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The Stephen McCain Podcast
Insightful interviews, strategies, and advice from people making world-class decisions in human optimization, performance, & longevity with Olympian Stephen McCain.
The Stephen McCain Podcast
Unlock Your Metabolic Potential: Mastering VO2 Max, Metabolic Health, and Breathing Techniques with expert Gilles Essiembre; the 50 year old man with a VO2 max of 70.4
Unlock the secrets to boosting your VO2 max and enhancing your overall performance as we sit down with the incredible Gilles Essiembre, a seasoned athlete whose expertise spans bodybuilding, Spartan races, and ultra-marathons. Gilles's impressive journey to achieving a VO2 max score of 70.4 at age 50 is nothing short of inspirational. Together, we'll uncover the immense benefits of respiratory training and how adjusting key biomarkers can lead to greater energy levels, fat burn, and potentially increased lifespan.
Proper breathing isn't just about oxygen—it's about optimizing your entire metabolic health. In this episode, Gilles illustrates how even minor distractions and irregular breathing patterns can derail your metabolism and stress levels. We’ll delve into the science behind lung capacity, spirometer readings, and the impact of different breathing rates on various exercise zones. Learn practical steps to enhance your oxygen absorption, optimize gas exchange, and ultimately improve your physiological outcomes.
Finally, we look at the intersection of long-term health and athletic performance, focusing on strategic weight management and fitness planning for seniors. Gilles shares his insights on the benefits of zone two training, the pitfalls of relying too heavily on carbohydrates, and the importance of balancing muscle mass with cardiovascular health. Whether you're managing COPD, asthma, or simply looking to take your athletic performance to the next level, this episode offers a comprehensive guide to respiratory and metabolic testing, individualized fitness protocols, and innovative breathing techniques through the latest technology.
Be sure to checkout all the show notes at: https://stephenmccain.com/vo2max
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Welcome to another episode of the Stephen McCain podcast, where I bring you people making world-class decisions in the field of human optimization and performance. This week's episode is all about metabolic conditioning unique way of increasing people's VO2 max. I've been doing his protocol for some time now and I feel a lot better. I feel like I have a lot more energy. I know exactly what zone and what heart rate to train in to burn maximal fat. I just feel better. I feel like I'm getting better blood flow and I don't really have a strong history of embracing cardio. I've done it in the past, but now I'm fully on board and this is a part of my complete longevity routine. And look, the studies on VO2max are unequivocally there in terms of it increases your longevity. So this is something that I think we can all do to feel better, to have more energy, to potentially live longer. So you're definitely going to want to check out this episode. Let's do this, Jill. Welcome to the Stephen McCain podcast.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here. You know me, we've talked before. I get really passionate, I get really excited. Talk about longevity, respiratory and metabolic age and metabolic protocol. I love chatting and educating people and giving my two cents world in this. Uh, this world, you know that's we're all about. Uh, trying to help humanity be healthier and just get everybody to to live longer. So whatever I can do to help and and have great conversations too, so looking forward to it yeah, absolutely well, the honor's all mine.
Speaker 1:You know, we we had a conversation not that long ago and we were. I was introduced to you by my friend, jesse James Carroll, and whoever he's going to introduce me to I know is going to be really good at whatever they do, and I was. I mean, I knew within five seconds when you were on. I was like I just liked this guy and then when we started talking I thought, oh my God, this guy is really top of the line and it comes to what you do and you are a VO2 max expert.
Speaker 1:But when I look at your biography doing bodybuilding, doing Spartan races, doing ultra marathons and so you've really seemed to have pushed your physiology to extremes. You're not just this person who's like well, I'm just this metabolic expert that's happened to just maybe be an endurance athlete. You really, in my opinion, seem to have a very broad spectrum of the human body in terms of performance and I know we're going to get into, like your protocols and VO2 max for longevity. But I am curious a little bit about your background If you wouldn't mind just sharing a little bit of your past and how you got into being this VO2 max guy. And I do want to start off for the listeners. I would like to get, before we get into your background, your age and your VO2 Max current score.
Speaker 2:Well, my age is 50. And you and I have this. You're older than me, you're really old. He's older by one day. So we both hit the old, 58 years old. And, uh, my current vo2 max score from my last test was 70.4 milliliters per kilogram per minute. Jesus, yeah, so it's, it's quite high, yeah, and it took me quite a while to get to it, uh, but it was always in the 60s. But, uh, I really know I dialed it in with just some respiratory training and some changing some some key biomarkers and experimenting.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, we're gonna dig into that a little bit, but I would, I would love to just allow the users to hear a little bit about your background and maybe how you got into this stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, for me. I was always a pretty gifted athlete. I was good at everything. I was a good badminton player. I played high school hockey but, being at my size, I should have been a gymnast. But in Canada you've got to be from Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver to be able to been a gymnast. But in Canada you got to be from Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver to be able to be a you know, a gymnast. I had that, that body. But you know, I was a really good snowboarder. I won snowboard and some competition. I won some skateboard competition uh, you know, captain of my high school hockey team and figuring out where the weakest link was and the strongest point I've had throughout sports being only 5'6 in hockey didn't give me much of a chance.
Speaker 2:So I started watching at a young age. As soon as I saw the mouth drop of a player, I knew I had him. So I said, well, I'm going to make him chase me around. So I'm going to make some crazy moves and just skate around and let him chase me a little bit and make it hard for him. Then I'm going to turn on my booster and he's not going to be able to follow me. And I didn't do that in the first and second period. So I knew that I was just an average hockey player in first and second. So I would turn on my boosters and make them chase me around a little bit. In third period, then, when I seen their mouth drop, and that's when I seen weakness and now and that's when I would play my my best hockey, I wouldn't get hit as much and that's where I stopped Now. That's hence where I started coming in on board of where I am today.
Speaker 2:But I got a lot into bodybuilding and I'll tell you when I got out of the bodybuilding I did it all natural and I competed against obviously not natural people. And I did win the bantamweight title, you know, first in Canada, which helped the use of steroids, and I think it was that year after I won. You know, I was 175 pounds and I'm really thin boned. This is on the, not during the competition days, but you know, off season this is not during the competition days but off-season, and I couldn't jog my weight even 175, at 5'6", 5'5" it's just not the good weight to be with thin bones. So my dad got a massive heart attack. He was 60.
Speaker 2:That created obviously some traumatic moments for me, but it was instant, it was gone and it got me thinking a lot about my longevity, where I was at in life I think I was 27 at the time and 28. And I said, wow, he's never going to meet my kids, he's not going to meet my wife. I wasn't married at the time. I was like, wow, you know, this is crazy. I want to be metabolically fit all around. I want to be able to go to the gym, look good, be strong like, be able to do cardiovascular stuff, eat well, and that got me on the road to quitting bodybuilding, obviously, and got in a little bit more into the other side of the equation.
Speaker 2:I did so many different ultra marathons too. I qualified to go to the worlds in Spartan races, and this probably all happened actually in my 40s most of my things that I've actually done well in the ultra field and for some reason I always had this the way to go past that 100. And I and I do believe it takes a certain personality to be able to go past that 100, because when we pass that that there's a certain threshold that people just can't pass, but once you pass it it's easier. It's just to get past that point. And the thing is with ultras once you pass it, you're okay. But guess what? It's going to hit you again. Maybe it's in 20 miles from now.
Speaker 1:It's going to hit you again.
Speaker 2:You just got to remember, you just got to pass this. Get these negative thoughts out of my brain. Let's breathe correctly, let's fuel up, let's hydrate, let's add the proper supplementation and keep the feet moving. I always go forward, you know yeah, yeah, I mean it's.
Speaker 1:It's funny because, you know, I, I I've made the comment a few times in my life that I have pushed my body to the absolute extreme and I you know when I when I say that, like I don't know if I've expressed this on the podcast before, but I mean there was a moment in my training when I was in my upper, upper twenties, I was getting close to 30. I was trying to make my last Olympic team and my body was just shot. I had two surgeries within a year and I was laying an MRI machine for the third time and I literally thought, I thought, man, maybe this is a disease that I have. Maybe this whole like gymnastics, olympic thing is a disease. Maybe this isn't healthy to have this desire. And I said no. I said I told my body because these things were coming up and I said, no, I'm going to retire, I am not going to quit. So whatever you have to do, body, you're going to have to just do it, because I'm not quitting, I'm retiring and I have this next Olympics plan that's on the calendar and, by God, we're doing this.
Speaker 1:And literally after I had that conversation with myself, I went back into the gym and I was a different person. It was like my body literally listened to me. And before that conversation, before that MRI, I was, I remember, going onto the pommel horse and going to take a turn on it and my body it like balked it. I couldn't actually get it to go Like it, would it? It bypassed the signaling and I don't know if there's a medical term for this or not. I heard someone one time mention it, but it wouldn't allow me. I was actually in direct conflict with my own physiology. My physiology was like no, we're done, screw you, we're not doing this anymore.
Speaker 1:But after that conversation with myself, somehow I came back and at 30, I was in the best shape of my life. And so we have these weird like programmed barriers within us that we seem to adhere to, and I don't know if it's based on society, based on like, like. How do people keep breaking a world record? When it was 10 years ago, that was like no way we could do it. And then people do it. And then now, all of a sudden, okay, now we can break this world record, now it's the standard. So there's some sort of belief system in this stuff and I know we're getting a little bit out there but you're hitting it right on the nose though.
Speaker 2:The belief I mean you know that, healing yourself and all this. You know I say it's 30% of our mental state. If we believe we're going to achieve, to beat this cancer, well, guess what? Our chances of survival. It goes up and that's actually a proven thing. I don't know if it's 30%, don't quote me on that there but it's a huge component. There's a reason why hockey players, golfers, have mental coaches and psychologists Because you felt it as soon as you decided. Instead of your body telling your mind what to do, you're telling your body hey, I'm in control. You're not in control, body, I'm in control. Just like for me, my client, I said listen, don't let your breathing control you, you're in control of your breathing. So when you want to breathe 60 times or 70 times a minute or you're hyperventilating, no, no, you're in control. Switch your thoughts, get back to what you're trained to do.
Speaker 2:You're manipulating the way you breathe.
Speaker 1:Don't let your your breath manipulate your brain yeah, exactly, and I remember doing I've done a lot of yoga, a lot of like interesting intense meditations, a lot of holotropic breathing, and you know there's that saying that breathing is the only voluntary way to control your involuntary actions of your body, right, so the breathing is the gateway to your physiology. I mean, obviously, the way you think too, I'm sure affects it, and because that affects your emotions and stuff. But let's talk a little bit about breathing, because I know our first conversation you were part of your secret sauce, so to speak is this respiratory rate and stuff that you used. And so what are the biggest pitfalls or problems that you see with people's breathing?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll go on. This is real funny because this just happened. Jesse, who we were talking about. He did a resting metabolic test. He says I want you to actually overlook it and analyze it. I'm analyzing this. What in the world was going on? Your metabolism is so. Your metabolism is shot. Wait a minute, jesse. Was someone talking to you? Why are you breathing? All over the map? And I know you're breathing. You can breathe a lot slower than this and you're all over the map. Oh, the boys were talking to me. I said that is what. And physiology, I knew something was going on. Someone was talking to him or he wasn't in his head. Basically, it looked like his metabolism was shot just by the way he was breathing and thinking. He was burning, let's say, carbohydrates, right at rest and then you could see his heart rate start to calm down hrv and then you start seeing the fat start using fat and his metabolism, his ph level all went to a normal level because his mind, he let it go to relax and he was breathing normal at that point because he was listening in. And there you know the, instead of getting coach how to breathe, he's thinking too much.
Speaker 2:But that's where I start my program really, and people like metabolic analysis, like me, they look at that. They say good metabolism, bad metabolism. You use good fats. You, you use, uh, too much carbohydrate and they use, oh, your rmr is you're allowed to eat 1500 calories in around about a day. I look at that. Fine, I do look at that. But I look at how they breathe at rest. Because how you breathe at rest, guess what you and I, when we work hard, we're in an oxidative stress environment of work-wise uh to training and we don't breathe correctly when we're resting and we're, you know it's almost like hyperventilating. So you're always in an oxidative stress at rest. So I teach people how to breathe normal so they can recuperate and be in a good ph balance and and have that gas exchange. Because if you're breathing, rapid breathing, you're just doing upper chest, guess what you're gonna have brain fog. You know it can cause anxiety, depression, panic attacks. So it starts with the resting.
Speaker 2:Then I move on to you know your metabolic, your spirometer reading. Do you have the capacity? I look at your age and then I do a test on five different spirometer readings that I look for right. The main ones I look for is your total lung capacity, your FUD1. Your FEV1 is what kind of what we exercise with. Right, it's our one second power. So on a spirometer test, you're going to go like six seconds. Right, you're going to get rid of every ounce of oxygen and ventilation you can in six seconds. Well, the first one second is your FV1. That's what I use to marker on when you're exercising.
Speaker 2:All through the different zones we have. We have five different zones, right, a very light walk for some people. Some people have to jog to be in zone one. Zone two you're burning mostly fat as a fuel source. This is a really amazing zone for physiology-wise Mitochondrias. We build a lot of mitochondria. We burn a lot of fat. You can have actually a conversation in this zone. You can listen to podcasts. You can really clearly think. So this is where I listen to all my podcasts in this fat zone here.
Speaker 2:And then zone three is more like your tempo runs where you're competing at. And zone four you're going to drift into zone four once in a while on your marathons and your your half marathons or whatever you're doing. Zone five is where basically there's almost no return. Right, you're going for an absolutely full sprint and some people, untrained people this is where you hit the wall.
Speaker 2:Well, I teach people how to breathe in every little zone and with, based on your physiology and your spirometer reading, it's going to be different for some people. I want them all at the same at the end of my, my respiratory program to breathe the exact, almost same way. But I have to adjust certain people. You're breathing 27 times a minute in the zone two. I'm not going to drop you to 17 times that minute in one shot. Your body won't know how to do that, so I'll drop you slower. And if I put you on a rhythm, you know a nice little tachometer.
Speaker 2:Well, if I put you at 23 times a minute to breathe, well, you're going to want to get the same ventilation, your body's going to require the same ventilation. But now that you're breathing 23, what are you going to end up doing? The only way you can get more ventilation it's going to force you to breathe deeper. Deeper into your lungs means that now you're reaching more alveoli, and the alveoli is right. You got, you know, zillions ones, right, and but they're all around these capillaries and blood you know supply, so they're surrounded. So as soon as we breathe and we fill these sacks, well, the blood flows right there, but if you're not reaching those alveoli, you're not going to get that proper oxygenation in interesting.
Speaker 1:So you're actually um taking advantage of more surface area of the lungs. You're using more surface area of it. By breathing slower.
Speaker 2:You're basically forcing your body to say use more of per each breath yeah, it's all in stages too, right, we, we all have an extra 25. Let's, I'm going to use a status 25. You know, on average it's called a reservoir, right, most people don't breathe in the reservoir. You know, people think that I, I just increased their lungs, uh, by 0.5 liters, like they do a spirometer test, like in six weeks. Wow, you grew my lungs by 0.5 meters by this much. Wow, how did I do that? How did you do? In essence, I went and stole some of your, your, your air, your reservoir, so you're going to be able to access that. And people think that they access the reservoir by the inhale, but it's really on the exhale, because when you're exhaling you're stealing that reservoir. But your next breath, guess what? You're taking an extra 25 percent and continue on. Interesting, yeah, so so I teach like right now, for, for someone that's respiratory trained, I use 100% of my lung capacity in my zones five. So for me it's 168 liters. Is 100% of my lungs that I can use in a ventilate. How much I can ventilate in one minute. It's 168 liters. And how I guesstimate this is I take the FUV1, let's just say you have six liter lungs. Let's just say you have six liter lungs but your FUV1 in one second is five liters. Well, I take five liters times 40 breaths a minute will give me 200 liters.
Speaker 2:Technically, stephen, if you're the guy with the stats here, stephen, you should be able to access 200 liters at your very max. If you're really well trained in the respiratory, you probably will hit 75 percent of that 200. Fantastic, you're untrained. Once I got you trained, let's say it's what's what's? 100 liters? That would be a 75. So you reach 150 liters out of 200. Well, once I tap into that reservoir, you work on your intercostal muscles and all your respiratory muscles, which is about 10 pounds. Well, once I train you to do that, you're going to be able to get 180 liters. Oh, now you can reach 190 liters and if you have full control of your respiratory, you're going to get to that 200 where you're maxed. Well, guess what? You just got an extra 50 liters extra a minute in your zone. Five. Well, guess what's that's going to do to your your vo2 max, you know yeah, I mean that that that is basically what vo2 max is right like.
Speaker 1:What is the definition is the amount of oxygen absorption right now, how much it's.
Speaker 2:It's great to actually being able to inhale it, but you also need to teach your body to absorb that oxygen. So I'm absorbing seven liters now and it also goes by other statistics. So I look at how many liters per breath you're absorbing. It's kind of like you know how you get running economy. So, oh, I'm using certain amount of calories per step. I'm very mechanically efficient. Well, I do the same thing with the respiratory. How much vo2 are you absorbing per breath if you're under 100? Uh, you know, uh, milliliters per breath, you know I, I want you, you know, closer to 150. Maybe it depends on this, you know, on on your circumstance. Like, yeah, I have a record. You know who my record is. This is gonna you're gonna laugh. The record was 252 milliliters per breath with jesse. Never seen that. Yeah, wow never, seen it.
Speaker 2:However, okay, it's fantastic, you got the record, but that's a little too. You're breathing in a little too deep and a little too slow. So let's, let's give that, that, that those lungs, a little bit of a break here and let's, let's, let's, go to at least maybe 90% of your F3B1. So I don't want, if his F3B1 was five liters, I don't want you to breathe at five liters, I want you to go to 90% of that five liters. So I said you're trying to manipulate my DO2, weren't you? So I just got to slow him down, speed him up in the breathing frequency a little bit, which is very unusual. Only maybe 5% of my clients do I have to speed them up in the breathing frequency a little bit, which is very unusual. Only maybe 5% of my clients do I have to speed them up. Most people. I'm slowing them down, got it Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, very interesting. And it's not surprising that it's Jesse, because I'm sure he just took right to your point. He worked so hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we decreased his metabolic age by seven years. Yeah, it was six or seven years in a three-and-a-half-week span. He followed everything to the letter Not surprisingly, of course, we both know and he followed it to the letter. And, yeah, he went from 48 VO2 max all the way to 61 VO2 max in just following the protocol In three weeks, in three-and three and a half weeks, yeah. And and even the uh uh leonard was uh, was doing the uh exam on him to test on him and leonard's uh in west palm beach and he was uh. He was like oh, my gosh, you're in zone two and you're already at 52 millimeters, you know, per kilogram minute already. You, my gosh, you're in zone two and you're already at 52 millimeters per kilogram minute already. Before you were in zone five, at 48. Now you're in zone two at 52.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this whole, all of this stuff has seemed like it's become very popular, and a lot of it is from people like dr peter attia, who has basically claimed and I might get this wrong, but in his book or on his podcast, I forget, I subscribed to a lot of his stuff that vo2 max, in some regard, is more important than quitting smoking in terms of your longevity. Yeah, and, and he really, you know, I agree with him, okay, and he really, you know, I agree with him, okay. And he really talks about zone two and zone five, you know. And zone two is he talks about it like a pyramid. So the zone two is your base and zone five is your peak of the top of the pyramid, and if you want a high peak, you've got to have a wide base, right? So, yeah, and so for zone two, typically what he will say is that that's your, where you're burning the maximum amount of fat. That's why you get this mitochondrial biogenesis, because you need more mitochondria to burn that fat. And then zone five is the equivalent of your vo2 max, right, because that's just the maximum amount of oxygen you can, like you said, not only take in but process. That's why there's not only a lung thing to do with this, but also a cellular thing to do with this, right, like you have to be able to process that oxygen and get it to the actual tissue that needs it.
Speaker 1:What I find interesting is that you focus on the respiratory rate and dialing in people at every zone and you don't hear anyone talking about this, and it kind of reminds me of this is probably a terrible analogy, but I remember I had really a weak voice and when I was studying theater I had like Jeff Goldblum was my coach at one point who's amazing coach, one of the most interesting humans I've ever met and he he was like look, everything's great, you got to work on your voice. So I, if you listen to my voice right now, I have like a little bit of resonance in it. I've trained this muscle. So I did this thing called Bel Canto technique and you just do scales on the piano from really low to really high, and so you need a fluid voice through your entire range. It needs to be trained, and it kind of reminds me of what you're talking about. You need to be fully trained through all zones. Right, because they shouldn't I mean they, they all probably contribute well, guess what.
Speaker 2:To get to zone five. What zone do you need to go to?
Speaker 2:you know what I mean you have to go to zone three, four. So you need to be able to uh, to, to adapt to, to that right. And peter pia puts a big, strong emphasis on VO2 mass. I mean, obviously diseases don't like oxygen, right? I mean it goes more complicated than that. But you know the more oxygen we have in our tissues, you know we're fighting diseases.
Speaker 2:You know you're clinically like on the disabled list when you're below 17.5. I think that's the scale really. So you know, sometimes, with clients, you know they're hovering, you know they're around 25. And I'm like all right, let's do the math. Right, you're 50 years old right now. All right, you're 50 and you're at 25. You're going to lose 10, and when you're 60, well, 10, guess what. You're now at 22, 50, that's everything, all goes normal. But if you gain weight and do this, you may lose more, right? So let's just call it now you're 21 and a half, at 60. Now you lose another 10, guess what? What? You're at 17.
Speaker 2:At seven years old you're disabled, but now you're technically disabled. You know climbing stairs. If you're going to Italy, for example, and you want to go to the what do they call those stairs? The Spanish stairs you know you won't be able to make it up. You know you're going to have to stop. You're not enjoying the quality of life.
Speaker 2:So what I do is go this what do you want to do? What's your goals? Well, I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to to to go hiking with my grandkids at seven, all right. So here's what we need to do. We need to get you let's get you about 30 by time you hit 70. So that means we need to work hard at getting you to 38, 40, let's say right, because you're 50, so let's get you to, you know, into that 40 range. So that way we reverse engineer, because now, if I get to the 40, you lose 10. Now you're actually at guess what 36. All right, we're still in your gold. You're at 60 years old, 36. Now you lose another 10. Boom, I got you in the low, low 30s.
Speaker 1:Now you can still do things with your grandchildren yeah, and when you talk about being disabled, putting on a pair of pants, going to the grocery store, pushing cart, like there you go, that that basically exhausted you for the day, right, like I barely can sustain even the most basic of responsibilities that I have to do for my own self, and it's quite scary how that stuff can creep up on you with age and it for me.
Speaker 1:That that's it's really why I I did vo2, um, all this testing back in 2010 and I really changed my physiology and I tested my zones and I put a heart rate monitor on and I had this watch that would beep at me and make sure I stayed in my zones and I, I I barely because I came from the world of being like a power athlete right, you know, like a gymnast, and so for me, I was in great shape, but it was embarrassing.
Speaker 1:I almost I would go to this park and try to do it when no one was there, because I had to almost do this running thing and play like barely moving, and it was the most pathetic jog and it wasn't even a jog, it was walking with a running movement, and because if I went beyond that, I would immediately just go up the zones, but after a few months of it I could just run indefinitely, it felt like, and so it's been a long time since I've done that training and I know that it's probably the weakest link in my physiology in terms of my physical capabilities and VO2 is just like one biomarker versus like 30 different biomarkers, right?
Speaker 2:So I look at VO2 max, but that is just one protocol, right? But I have to attack a lot of other protocols, a lot of different stats and biomarkers to change that VO2max. So that's just one biomarker where a lot of the emphasis is on VO2max. So I talk a lot about VO2max, but it is one of my parts, but there's so many other biomarkers to change and all these little ones that I'm changing. Guess what? It still has the effects on the VO2max. So I'm changing all these things and going back on what you were saying, you're so working in your field.
Speaker 2:There's a reason why, um, why aren't athletes outliving? Uh, joe, below you know, john do and jane do. There's a reason for that Athletes are always trained in the oxidative stress. So, in four and fives, on four and five and three and four and five, three, four, five, what we're finding? The professional athletes. They step on the treadmill, they switch zones really quickly into oxidative stress, because that's where they train and that's where they're comfortable in training. Well, guess what it's like running a car at in fourth and fifth year, and metal to the pedal right or the pedal to the metal right. It's always at that level. Yeah, versus now.
Speaker 2:If we train our body and our athletes on the low end zones, on the low zones and train them very efficiently in zone two, well, guess what's going to happen for a hockey player in the third period. For the conserving energy because we train them very well, a lot of mitochondrial density, they have a great zone two. So instead of switching fields now at 120 heart rate, I trained them to switch fields at about 150 heart rate. Well, guess what? They've gained 30 different heartbeats there to be able to stay, burning mostly fat. So guess what it saves that carbohydrate fuel source. So you don't bonk in the third period. You conserve all that energy in the first and second period. Guess what? You're going to be avoiding injury. You're going to make a better play. In your third period. You're going to be more efficient. You're skating strides or if you're playing soccer, you're going to be still operating at the same level as first and second period for a hockey player.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think that's what's missing out of the professional elite athletes it's it's funny how they have terrible zone twos. I'm like, oh my gosh, you switch feels so fast. Some of them it's supposed to walk. You walk a speed walk on a treadmill. Switch feels yeah. Right to carbohydrates yeah, I would I like, do you have?
Speaker 2:diabetes, like I mean, because that's the sign of diabetes, right? Your body's not liking to use fat as fuel. I'm like, do you have diabetes in your family? No, no, no, all right, let's go for a blood test. Come back with a blood test, all right. It's not that you know what in the world. We need to work on your zone too. You're gonna have to like roll for a month or two, just no little walks yeah, yeah, that that was me.
Speaker 1:But I think the best example of that I can think of a professional athlete that really has what you're talking about, this massive fat burning zone, is flo money, mayweather he. If you watch him fight, he will. For the first couple of rounds he'll just exhaust his athlete. He just no one can hit him. So he's just guarding, guarding and tapping and doing all this stuff. And now, look, I'm not a boxing expert. So if I'm getting this wrong, please don't, don't come at me. But if you watch him, when he sees that the other person can barely hold their hands up, he just goes in for the kill, Jaw drops Yep and the jaw sinks back.
Speaker 2:He's like time to go buddy, yeah. Third period of my hockey game Time to strike yeah.
Speaker 1:And so for someone listening to this, maybe this is all brand new to you. The more effort, the more intensity of effort you can do in a fat burning zone. I mean we basically have an almost unlimited source of fat we can use, right, I mean it's, you have an unlimited amount. It's very efficient fuel source when you have to switch over to carbohydrates. You are now. Now you're basically your. Your bursts are capped at a minute. Right, you might have a thousand calories.
Speaker 2:You may have 1500. It depends how well you you ate and stored the calories right. Yeah, eventually she's gonna run out and we both know when you run out of the, the carbs, what's your body going to utilize? It's going to start being a. You know, it's your carnivore. At that point, you're going to eat your muscles for fuel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right yeah, there's a reason why you know that some people don't lose, lose, lose weight and they ruin their metabolism because they're out. I said I've been jogging for four weeks, jill, I didn't lose a pound. All right, let's go see. Oh my gosh, you're jogging 167. You were burning. Let's go look how much fat you're burning. Oh, wow, zero. But you did burn 670 calories, oh, and you didn't eat that day and you went jog. Oh guess what. You ate all your muscle. Oh, guess what. You ruined your metabolism too. You slowed it down, yeah, and that is why you did not lose weight. It's not rocket science. You just. We have to just teach people that sometimes less is less is, uh, is more you, you.
Speaker 1:That is a very important point. Isn't that called black hole training, where you, essentially, you see these people that are overweight and they get on the treadmill and they're just running because they're like, they're just running and and what they're doing is they're just burning through all their carbs or they're actually striping muscle for fuel and you got. You have to remember your muscle is your metabolism right. More muscle is metabolically active tissue. That is.
Speaker 2:You should be saying that more often. I love that you're saying that, steve, we don't say that enough. Your muscles are your metabolism yeah I don't want to eat those.
Speaker 1:No, and the older you get, you get resistant to anabolic signaling. You don't fold proteins as well. Your hormones go down. It gets harder and harder to build muscle as you age, and so a lot of times you have to rely on boosting up your hormones or doing creative things like injectable carnitine in order to upregulate androgen receptors.
Speaker 1:I'm 50. I pay attention to this stuff. But where do you think that sugar goes? It needs to go into the muscle to be stored as glycogen. And I always tell people take a big bucket and a small bucket and then take the same amount of water and pour it in each. It's going to overflow in the small one. Well, that's the guy with little muscles. What's all that overflow going to go to? It's going to go to fat. It has to be stored somewhere, right? I think that is a solid takeaway that I think people should remember. Now I want to. I think we've laid the foundation for a lot of this, but I want to go through the process of somebody who says okay, I recognize this is important, I want to do this. So what is the process like they? They go to some testing facility that can essentially what is the process. They put the mask on and they tell me a little bit about the process well for, for for my facility, I, I number one.
Speaker 2:I'm going to do their, their body composition. Uh, I'm also going to do the spirometer test. Right, a healthy lung. I need to know your baseline right. I need to know what you have your capacity right, there's capacity. And then there's coordination right, your capability. So right now I'm going to test you out static wise. All right, what do you got? All right, so we know what we stand still on the spirometer Great.
Speaker 2:Now let's go test that metabolism of yours and let's go see how your body burns fat at rest and how you breathe at rest. Are you stressed out? Do we need to slow your breathing? Do we need to give you breathing exercise at rest and see if we need to fix that ph level, you know, during your daytime. So we do the mass thing and it's a 10 minute resting test. You just basically said that. That's the fun part of my testing is that resting, enjoy yourself, and that takes about 10 minutes.
Speaker 2:After that particular test, I do some co2 tolerance test. I do some CO2 tolerance tests. It's called a BOLT score. It's not an exact thing, but it's going to give me an idea of how intolerable, how their body, the CO2 affects them. You know, if high CO2 affects them, if it's a low score, they probably have a higher tendency to over breathe during the daytime. So how I do that is I let you breathe normally in and out and in and on an expired air, not a forcing, just a regular expired air. I get them to plug their notes and we count how many seconds before their body not, it's not a max breath hold before you feel that quiver of the throat, quiver of the diaphragm. Whenever your body feels it tells you that it needs to breathe, we, we stop the timer. Is it 10 seconds, 50, 20, 30? Usually after my respiratory training I get people above the 30 second mark and even though you know you can hold your breath for 30, three minutes, it's whenever your body gives you that indication to breathe. So that's a book.
Speaker 2:Then I move into the exercise test, the VO2 max test. Vo2 is my last number, so that's, I don't look hardly at VO2 when I'm actually analyzing someone right away. Right, I'm looking at all the other biomarkers first. Right, first biomarker is where that zone one and finishes the zone two. I'm looking at their breathing frequency. I'm making sure the gas exchange is being done properly. I'm making sure nothing funky is going on right, because I'll be able to tell if there's something you know wrong with, you know, your heart valve, or or if there's uh, uh, the gastic change is not being done properly. It can be dangerous right for the heart if I'm pushing them to a certain level. So I like to see that biomarker to make sure if I'm going to continue the test or not. If I start seeing a dip towards the end of the vo2 or or it's called vo2 pulse every time your heart beats, uh, I like to see that number. If I start seeing it drop and drop and drop, or we're gonna see the heart rate going up and up and up and it's like, oh good, good, good, good, and then it starts to drop and then you're like you're trying to fix the heart monitor. Is it the heart monitor? You know that could be a sign of something else you know in the cardiovascular. So there's those biomarkers that I have on hand to make sure that test is about.
Speaker 2:It's a three minute test. Some of them is running. I like to do all my tests with a human body. So it's either going to be a a hike, or it's going to be a hike or it's gonna be a run. I like that because the diaphragm is in a good position. Unless it's a triathlete. We need to test both there, on the bike and so forth. I wanna test my patients, no matter what, upright. So if we're gonna test on the bike, doesn't matter, I wanna test you upright because I wanna see what the diaphragm can do too. Right, that's the respiratory side of me. Right At other metabolic analysts, you know whatever test will do it, but me, because I specialize in respiratory, I want to see what the diaphragm can do at, you know, at a nice thoracic spine, straight up format.
Speaker 2:So you do that test three minutes warm up and then I increase the speed every minute. So let's say you're a non-jogger, you're very fit, but you have knee injuries. I'm going to put you maybe at 12 degrees, 15 degree incline, and then I increase the speed every minute. So after three minutes warm-up, I increase the speed every minute until VO2 max. I usually have to analyze how fast you're going to do.
Speaker 2:I put you on a treadmill, look at your gait at a high speed. Yeah, how do you feel? You know, ask a bunch of questions and then stop them. Let's put the mask back on and then get them on the treadmill, and I always leave about two more minutes at the end in case I don't reach that VO2 max. So I always tell my clients if I did my job, you're done this test in 12 minutes. If I didn't do my job, well, I'm so sorry, but it's 14 minutes, so I'm going to do this as quick and as efficient as I can. So, uh, yeah, slap me an extra hundred dollars and I'll make sure that you know I set this right for you, so it's not 14 minutes, yeah yeah, so let's say, someone wanted to work with you specifically and we'll talk about how they can do that.
Speaker 1:Um, where, where can they? Can they? Because now these test centers seem to be popping up around. Are there standards or certain? I know you, you use the panoey device, but can someone just go to one of these testing facilities in their city and then send you their details?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah for sure. Yeah, they, they can get you know a second opinion or whatnot. I mean they would need to contact me. I have, you know, I have a facility in Florida that's going to be opening up very shortly, West Palm Beach. I'm in Canada. You know, for certain athletes I had to basically go to them, or some longevity clients as well. But what I do I can do a lot remotely to even my facility in Florida. If the test is conducted by someone, you know that I trust that it's going to make them go to a VO2 max. I'll know if they're a VO2 Max just looking at their stats. Right, I can't even look at the stats live while it's happening from. I could be in Costa Rica, it doesn't really matter. So I can do all the analysis and do a Zoom call with the client if you're in a different state or country. Modern technology that way. But they're popping up everywhere and companies like Pinoy and other companies are making it a lot easier. Now, are some of them trained the way I am and analyzing all the data? Of course not, right, there's some. At least you'll get all your stats.
Speaker 2:My business, I am a specialist, right, I took a lot of courses in exercise, physiology and reading journals and how to change right, reading a report is one thing, but having a protocol to change all these biomarkers, that's another thing. That's what I studied. I want to change this biomarker. How do I change this? Well, let's try this and this and this, because it really makes good physiology sense. Oh, my gosh, you know, I went from burning nine calories of fat to 12 calories of fat per minute now in my zone two. How did I do that? Well, the only thing I've done differently is I added one extra interval training and there's different interval training. Right, we know that people at the track will do an interval interval, slowdown. But we both know that if we run full tilt right now on the treadmill, you and I will go at 14 miles an hour. We'll get on the treadmill and we'll run. We might last 15 seconds, 17 seconds at full, full top of our speed, but our heart rate might only get to zone three, but our legs gave out. So there's a way to do heart rate intervals.
Speaker 2:So when I do an interval, let's say I'll put myself in a parasympathetic state, right, so, which would be zone one and two? Right, then I'm going to jack myself up. Now if I jack myself up too fast I won't get to my heart rate goal of 171 heart rate zone five. So what I do is I'll go to eight miles an hour, jack up my heart rate a little bit. I'll go at 8.5 miles an hour in the treadmill and then I start seeing it slowing down. Now I'll go to 9.3 miles an hour, which for me in kilometers it's a four minute pace. When I'm at that I'm jacking up the heart rate. Then I'll go full tilt until I reach that 171.
Speaker 2:As soon as it's 171, I start my timer Click 30 seconds in my zone 5. So now I'm almost in the way I breathe. I'm still suppressing a little bit of the sympathetic, but no matter what, you're in an oxidative stress at that point. But then 30 seconds up, boom, I'm going to slow it down. Let's say my heart rate is about 150 where I switch fuels, 150 heart rate. So I'm going to wait until I hit 150, but not really For me.
Speaker 2:Each individual I'll say wait until 140. For me I wait until I'm 140, then I put 90 seconds on. That means I'm now finally my heart is is recuperated, my lungs are recuperated and my legs, uh, and fuel supply is kind of recuperated. So now I'm gonna wait 90 seconds, calm down my my sympathetic state into a parasympathetic state. So I'm telling my body, ah, it's okay, he's gonna go back. He's pretty crazy. He's gonna go back to his zone five. But don't worry, body, he's gonna come back to us. Yeah, so I'm trying to manipulate in my body so what that's gonna do to the body. I'm teaching the body to use a little bit more fat in zone two. Plus it's increasing your vo2 max. We're we're fixing a lot of biomarkers by doing that.
Speaker 2:Now, do I do that type of training now? No, I'm past that. I'll do a little bit more. Like peter attia, he doesn't do like just those types of intervals, he'll do like a big four minute interval. Yeah, I, I don't follow that prescription. You know what I do for my interval I go run in the mountains. We're blessed with mountains where I live, so I go all out in the mountains and then I tone down. All out in the mountains, you know, I could see, maybe a big hill. That's about, like you know, 500 meters or 500 feet up, and I'll just go for it, just dig my heels in and when I reach the top I'm going to continue going really hard to make it three, four minutes. Then I'm going to dial it down to a zone three and then, once I'm recuperating enough, I'll continue on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but again you have to wait. I don't do that the first year for clients, unless they're they're elite, you know yeah I.
Speaker 1:I think that whenever you're learning something, it's really good to do a protocol by the book so you can really learn how to do it. But then, as you get to a point where, like, you know this stuff, then it's about incorporating it into fun, active lifestyle, right where you. Where you're like, hey, I'm going to, I'm doing this mountain, and the protocols that I know are already a part of me, so they're just, I just do the mountain and this protocol is inside of me. I call it playing jazz. You know, it's like when I go to the gym, I can walk into a gym and a friend of mine has the best gym I've ever seen in the world. He has so many. He's actually a business partner of mine. It's a phenomenal.
Speaker 1:You go in, he has everything, and so we go in there and we just work out and I call it just do playing jazz, because I'm doing this, I'm picking up this, I'm doing that, and but what I'm doing is actually all these different protocols that I know I just play within the framework of all these things you know. So I think this VO2 max stuff is something that we should all learn to incorporate into our lives. I wanted to ask you. So once somebody gets tested and let's say you, you look at them and and you start to work with them on a protocol how, what do they need in terms of wearables in order to track all this? These biomarkers? You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean because there's all these devices now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do you recommend for that, or what do they have to do?
Speaker 2:I, I, I, I love the uh, obviously the uh. I I'm a garmin guy, so I love garmin because I use a, a portal where basically every time my clients, uh, you know, turn this on, I see it when they do their respiratory training, they need to click that, it's done, and and then they, they give me a rating on rpe, or how hard was it? Five out of ten, ten out of ten. So I, I can see everything. I know where the heart rate, I know that they, uh, I'll send them a message. You know it pops on my phone. I see, well, how come your average heart rate is, uh, 146? Uh, this was known today there. Uh, mr jo, joe Blow, here, you know, guess what? You stopped burning fat at 135. You know that, right, I just want to check in with you. What was going on? Well, my dog was having fun and I just continued to jog with the dog. All right, all right, guess what you're doing tomorrow. Zone two and tomorrow is the interval. Guess what? We're switching it up. This is the interval. Guess what we're switching it up? This is your interval day. We're going to consider that an interval.
Speaker 2:So, and going back a while ago, remember, we were talking about the psychology and I'll tell you why. My protocol is really cool. It changes people's lives and I'm very excited about it, but sometimes it's too much. For example, someone in Florida didn't take the respiratory training device and all my protocols. I hadn't done it in like I don't know two and a half weeks, but it's all on my desk, it's ready, it's ready. I just keep forgetting. I keep forgetting. I said listen, I said you're the type of guy that you train hard, work hard and so forth. Let's dumb down your the recipe here. Let's dumb it down. What's your commute? Ah, all right, no problem. Here's what we're going to do. Instead of the 20 minute workout for the rest of it, we're going to change it to a 10-minute workout for you. So you're going to do five minutes in your zone two At this phase. You're going to breathe that I'm going to tell them how to breathe because you know in my protocol you're going to go past that depth, past the depth on the inhale, past the depth we're going to exaggerate With the device. We exaggerate breathing, all right. So you're going to exaggerate zone 2 breathing. Keep focusing on that. You're pretending that you're doing zone 2, but you're driving People think like you're an idiot.
Speaker 2:You got this big balloon and you know you're going down. You know you got CO2 in the balloon. That's why you're not going to get like lightheaded or anything, because you're still sucking in some CO2 and some of the excess oxygen some CO2 and some uh, the excess, uh oxygen. So you're going to do that on your drive. Now you're going to switch it to. Let's go to his own for breathing. I'm going to put you at, you know, 35 or whatever the case. I put him at and and you're going to breathe at that at five minutes. Now he's listening to a podcast and he's doing that. So I use a little bit of psychology that a little bit is better than nothing. So now I got him doing my respiratory training on his drive. So now it's efficient.
Speaker 2:So why the protocol works for some people is we need to dumb it down. Sometimes you know you don't want to go four days a week at the gym. No problem, let's do full body in two days. Can you handle that? I have to do that because to keep my muscle mass I hate the gym but I do it and I go twice and I've been going three times a week. We'll have that discussion, you and I. I'm finally doing three days there Excellent. But you know, sometimes those two days is better than none, because if I don't do that, I lose too much muscle mass with my runs and my other forms of cardio and my TRX workout are great at mobility and great for endurance and different, you know, balanced muscles and so forth, but it's not going to bring me the mass that I need to keep for my metabolism, like lifting good, heavy weight stuff, yeah.
Speaker 2:So dumbing it down is huge and using psychology to to do it. And sometimes people say, listen, I want to do yoga and I know I'm not going to do this. All right, let's talk about this. What about trx? What about this? Okay, you're gonna do yoga, can you do a yoga? That's a little bit more. You know physical. Yes, there's this type of yoga and I don't know much about yoga, but I'm like, yes, let's do that yoga, can you do that? Yes, ha, compromise, let's do it, yeah, yeah yeah, because look a protocol, but life exists.
Speaker 1:It's part of the whole jazz thing that I talked about. It's like weaving this stuff into your lifestyle. You know, like you got to have a treadmill desk to get in 10,000 steps a day or to keep moving. Then that's what you got to do. You just got to figure out, like, what are my constraints and how do I work with them. Let me ask you this because I do work out with weights three times a week when I do your protocol, because I'm definitely going to do it and I'm fairly aggressive I'll be driving for results, but at the same time, knowing that I lift three days a week and with a day off in between, what am I looking at? What am I looking at in terms of what am I looking at? What am I looking?
Speaker 2:at in terms of a full protocol within that as well. Well, I'm going to be putting on your metabolism, which we assume with you, uh, that your metabolism is going to be good. Uh, so I'll probably add some, some interval training. But before I give you the pro, I'll give the protocol. But then I talk to you. Jill, I, I really want to do. Uh, I want to run in the mountains. Uh, I want to do, I want to go hiking in in the mountains because you're in nevada. Uh, I want to go where there's rattlesnakes. Fine, you like doing that. Steven, let's go see some rattlesnakes. You know, maybe I don't want to go with a rattlesnake, I'm fine, I like my little grass snakes. But then again, then we got bears and moose and yeah, yeah, you've got a lot out there where you're at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got a lot of crazy stuff, but we don't have alligators and stuff like that. But so, with you, you're going to get a lot of zone two training, right, it depends now, right, probably no matter what. You're going to get a lot of Zone 2 training, it depends, now, probably no matter what you're going to do Zone 2. Zone 2 for people like you and me that are elite athletes is very boring. I dislike it. I cringe. I listen to podcasts, but even that it's still hard for me to do a zone two. I'd like to jog fast, and running at 6.8 miles an hour is boring. And remember zone two. You've got a lot of oxygen that's in your brain, so you can't think. So you need a podcast. So you've got to keep yourself busy. But I also don't want you to be talking to the guy next door, because guess what talking does. So you need a podcast. So you got to keep yourself busy. But I also don't want you to be talking to the guy next door, because guess what talking does? Salespeople, we hyperventilate when we talk. We're constantly a little short. You know tachypnea it's called, right, yeah, so you're just short bursts of breath, so that's a form of hyperventilation. So I want you to be able to breathe. I'm going to be teaching you how to breathe through your nose. That'll teach you basically to breathe deeper into your respiratory system and your lungs. We're going to do those zone two trends, it depends what you like, so we're going to find it. Then, if I find like a little deficiency in your power lungs, is it asthma or is it slow lungs or lazy lungs? Is it your respiratory? Is it your mobility? Is it your respiratory muscles, sorry, or your mobility, I say, oh, you know what, steven, which I know, your core is probably crazy strong. So I'll know right away, your gymnast, that your core is probably darn strong. So it's not going to be that. Your mobility, it's probably not that so. So most likely for you it won't be mobility to your core, but I'll still give you some exercise because I want you to be able to be able to control your expiratory muscles and it takes a while for you to be able to manipulate and get rid of that extra 25% of air, right. So that's core. And then I'm going to get you to do an interval and we come up with a good plan for an interval, probably for you, depending on your VO2 max. One to three, depending on your lifestyle too. Maybe it's two, maybe it's just one, but then when we reach this One to three a week, you mean a week, yeah, sorry when I'm talking like that, yeah, it's per. Yeah. One a week, yeah, okay. And and we discussed your form of cardio in your zone too. We discussed your core training.
Speaker 2:The best core training that I do is trx, right? I've been doing, been TRX certified for I don't remember 2013, I guess. I guess that's 11 years being certified in TRX. So I do a lot of cool stuff with TRX to work these intercostals, the obliques, your, your abs. There's a lot that goes to the respiratory muscle, right? The average person is 10 pounds of muscle. So think about that. That's a lot that goes to the respiratory muscles, right, the average person is 10 pounds of muscles. Think about that. That's a lot of muscles that we need to recruit to help the lung and people with lung diseases. We really need to work on that right.
Speaker 2:When it's COPD, usually it's the inspiratory. I got to teach them how to breathe around some of their scar tissue, right, so it has to do with the inspiratory. So we're working on the inspiratory. When it's asthma, it's the expiratory. So we need to teach them to get rid of the number one the mucus. When we get rid of the mucus, the inflammation is going to go down. So when you do that, you have access to more of the lungs, right? Because usually asthma will form into your bronchioles and your trach and into the medium to small airways. So we remove mucus from doing expiratory exercises. We'll remove some of that mucus and get rid of that inflammation and help people with those asthma problems Interesting.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of analyzing and protocol. I find it really easy and it just feels like it's very natural, but for some reason nobody's really designed a protocol like mine. I think that's why it's obviously it's taken a mind of its own and really been from all sides on asking me how am I getting these stats? It doesn't make sense. Well, when you use respiratory to change these stats, wow, does it ever have?
Speaker 2:You know, you can even actually do certain breathing techniques 48 hours before a big, let's say, a hundred meter dash. I got a hundred meter dash guy that needs to. He's going in two days from now to basically get his EPO up by triggering ways to extract EPO from the spine fluid, and I can also, right before they do the 100-meter dash, I can do some certain breastfuls to squeeze out the oh my gosh, I can't think of where we hold blood. We hold 300, not pancreas Spleen, spleen, thank you. I'm French, so sometimes it doesn't come natural but to squeeze out 300 milliliters of blood. What's 300 milliliters going to do? Well, guess what? It's fresh blood. An extra 300 milliliters is going to bring even more oxygen, so I can trigger that for the next 60 minutes. There's so much stuff that we can do. I'm so excited to teach you.
Speaker 1:I can't wait. I'm really blessed that we've met I told you about my friend that I've recently met who he can hold his breath for 24 minutes.
Speaker 2:He told me that yeah, he's held it three minutes and I and, but I haven't practiced so I don't know what's my max, but there's, that's insane.
Speaker 1:It's. I'm going to have him on the podcast Cause I think that, like with your podcast and with his, I think people are going to be armed with like everything they could ever imagine. So he does a lot of like lung stretching stuff, cause he's like, look, people have never stretched their lungs and he's like, the first time you stretch them, you're going to get so much out of it because you've never stretched it before. And he has all these like techniques and and, like you said, he can clench his spleen and kick out red blood cells and so I need to meet that guy.
Speaker 1:yeah, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna absolutely and and you, you have to come out to vegas one time we'll have like a get together. We'll do like a super geek out session. Maybe we'll even do a whole podcast on that, where we're all together in the same room. But definitely, yeah, he does this event where he's performing in a glass cylinder filled with water for 10 minutes and he's doing a whole act and it's bonkers and he knows this stuff on such a it's kind of like how what you were saying there's a lot of people out there that run these protocols for people, and I call it paint by numbers.
Speaker 1:You know they're like oh, here's the, you just do this, this and this. But people like you and this guy, a friend of mine they're literally artists. You're taking these scientific protocols and you're massaging each little, turning little dials and trying things and seeing what results you get out of it, and so the initial protocols are just like the. They're like the starting point. But then, when you can work with these people like yourself who are kind of artists, you can really get more out of it. And and those are the people I just I adore. I really love working with people that really take the ball and they just run and they don't need permission.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tweak it. I'm going to do things and I don't care if it goes against the grain. I'm going to squeeze the most out of this, and so I think you'll get a kick out of me in the sky. I did want to ask you this. I have a Concept2 rower. I have a Trueform treadmill. I have a Concept2 erg bike that has this little desk on top of it so I can do Zone 2 and check emails, you'll be in Zone 1, by the way, oh, I will.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you'll be on that. Oh, on that note, I got to tell you a funny story. I'm trying to get my client into zone two and walking their dog. I'm like, okay, this is not working out with you and your dog. You know what I did? I bought them a gentle leer Tell me what? The dog keeps stopping to sniff and I can't control the dog.
Speaker 2:The dog is a black lab and I said are you Bought them a gentle leer so they could do their zone two Now with the gentle leer? It doesn't like its neck being pulled this way. So now they can get into zone two because they got a gentle leer and when the dog wants to go sniff, she can put her dog back into a plane, basically in the walking path, and continue walking Instead of being pulled to the tree, smelling the tree and and fighting with the dog. You can stay in the constant state. But anyway, it's a really funny thing that your dog was stopping them from getting to zone two because she'd have to stop every like five minutes. Sniff this fire hydrant, sniff this tree. I bought a gentle ear there. Just keep the dog going the last five, ten minutes of your walk there. There, let your dog go sniff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's the thing being the artist in it. So you're saying that on all these riding this bike, I won't get into zone two.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're right. But I'm saying if you're able to probably type oh God, like I can't I walk, I have a 70. I can't I walk, I have a 70. I think he's 77 now. I've been actually practicing longevity all my tricks on this guy for the last 10 years and we walk, he's 77. We can walk at about 3.8 miles an hour to 4 miles an hour.
Speaker 2:We're cooking and, um, I can't get to even like close to a zone two right and four miles an hour. Even when we climb a hill I try to even go past them and see if I can get. I can't get into zone two so you can get fit enough that you, just you won't get to that zone too. I have to jog. Most people can't jog in zone two right, which which that is hard for some people, right? If you're telling that's why I don't have any marathon runners almost in my, my rolodex, you know, when they come to see me they're not going to follow my protocol because most of them can't run in zone two and they're going to have to speed walk to get to run. So it's very hard for a runner to slow down because they came in running zone two most of the time, or if they do, they got to run at five miles an hour Like I had to relearn how to to to use my proper fuel at higher range.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to ask you this too, because Peter Tia talks a lot and I even bought one and I started playing around with it a lactate meter, because you're talking about getting a proper test done, and then you get this whole display of things and you actually know how to use all those numbers and really stage an entire protocol. What are your opinions on just doing some zone two training and then just pricking your finger and using a lactate meter and seeing how many millimoles of lactate you have in your blood?
Speaker 2:I don't use the, you know. I use breath analysis really, instead of, you know, pricking it's obviously less evasive, really instead of, you know, perking it it's obviously less evasive, and I get all my stats from there. So I don't really get into the like. I know that I can teach an athlete to you know how we all call it lactic acid. You know, and you stiffen right up. I can teach, you know athletes to not get into that lactate state by kind of teaching them how to use lactate as a fuel source, technically, yeah, so that you're not going to get to a lactate state by different respiratory protocols and proper breathing techniques and proper interval and zone training, so that you're not going to use lactate as something that's going to stop you. You know, you can go do like.
Speaker 2:You know, for example, that elite runner that actually he was one, you know, one of the only ones that listened to from A to Z. He can go run a 5K run, which is 3.1 miles, and get, get his. He can run that and used to run it in about 1750 and he's now run it in 16 minutes 45 seconds and he's our age and he was able to achieve that by just changing his breathing method. So he shaved off a minute off his 3.1 mile or five kilometer so he doesn't really get to that lactate stage anymore, so he can sleep better. He says I sleep better at night and I can go do a pr run in a race.
Speaker 2:And then my buddy asked me to go for a 10k run with him in a zone two. I can go. But you said before when I, when I, when my body would go into full lactate and I would finish it with the, you know my skin on my teeth and just making it and collapsing and gasping for air, full lactate. You know the dead legs, the cement legs yeah, that's probably me. Yeah, so yeah, if you would have done the lactate test there, you know, obviously you would have been in full lactate. But on that note again, it was supposed to be a simple yes or no, but I don't use lactate, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean it really is a pain in the ass. I mean I think it'll be really great when some of these wearables can actually read that Like it would be a nice another biomarker to actually add to the equation.
Speaker 2:I know I've got these shirts that are for, like hockey players, and for or for to to add on to my protocols. I'm going to be testing this, but it's going to be, um, the wearable device it's going to be testing. It's uh, it's going to be testing the uh heart rate variability, your nervous system. It can actually even sense how deep you're breathing up to about, I think it's like plus or minus 4% and your breathing frequency and your ventilation. So I'm very excited to be testing that and for one to be able to put that on a hockey player or a soccer player or a football player and seeing how they breathe and be able to analyze their nervous system as well.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's cool Very cool.
Speaker 2:I'm excited for that and be able to analyze their nervous system as well, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool, very cool. Yeah, I'm excited for that. Yeah, I mean, it is a lot of great stuff. I don't think we can fully imagine all the interesting, great things that technology is going to do for us moving forward. I have a wish list of things that I want to be developed, and I'm sure they'll be developed the thing you said about the lactate, I think my gosh.
Speaker 2:Imagine if they have a device, you know that it's coming, we have yeah, because we know that. Uh, you know moxie, and they can. It can read the, uh, the amount of oxygen inside or muscle tissue, right, and you know. So if it can do that, why can't it test lactate from the less evasive way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I attend this it's like a hybrid medical finance investor conference a couple times a year and that's where I met my friend that can hold his breath for 24 minutes. But they have this, there's this device that's always there and they use it as like a CGM to glucose monitor real time.
Speaker 1:But they say, the technology is there where they can almost measure anything, so they have to get clearance and they have to go through all these things. But basically they're like the machine is, the device is ready. So like how badass would it be for you to be able to wear this thing and to know all your blood biomarkers, maybe even your nutrition, in a real time. You know, like I'm taking my supplements based on. Even maybe a supplement dispenser is spitting out the amount of milligrams you need, based on this thing in real time. Like that would be crazy real time on your watch.
Speaker 2:you'd be be like oh, I need a protein bar, I need a carb bar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to happen for sure, but fortunately we're at a point where we have enough access. I mean, someone can go down, they can get tested, they can work with you and they can improve a substantial biomarker that is highly correlated with longevity, and they can do it over the internet. I mean, like, like we're having this podcast, so you know we already have enough to really move the needle, not a little bit significantly significantly right when you can reverse someone's you know metabolic age.
Speaker 2:You know, in three and a half weeks by seven years. Now that, oh, granted, you know jesse, last week, or it was this week, you know, uh, he really committed you know 110. But even if he would have committed 60 of the protocol he still would have probably got at least three, three years off his, off his metabolic yeah.
Speaker 2:And if anybody doesn't understand metabolic age, right, we're basically. You know my body, let's say my VO2 max. Well, it's not even on the scale right, even as a 20-year-old, you know it doesn't. The elite is not even doesn't say 70. It says, I think 60 or something like that right.
Speaker 1:You're off the charts, literally.
Speaker 2:I'm off the charts, so I'm not even born yet because I have my metabolic.
Speaker 2:But most of the clients, right, they're aiming to be their age number one and then reverse their age. It's their body. So if you're 50 years old, you want your body to feel like it's 30, right, let's drop it down a few decades. That's my goal. For people is to drop by two decades. If we can bring you to a feeling of 30-year-old, your body will feel. 30-year-old Doesn't mean that you have to date someone that's 20 years younger. Now it's your body feels like it. Right, your mind's still 50. You're still wearing the good old reading glasses, but it's what your body can do.
Speaker 1:I have a small confession. So for some reason, throughout my life, my dating life, I always dated women that were quite a bit younger than me and I always had these people that were like, oh, I get it. And they would imply that that was my level of maturity. And maybe it was, maybe it was. But I used to always tell them I said, look, it's not the level of maturity. I said it's the hormone level. I am hormonally aligned with someone of that age, so he's kind of off topic, but with someone of that age, so he's kind of off topic. But but what you're saying is. What you're saying is hey, if you can boost, bring yourself down to, it's the same thing with hormones you put your hormones back where you were when you were 30, you put your metabolism back when you were 30, you're going to move and you're going to act and behave like a 30 year old and you're going to feel good.
Speaker 2:You're going to dress well, you're going to eat well, you're going. You know you're going to do healthy things, you hang around right People, you're going to get yourself in a mental situation. It's like a snowball effect, you know. Yeah, it's like when I went vegan. Oh, you went, you went, you went vegan. Well, yeah, I went vegan as a test. I saw a lot of aging athletes doing it. I went vegan as a test. I saw a lot of aging athletes doing it.
Speaker 2:What part of the vegan diet made me able to to run three times further? Now, what part of it? I have no idea. It's a multiple of things. What was it? Was it the steak that was bothering me? Was it? Was it the milk? What was it? I had no idea because I changed everything. Yeah, but if I would have done one at a time it's little things it might have been the steak and milk, or it might have been the gluten, it might have been this, it might have been this. So, every little thing we do eating correctly, stop smoking, to exercise regularly at a low intensity, to lifting weights to get that muscle little extra thing we do, you know listen to podcasts, motivational things yeah dedicate yourself to.
Speaker 2:You know half an hour of reading and inspirational stuff. You know every little thing.
Speaker 1:It really does yeah, and I used to have this philosophy, like every turn, every extra, like you put your arm in a cast in three weeks, or you know, you take off the cast, your arm is a rail, it's super skinny, and so that's not that long of a time. And so I used to always think about that when I was a gymnast and I thought, well, if I'm losing this that fast, if I potentially am, if I'm totally immobile, well that means that every extra little turn or drill or anything that I do is adding, even if I can't see it, even if I can't feel it. It is adding positively. Now, obviously without burning yourself out or redlining yourself and all that jazz, but man this has been um, this has been a real fun.
Speaker 1:Man, I cannot wait to work with you. What I'm going to do is I'll release the podcast before then, but I'm going to post and even make a separate video of my whole process of working with you, because I know this stuff can be confusing. I know it can be like oh, I got to go get tested and I got to do this, I got to do that. But I really want to try to open up a window for someone to be able to like ah, okay, I see it and I see this guy's results and I see what he did and I see the testing process and and now they know who you are. How do they find you and work with you?
Speaker 2:My website's well, go to O2max, so it's a little oxygen into maxca, and you'll be able to find me and access me. You'll be able to see on Instagram Breathing Coach Jill and you'll be able to access me that way On LinkedIn. You know Jill Esiam, you might put that on your podcast, yeah, and definitely ask me any questions too, right? Anything you have, we're noticing. I want to leave you with this is when you hear from a doctor or anybody that tells you it can't be done, or you have this condition or this, and that you take their recommendation but go do your homework. Don't, don't let anybody tell you that you won't be able to do that again, you'll never be able to throw a ball again with that type of injury, or or I'll show you.
Speaker 2:Uh, I did, uh, I went. I went snowboarding. I'd been snowboarding for 30 years, 33 years, and I broke. I had a spiral fracture. The doctor said it was like you were on a motorcycle and you hit a telephone pole. It was that bad of an injury. So it basically my whole arm just shattered, and all the way from the head neck my whole shoulder, just oh, and so they took 17 screws and a plate and put it back together for me and this was, uh, well, it's going to be one, uh, one year next week and they said this was in the. You know we we'll call it April 1st. I met the doctor and I said, listen, I've been training for it's 115 kilometers. How many miles would that be? 80 miles, 80 miles, 80 miles, about An 80-mile run in the biggest mountains in Canada besides the Rocky Mountains. It was going to be pretty gruesome, about 15,000 feet of elevation and you name it. It was going to be pretty gruesome, about 15,000 feet of elevation and you name it. It was going to be gruesome. I said I've been training hard for this. He says, son, you're done, you're not doing that this year. And this is April 1st. And I was like, oh no, so I had that surgery right around April 1st.
Speaker 2:I said, okay, so the first three weeks didn't do anything. The fourth week you can see it on my app I started running. I took my arm, I duct taped myself all around. People thought it was a little crazy. I was in a sling and full of duct tape. I was in a sling and full of duct tape and I went for my first run.
Speaker 2:All this to say it started off by yes, it hurt, it was jiggling around, you could feel the bones and stuff Not recommended. Started going to the gym. As soon as I was able to bend I would hold a two and a half pound and I would train the other side and just kept going, kept going. He'd tell me, don't go over five pounds. Yo, I'd go to 10, I'd push just the limits and, you know, started getting my mobility back, the strength back, and by september I think it was september 5th, uh, I ran 115 kilometers and I was actually in top five for the longest time. Then I got lost in the mountain. They found me on top of the mountain. I didn't belong so it was like it was about a mile and almost a mile, mile and a half off course. But uh, but guess what? I finished it. You know it took me 19 hours to do the 80 miles and the wilderness, but I finished it.
Speaker 2:So the moral of the story is that you know I did hyperbaric. You know I remember the story you told me right, all the stuff that you did to get yourself away from an injury. I can't remember quite the story, but I did hyperbaric chamber I can't remember quite the story, but I did hyperbaric chamber, I did red light therapy, you know, and sauna, pemf and strength training, and continued doing the cardio because continuing the blood flow I must say, though this will belong in another story but for at least eight months, jogging the right arm would do you know, because you're jogging like this would spit out like sweat. It's really weird that the body was detoxing for about eight months it was sweating so much. It was the right side. It would always be like a track of sweat in the same direction as the treadmill.
Speaker 2:That's another story that you and I should talk. Was that my body sweating and detoxing all these metal things in my body? Wow, you and I are going to talk about that some other time, because that was really cool. It finally stopped, you know, a few months ago. But anyway, the moral of the story is we listen to what our doctors have to say and do your research and work hard and don't let cancer or diseases or anything stop you. You can reverse some diseases. You can take your life back in your hands, kind of like what we said a while ago don't let the breath control your brain. Let your brain control your breath, same as any disease we get take control of your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that's my advice to anybody that's listening to this podcast right, well, I think you're like that yeah, and and if someone's out there listening to that and they need to hear this, you know? Um, yeah, I completely agree with you. Once the doctor says something, you can't do something, I it it, you don't.
Speaker 1:If you know, if you just had surgery and like I tore my achilles at one point, you know, like it doesn't yeah, yeah, don't go running the next day on it, but don't let somebody tell you you're never going to be able to do x or y or z again. That's bullshit. I don't care what you say, I'll do it because I I choose to do it and people so easily throw around limitations on you and the short towel doctor said this done yeah.
Speaker 1:so it's yeah. I appreciate you saying that, and that's one of the reasons why I even get on this podcast and do this is because it's the stories that people have. It's not just the knowledge, which is great, but it's the reason why you're doing it, and it's the thing that makes you tick, and it's also these valuable lessons that all these people like yourself have shared. That really, at the end of the day, that's the thing when I go to some event, and it's got all these people that are in this new health space coming together. They all have some interesting, powerful story that happened to them, or a loved one or something, and that is the glue that holds us all together and makes it really, really special to be in the company of each other. And so I hugely appreciate you, jill, and I just think it's a real blessing to have met you. I can't wait to work with you.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to get you integrated with this new business I'm doing, which I'll talk about later. And, yeah, thank you so much for sharing your time. Did we miss anything? I think we got a pretty good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I knew that you and I would get talking. We would. I don't know where we're. I'm. I can't wait to listen to the at the podcast. It's going to be uh. You know I think working with you uh is going to be fantastic. You know, because, again, I specialize in this. I I want to know more about peptides and and different you know different supplements. You know I I just started taking his supplements and I want to know why my heart rate. Now I have a hard time getting zone two creatine. You know creatine? I thought creatine was for for power, but why is it? It's fueling, it's putting water inside my muscle cells and maybe it's calming everything down. But let's just, I I've never researched it yet, but something I want to actually uh reach out to you and go wow, I'm having a hard time I I have to run so much faster now to be in zone two yeah, it sounds like you're getting some efficiency out of that.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll definitely. We'll definitely get a talk and we'll probably have you back on at some point in time, and I really appreciate it and for everyone out there that's listening, thank you so much for tuning into the Steve McCain podcast and you can find everything you want. On Jill, how do you say, how do you say, your last name?
Speaker 2:Jill, essiam, essiam, okay, so I don't want to pronounce the D-R-E, and you know what? Yeah, I don't even know if I say it correctly.
Speaker 1:Well then, that's good Cause. Then you won't be too hard on people that butcher it. But go to his website, o2maxca, and check him out and try his protocol. Or, if you have questions, reach out to him on LinkedIn. I'll include links to every single thing in the show notes. We'll make it to stephenmccaincom backslash, vo2max and Jill. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Stephen.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. I look forward to more chats together.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thanks everyone for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next one. Cheers.