Well...Basically
Well...Basically
170:Toiling With Fitness Snake Oil
On Today's show we serve up a side of skepticism on fitness devices that claim the world but leave us questioning their worth.
Samuel Weeks, Andrew Jack Rose, and I (Michael Jones De Silva, or Gordon if you're feeling familiar), gather around the mic to share a dubious encounter with a wellness guru, and the even more dubious claims of a microcurrent therapy device. But it's not all side-eyes; we dive into the real science behind muscle growth strategies, the German body re-composition method, and even share a fantasy of a world without grueling gym sessions - replaced by the siren call of passive workout machines.
Finally, we get personal and ponder how ritualizing our activities, like gulping down protein shakes, has become a reflex in the fitness world. Blending fun with fitness and reminding everyone that pumping iron isn't the only way to stay in shape. So, lace up those dancing shoes, or hit the gym, or maybe just find a comfortable spot to tune in – because this episode will flex your mind, tickle your funny bone, and maybe, just maybe, change the way you think about fitness, feuds, and flatbreads.
this is well, basically with your host, mike de silva, and sam weeks on today's episode.
Speaker 2:We had a little catch-up. We talked about life I've got a show coming up we covered some rap beef and then we moved into today's topic, where we talked about fitness devices ones that don't work. Mostly, we covered a few studies to have a look at a few of these things that are around. This was inspired by a device that I saw in a masseuse's office. We hope you'll enjoy today's episode. This is Well, basically, yeah, talking to the microphone though, but just don't make those noises. What's going on? How's the energy?
Speaker 3:it's good. Yeah, I've worked out. We just saw some friends yeah, the house was full before it was really briefly a buzz, yeah, and now it's gone quiet again. Yeah, it's. It's strange. I ate some of your delicious bread, sammy. Oh, flatbread homemade sourdough, sourdough flatbread. It's the only sourdoughing I'm doing with just the right amount of butter and salt yeah that's the way to eat lots. Yeah the right. It's always the right amount every time I didn't only butter one side.
Speaker 2:If I butter both sides, that's when you know they might have died. It could have been too much. Yeah, he rapped just then.
Speaker 3:Did I really yeah Bo Beale no that's not the rap.
Speaker 2:I'm so into this. You guys are going to hate this chat, but I thought I'd bring it up. Bring it up there's not many people I can talk to. Maybe a listener will be like oh my God, there's hip hop beef happening at the moment between Drake and Kendrick Lamar and I love that show. There have been diss tracks, there's been all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3:Do you?
Speaker 2:know what the core of the beef is. What's the? I kind of do so, I guess, like they've kind of been throwing shots at each other for like the last 10 years, but it's like raps, like highly competitive, so it's like saying who's the best, and often on records I'll say that. And then Kendrick did a verse on another person's record where he called out everyone and said he was better than all of them and Drake took that really personally, but nothing kind of happened from that. He just said it was like weird in interviews or whatever.
Speaker 1:Are those two?
Speaker 2:currently like the best. I would say yes, I guess. Well, Drake's like got more number ones than Michael Jackson at this point and then, but Kendrick's definitely, I would say probably more artful and a bit more creative.
Speaker 3:What about Childish Gambino?
Speaker 2:I would say they're in different lakes. Childish Gambino is good, though what?
Speaker 3:about Manila Ice? No, I want to hear more about these beefs. So how are they like firing?
Speaker 2:so what happened was recently a guy called future did an album with metro berman, who's a producer, and uh, I'm just filling everyone in. Who doesn't know?
Speaker 3:I appreciate you're filling me in.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I don't know who these people are so he did an album with future and then metro booming has this problem with drake for some reason. I think he complained about him getting lots of uh, accolades or whatever when he should be and it was like shut up, it doesn't matter anyway. Everyone heaps of people on this album just dissed drake and kendrick like, really like, had a really good verse and also really just him. And everyone was like, oh, what's gonna happen, what's gonna happen. And then j cole who's who did a record with dra Drake saying they were the like two best rappers, responded to the disc Cause the Kendrick's just was kind of aimed at both of them.
Speaker 2:And then a week later, at his own festival, j Cole apologized for his disc track and said he was going to remove it from streaming platforms Cause it was messing up his energy. Wow, he has his own festival. Yeah, so he's got a label. Lots of people go to it. And then everyone was like, well, that's a bit lame, because you've been saying that you've been the best rapper for years yeah exactly, Anyway.
Speaker 2:and then Drake has released a diss track which is pretty nasty and good, so we're waiting for. I reckon, if Kendrick does it right, he'll like destroy it.
Speaker 3:But I'm waiting.
Speaker 2:I'm waiting for it to come out so I can listen to it.
Speaker 3:Is this like YouTube influences when they have beef, but they've like choreographed the beef beforehand to get viewers by fighting, like they're all buddy-buddy but they're like we need to source it up a bit. It needs to be like a bit of contention so that people keep buying our albums. I mean, it's not like the 90s.
Speaker 2:Well, see, like that's everyone's sort of thought and and uh, so um, I guess like you could be right about that, but it's a track. It's nasty. Yeah, we're playing a rap, this song, at the top of the episode, just to start Of course no, gave them to him.
Speaker 3:He's big in Japan. What a weird flex.
Speaker 4:Yeah, chris Kendrick, short Backstage in my city it was friendzone. You won't never take no chain off of us. How the fuck you be steppin' with a size 7 manzone.
Speaker 2:Chris Kendrick short, that's all we need to hear. There's heaps of short jokes in there which are pretty funny.
Speaker 3:I think it's the easiest target as well. If you're even like half an inch taller than someone, you can just rip them apart.
Speaker 2:Anyway, weird hip hop tangent for a podcast. That's like never covered hip hop media ever. But you know I'm deep in there and we like to mix it up a little bit.
Speaker 3:I think that is a great lesson in a field I know nothing about. Yeah, I feel like I've learned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe you'll be really tuned. I'll send you Kendrick's just as soon as it drops and I'll send going to try.
Speaker 3:I'm not even going to put the effort in for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just rhyming words and saying mean things. Diss poetry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, slam poetry, slam poetry.
Speaker 2:I said diss, diss slam poetry, diss be slam poetry.
Speaker 3:What have you done today, Mikey? Or maybe not today what. What have you done today, Mikey?
Speaker 1:Or maybe not today. What have you done this week? I went to work.
Speaker 3:That's very good of you Bring that money in Anything else Exciting, I worked out.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good, I don't have a life.
Speaker 3:You have a lovely life. You work and work out.
Speaker 2:I'm alive. You're coming to the gig next week. I am, which is good, that, sam, which is good, that's exciting. What's the gig, sam? Oh, so I am part of a electronic music duo. I'll only be there briefly, but I'll be there Launching our debut EP. You could just sleep beforehand because we're not playing oh no, If I sleep I won't get up.
Speaker 1:Oh okay, but I'm not too bad at being up late.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're playing a show at the Civic Underground on the 24th. I'll put links to tickets. If you live in Sydney, you want to come. Or if you want to fly over from New Zealand, which is our most popular listenership, that's where you guys are feel free to fly over. It'll be nice house music. Also, if you want to pre-order the EP, you can do that now or pre-save it on Spotify. What's the name of the electronic you are? Oh, we are called Middle James because both of our middle names are, in fact.
Speaker 3:Yames James. Yeah, mr Yarmus, that's very exciting. It is very exciting we're going for a little boogie that night. We are indeed. I'm going to, I'm watching, I'm going to the symphony before that and then I'm coming to that and it's like back to back.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to go from this like stuffy old person crowd to dancing in civic underground yeah, and I think the house dancers are coming through, so we'll have professional dancers on the dance floor really yeah, oh, that's a vibe, yeah, that is sick, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, like mike's really good at bringing was that well and bringing those people on. So I mean me and connor, when we when connor first met mike, I took him to a gig to have a meeting about the ep and we went and it was like mike was playing after a dance competition. So everyone in the room like we're trying to dance. It's like really good music, good house music, even on the room is like the best dancer I've ever seen in my entire life and being kind of just like doing, doing the two-step, doing the two-step and I'm like, oh my god, this is incredible, wow, um, but there should be a few of them there which will be really, really cool.
Speaker 2:It's always great to see them that's exciting.
Speaker 3:So, middle james, and what's the album name? Waka waka, yeah, waka waka some shakira um, I went. I did my three monthly STI test today and it was very uneventful, although I've made friends with both the doctor that I go to regularly and so he'll chat with me. I went. I went to work time. It was very naughty.
Speaker 2:I can't do that.
Speaker 3:And so I went and he was chatting with me and I was like, okay, yeah, and I'm looking at my watch, being like I'm going to move on, and then you obviously go to the pathologist to get all of the bloods taken and everything, um, and I'm friendly with the pathologist in this clinic as well, and so she was telling me an update on her life. While it was all going on I was like, please, please, I need to keep moving, I need to keep moving, but it's very easy, I don't get my results on monday.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you sound like you have a nice cute doctor he's very sweet yeah he's very good as well.
Speaker 3:He really cares about outcomes like he. I've seen so many doctors that are just like wham bam gps particularly that are just like wham bam.
Speaker 3:Get you through like, oh yeah, that's fine, he's a like a, he's a topical cream yeah, literally, and I you know, like when I had, like, when I thought I had scabies, the first doctor I went to she was like oh, um, the treatment is this, and also, here's a steroid cream. And I was like I don't really want a steroid cream, I'm worried about getting topical steroid withdrawal. I think that's what it's called, uh, and she was like no, um, this is the best way to treat it. And I was like can you just tell me the person who's going to put it on? I don't want this. She's like I'll write it out for you.
Speaker 3:Anyway. I was like what are you doing? Also, I had to show her like sensitive parts of my body and she was repulsed at the idea of actually looking at them. Like I was like can you just like cite where you know the rash is appearing, because I need to like have it confirmed. I need you to like see it. I'm not just don't take my word for it like I've done my own. It's webmd research babe. Like you need to see it. And she was like okay, and so I like lay down on the bed and she was looking, but she looked from like two meters away.
Speaker 1:Oh my god and was like peering with a face of disgust no, no.
Speaker 3:So then I left and I tried and it didn't work and I came back and picked a different doctor and this other doctor is very, very good.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good um, I think the first doctor misunderstood no she, just I, because I. I don't think she uh took into account what being a doctor meant.
Speaker 3:Yes, I agree, she absolutely did I was bad mouthing her to the new doctor. Being like she was, she had no idea what she was doing and and he was like she's a bit like that, isn't she? Oh, my God, why is she still there? Oh?
Speaker 2:my God, my cough still hasn't left.
Speaker 3:It'll never leave. Nice horsey cough, it's never going to leave.
Speaker 2:It's been with me so long now. I don't think it's ever going to go.
Speaker 1:Hey, welcome, popcorn lung.
Speaker 2:Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Episode number 170. We're at a 10. It's easy to remember, simple. I didn't mess that up. Welcome to First Time Listeners. Second Time Listen in his third, fourth, fifth my friends who've listened to the show, Some of them, lots of them actually. It's nice, Feels like I don't need to talk to them when I see them in person.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Don't update them on your live. It's easy, yeah.
Speaker 3:But then if someone doesn't listen and they're like, oh so you know, what did you do this week about on the podcast actually? You can just listen to that.
Speaker 2:You guys who listen every week. We love you indeed the most. I'm here. Samuel Weeks, andrew is here, andrew Jack Rose and Michael Jones De Silva.
Speaker 1:Is it all the same? I cut everyone's middle names.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, it's actually Gordon, thank you?
Speaker 1:Huh, it's actually Gordon Is it.
Speaker 2:Where's the Jones come from? I don't know. You just brought in the Jones, michael Jones. I guess that sounds like a good fake name that is a good fake name.
Speaker 1:No, that's a real name. It was a rugby player.
Speaker 3:Yeah but not Michael Jones De Silva.
Speaker 2:I'm going to make that up.
Speaker 3:I thought I'd play some nice house music, because that's what you're going to hear next week if you come to the gig, when you come to the gig when.
Speaker 2:It's also a nice meet up.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like fans of the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're actually going to put a big well basically signed behind us DJ. Very good, it's a crossover.
Speaker 3:And you can do a meet and greet for 300 bucks a pop. Just transfer it directly to me.
Speaker 2:Signing autographs for the podcast, not for the music. We don't have enough music out yet. One day it is my friend. Such a track, who's it by? It is called Music Is my Friend, funnily enough, by a guy called Arnold Jarvis.
Speaker 3:But a soulful house for our souls. Restorative For this lovely Sunday, restorative house. Music For this lovely Sunday afternoon.
Speaker 2:That's got to be a new genre. Yeah, if it comes out on Sunday. We've been having issues with that.
Speaker 3:It'll come out on Sunday.
Speaker 2:Really sorry about the last couple of releases being a little bit late. You can let us know how you feel, how we sound on a Monday or a Tuesday.
Speaker 3:Yeah maybe that's the day, maybe it is. I like the Sunday, though, because I go to the gym and, like vainly, I listen to the show on like the way and at the gym. And so these last couple Sundays I've been like what am I supposed to listen to? I listen to fucking music, the stuff they're playing in the gym. No, I listen to myself. Yeah, I love it, I love it. People ask me that they say don't you listen to the episodes? Yes, of course I do, do you? Really I love it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I guess I do in the edit, but I don't really listen to them probably. Okay, topic, it's fitness related and it's due. I'll tell you how we got here. So me and Connor music going back to music related very briefly we went up to we. We needed Connor's assistance in picking up some records Chloe and I are some record players and we went there and the guy who was selling them to us wasn't there. But the gentleman who was selling them was a masseuse. He sort of knows more. He was more professional, a wellness guru. Well, yeah, sort of a bit of both things. He was kind of like a car but not a car. Uh, I was like super confused because I'd never heard of it before. Anyway, he was helping a guy with his back pain. The guy was like yeah, he's really good. I was like cool. And then he walked out the door. He had a machine on his um table that apparently fixed everything uh, it's.
Speaker 3:Can you explain the machine like? What does it look like?
Speaker 2:okay, so it's a little blue box and the uh, the thing itself was actually called. Oh my God. I thought I put it in the sheet, but it's not saved. It's not EMS, it's something completely different.
Speaker 3:I think it must be in the chat. That's rough, oh no. Microcurrent therapy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, microcurrent therapy in a portable device.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so basically they connect. You have a wet towel and you connect the connections and you put the wet towel on you and it sends like currents, at different frequencies through your body. And these very specific and different frequencies, supposedly. At the time before I read a few PubMed studies. One was for depression, One was for just like muscular pain, but like different parts of the body. One was for your hips to stop you getting a replacement Kidney stones as well.
Speaker 3:That's a rough one for electricity to be fixing.
Speaker 2:I was just like. I mean, I looked up at connor and he knew like this guy was like talking about your everybody. And connor looked at me and he's like you know, you think this is bullshit, don't you?
Speaker 3:and I'm like, yeah, I do, it's such a wide range of things for an electrocar also it makes me think of electroshock therapy, like was there like a gay dial on there, or fix that?
Speaker 2:no, no, there wasn't. I, I don't think you necessarily. I don't think it's as active like I've had treatments before. Um, I went to, uh, go see a wonderful gentleman called ben tong and when I had issues with my hips, um, he would put like needles in the hips and connect like any electric current to those needles and let it run for ages and you just get like it's basically to help free up the joint and get something, get muscle muscles moving around the joint to sort of ease pain, and I found that really effective.
Speaker 2:You're fucked afterwards Cause your hips don't ever get that much stimulation because they're just like going, contraction, relaxing, contracting. It feels terrible, like it's actually the worst shit ever. He did my calf once as well and I was like this is I hate this, this is Guantanamo level. Yeah, um, but yeah, this thing I don't know, when you're using like frequencies to, uh, you know, could you just, you know, could I know, could I get into ableton, which is the thing that I use to make music, and make a track with a whole bunch of frequencies and like I don't know anyone who had kidney stows and the dance hall, they just piss them out instantly this is it's gonna work.
Speaker 3:Restorative house. This is how you make it. You figure out these frequencies, pump it into one song and suddenly people will just oh my god okay, that's it.
Speaker 2:That's gonna be our new. That's it. That's it. That's going to be our next album. It's going to be called Restorative House. And we can put the brown note in there as well. Yeah, that'd be perfect. Just one poo on the dance floor is going to fix your life.
Speaker 3:You sent through a publication about these actually, because it's not fair to judge without having a little information behind it. The study was on assessing how they're useful for chronic back pain, um, skeletal system pain, fibromyalgia, migraines and depression, um, and it found that uh in all indications, the improvement of health related quality of life is assessed by the SF 36 questionnaire. So they used a questionnaire to do this with statistically higher um uh, statistically highly significant and clinically relevant. So they found that in the people that they were giving this questionnaire to uh, it had positive health outcomes.
Speaker 2:Now bar the fibromyalgia.
Speaker 3:So that's what the one thing that they found like that, that that didn't help at all and the group was actually pretty large I don't know if it was because in the patients and methods it says 50 patients per indication already using investigational device before study entry. So they use 50 people, um, who were already using this machine for six months per condition.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, but I think the thing is with that is, if someone's been using that machine for six months already before signing up for this thing, they are probably already a believer of it working so if they've been placeboed by this machine. Yeah, and they pick up this, they're gonna obviously go.
Speaker 2:Yes, I've had better health.
Speaker 3:This is the part I messed when I was what machine have you ever used for six months that's a half a year and you get to the end of that and you're like, wow, I did nothing the whole time. I would never. I would have two weeks in being like okay well goodbye.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so actually we can write that study off completely no well maybe I missed that section completely. That's so funny, but it's like the most important part to read.
Speaker 3:I'm such a lazy reader of these papers. I only read the abstract because I'm like they'll put the top line in there. I'm not going into the. I'm not reading a graph, babe, it's not happening. Um, so I'm not going into the. I'm not reading a graph, babe, it's not happening. So I'm not sold by the machine. I've never used one. I've done very little research into it. They could be incredibly useful. And for the 50 patients per indication, so the 270, I think you said.
Speaker 2:Cause I think they had to drop a few. Maybe they loved it too much.
Speaker 3:For those patients. The majority of them loved it and loved it, and they said there was only four adverse events related to the application of microcurrent during the trial. I hope they weren't deaths they turned it too high, crispy you're not depressed anymore, though yeah, so that was good, but it got my mind thinking about.
Speaker 3:I confused, when you told me that story, that this was like some kind of exercise machine, and so it got me looking into passive exercise machines. Which crazy. Um, there's a few of them and there is a few I feel like they're not as in vogue as they once were.
Speaker 2:You know, there was once a time where your tv was riddled with ab king pros, so that they've been ab king pros. That's actually exercise but, like man, the way they used to, how they used to sell them.
Speaker 2:My favorite one was the one where you'd like kneel on it and then move your hips side to side oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, very sexy that one, yeah it's, yeah, it's so funny that the bit that I mean those are actually exercises, but the joke, the joke of those is these are merely things that do the exact same thing that you don't need a machine for.
Speaker 3:No, you don't need five payments of $49.99 to get them. It's like real simple machines you can do them with. The first one I saw, and it was the one that popped into my head immediately, was the vibrating belt machine, which is like a super 60s and 70s machine. This is retro, beyond retro. Like no one, I don't think, would use them now.
Speaker 2:Someone that wraps around your waist and you stand there and it just fucking like exactly.
Speaker 3:So you basically get one or two belts wrapped around your belly and like lower abdomen and then you push forwards against it and then turn the machine on, and all of these machines that work with vibration just have like an off kilter weight that they spin around to make the whole thing vibrate, and this will just vibrate the belt. And the idea was that it would like I mean the way they would sell it on tv would be like it vibrates the fat off you. But it was supposed to like stimulate parts of your body and get it moving in a way, and also the the act of like leaning forward and having this thing vibrate means you have to like engage your core, to like stay standing while it's doing it.
Speaker 2:And so they ran a whole bunch of sorry to interrupt, actually Interrupt away please. They had a whole bunch of classes for a short amount of time that was called like vibratrain. We like stand on one of those plates but and like do squats and like do that type of stuff on the vibrating plate.
Speaker 3:And that's I think this will be a theme in a lot of these is, um, they all have their own individual health benefits of varying degrees, but you need to be doing exercise with them. So this one, um, I took off the wikipedia page. There's some quotes uh, it's a device that promoted, uh, passively reducing body fat through the use of an oscillating and vibrating belt around the exercise subject's waist, without active exercise, so like you could sit and watch TV if you wanted. Yeah, this is the jiggle belt. But they said they remained popular through the 1960s but fell out of fashion in the 1980s when it became clear that they had no fat reducing benefits.
Speaker 2:It's so funny. Can you just imagine guys sitting in the gym with this, like basically standing like he's getting a blow job with his hands on his head?
Speaker 3:Thing just vibrates around this tummy Like, yeah, this is fixing me. I don't know why I'm not losing the kilos. There are benefits of things like increased circulation, so it can be used as like a recovery tool for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, the vibratron thing is like, I guess, tool for yourself. Yeah well, the vibratron thing is like, I guess it's a similar. It's just literally a plate that you stand on um. But yeah, I guess like I can't really.
Speaker 3:Those also were sold as passive workout machines that, instead of doing like your workout on top of it, you would just place yourself in front of the tv standing on vibrate.
Speaker 2:Well, how can you watch tv when the tv is bloody vibrating?
Speaker 3:yeah, you'd have to put the tv on a vibraplane as well, and then it would be doing it in sync with you. Oh my God, so good. Any thoughts on the vibrating belt, mikey?
Speaker 1:Not on the belt, no, no.
Speaker 2:Did you ever get a vibro-train Use? A vibro-train yeah, my mum had one for a time, did she? Yeah, that's sweet, yeah on them, but I guess, like the thing is, it's it's quite similar to there. There are so many of these things in fitness that people think they're like the greatest thing ever.
Speaker 2:It's like I remember, for like ankle rehabilitation a lot of people were using like bose balls or like semi-circle ball, like yeah, or like getting people to stand and do squats on them and all that shit, but I just like vibratrain is probably a similar thing, where you're shaking heaps, like I haven't looked into Getting people to stand and do squats on them and all that shit, but I just like vibratrain is probably a similar thing where you're shaking heaps. I haven't looked into that much because it seems I know I'm writing it off but it seems a little bit silly. But for ankle rehab, even standing on a wobbly board, I'm just like okay. So if you're training someone to rehab back into moving normally in real life, do you think that rehabbing them on what is effectively a bouncy castle is actually getting them ready for that, unless they are a birthday clown and they live in a bouncy castle?
Speaker 3:I just, I just just really tiny boat sailors.
Speaker 2:It's just a lot of the stuff is just so unnecessary and it looks cool, so people buy it and they buy into it, and there's just so many examples of this that happen in the in the fitness industry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I mean, if it gets people moving, no issue.
Speaker 3:If it's fun, I did love the idea of someone standing with a belt in front of the TV being like look at him, look at me, get so skinny. Another one I saw and this one also has very good therapeutic uses, but I don't know if it has the use that they sold it at originally ab stimulators. So they are those square pieces of material that run an electric current, that kind of shock your abs. Very similar to the machine that you had, but with a higher shock, and the idea was the electrical current activating the muscles in the abs would do the workout for you. So you could just sit, literally sit on a couch in front of the tb and, um, you would get abs if you did it regularly enough I think most of them claim to melt the fat away melt the fat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the before and after is always so good for those hey or there'd be like a, like a cartoon, where it just shrinks in yeah, I'm convinced, well done yeah, and or it would be always some guy with, like already, the most fucking jacked abs you've ever seen in your life, just glistening perfectly with sweat with these two like pads on his tummy yeah with a smile on his face, as if he's not being shocked.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um so the page for this. Uh, it's an air mass device, um, that cause calorie burning. Uh, they said it's marginal. At best, calories are burnt in significant amount only when most of the body is involved with the physical exercise. So real exercise involves several muscles the heart, the respiratory system, they all get engaged in real exercise and this misses pretty much all of that. This has, uh, small marginal benefits in increasing blood circulation to the area and if you have worked out, it can increase the depth of workout, like it makes the micro tears.
Speaker 2:We were talking about this before, so it actually it's had a bit of a resurgence because there's a a celebrity called Kamel Nanjani. Do you know who he is? He was a comedic actor. He is a comedian, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And he basically got this Marvel role and he had to get jacked for it and he got real jacked like super jacked, like crazy, probably with chemical assistance. But he did a bunch of training videos on the training techniques that he used and he effectively had EMS on like the body part that he was working to increase like mind muscle connection, slash muscle activation. So if he was doing like leg raises he'd have like them on his quads and stuff and I was like I feel like I can't really argue with that in terms of like yes, if you have an electric current running through a muscle that you're working out, you're probably going current running through a muscle that you're working out. You're probably going to feel that muscle more as you're working it. A little tap might do the same thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but also that's what Sam does to me, He'll be like work this muscle. I'll be like oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, also that. So it's all yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, so it also said. Strength training by NMES does promote neural and muscular adaptations that are complementary with well-known effects of voluntary resistance training.
Speaker 2:So that's what you're saying. It can't be involuntary, yeah, the whole time.
Speaker 3:This is again with this theme. This works in conjunction as a small improvement on I don't want to say actual exercise, but actual exercise, you know. Yeah, so they were a little tough one. And EMS, which is this machine machine during hypertrophy training, blood flow restriction training.
Speaker 2:I wrote blood flow restriction training because this is another thing that sort of got. It was in vogue, I think Arnie was doing it like in the 80s for a while. It's basically, let's say, if we were to work a bicep, work your biceps. You tape up your arm, that you can get these like bands that tape it up and while you you just get a mad pump. And it's a similar thing because there's no blood flow going there. You just get a crazy pump in your bicep and when you take it off it all goes up.
Speaker 2:But it's actually I was reading studies.
Speaker 3:Is it just aesthetic, though, or is it good for?
Speaker 2:for building muscle. Yeah, it can help. It's just another. It's another like something like that which I mean everyone used to be like that's fucking ridiculous, why would anyone do that? And turns out there's like it actually is quite effective but it's just another tool to add to the belt. Like you know how we talk about progressive overload, you know this could be something that you do for a training face yeah, as an additional, though it's not, you're not going to be able to sit on the couch and get abs.
Speaker 1:I think is the thing, um, I mean that makes a little bit more sense, though it's kind of like playing around with the body's internal stuff rather than trying to introduce some external force.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, yeah, magical. Did you buy into any of this stuff, mikey, at any point in your life?
Speaker 1:no, um, my parents had one of those ab rollers in like the 1990s, yeah, but they're actually, oh, the kind of shell that goes over your back. Yeah, the G-shaped one, it's like an assisted crunch machine Probably not that terrible, but it did claim to melt away the fat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the old ab exercises melting away the fat my dad got this.
Speaker 3:Good on him. You know if that gets him moving. I don't know what it's called, but you use it. Is it German?
Speaker 2:body recomposition German body recomp, yeah, yeah what is that? That's just when you train upper and lower body, but you pair them up.
Speaker 3:So you do one after the other immediately.
Speaker 2:Yes, you go upper and then lower.
Speaker 3:And what does that do inside your?
Speaker 2:body. Well, it's basically just increases your heart rate because your heart goes. I need to see blood to the legs right now. Oh shit, I've got to also see blood to the upper body now and your heart rate goes up. It's like pick where you want your blood I quite like it because it's your sort of multitasking while you're training, you're working on like cardiovascular fitness at the same time as you're working on strength.
Speaker 3:I also quite like those paired, because if you pair like an arm with an arm you obviously get more fatigue in the arm and it's also effective because they're like different muscle groups.
Speaker 3:Besides you being like you, know, there was one more passive workout machine that I came across, and I actually didn't write this down in our little notes. It was do you know the one? I can't remember the name of it, but you strap your feet in and then turn yourself upside down fully. Oh yeah, yeah, you look like dracula. Yeah, yeah, they flip themselves upside down. Um, people were using that because it like reverses aging, because gravity's going the other way. Oh nah, that's surely not well at the time in the time that you're in it.
Speaker 3:That is completely true, but you're not going to be in there for more than like five minutes, and the second you flip yourself, gravity, I'm sorry, reasserts itself. Like all the positives, it'll like flip you upside down. This one is a little more insidious. There are, again, therapeutic benefits, and it's things to do with heart health, because it does put a high strain on your heart. Your body is made to pump blood more effectively from the bottom to top, so if you flip yourself, it's doing the reverse job. It's not as good as getting blood. That's why blood pulls in the brain.
Speaker 3:If you're upside down for too long, um, but there's benefits, yes. So this is the insidious part about it. If you have things like high cholesterol or diabetes or any number of like real common diseases, you put yourself in a very high risk spot. And there are so many funny videos I mean, not funny, tragic of people that like set themselves up and they're going to film themselves for their fitness vlog and then get trapped upside down and they're like calling the police to come break into their house to like flip them back up the right way, um, so that one's another one that I think they're selling a machine that's for something else. Uh, that might have therapeutic benefits additional to working out, um, as like a workout device. And people that are, I'm sorry, incredibly unhealthy I know you don't like the word, mikey, but incredibly unhealthy are like strapping themselves in and putting themselves on a ride to the morgue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's such a easy. I feel like I mean, maybe there's so much information there now around this stuff, but back then it was probably just so easy because, like everyone wants to, you know, look a certain way and having something that goes you literally have to do nothing to get there, is like a perfect self.
Speaker 3:Just flip yourself upside down, I'll level with you as well, If a passive workout machine comes out that works.
Speaker 4:I'm never stepping foot in the gym.
Speaker 3:I'll be putting myself in that jacuzzi suit or whatever it is, for the rest of my life.
Speaker 2:I'd be absolutely sad. You should do a cycle. You can put on quite a lot of muscle without doing any exercise. Then I get the pimples and my balls will get tiny. Yeah, I know, but you know they don't have big muscles. It doesn't matter what pimples and tiny balls I have, you'll also probably lose your hair, unfortunately.
Speaker 3:You know I'm on the knife's edge there. Sorry, Mikey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think I'm good going, matty, for now you can lose your hair without that as well.
Speaker 3:Once I get old enough, I'm going to tell the doctor that I'm having trouble keeping it up on any testy uh injections oh, I actually low-key can't wait till I'm gonna say 45 and I'm 100 hopping on I'll do it as early as possible if I could convince a doctor now to put me on.
Speaker 3:I asked my doctor this guy, this really good one when I was getting the scabies stuff chest. We couldn't work out what it was because the scabies treatment wasn't working, and so he was like I'm testing you for everything. And he put down like everything. I had so much blood taken out of me, um, just for these tests. And while I was talking with him I was like hey, can you like chuck a testosterone test on there as well? Just you know you're doing so many. And he was like no, that one is so heavily scrutinized. So many people come in and just want to get their testosterone tested so they can get the injections.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I imagine in sydney it'd be a huge thing. I get it if you're older, but yeah, well, I take it now. It's just there's too much risk. Um, I like this topic and I think there are quite a few things that we can move into talking about like supplement. We've done a supplement episode, but there's heaps of new things on the market now that are proven to work. Lots of it's like ayurvedic medicine. What was ayurvedic medicine that's now been bastardized by a lot of supplement companies. What's ayurvedic medicine? It's just, uh, it's the opposite of western. Oh, yeah, so like ashwagandha, for example, we love my ashwagandha, yeah, exactly, so we could talk about that, because that's one that I've just started taking again and I definitely noticed a difference with that.
Speaker 3:So if anyone is taking any strange supplements that they think works for them, please write in. I'd like to hear some personal experience. I like reading random articles on the internet, but I think it loses that certain genesis of someone actually experiencing it. Would you call amyl a supplement?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's supplements mate. It is nothing but a supplement. Thank you so much for listening to Well Basically. If you want to find Andrew, you can find him at the Beer Back Investor. If you want to find Mikey, you can find him at Well Basically Mikey. If you want to find me, you can find me at Well Basically Sam. The website is wwwwellbasicallypodcom. You know what we should do? We should start a supplement company, Well, basically branded.
Speaker 1:But it's just.
Speaker 4:Emil.
Speaker 1:Absolutely you work out.
Speaker 3:Different varieties, though We'll do like nighttime Emil, or like wake up Emil.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you ritualize something, people will buy it. Yeah, that's why protein shakes are so popular because people are like you're going to have your protein shakes straight after the workout. You don't.
Speaker 3:But I do but you do need Amel.
Speaker 4:You do, you do, you work out Amel I can't speak from experience. Loosen some muscles up. I've had it on a dance floor.
Speaker 2:from time to time it's pretty fun.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That for listening.
Speaker 1:Well, I am all.