energy systems. ’Cause that’s the other thing is people wanna cleanly define like, okay, this is my, uh, PCR system, and then this- Mm-hmm … is glycolysis and this…
[01:26:26] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, well, no, it’s all happening on like this spectrum. Um, and so that gives them like the actual physical connection to like, okay, now I know what it means. Um, so then when we go back to like the 45 seconds, it’s like, oh, okay, I could really hammer those ’cause it’s not as bad as the 10-minute.
[01:26:40] Ben Skutnik: But then when we do like the aerobic power VO2 stuff, it’s like, man, I was able to push pretty hard on that for 10 minutes, so I can probably push these intervals a little bit harder as well. That’s great. So those are probably like the three things that I really hammer. I also, like Hunter is one of, uh, the guys who I do his conditioning work.
[01:26:55] Ben Skutnik: He’ll tell you, I also do some pretty wild stuff that I do try to set them up for failure at times, because I… It’s like you can’t know your limit unless you reach your limit, right? And so we have to expose that, but then just understanding like, hey, that’s your limit. Like cut it, walk away, we’ll come back another day.
[01:27:12] Dr. Mike T Nelson: What would be a wild example?
[01:27:14] Ben Skutnik: Um, well, so like that, um, like I just told you, the, the four intervals that I had, it was one, I think it was one, three, seven, 10 minutes of work- Nice … uh, with, with a couple minutes in between. But we had it set at an intensity, so using that 10-minute test- We have them do a 10-minute test, and they find their average workload, right?
[01:27:32] Ben Skutnik: So whatever your average workload’s, like 275 watts. Cool. Those intervals were at 1.3 your 10-minute test, right? Hmm. So, so one minute, not bad. Yep. Three minutes, now we’re starting to get spicy. But seven minutes, it’s like, whoa, this is tough. And so the way I always tell them is, um, if you fail during an interval, you can…
[01:27:54] Ben Skutnik: You have one of two choices. You can cut it and call it a day and we’re good, or you can just extend your rest period and try the next interval. And, uh, a lot of the guys- … were like, they failed on that seven minute. They’re like, “Oh, I’m gonna extend it and try the 10 minute.” And then they’re all like, “Two minutes into that 10 minutes, I was smoked.”
[01:28:07] Ben Skutnik: And it’s like, yeah. Yeah. ’Cause that’s, and that’s why I like the Critical Power model, ’cause it’s like, hey, this is a finite amount of work that we have. Yep. It’s, you know, like, and so when it runs out, it runs out, and nothing you can do. I mean, you can try and fuel, you can rest a little bit longer, but it’s gonna take a while to replenish all of that, uh, finite energy.
[01:28:24] Ben Skutnik: So, um, yeah, that, that was a pretty gnarly one. Um, there’s also one where kind of the same model, basing off the 10-minute test, we start, it’s like, it’s essentially a ramp test, but for folks who’ve never been in the lab, it’s like this is the most, this is the most horrible thing. It’s like we start at .9, uh, of their 10-minute test, then we go .95 30 seconds later, 30 seconds later 1, 1.05, 1, and we build up every 30 seconds.
[01:28:50] Ben Skutnik: And I like that for the people who’ve never done exercise tests, ’cause they don’t realize, you know, when we talk about VO2 max, they think aerobic, they think it feels a certain way, and it’s like, no, the piano drops on you. You, you- Mm-hmm … feel good, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “I don’t feel good,” and then you, you’re on borrowed time then.
[01:29:07] Ben Skutnik: You got about a minute and a half- Mm … maybe if you’re really in shape, couple minutes of really suffering there. So it’s fun when people do that one for the first time, ’cause they’re like, “Geez, I felt great, and then all of a sudden I didn’t.” It’s like, physiology. Welcome.
[01:29:20] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And it, it’s a weird thing to even take, like, a six-minute rest period and to come back and do some high output thing and not-
[01:29:28] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm
[01:29:29] Dr. Mike T Nelson: be able to do it. Yeah. It is the… And, and I don’t think people grasp that until they’ve done it, because it- it’s so weird ’cause you’re like, “Okay, I’m good.” This is, like, you know, round four, round five of whatever heinous thing you’re doing, and you got a long rest period, heart rate’s back down. You’re, like, feeling good.
[01:29:45] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You start into it. You’re like, “Yeah, I got this,” and then, like, a third of the way in, you’re like, “Oh, fuck, I don’t got this at all.”
[01:29:52] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. No, and that’s just it, right? Heart rate’s down. I got my breathing un- Yeah … under control. I feel better. Let’s get it, get it ramped up, and then, yeah, like, a minute into it, your muscles are like, “Hey, no, no, no.
[01:30:02] Ben Skutnik: We still don’t have- No. … like, we haven’t been replenished yet. This is, this is painful.” And yeah, then they’re, they’re like, “Oh, man.” And, and yeah, so it’s, it’s cool though. I mean, that’s the thing. Like, I love… For as much as I don’t necessarily like the hubbub around VO2 max right now, I do love energy systems training ’cause I think that is something, um, that people, the nuance of it is so much fun to explore.
[01:30:25] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. And people can really gain, like, a real good understanding of how their body operates, not just, you know, on the bike, but how their body handles certain nutritional strategies and things like that. I think that’s the best way to expose it, is to do some pretty high-level endur- or, uh, energy system work.
[01:30:40] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. And last question and I’ll let you go is the thing I love about it, too, is that, one, it appears to be, and I like your opinion on this, very trainable, and two- Everybody has a radically different starting point, and there’s no question that VO2 max has an extremely high genetic component. You can read the Heritage- Mm-hmm
[01:30:58] Dr. Mike T Nelson: study, you can read all these different studies. But it seems to me that most people, if they do it in an intelligent fashion, they make it a priority, can get significantly better up to a point. Like, you may not hit the high 70s and 80s for VO2 max, but you can make significant progress in most people.
[01:31:17] Dr. Mike T Nelson: And if you gave me, let’s say, six months, and you said, “I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. I will not cut my calories. I’ll leave my stress about the same. I’ll make this a priority,” you can make a massive change in somebody’s aerobic capacity in just six months, where you look at adding lean body mass of- Yeah
[01:31:35] Dr. Mike T Nelson: especially if you’ve been lifting for a while, you’re talking, you know, significant changes. You’re more, like, six years.
[01:31:42] Ben Skutnik: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ex- I wholly, wholeheartedly agree with that. And also what goes kinda unnoticed, if you have somebody who is pretty deconditioned… So, uh, in my master’s thesis, I, it was an interval training study, and we worked with obese pre-hypertensive individuals.
[01:31:59] Ben Skutnik: We’re talking VO2 maxes of, like, 18,
[01:32:02] Dr. Mike T Nelson: 20. Mm.
[01:32:03] Ben Skutnik: You get someone like that up to a VO2 max of
[01:32:06] Dr. Mike T Nelson: 35- Oh, it’s life-changing …
[01:32:08] Ben Skutnik: literally, right? Literally. Like, that’s what people don’t understand. Like,
[01:32:09] Dr. Mike T Nelson: no exaggeration.
[01:32:11] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Like, the, the, the requirement to walk upstairs, I think, is, like, 25 or 30, right? Like, uh, and so you get individuals who are that deconditioned, and it was a 10-week study, so it wasn’t super long.
[01:32:23] Ben Skutnik: They came in three days a week, did some intervals. They were up to 35s, 40s.
[01:32:27] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Wow.
[01:32:27] Ben Skutnik: You’re, you’re- That’s
[01:32:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: huge …
[01:32:28] Ben Skutnik: you’re literally talking changing lives, right? And so that’s the thing. As much as I think, you know, like we talked about earlier, the historical f- um, the field historically has really been obsessed with aerobic ’cause it was easy to measure, so we kinda overlook some of the importance of strength.
[01:32:43] Ben Skutnik: Now we know strength is really important, but that doesn’t mean that getting aerobically fit is not. And so, yeah, I think because it’s so trainable, everybody should train to a certain point, right? Regardless of what your goal is. If you’re an athlete in, in season or in sport, maybe put it on the back burner.
[01:32:59] Ben Skutnik: But if you’re- Mm-hmm … a general population- I think two things. I think everybody would benefit from one serious, serious four-month diet to get the best body composition possible. For sure. Do that once, and then the same thing with aerobic training. Yeah, six months. If you can devote six months to say, “Okay, primary priority.
[01:33:17] Ben Skutnik: I’m still gonna strength train, I’m still gonna do all this, but my primary priority is aerobic or energy system development,” that’s gonna stick with you forever because the maintenance side is so easy. Yeah. It’s so easy to maintain once it’s developed. And yeah, you will find, yeah, you’ll feel better during workouts, but you’re also gonna sleep better.
[01:33:34] Ben Skutnik: Your stress is not gonna be as stressful. Your body’s gonna handle stress better. Your body’s gonna be able to partition nutrients better. Everything gets better. So this is why I say VO2 max is important to a degree because it does dictate a lot of that stuff. Um, but yeah, you don’t need to get to the 55s, the 60s.
[01:33:49] Ben Skutnik: If you can, you know, focus in for a few months and get to 45, you’re gonna be solid, uh, for, for general l- you know, life
[01:33:58] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, and if you take someone from the low 30s to 45, like it’s a big difference. Like and you’ll be able- Mm-hmm … to feel a difference, and I think that’s- it’s the hardest part of you don’t know what it feels like because you’ve never been there before, so you have no frame of reference.
[01:34:14] Dr. Mike T Nelson: You’re just kinda trusting that it’s gonna be better. But once you get to that point, I find most people will stay with it because now they know what it feels like to erode from that point, and they’re like, “Oh, shit.” Like I know for myself, like if I start getting, for me personally, below like 45, like I notice a difference in- Mm-hmm
[01:34:33] Dr. Mike T Nelson: my energy level, my cognition, how I can recover from training. Just general insults from stress. So for me, that’s kinda my, my minimum right around there, just because the cost to me starts going up exponentially. But the only reason- Yeah … I know that is because I’ve been higher and I’ve been lower, and I know what that difference feels like now.
[01:34:53] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Well, and for the general person too, because they’re gonna have to train to get there, the training becomes easier, right? Mm-hmm. Like that’s the thing. It, it never, it never necessarily f- necessarily feels better, right? The-
[01:35:05] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah, it still feels horrible.
[01:35:06] Ben Skutnik: Yeah, threshold intervals always hurt, right? But, uh, it’s, it’s just easier to do, both talk yourself into doing and complete.
[01:35:15] Ben Skutnik: Even when you’re feeling the pain, it’s like hey, you start to… I’m a big like mind game person, so I’m like, “Oh, there’s only 15 rounds left, so that’s actually just- Yep … three rounds of five.” So then, you know, and y- and so you find these ways to make it better, uh, make it easier to get through. And, and yeah, so I think everybody should, um, devote a, a specific block to that to get it well-developed, and then just maintain if you want.
[01:35:35] Ben Skutnik: If you wanna keep pushing it, maybe you fall in love with that training, great, go for it. I’m never gonna stop somebody who says like, “You know what? I really wanna dive in on this,” but I do think everybody should dive in for, yeah, like four, six months to get a really good training adaptation. I think that’s, that’s huge.
[01:35:49] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all your time here. Uh, where can people find out more about you if they, if you want to be found?
[01:35:56] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Uh, so I am, uh, I’m mostly in the comments on social media, but, uh, you can find me @benskutnik on Instagram. Um, I do, uh, some nutrition work for a group called Power Athlete, so you can find that.
[01:36:09] Ben Skutnik: And then, uh, if you’re ever in like the Indianapolis area, I work at Butler University, uh, as Assistant Principal, or Assistant, uh, Professor there. My wife is Assistant Principal. Um, but yeah, they can find me, find me around. Uh, or if I see you, you, if you are research-minded and you’re at any of the conferences, uh, I’ll be lurking around there as well.
[01:36:28] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Any big conferences coming up this year?
[01:36:30] Ben Skutnik: Um, well, the nice thing is next year ACSM’s in Indianapolis, so- Oh,
[01:36:35] Dr. Mike T Nelson: nice …
[01:36:36] Ben Skutnik: uh, I don’t have to travel for that. Um, so that’ll be on the docket. Um, and then once, ’cause I’m just moving into my role at Butler, so we’ll see, uh, what the university allows, see what kind of travel budget I have, and then decide from there.
[01:36:51] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for all your time here today. I really appreciate it, and sharing all your knowledge and wisdom. And yeah, this was great. Really appreciate it.
[01:36:59] Ben Skutnik: Yeah. Thanks, Mike. I, I enjoyed it a lot.
[01:37:01] Dr. Mike T Nelson: Thank you.
[01:37:02] Ben Skutnik: All right.