The Deep Healing Project
The Wellness Brothers, Dr. Jake and Dr. Nick Hyde, talk about doctor stuff, or brother stuff, or sometimes both. Filled to the brim with humor, practical advice, and rich in-depth conversation, these brothers from opposite sides of the country connect on the topics that they truly love. Centered on holistic health, each podcast goes to the core of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and life.
The Deep Healing Project
Your Muscles Are Batteries—And Movement Turns Them On
We explore how exercise should make your everyday life easier, not just improve your appearance or performance metrics. The goal is to build resilience through selective stress that prepares you for life's unavoidable challenges.
• Strength training is critically undervalued but offers benefits that would be considered miraculous if available in pill form
• Your muscles function as batteries containing most of your mitochondria, which is why movement can provide immediate energy when feeling lethargic
• The "zone of proximal development" concept suggests training at about 75% effort to allow more frequent exercise with less recovery time
• Finding your personal "therapeutic dose" of exercise – the point where you genuinely feel better – creates natural motivation
• Even five-minute workouts can provide significant benefits if they include functional movements like squats or push-ups
• The ability to stand up from a chair without using your arms is one of the strongest predictors of quality of life as we age
• Balanced training should prepare you for real-life activities, not just specialized skills in a single sport
Start by challenging your excuses and finding small windows for movement throughout the day – the best workout is the one you'll actually do consistently.
Howdy, jake. Well, hello there, brother. Well, for those of you who've maybe never listened to us or watched us, or even know how you got here, my name is Dr Nick Hyde. This is my brother, dr Jake Hyde. We do have a podcast.
Speaker 2:This, is it actually this?
Speaker 1:is the pod.
Speaker 2:You found it. You've arrived. Hey, Nick, good to see you on this fine morning. What happened to the man cave from last episode?
Speaker 1:Well, audio problems. You know, there's always something. No technical task is straightforward. That's what I found. So because of my microphone issue, I can't be in the den of roosters. What are you thinking? I like the man cave. I'm going to be back. I'm going to be back.
Speaker 2:Looks like you're on your portico of your Italian villa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, this is a nice garden man. I've got a flower in my face on this side, which is nice, got some good aromas and it's a little cold out.
Speaker 2:But That'll keep you alert in the morning. Nick, if you guys don't know, we typically record pretty early. I'm in Nashville. I got a couple-hour advantage on Nick, so he's podcasting pretty early, just for you guys.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, but you know this is the time that's we talked about this before. This is the me time, and so it's a great time to fit in a podcast with my brother, because that's what I'd want to be doing anyways.
Speaker 2:Totally Speaking of me time dude, I got to work out right before this.
Speaker 1:That's why I'm a little grungier than normal. Nick looks like he's ready to do something professional. I, I don't get ready in the dark.
Speaker 2:So I'm just happy my hair looks okay. It looks like, yeah, well actually, um, I'm usually more of the morning person, so I I handle the boys from like 4 AM onwards. But, um, my wife's been kind of under the weather so I take the baby just the whole night while she's recovering sleep is important after all and so she was up like six 30 feeling pretty good from a full night's rest. So I went to the gym and I haven't gone to the gym really in the morning. That used to be my routine, like go to the gym like 536 before the toddler was waking up, and I just kind of have had to forfeit that these last two months with the newborn and it's a little sad.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a grieving process with some of the things when you're sacrificing for something that matters. Obviously I want to have a baby, so I'm happy to make the sacrifices. But today I mean it was kind of a long night and I was like she's like you can go sleep for like an hour and I'm like I could, but I probably won't, you know, wired and tired kind of feeling. So I'm like I'm gonna go to the gym. She felt real nice to be able to back in like an old pattern and to move the body Like I'm not working out like I used to because I don't have it. Don't have it in me right now, but it still feels good to, you know, push some heavy things around in the morning. What about you?
Speaker 1:What kind of stuff were you doing in the gym?
Speaker 2:What kind of stuff were you doing in the gym? Right now, because I work out so infrequently, I'm concentrating on the basic compound movements, like a little bit of a warm-up with some of the things, and then pretty high weight, low rep. So your basic pushing, your basic pulling, the functional lower body stuff hip hinges, squats, lunges, things like that. We can get into specifics if you want, because I enjoy talking about kind of approaches to this. But when it's like I get to work out every, you know, maybe on a good week twice I get activity, but lifting, you know what I mean, maybe twice, yeah, uh, I, I, I go for the classics they're classic for a reason man and it's pretty.
Speaker 2:It's pretty fast and furious, so I don't give myself a ton of rest time unless the movement really requires it. But I just, I kind of I'm in there for 30 minutes and I'm I'm moving. So say, if I'm doing a heavy bench, so a heavy pushing, I didn't do bench today. I did um, like incline, like heavy dumbbells, because you're maximizing like chest and shoulder at the same time. It's just, it's about efficiency right now. So in my recovery I'm doing hip hinge with like a heavy dumbbell, so that's like hip hinge. It's like a deadlift movement for just people out there is what I'm talking about and that's like recovery.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2:So I'm really trying not to like a recovery. That's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that, so I'm really trying not to waste a minute while I'm in there. Yeah, Because if you're on dad duty the toddler is going to be like dad.
Speaker 2:That's the thing too. So, yeah, every minute counts. You definitely feel it when you're trying to serve as a dedicated father, husband and a clinician at the same time. So when you're in there, there's no, there's no dilly dallying.
Speaker 1:That's a good way to put the pressure on the exercise. Make sure you just get to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cause it's kind of cardio too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's yeah, exactly. No, that's a really good point. Well, I do want to bring this up. You know, podcast number three. We, uh, you know season two. Number three we talked about the essentials of health, and exercise is one of those, but we don't really get into all the details of you know, we we've number one. We both played collegiate sports and exercise has been very important for us for a very long time. I'd say that we know a lot and we've also helped people clinically, but yet we don't really go into all the details of some of the wisdom that we, that we've also helped people clinically, but yet we don't really go into all the details of some of the wisdom that we've garnered.
Speaker 2:Nick, you want to get into your track and field prowess.
Speaker 1:I'm probably one of the only well, I'm the only person I know who's competed D1 as a thrower and a sprinter, but competing is a generous word. It's a very generous word to say.
Speaker 2:I competed. Competing implies you had a chance. Yeah Well, I'm not much better, so that's not our main sports. By the way, nick and I we played other sports, so I played basketball, but one of the assistant basketball coaches we went to a small school for nerds, so some of the sports are scrambling to put athletes out there, and so one of the assistant basketball coaches was the head tennis coach, and him and I just got along really well and he's like Jake, why don't you play tennis? I'm like I don't know how to play tennis well, and he's like jake won, she played tennis. I'm like I don't know how to play tennis. He's like don't worry dude.
Speaker 1:He's like don't worry, there's no collegiate coach ever to an athlete. Yeah, but I think he just liked me.
Speaker 2:He's like don't worry, man. Um, I'm like I don't have any gear and he's like I'll get you the gear. I'm like I don't really have time. He's like you don't have to really show up and I'll be. Oh okay, so I go.
Speaker 2:And it's true, they need to fill out a full roster, but only six people ever compete. So I'm kind of out there getting activity. You know, it's the, it's a spring sport, it's outdoors, it's kind of fun and I'm getting better, I'm like learning it, I'm enjoying it and, uh, I don't know for whatever, though, at the end of the season, injuries, illnesses, I don't know, wiped out our team. So let's say, I'm the 10th guy on a roster, 60 will compete and they need me. I'm called in to go compete and we're playing against a nationally ranked team. Oh boy, and I get absolutely smoked so bad. So I'm not kidding you. My first like serve receive from this guy knocked the racket out of my hand you're like this is gonna be a long long, unbelievable well, I had to like recalibrate to someone who's awesome at tennis.
Speaker 2:I just wasn't expecting that. You know, I don't even think ever we had one guy that was like nationally ranked. I don't think I ever played against him, you know, in practice yeah they didn't let you.
Speaker 2:It was a waste. It was a waste of his time. He never played against me. Uh, so I never. I'd never seen that before. That was incredible. So once I calibrated, I could actually play a match. I don't think I. I mean, it was a skunk, don't get me wrong. Yeah, it looked okay on the court, yeah. And then there was another match a couple days later, home match. First of all, I had told all my friends when I got back you guys won't believe this. And so I told them. And now we're back home court and I get called to play again. And now my friends show up. They're like, oh yeah, they're setting up lawn chairs to watch this.
Speaker 2:This time it was against a team that wasn't very good, and so I got matched up against their worst player. That's what I was, and I had a shot. This time this guy was kind of dorky. He was doing the same thing as you. No, no, I'm like five times the athlete. This guy is the other guy I played. That was really good at tennis, was a good athlete. This guy is good at tennis, bad athlete, but I'm like I think I could take this guy. This guy was working me all over the court. I don't know how many miles I ran just trying to play him, because you know what I'm doing. I'm putting it in the middle, I'm just trying to keep the play going and he's just working me and my friends are laughing so hard. So anyway, this guy destroyed me too. So I'm owing to collegiate tennis and uh, yeah, proud is it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm a two sport, two sport athlete that's awesome.
Speaker 1:is it weird to say I don't even remember where the tennis courts were at our school?
Speaker 2:No, I mean they were by the gym.
Speaker 1:It's just funny. It's like there's no image in my head.
Speaker 2:If you were in the weight room you could look out the windows and see them. If that helps Well.
Speaker 1:Yep, you could look out the windows and see them, if that helps.
Speaker 2:Well, yep, that tells me what you were up to with college, nick. Not looking out the windows in the weight room? Yeah, because I was in that weight room man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you were looking at the weights. I had a lot of secondhand arnold schwarzenegger workout programs that I was trying to get big with. But man, it would have been nice to know he was taking steroids the whole time.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, that is the dark truth of a lot of the influencers out there on the Internet. Like the fitness influencers are not exactly making choices that the average listener is going to be doing. Well, yeah, that's worth pointing out because a lot of people are like all right, I'm listening to this guy who's super jacked, so shredded, and he's telling me how to get fit, but I mean, some of them are honest and that's really cool but you can't.
Speaker 1:Because you can't exactly because it's illegal. You know, usually people don't admit to doing illegal stuff.
Speaker 2:Some of it's not illegal though too. Some of it's just like. That's not exactly good for you. You know there's certain peptides you could take. Might want to do it. There are certain like amphetamine type of fat burners that are over the counter. You can get from a pharmacist just with an ID. I wouldn't recommend doing that, but you can definitely get shredded doing that. Certain of them, certain, some of them have just eating disorders, and it is interesting because, like I think, in the female fitness world, if an influencer was encouraging eating disorder behaviors, women would be like man. I don't like this. This doesn't feel right to me. Women are a little more savvy when it comes to them, but some of the men fitness stuff is like straight up, bro, you want to get six pack this summer and then it's just like have an eating disorder and I'll tell you how I do my eating disorder. It's really like that.
Speaker 1:Cause you got to get abs. Man. Well, and, and generally speaking, I've noticed that if the person's making their living off of you buying their products because you think you're going to look like them, I trust them a whole lot less right. So they're like like I'm not going to get into too many specifics, but there is a guy who has a supplement company and he does like all this different kinds of exercise and he's huge and he like does somehow. He does marathons and he's like enormously big. I know exactly and you're like enormously big, I know exactly. I know. Yeah, okay, I kind of ruined it, but he's on gear for sure. And you know, if I had a enormous supplement company and I was going to make my money that way, I would a little bit of gear and you make like five times more money, probably from his position yeah, yeah, that there's definitely something I would feel conflicted about doing that for sure so I get.
Speaker 1:I get it though I'm not like throwing I you know but at the same time it is misleading a lot of people. It's like, yeah, you take these athletic greens, you're going to be ripped, like me. It's like, no, not exactly, but you know what I don't want to do? Lots of anti-speak here and criticism. I want to do some positive things. What do we really believe in when it comes to exercise?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's worth bringing that up. So Nick and I can pledge to our listeners we are going to get the real deal. Normal person Working themselves out, not trying to enter fitness competitions, not trying to market themselves with their shirts off or like in a bikini, trying to be like. This is what you want, right? Follow my, follow my stuff, buy my products. We're not going to do that. Normal person getting healthy that's our pledge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'd say we do have some general principles that probably work across a whole lot of variety of applications, and one of my principles is your exercise and training should make your life easier, so meaning you know what is exercise supposed to do. It's supposed to make you more resilient to the life that you live. Right, Make it easier for you to pick stuff up, move around, do your daily tasks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, chase little boys around, Not throw your back out all the time, not wear out. One of the reasons to be fit is so you don't wear yourself out at the end of the day, end of the week, exactly. So the idea of exercise is this idea of selective stress, choosing some of your stresses because life is going to hand you stresses that you didn't choose. You know, it's like college courses, like some of these are required courses to graduate, some of these are electives, right, and so you can elect some stress into your life that's going to enhance your life. And then, when life's given you, here's the challenge for you to deal with. You've built yourself up into a robust enough state to be like I got this. This is not going to break me, it's not going to wear me down, and you and I have two little boys. We each have two little boys, I should say yeah, well, some.
Speaker 1:so switching from, you know, my youth, where things are a little bit easier. And then when I got into chiropractic work uh, one of my first jobs I was like just bent over because that's the height of the table for chiropractors and I threw my back out and I learned a lot about how much strength I thought I had and what I actually needed to do. My job at that time and I was just my back was fatiguinguing so much and then I would work for three hours more after it was already fatigued you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, and a lot of chiropractors retire early because of physical limitations. Right, their backs worn out, their wrists are worn out. Yeah, they gotta retire.
Speaker 1:Just can't physically do it yeah, I think most people don't have those kinds of physical demands in their job, but we all have those activities we like to do or whatever. You know, I have people who are like I was gardening, I was weeding for this has just happened yesterday. The guy was like I was doing weeds for two hours and like my back's like feels like it's about to go out. I'm like dude, you should be able to do that, you know yeah, you should.
Speaker 2:I mean, and another way to look at it too is like the other is gardening, which is manual labor. But, um, like, I have patients over the years that are big cyclists. They'll put on a hundred miles a week or whatever, but that is their activity and so they're training something very specific and that's all their training. So when they're trying to do something more functional, like move a piece of furniture or whatever, they haven't developed the ability to resist that kind of stress, and so what happens to them is they injure themselves. Now they can't cycle, now they can't regulate their emotions, now they're a mess. And then their wife sends them to me. It's like, listen, you can cycle as much as you want, but that can't be your only training. You need more balance than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so on that level there is a term people throw around called functional training, and I think it's one of those buzzwords that kind of means nothing to some people, but it means everything to some people. I really like it, but it's probably overused, just like people use the word holistic and they're not really holistic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they mean like naturalistic or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so functional training I really believe in and, as we're saying, this is the kind of stuff that prepares you for life. Well, and I have changed my exercise plan a lot over the last several years to meet that for myself, and I've come away with some interesting information, I think, especially geared towards uh well, I'd say especially men, but there's only a couple things that your muscles can do, and that's maybe a good place to start. Right, your muscles adapt. They're adaptive organs, right? So you want to train your muscles. Anything that you do to your muscles, it'll be like, oh, I guess we should do this better. We should be more efficient, right, and so, um, they can get more efficient at stretching. They can get more efficient at stretching. They can get more efficient, like, elongating. They can get more efficient at, you know, lifting heavy things or having endurance or having speed. That's pretty much it, correct? Yeah? So we all need to train some combination of that in a way that again, bulletproofs ourselves towards life, and what I find is probably undervalued is strength.
Speaker 2:Totally Stronger is always better. Yeah, Then give them a choice. Would it be better to be stronger? The answer is always yeah For the normal person. Being stronger would improve your life.
Speaker 1:It's pretty simple. There's times where people really need strength but there are decades past when they could have done it. You know what I mean. Like I had a 90-year-old guy come in yesterday and he's been healthy for most of his life. Now he could really use some strength, but it's hard to get strength. Like he can't go to the gym now to get strength that well.
Speaker 2:He could be working on some things, but it would have been easy for him to do it at a younger age, you know and younger, meaning like five years ago, ten years ago, totally not like in your 40s, although it's a good idea to start in your 40s if you haven't. But yeah, if you're 90 years old and now you can't lift because your hips shot um, so you're not going to be able to strengthen your glutes very well. If your hip doesn't work right, you're facing a replacement, or maybe you have a pending replacement, or you just had one Really hard to put on strength. At that point you can still do incremental things to improve the function of your body. But yeah, now you're in a tough spot. Would have been nice to invest even five years earlier. But yeah, if this is where you find yourself now, this is still the best time.
Speaker 2:There's an old saying I don't know where this comes from, but it's like if you want a healthy tree, when's the best time to plant it? And the answer is 10 years ago. The second best answer is today. Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, true for training, absolutely true for training. And so I'd say strength is important, but endurance is also important and that's like the key to real life. So strength, endurance, training combined, I found, has made me the most resilient to life of all the training that I've done. Now I did, I did some pretty heavy strength training like I was going for I had some wreck. I want, I wanted to do some feats of strength for a while, like be able to lift. You know I'm not going to get into the details of it, give us the deets.
Speaker 1:I wanted to lift 400 pounds over my head. Overhead press. Not like an overhead press, but like a snatch.
Speaker 2:Like a snatch. Okay, that's like classic Olympic lifting. If you can picture someone lifting something over your head at the Olympics, you're probably picturing a snatch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 400, nick Holy moly yeah, so I I did work. I did this awesome five by five strength program and I got a lot stronger. I did all right. I think I put like 150 on my my bench press and like 200 on my squat in like nine months maybe nick's talking additive.
Speaker 2:He didn't bench 150, he added 150 yeah, that is correct.
Speaker 1:So I was like, yeah, this is good. This pinnacle of my it wasn't the pinnacle of my health. You know, fitness and health don't go on the same trajectory necessarily. Right now I feel the best I feel in in my physical body health than I ever have, and partly it's the training and what have I been doing? I've been focusing on strength endurance exercises. It's funny that we've known what these are a lot of times. You know so like a push-up or like an air squat. And what I found too is circulation right. When you get that feeling of like your muscles being like burning or like they feel like a pump right, it's great for your muscles because it's actually stimulating more blood vessels being made into that area of your body. So that sensation is indicative that your body is going to stimulate more blood vessel growth, which is really good for health as well. And so I've been doing that and I focus in on getting the burn and you know what, it doesn't take me too long to do those things. I feel a lot better.
Speaker 1:I also do kettlebell stuff. I do some strength still. I'm still trying to get stronger, but it's not like that's my only program and I'm not as strong as I was when I was doing the five by five program, but I feel better overall. So you know, it's like those kinds of things. So like the strength endurance. A classic strength endurance kind of exercise is like you do a hundred kettlebell swings or whatever Right, it's like it's hard to do, like your muscles are working. It's not just pure endurance, it's some strength. But then there is this endurance feature and like if you do that and then someone asks you to move furniture, like after you've been training that way, it's like no problem, you know what I mean. But yeah, most of my exercises don't take more than 10 minutes, because that's all you really need for strength endurance training you need enough of a stimulus to force your body into an adaptive response.
Speaker 2:That's one way of thinking about it. There has to be enough stimulus to where your body goes. Holy moly, what was that? You need to be ready for that next time.
Speaker 1:As an example, one of my favorite training things and this isn't going to appeal to everyone across the board, but just to kind of paint the picture is it's like I'll do 100 air squats, 100 push-ups, like a hundred sit-ups, a hundred kettlebell swings, um, and you try to take the least amount of breaks as possible and you get that pump feeling in those muscle groups and it's like that'll take eight, nine minutes and it's like I could, I got cooked there.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean that was hard and it's like I could, I got cooked there. You know, I mean that was hard and yet, um, and it's a good way to track it, because the first, you know, day one, it's like I took a lot of breaks, but then it's like, oh, now I can hit this mark and I don't have to take any breaks, and it's like, oh, I am growing in strength, endurance, right, my muscles are more efficient and I can track that over time. You know, having an exercise like that, that's really good. I also think it's good for women to do strength. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend like exactly what I'm doing, but like everyone should get stronger um, everybody like stronger is better.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I've recently had a couple of different clients. Women get DEXA scans and it's like, oh, it looks like bone density needs to be improved, you know. And in your sixties it's a lot harder to do it. It can be done, but, like your thirties, your twenties, great time to start doing it. Cause, why would your, why would your bones reinforce themselves, nick? Why would they do it?
Speaker 1:It's gold standard stuff. The best thing to get your bones stronger is to do resistance training, so strength training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when your bones are strained under a weight, they will essentially be forced. It's more of an invitation, but they're being asked to reinforce. It's like, hey, we got to be ready for that. That's the whole idea of a lot of various stresses for your body. It's like, hey, we need to be ready to do this again and the body will do its best to do that. So what is that?
Speaker 2:I forget some of the trivial things from school. Is that Wolf's Law? I don't remember that. I could be wrong about that, but it's this idea of reinforcement. So one of the reasons your bones have density is because they exist under stress a good chunk of the day, simply going about your life, resisting gravity. Your bones are mineralizing, they're reinforcing themselves. That's why astronauts in the international space station are only really supposed to be up there for so long, because they're not fighting against gravity and their bones and muscles will start to weaken but you know what they do when they're up there five by five strength programs yeah, that is what they're doing up there, so they're lifting as heavy as they possibly can in this.
Speaker 1:Like it looks like a barbell machine. It is like a barbell machine, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's really important. And yeah, if you are, say you're 100 pounds I'm just going to do this for math reasons and you do a deadlift with 100 pounds on the bar, you've done gravity times 2 to your bones 2g. Your bones are like whoa, we better get denser in case this happens more exactly, and diet plays into this.
Speaker 2:This is not going to be a diet episode, but diet also plays into the idea of reinforcing your body, making a more robust system to resist stress. Here's another interesting thing too. I remember reading a study. They followed 10,000 aging people for 10 years and they were trying to figure out predictive markers for both longevity, which is how long they're going to live, but also quality of life too. And the most predictive thing for quality of life moving forward was can they do a sit to stand unassisted, meaning imagine like sitting on a chair and getting out of the chair without using your arms, without pushing up against something, holding something, pulling. So if you can just sit and then stand up just using your legs, that was the most powerful predictor for how much quality they're going to have moving forward. Quality of life, so lower body strength how about that?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, brandon brock, who? Dr brandon brock, who's really quite famous now, I think, in some circles of functional neurology, functional medicine, he would say when he was my teacher he would say uh, it's the. Get up and make a sandwich, test, right, it's like that's one of the best things you could ever do for someone's health. At the end of the day is, can they get up and make themselves food? Because then they can survive. Right, I can get up and go to the, the fridge and I could make myself something and I could stand there long enough to do it without being, uh, you know, unsafe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're listening to this and just say getting out of the couch, you need to support yourself to some degree. Like hands on your knees is another thing people do Hands on the end of the couch or whatever. You don't have to go to the gym, you can sit down on the couch, kind of on the edge of the couch, couch, not like recline back and stand up and then sit back down on the couch.
Speaker 1:Stand up, do it till you feel a little burn and then, when that comes a little easier, you can do it while holding something like a you know some cans of tomato sauce or something right, just kind of make it a little bit more difficult.
Speaker 2:You know, put some textbooks on your lap or something, jug of water, whatever it is. Yeah, but yeah, exercise is a relative term. So what's a healthy exercise for me doesn't mean it's a healthy exercise for our mom, right, because the stress isn't the only factor, the only variable, it's the stress, it's what's being stressed, and what you're really looking for is what's called the zone of proximal development. Familiar with that term, nick Mm-mm. So it's a term that's actually used for any kind of growth. It was originally coined when they were studying how little kids learn how to speak.
Speaker 2:And the kids that learn to speak, uh, the the most efficiently is because their, their influences in their life, their caretakers, talk to them in their zone of proximal development, meaning, um, in a place where you're riding the sweet spot between competency and failure. You're talking to them kind of just, you know, above their competency or at the edge of their competency, where they're not gonna maybe fully understand everything you're saying, but they'll understand the gist, and so so it's like, it's almost like riding a wave. When you're riding a wave or you're trying to surf, if you're too far in front of the wave, you're not going to catch it. If you go too high up on it, you'll fall over the backside of it. So it's a sweet spot, and so that's true.
Speaker 2:In any kind of, if you want to grow in anything, you put yourself in that zone of proximal development where you're walking the line between competency and failure. So just under failure, but just stretching your competency, and so in a lift. That's why you lift to where you're approaching failure. Some people lift to failure in certain things. You don't have to do that. I, for certain workouts, I like to do that. I like my last rep to be the last possible one I could do. In some cases, especially if I'm trying to put muscle on. In that time of my life which is not really now, but what times when I was trying to put muscle on, my last rep is literally the last one I could do. Yeah, does that make sense? And so that's, that's the sweet spot where you're going to have the most rapid growth.
Speaker 1:Yes and uh, I'm realizing there is one big topic I want to bring up because, um, we are getting lower on time here and I want to make sure you know we got someone. We can talk about this forever, I think, really. But I want to bring up on that level. It's like, yeah, you do want to be in that zone. It's excellent. And actually I think a lot of training should feel like learning, you know. So I think that that's a great term and a great analogy for it. I right, like some of the training I do, it's like I'm learning to do this better. I'm learning to have better form. I'm like learning to do it more. I don't think about it just in terms of like I'm getting stronger, but it's like it's conditioning my body, I'm learning a skill and I seem to enjoy that kind of training more. Factor of all of this is it's like what's the best exercise anyone could do? The one that you're going to do, right? So you know we do have to learn to make exercise. You know, it's like you're hearing what we're saying. Maybe you're like I do want to do some strength. I've never done strength before and trained that way. You have to do something that's doable. So if you're like you know you don't go zero to 60.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of American culture has an unhealthy approach to exercise where it's like completely devastating in how hard it is. You know, I think about like CrossFit can be really, really hard for people, especially beginners, you know like. But I actually like there's a Russian approach to training. I learned this from some like Russian Sambo guys and then Pavel Tatsuin, who's like the kettlebell genius is that if you stick in like your overall exercise, if it's about like 75% of your effort, well, you could give 75% of your effort like any day. It's not too aggravating, right. And so what they found is with these Russian lifters, they were wondering how they were getting so strong and they were beating out a lot of these people, especially like Soviet era weightlifting, and they were doing 75% effort all the time and you're like, how does that make you stronger? Right, you need that like one max, but they would ramp it up and they just get so much more volume in in the year because it was easy so they could train seven days a week, because they minimize their recovery time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, essentially because if you're lifting really hard, the next day you're recovering.
Speaker 2:You've got to go easy on your body, but if you're doing 75%, you can go again the next day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so they were doing this with the weightlifters, they were doing this with the wrestlers. Of course, their wrestling team was completely dominant.
Speaker 2:By the way, I would do this type of training if I got to train like a job. Yeah, if I was competitive, I would. I would probably have this philosophy. Um, the reason I left the way I do is because I I don't get to do it that much, so I'm gonna like, I'm gonna shake my body up. It's gonna be like whoa, um well, yeah, so I agree with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so pavel is one of these guys who's trained some of these like olympic level trainers, you know, olympic level, like lifters and stuff. And he says, like the intermediate group of the team is the one that you push the hardest, but the advanced people you don't actually push them that hard and you're like those are the people winning the medals, right? Yeah, they have to be able to do it on the, you know, on the day of the thing. You know, you have to protect them against a lot of problems that could come up. So, anyways, them against a lot of problems that could come up. So, anyways, I've applied that 75% training method for most of my life because I discovered I don't feel so good if I'm taking too much time off, you know, or if I hit myself too hard, like I go as hard as I possibly can on a squat and then I'm sore for days. It's not motivating for me, I'll put it that way. It's not motivating for me to always have to recover, right. So motivation is really important. And I want to say also, just on an energy level, I think there's an epidemic of people just being tired all day long, and I'll kind of make this a different thing.
Speaker 1:You can be tired from a lack of sleep, like Jake is, or you can be like lethargic, because there's no, you don't feel like you have a lot of energy in the day. Well, your muscles are your biggest batteries. They literally are batteries. It's where you make most of your energy in your body. Most of your mitochondria are in your muscles. You have a. I mean, that's where they belong, right, that's what takes a lot of energy. Your brain takes a lot of energy. I say brain and muscles, yeah, yeah, muscles, yeah, yeah. So, um, a great way to tap into those battery packs is to move them right.
Speaker 1:So, even like micro workouts, it's like if I just jump, I mean like if you're tired, like if you feel tired in the day, try this, just bounce up and down for a minute and see if you have more energy. If you do after that, then you're not like tired from a lack of sleep. You are tired or lethargic from a lack of energy production or energy release in your body. And so one thing that has really changed my life in the last year is being able to exercise more frequently, because I'm not killing myself every time I exercise.
Speaker 1:Do you get what I'm saying. So it's like I can fit a 10-minute little thing in in the morning like a five-minute thing in later, and then I can even just do five minutes of stretching at the end of the day, because it does release some of that energy in your muscles and it's like I don't feel like you know doing some strength or something, but that's a, that's a form of exercise, you know. So I could stretch the muscles, release some of this energy and then at these multiple times in the day I'm getting this energy release and it feels good and I feel feel more, you know alive.
Speaker 2:That's a great point. So when people are tired, sometimes their rationale is like I need to deactivate because I'm tired, but what their body actually wants is activation. In fact, you create activity in your body, you stimulate energy production. That's a good point. So, yeah, try that. That's a good.
Speaker 1:That's a good tip you go for like a 15 minute walk or 20 minute walk.
Speaker 2:It's like make it a yeah, make it a brisk one totally.
Speaker 1:I just don't have a lot of time to be like I'm gonna going to go for these. I love walking, it's one of my favorites, but like I can't fit it in my life as well. You know, I always have two people or three that I need to take when I go on a walk and that just complicates things Boy he's.
Speaker 2:you know it could take an hour to go down the street. But I have a newborn who actually really likes being in a stroller, likes being outside. So if I just could take him out, you know, we can put some, we can get some steps under us for sure, and so I've been in a. Yeah, I haven't been going to the gym as much, but I have been able to get outside and go on more walks because he seems to really enjoy them. But then when we bring the kid it could take forever just to get five houses down. I relate with that for sure. Yeah, I might try. We have like a utility wagon and I could fit both of them in there. Probably I could figure out how to best do that with a newborn, but then I could be pushing both of them and I might even be able to get a jog in, because that'll make it more fun probably for the five-year-old yeah, I mean I know we're gonna be wrapping up here, but I do want to like hit this home.
Speaker 1:For people, you know, if you haven't really been training, this is a great time to start. Just like jake said, today's the next best time. And, um, don't make it so hard that you don't want to do it. Make it something that you do want to do and enjoy it, and then enjoy the benefits of it, and then you'll never stop training. Right, you'll be like oh, this feels good. I feel better in my life, I'm enjoying it when I do it you know 100.
Speaker 2:get over that initial hurdle of I don't have the time, I don't have the energy, it's too hard, it's too painful, I don't like to sweat. It's like there's initial hurdles to entry. Once you get past that, 100% of people like exercising Totally.
Speaker 1:And I'll say this exercising totally.
Speaker 2:And I'll say this, I'll say this if you could put resistance training into pill form, like the benefits of resistance training, what it does for your nervous system, what it does for your muscles, your ligaments, your bones, your hormones, your immune system, if you can put that in a pill, that would be the magic pill. It would be it would be totally, you're absolutely right, uh.
Speaker 2:But like a lot of good things, there's no shortcuts. Like really good benefits sometimes just have to be earned. And the added benefit to like if you can get in a pill, great, we'd be a lot healthier as a society. But there's an added benefit of doing a hard thing, and then there's an emotional component to that that you can't get by taking a pill. You know what I mean. It's like I just did a hard thing. I'm proud of myself. I'm feeling more disciplined.
Speaker 1:I'm proud of myself well, something if you come into me, um, in my clinic, something I talk about a lot is therapeutic dose, and there's a therapeutic dose to exercise. What do I mean by that? There's, just, like we're saying, all these benefits. If you do it enough, or you have the intensity enough, you will notice the therapy of it, and that's physical and mental right. So even if you go for a walk if I go for a walk around the block right now, you know five minutes I might notice a little bit of a dose. Maybe I'm in a funky spot and my head kind of clears up. I'm like, okay.
Speaker 1:But even for like someone who's in a really bad you know anxious, depressed place, you can go for a 40-minute walk. There's a therapeutic dose. It might be 20 minutes, it might be 20 minutes, it might be 30 minutes, it might be whatever it is. But at some point, all of a sudden, you're going to be like, ah, that feels better. And I encourage people to look for that dose for you. What is the dose where you're like that felt good and then strive for that. You don't have to strive for how many reps or how many. You know all these other things that people look for to say, like I've done whatever exercise or workout, well, once you're hitting the therapeutic dose, you will get addicted to exercise in a good way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, we are going to wrap. I have a question. This is a fun question, so something. All right, we are going to wrap. I have a question. This is a fun question, so something to be mindful of is checking your excuses, just observing them like you're observing something you care about, like well, what excuses am I making? And just challenge them like you're having a debate with a friend. So anyway, nick, we don't have any time right, but you do have five minutes today, this morning, you could use to exert yourself. What might you do in five minutes?
Speaker 1:I push up some squats man.
Speaker 2:I just put the timer on. How would that look? Yeah, break it down.
Speaker 1:If you got five minutes, if that's the condition, right, I have five minutes Put the timer on, or this is a great exercise for me that I like. If I have a timer, I'll get like a kettlebell and I'll just keep doing different exercises with the kettlebell for five minutes and try not to put it down. You could do that with a dumbbell and be like you know a lot of people have a little dumbbell at their house and be like I'm going to lift it above my head and I'll switch to this side, I'll do some goblet squats with it or whatever. It's just like five minutes. I'm just not going to put this down. I'm just going to switch it up if I get too tired with one thing.
Speaker 2:Here's a good one. Pushups and squats is probably the best answer, but here's a fun one five minutes, and I wanted to like work myself over pretty good and work like a lot of muscles and get my heart rate up and everything. What I would do is I would as quickly as appropriately possible for like safety, I would go from a standing position to laying flat on my chest and then get back into a standing position and then do it again. So I'd go down to my chest, stand up, down to my chest, stand up just for five minutes straight. Um, you know what I'm describing? That, yes, that would be really really hard.
Speaker 2:That is a burpee technically. So there's people might say you got to jump at the end. Whatever you can, you can add a jump at the end if you want to. However, if you, if you've done burpees, you know, if you haven't done a burpee, give it a go. But I don't think I could do five minutes. I think my whole body would be exhausted before five minutes was over if you don't know why they call them burpees.
Speaker 2:You haven't done burpees enough what's such a such like a whimsical name for the hardest workout?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, no, that's tough. Yeah, and then if you only had one minute and you're trying to get a good exercise in, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Ooh, I mean, if you do one minute of bodyweight squats, you're going to be feeling a good burn. Your heart rate's going to be up. Most people would fail before they finished a minute. Someone who's somewhat fit you wouldn't fail, you just you'd feel the burn and that's a good. It's so many big muscles. You would get a hormonal benefit probably. I think you can do like 50 body weight squats and you can see like m tour changes and other like chemical markers that indicate your body's in an adaptive response.
Speaker 2:But I would maybe just do a minute straight of squat, but a minute straight of trying to do burpees quickly, that I'd be gassed like the five minute burpee pace would be relaxed, yeah, but if I did as many burpees as I could in a minute I'd be feeling that pretty hard yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And here's another thing that I shoot for. I decided because I have a life with little kids. I it's okay for me to get sweaty in clothes that I wasn't planning to get sweaty in. I know it sounds kind of crazy, but that has freed me up a lot. You know what I mean. It's like I can do a minute of squats right now. I'm like, well, that probably will make me sweaty, but say, I did do something in like five minutes and I did get a little bit sweaty, just a little bit. That's okay. I know that's kind of a weird detail to add in, but like, just be like a normal human being for once. You know, that's what I tell myself.
Speaker 2:I mean it's fair enough. All my clothes have spit up on it already. What's a little sweat gonna do?
Speaker 1:well, I love it with kids, like they'll just play and do something crazy, exercise wise, without planning it at all. And you kids are so vital right, they have this vitalism to them that is contagious. But it's like you can be getting ready for bed and then they're ready to do a full-out wrestling match and be dripping sweat. I wasn't really ready for that, but good on them. You know what I mean. So, like you should have that playfulness of a kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exercise should be play. Should be play time. I just saw Thomas Aquinas. I know we got to go Thomas Aquinas yesterday. I was reading it and he was saying that not being playful enough is a vice right, everyone should be playful. So that's also part of the exercise that he goes through that. Well, anyways, I hope everyone has a good day. Good week, jake. I love you man. I love you too. Until next time, everybody, yeah, bye.