Sports Science Dudes

Episode 91 - Katie Vasenina PhD - Tennis, Training, Collagen, and Veganism

• Jose Antonio PhD

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Dr. Katie Vasenina shares her journey from standout tennis player to sports scientist, offering unique insights on sport-specific training methodologies and nutritional interventions for athletes. Her research challenges conventional wisdom about asymmetrical training, collagen supplementation effectiveness, and dietary approaches for optimal recovery and performance.

• Former Division I tennis player who specialized in sport-specific training
• Completed her PhD studying various topics including collagen supplementation and muscle damage recovery
• Found early sport specialization (before age 9) correlates with increased injury rates
• Discovered traditional strength coaches often apply inappropriate training methods to tennis players
• Researched collagen supplementation, finding it ineffective for muscle recovery but potentially beneficial for tendons
• Conducted innovative study comparing vegan vs omnivore diets for muscle damage recovery
• Found no performance differences between diet groups when protein intake was equated (1.4-1.5g/kg)
• Currently training for a 50km ultra obstacle race (not sure she should do it!)
• Starting a new position at the University of Tampa in August 2024
• Planning future research on collagen supplementation with vitamin C for tendon health

Catch Dr. Vasenina's presentation "Collagen Doesn't Do Sh*t, Except When It Does" at the ISSN conference in Delray Beach, June 23-25.


Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Sports Science Dudes. I'm your host, Dr Jose Antonio. With me today is my special guest, Katie Bassanina. I hope I'm pronouncing your name right, Katie. I found some interesting things about you. You were a standout player at University of South Florida and apparently you were the team's number one singles player, earning recognitions all Big East in 2011 and 2012. So wow, over a decade ago. So you're quite the tennis stud. I also did not know, or maybe you told me that you had trained a bit in Spain and Australia.

Speaker 2:

I did yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's pretty interesting, I mean. So you really moved around. For those of you who don't know Katie, she is from Moldova, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, the USSR, and I think it gained independence in 1991. You were born in 1992.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I did.

Speaker 1:

You could have been technically from the USSR, but I guess now you're Moldovan.

Speaker 2:

I could have. Yeah, I technically still have a birth certificate that says USSR in it, because they didn't have any new ones. They said Moldova.

Speaker 1:

Wow, you could have been part of the evil Soviet empire.

Speaker 2:

Oh, but academically.

Speaker 1:

So you are a newly minted PhD. I guess when are you officially graduating from the University of Central Florida?

Speaker 2:

So I think the official walk and the hooting ceremony is the very beginning of May. But I finished all the requirements for the PhD program I've defended, all the papers have been signed, so we are pretty- so you're done, done, you're done, done.

Speaker 1:

You don't even have to walk if you don't want to walk or get hooded, and all that fun stuff.

Speaker 2:

No, no, no, I have to walk. That's like an important part, right? I want Dr fakura to like do that ceremony. Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure he's not a fan of it and he would rather skip it.

Speaker 1:

No, you know what? Anyone who gets a phd, the hooding ceremony actually is really cool. Um, I don't know why anyone would skip it, but technically, if you had to move back to moldova, like tomorrow, you have a phd so that's a good point so, yeah, your phd was under dr david fakura at university central florida.

Speaker 1:

You also got your master's um at university south florida in that's a good point. So, yeah, your PhD was under Dr David Fukuda at University of Central Florida. You also got your master's at University of South Florida. In fact, you got two masters, which I find really interesting Master's in exercise science and master of arts in global sustainability Don't know what the hell that is and your bachelor of arts wasn't even in a science, which makes your journey a little different because you weren't a science major. Which makes your journey a little different because you weren't a science major. So was there a lot of catch up for you, particularly within your master's degree, that you had to learn, basically the language of science, which is its own language?

Speaker 2:

I would say a decent amount. I took a lot of science classes in my undergrad. So I took a lot of nutrition and some exercise science, the basic classes, but I mostly cared about tennis. So, whatever major I was kind of suggested to go, I literally went to my advisors and I was like I don't care about academia, I just want to be really good at tennis. So can you tell me what major I should do and enhance the master's? Because I finished my undergrad in three years and I still had eligibility left. So I was like, okay, which master should I go for? And they were like well, this one does not have a GRE requirement, so you should try for it. And I was like, sounds great.

Speaker 2:

So it was kind of a different program from environmental science. So we did a lot of like water sustainability and tourism and things like that, yeah. And then I actually took some time. I coached as a division one coach and I realized that I do have a lot of interest and passion in science and I would love to continue the journey. But obviously I need to get more education before I can start the PhD. So I had to go all the way back and get the second master's now you coached.

Speaker 1:

Uh, you said d1 tennis. Yeah, what years were those?

Speaker 2:

uh, 2015 through 2018. So yeah, I was a coach years that's a long time now.

Speaker 1:

let me ask you this I think tennis and the fight sports are the hardest sports to train for for a number of reasons. Now, when you coached, were you coaching the skills part of tennis, or strength and conditioning, or or both? Or do they have their own strength and conditioning coaches and you just do the, the actual tennis coaching?

Speaker 2:

They did so. Yeah, so they had their own strength and conditioning coach for lifting. We did a lot of stuff kind of like on the tennis court and then we did the conditioning part for the tennis court as well, because the movements are so different than if you're just a CSCS certified strength and conditioning coach. You wouldn't necessarily know that unless you specifically learn those skills and those movement on the tennis court. Um, so yeah, we were coaching the skill part, not necessarily as much skill skill part, because those tennis players were really good. They will all. They all wear d1 athletes. So we just had to work on kind of making them better at strategy, making them more consistent and just a little bit faster on the tennis court.

Speaker 1:

Okay, In college tennis do the men and women play different number of sets? Is it best out of three? Do men play more sets or is it the same?

Speaker 2:

Nope, it's the same. The only time when they play more sets is during those four big tournaments. So you have the Grand Slams right the French Open, us Open, australian Open and Wimbledon. So during those tournaments, men play three out of five sets. So you need to win three sets to win the whole match, and women play two out of three.

Speaker 1:

Oh, I meant at the college level. Is it different?

Speaker 2:

No, it's the same.

Speaker 1:

So it's best out of three sets. So you win two sets.

Speaker 2:

Exactly Now what?

Speaker 1:

do you think, since, since you're a tennis, I guess you're a tennis expert and you're a tennis?

Speaker 2:

athlete Used to be.

Speaker 1:

Well up here, you know how to do it. Maybe your body doesn't respond, Sort of what happens when you get older you know how to do it, your body just doesn't want to do it. But what do you think? And I'm sorry, I want to get into a little bit of sports nutrition, but I find training very interesting. So, when it comes to tennis, what do you think if you get the average strength and conditioning coach or professional? Yeah, what would be the most common mistake they would have, if they have any, in regards to tennis training? Mainly because, let's say, you play three sets, let's say you split the first two and then you have to play a third set, so that'll take what two?

Speaker 2:

hours roughly.

Speaker 1:

What would that?

Speaker 2:

be, yeah, like an hour and a half. An hour and a half, I would say, through three hours is probably the typical time frame.

Speaker 1:

Okay, would you or coaches you work with, would you recommend or not recommend steady state cardio versus doing HIIT training versus doing sprint interval training? I mean, obviously there's got to be a lot of change of direction training. So what's your view on those kinds of training?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so for tennis specifically, you don't really need to do as much steady state cardio. You do need it occasionally just for the overall endurance. But the points are so short and majority of the point is literally sprinting to the ball and accelerating it as hard as you can, right, and then you have a period of rest between the points, so you get a certain number of seconds and then you play two games, which doesn't even take that long. Okay, let's say you're going to juice, you're playing, you know like add in or add out, that will take a little bit. But let's say it's 10 minutes, then you switch sides and you're literally sitting down for two minutes.

Speaker 2:

So you have so much rest time while playing tennis that hit training and sprinting and focusing on, you know, sprinting, stopping and being able to do your best and then recover and then do the sprint again during training is kind of the biggest part. And a lot of times the strength and conditioning coaches in tennis they don't in not specifically in tennis, but in college they don't really understand that. And same thing with lifting as well. When I was in college my back actually got really injured and that's from lifting or tennis from lifting.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we had the, the trainer, the coach, who was working with the football team and he didn't really know much about tennis, so we would do very heavy movements right after tennis practice. He had us bend our backs and like throw the heavy balls explosively, which would have been good if you weren't doing that right after tennis practice and if you weren't loading it as heavy as you could wait, so you're talking about doing a bilateral, uh, two-handed throw with a, with a medicine ball or a weighted ball yeah, like a very heavy weight and that's because in tennis you do these sort of bilateral actions.

Speaker 1:

Right, exactly, okay. Yeah, that doesn't make sense because obviously tennis is unilateral. You're only using one side. Even if you do a two handed backhand, you're still. It's still. You're rotating one way or the other, you're not doing anything where you're lifting, I mean, who does that? I guess in soccer? I mean that might be it, that's it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, he was doing that for like football training. So I'm not even sure what the point of that was, because in tennis you only would use one arm right and then you would just put it behind your back bend a little bit depending on the type of the serve, but now my back doesn't really bend at all from that training well, I must you you probably very good at rotating one way right from your serve because you're right-handed, so you're probably rotating right to left quite a bit yeah, well now it doesn't rotate.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it doesn't bend or rotate, it just stays straight you know a lot of the strength coaches are, not just in tennis but in general when they they want, and I see this with baseball and softball there's almost always asymmetry between one side or the other, because you tend to be rotating only one way. So if you're a right-handed batter, you're swinging right to left. If you're a golfer, you're swinging the club. You know one way, only one way, not the other. So there's always going to be an imbalance. Did they ever tell you that you need to balance those asymmetries? Because if you're right-handed, you tend to be swinging one way a lot more because you're served, and I always. I mean my view is you should be asymmetrical because the game is asymmetrical.

Speaker 1:

What were you taught about that?

Speaker 2:

yeah, and that's a good question. So what was really interesting? That when I trained in Moldova, in Australia, in in Spain, we never did lifting. Majority of our training was functional. So we would use resistance bands and sprinting and just stuff on the tennis court, kind of repeating the motions that you would on the tennis court with a heavier racket, right. So you would just put some weights on the racket and you would swing your forehands and your backhands and your serve to kind of work on the more functional part of it.

Speaker 2:

Then the training became a little bit more focused on getting rid of those asymmetries here, because we were training bilaterally all the time. But it's really interesting that you bring up this topic because initially when I joined the PhD program, I was really interested in tennis and we did a study which was just a survey-based study. But we wanted to see how asymmetry and how tennis, what effect it had on quality of life following retirement. And yes, it's a survey-based study, right. So you can kind of look at the results and be like, okay, how much information did you actually get from these people?

Speaker 1:

But we had these are men and women after their careers ended. Exactly Okay.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so they were all either division one or former professional tennis players. The oldest guy that we had was 79. I'm not sure how much he remembered from his tennis years, but we looked at when those people specialized in tennis. Right, and by specialized I mean just played tennis and not other sports, because here in America it's common to grow up and play multiple sports. For example, you would play tennis and soccer, which kind of develops you, not in such an asymmetrical way.

Speaker 2:

But in Europe, specifically in Eastern Europe, the parents would sell their houses or their apartments to invest money in their kids, because that was their future, not just the kid's future, and they would start to fully just immerse in one sport at the age of like five or six. And what was interesting is that people who specialized just in tennis before the age of nine had a lot more pain and a lot more injuries that they experienced during their career and then following their retirement from sport, basically doing their daily activities, just moving around, walking around, doing things right. We use the validated questionnaires that were used before from CDC and like the Oslo Trauma Center, and people who specialize later than the age of nine specifically around the age of 11, had a lot less pain and less injuries. Isn't that interesting in terms of?

Speaker 1:

Were the people who specialize early? Were they better tennis players?

Speaker 2:

No, they weren't, and that's what I was thinking too, because that was the whole case for it. Right, that if you specialize so early, you have a lot more time, you become a better tennis player, right. But it's possible that they had more injuries than some other people and their bodies developed a lot, a lot more asymmetrically than other people. Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 1:

Um, and these were an equal mix of men and women. Was there a sex difference in terms of quality of life or good question.

Speaker 2:

We didn't look at that. We had too little of a simple size to separate that into.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'm wondering also if the ones who had more issues were also ones that just tended to quit exercising as they got older. Like enough of this training.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to do this anymore, but possibly that's not something that we also looked at, so yeah we had a lot of gaps in that study. But it was just kind of like an interesting thing to see because there's a paper that came out on asymmetry and it was basically looking at how asymmetry is associated with the number of injuries, specifically in tennis and I think it was baseball or something else. The paper came out like seven or six years ago and they saw that asymmetry is highly associated with a number of injuries.

Speaker 1:

Which is interesting because a lot of sports are just asymmetrical by their very nature. So is it the asymmetry or is it the fact that you're in a competitive sport Exactly, and you can't separate it Really?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and sports are considered such a great thing, unless you, until you get to a professional level, and then maybe it's not that great for your body, to be honest.

Speaker 1:

Right, right, hey, let's switch. I want to talk a little bit about nutrition. I mean, you just finished your PhD. But two topics. One you'll be giving a talk at the ISSN conference on collagen.

Speaker 2:

My favorite topic of the topic that you came up with, the title.

Speaker 1:

But hold on, that thought I want you to you. Earlier did a study and I hope I'm saying the name right on the microalgae supplement called P-Lib. Is that it, Mm-hmm? Is that how you say it, P-Liv?

Speaker 2:

I think so.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and supposedly I don't know what the mechanism would be, that it may or may not have affected markers of muscle damage, and I think you guys, I think you already presented this at ISSN. I don't know if it's fully published yet. What's the latest on it?

Speaker 2:

Well, we're not publishing it.

Speaker 1:

Oh, you're not. Well, what did you find? We found absolutely nothing so what would be the theoretical basis? How about that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the idea behind it was that it's kind of similar to spirulina, right or some other like supplements that have the antioxidants. So hypothesis with P-LIV was that it could reduce the oxidative stress, thereby lowering muscle damage, improving mitochondrial efficiency, leading potentially to increase VO2 max. That was also their thought. That was based on one mechanistical study on rats and would improve the endurance, endurance performance how was um?

Speaker 1:

how was muscle damage induced? What was the protocol?

Speaker 2:

uh, so it was my favorite one um downhill running, so we had participants wait, I gotta stop you there.

Speaker 1:

Did you try the protocol on?

Speaker 2:

yourself. I knew you were gonna ask me. No, I did not, but why?

Speaker 1:

not. Why didn't you, Katie?

Speaker 2:

Because I mean, it looked incredible. I just had other people try it, but now they're trying to make me do this protocol before I leave UCF.

Speaker 1:

I think you should because it looked first of all, it's got to be painful as hell Describe to the audience what you had them do, because it's I'm like holy crap, that's, that's hard yeah, so initially we tested their vo2 max and we got their top speed.

Speaker 2:

Then we took that speed and we took 70 percent of that and we had a treadmill that reversed the belt. So we put the treadmill at 15 percent decline and we had participants run for 30 minutes at 70 percent of their top speed at VO2 max.

Speaker 1:

Wait, what was the decline? You said 15%, 15%.

Speaker 2:

You know that's a lot. That was a lot.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I mean, that's a lot lot. That's not a little bit, that's a lot lot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I actually had one participant in my other study, the vegan study, who did the protocol and he was a marathon runner and he was a coach as well and he finished the protocol and he was so angry. The next day he said that he wanted to run a downhill marathon. Apparently it was somewhere and he decided not to do it because of this study.

Speaker 1:

Well, yeah, that I mean a lot of people. Like when people go hiking, they you know, if you're hiking up a hill or mountain it's always difficult metabolically. But I always tell people it's the downhill that'll kill you. You might think, okay, metabolically it's easier, but it'll wreck skeletal muscles. So anytime you do these downhill protocols I'm surprised no one.

Speaker 2:

No one got rhabdo or maybe some somewhere I don't think so, but maybe they were a little bit close. But here's what we did, and that was in our protocol too. If it was very challenging for them, we decreased the speed a little bit and these are runners.

Speaker 1:

These are not fake runners.

Speaker 2:

These are real runners they were recreationally trained, so they were possibly fake. That's why we had a little like a thing that was holding them up and they wouldn't fall Exactly Kind of like a leash in a way. Yeah, so if they fell the treadmill would stop and they would just like hang in the air it was torture.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I think. I think Brandy should put you on that protocol and video it and see what you're like the next day.

Speaker 2:

She's been trying to do that. I'm not a fan of it. She literally was like we need to have a watching party with Pops.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

And then Katie is going to run downhill.

Speaker 1:

It should be an Instagram post.

Speaker 2:

Should it? I don't think so.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's switch topics.

Speaker 2:

Collagen, describe to the audience what you're going to cover at the isis and conference, and it's in delray beach, june 23 25 yeah, so the title of my, of my topic, which I don't exactly remember, but it's something like collagen doesn't do shit, um, except when it does.

Speaker 1:

Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, yeah, so collagen does work potentially for some things, but it definitely doesn't do anything for things like muscle. So if you see a collagen supplement on the shelves somewhere in the store and it says that it helps with muscle recovery, it means that they did absolutely no research, because it doesn't really do anything with muscle recovery and there is not even a mechanistical reason of why it would.

Speaker 1:

Now would it matter if it's protein or peptides?

Speaker 2:

That's a good question. Okay, so whole collagen protein gives you a more sustained release of amino acids, right? And then peptides they are already broken down. So the idea behind let's say, peptides is that you have the amino acids acutely and you would get a whole influx of them, but if you take the whole protein you will have a more sustained release of them. Does it really make a difference? I would say for muscle no, because still the same pathway, but for tendons and ligaments, great question. I don't really have an answer for you because some studies show that when you consume collagen protein for a prolonged period of time, you might have a better result, specifically when combined with vitamin C, and some studies show that you don't.

Speaker 1:

What about clinical endpoints that matter, like pain, joint pain? There's I think I forget her name. She's at University of Arkansas Medical Center and I think she did a nine month supplementation study on collagen. I don't know if it was protein or peptides, yeah, but I think she found some a decrement or decrease in joint pain, if I recall.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that's. That's interesting. Specifically when it comes to acute response, I don't think there is a mechanism of why collagen would help with acute pain. But when you're talking about longer supplementation, collagen might have a positive effect on joint and tendon health. So it's possible that not specifically the pain but how the joints and tendons feel might have a result on how individuals are perceiving pain. Right, so they might just have stronger joints or stronger tendons, because I wouldn't think that, based on the information and data out there, that collagen specifically has an influence on the pain pathway.

Speaker 1:

Right, right Interesting. You also did an interesting study comparing vegan and omnivore diet.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and tell the audience what you found with that.

Speaker 1:

Describe the methodology and then the results.

Speaker 2:

Okay, well, that was probably one of my favorite and one of my hated study. Did you say?

Speaker 1:

favorite and hated.

Speaker 2:

Favorite and hated at the same time. I didn't think that would be possible, but apparently it is. So we recruited initially or we wanted to recruit 10 vegans and 10 omnivores and I thought it was so easy to get all of those vegans. I would go to the classrooms and I was like, hey, raise a hand if you're a vegan. And then nobody would raise a hand and I was like, okay, cool, we'll still. We still need omnivores for the study. So I had to join numerous Facebook groups looking for vegans. I literally would sounds kind of bad, but I would stalk people on Instagram. I would look up their handles. I was like vegan location, orlando, and I would message those people. So I found this guy. His handle is bearded vegan, orlando, or Orlando bearded vegan, or something interesting. Okay, orlandobeardedvegan, or something.

Speaker 1:

Interesting Okay.

Speaker 2:

And he had a beard. He was vegan, he lived in Orlando and he reposted my study a couple of times in his story, so he got us a couple of participants. So we even went to the vegan fest and we found zero vegans there. Apparently, a lot of vegetarians like to go to vegan fast and try vegan food a lot of omnivores, but not vegans.

Speaker 1:

So it was Okay, wait, stop there. So the vegetarians are still consuming milk, right?

Speaker 2:

They are yeah.

Speaker 1:

And vegans, it's zero animal products.

Speaker 2:

We weren't specific on honey because it's more of an ethical thing. Some vegans think that honey is an animal product, some vegans think that it's okay to have honey. So that wasn't something that we were looking at. We just wanted them to consume no dairy, no animal products, just purely plant-based products. I had some participants who came and they were like I am a vegan, I just have dairy once a month, and I was like sorry, you're not a vegan. So, yeah, we had 10 and 10.

Speaker 2:

We did the study during the hurricane season so I lost five participants due to the hurricane because they did the downhill running protocol. They were doing their post-testing and the hurricane would hit. So university was closed down and I would lose the participants because I couldn't have them come back because of the repeated bout effect. So it was a very, very long and challenging study but we ended up getting 10 vegans, 10 omnivores. We had a significant difference in age, 10 omnivores. We had a significant difference in age.

Speaker 2:

Vegans were about 10 years older than omnivores because initially we were kind of just recruiting the omnivores but we didn't think that we would have trouble getting vegans from college, which we did. We got only one college vegan student, which was also interesting, because I saw some studies that show that vegans, or people, tend to go vegan a little bit later in life because that's more of a conscious choice that they make. And it can be a little bit more expensive if you're buying 45 meats or tofu or things like that. So what was interesting? We did not control for their diet, we just had them continue. Whatever they were eating. We were writing down the diet and there was no difference in their protein intake. So vegans that's surprising. I know I was shocked. I was not expecting that.

Speaker 1:

Do you remember what their protein intake was?

Speaker 2:

grams per kilo 1.4 for veg vegans, 1.5 for omnivores that surprises me that vegans would be that high right.

Speaker 1:

What are they?

Speaker 2:

eating. Well, they were eating a lot a lot of tofu, a lot of soy product, and that was something very interesting too. Right, because what if you take somebody who's not looking at their protein intake? Would that actually make a difference? Because in our study they ran downhill. We did the post-testing. Yes, there was muscle damage, but we saw no difference between the groups and our thought was okay, maybe it's because of the protein intake, because their protein intake was not significantly different, so maybe acutely that did not affect it long term. I'm not really sure, and that's something that I'm really interested in as well. Right, because there is.

Speaker 1:

This was the same downhill protocol that you used prior yeah, yeah, that was our were these trained runners or semi-trained?

Speaker 2:

jolly joggers. They were recreationally trained as well, but they were actually a little bit more trained, in my opinion, than people from the Peel Leaf study two training sessions where we had them run for 30 minutes at 70% of their VA2 max, but on the flat treadmill just to see if they're able to do it, and a couple of people dropped out because they were not able to do it, which we didn't have in P-Leave.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it'd be interesting to see if. How would that would be affected long-term, because I even think 1.4, even 1.5 grams per kilo isn't really that high. So in essence, both groups aren't that high to begin with, so they're both going to have similar results. My guess is an interesting comparison would be someone who's 1.4 versus someone who's 2.4 grams per kilo.

Speaker 2:

In terms of vegans.

Speaker 1:

In terms of well, yeah, in terms of protein intake, and let's say they terms of vegans. In terms of well, yeah, in terms of protein intake, and let's say they're just vegans. But apparently it's hard as hell to get vegans to volunteer for a study.

Speaker 2:

So, oh my gosh, I'm never doing that again. But 1.4 and 2.2 for for omnivores would actually be really interesting using a similar protocol and to see how they would recover. But you know it's interesting. There is another study that came out, I would say, like two years ago or three years ago, and they looked at muscle growth between vegans and omnivores. They controlled for their protein intake. It was 1.8 grams per kilogram of body weight between the vegan and the omnivore group and then they just did resistance training sessions throughout 12 weeks and there was no difference between the groups in terms of muscle growth. They both grew, but there was a little bit of a trend towards the Omnivore group, right, and that was a 12-week study. So that's something interesting because I feel like, okay, acutely looks like as long as the protein intake is adequate, it might not make a difference, but doesn't make a difference long-term and that's something that I would really want to know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, long-term, it's hard to do those studies because it'll take months or years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and how are you going to keep those participants right?

Speaker 1:

Right, hey, you're training for a 50 kilometer race, aren't you Running race?

Speaker 2:

I thought you were going to forget about it. Yes, when is it? Um, it's exactly in two months, on may 17th okay, and what's? Your training now.

Speaker 1:

I gotta know what your training is like. 50 okay for people who can't do the conversion. 50 kilometers is how many miles. You could probably do it in your head. 30 miles.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so it's longer than a full length marathon. So you're not just running a marathon, you're running a marathon plus you know a few.

Speaker 1:

You can probably do it in your head 30 miles, so it's longer than a full length marathon. So you're not just running a marathon, You're running a marathon plus you know a few more miles.

Speaker 2:

So here's the thing. It's a little bit easier because it's actually broken down right. There are a bunch of obstacles, so it's not like you're running for 30 miles straight. You're running and then you're just hanging out, you're doing a challenge, an obstacle, and you just keep running.

Speaker 1:

But you still got to run 30 miles.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

Okay, how many miles a week are you running now?

Speaker 2:

Ah shoot.

Speaker 1:

Well, come on, be honest, I want to know how many miles a week average. Come on about 20, okay so you're not. You're not even exceeding the number of miles of the race no, I'm not okay, what do you project?

Speaker 2:

your time will be in a 30 mile race here's the thing five hours I was thinking the other day whether I should actually do it or not, but then it was like I don't want to pay dr an Antonio, what was that? A hundred dollars that we're bad on? So I decided I have to do it. But I'm honestly thinking because I did a half marathon Spartan race a year and a half ago and I finished it in three and a half hours and typically my no, the Spartan race.

Speaker 1:

Well, I know, but still.

Speaker 2:

With the obstacles.

Speaker 1:

I know but three and a half hours for a half marathon.

Speaker 2:

Well, when I ran a straight half marathon, my time is like 1.49. So the obstacles were what like two hours on top of that right? So I'm thinking honestly, probably 10 hours.

Speaker 1:

Do you want to do something for 10 hours?

Speaker 2:

I really don, but I can't back up now. I can't. I can't back off because we're already we're about a hundred dollars already on it well, you just pay me the hundred and just um.

Speaker 1:

You know you're any. Well, technically, you're doing an ultra distance event well, it's called an ultra spartan race right and, in a way, because you're not racing to win, you're just racing to finish. So technically you're not even racing, you're just doing something I can technically just walk you could now the. The interesting thing about these ultra distance events is, in a way, it's I was about to say it's the easiest thing to train for, because you're not trying to win, you're just trying to finish yeah so what's the key to doing something?

Speaker 1:

did you see? It'll take you 10 hours. Is that what you? Said that's what I'm thinking okay, the key to me is that you got to be fed. You got to learn how to eat over the 10 hour period while you're moving. So teaching yourself how to finding something that doesn't upset your stomach is really what you should be doing, and you should be doing volume like crazy amounts of volume like volume like forget the skydiving. Don't play tennis, don't even lift, just go out there and run, and it can be slow running.

Speaker 2:

For how long, jesus? How many hours?

Speaker 1:

like hours and hours like go on an easy two-hour run and then maybe you know two hours, yeah, yes, okay, okay, think about this okay, you've got basically eight weeks, and the last week is a taper anyway, so really at seven weeks, yeah the three or four weeks prior to the race you should be going out on very easy three or four hour run walks continuously that's awful.

Speaker 2:

The longest one I've done so far was an hour and 40 minutes, and it wasn't too hard.

Speaker 1:

It actually felt pretty good an hour and 40 is nothing. 10 miles I know 100 of a race. You got to double that. So make it an hour and 40 times two. Or what some people do is they'll do, let's say, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening, so they split it up. The thing is, your body has to get used to just moving for that long and I tell you what your brain you're going gonna hate. Life is what you're gonna do yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 1:

I'm I'm honestly regretting it okay, I mean, you get back out of it.

Speaker 2:

You get back out of it I mean it's no, no, no, it's a hundred dollars you're gonna lose because I think your body's gonna quit on you it's already trying to yeah, see lately it's it's already not very happy with some things. Okay, you know what? Two, two hours I can do two hours. I'll send you a screenshot of a two-hour run today. Oh, okay, yeah, I want to see that. I want to see that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, hey, one last thing Sorry, I'm giving you a hard time about the race that I don't. I did yeah and when do you start?

Speaker 2:

uh, so the start date is 15th of August. I am super excited, so it's it was my top choice. And what was really hard during this process and people who I kind of in the process of searching for jobs will understand me is that the jobs they get posted, you know, starting in the summer, a year before right, and then you see multiple jobs. You apply, you go for interviews and then you might get the offer from a great place, but it doesn't feel like the right fit, but you don't have any other offers at the time. So what do you do? You have a mental breakdown, you get a lot of advice and you hope that there is something better.

Speaker 2:

So the most challenging part about this process was saying no to some places that might've been the right fit, but I'm so excited that I did that, and then I kind of waited for the right thing. So, yeah, I got a position in human performance at University of Tampa and I am so excited. I already have been asked if I could teach anatomy. I said that I would love to, but if they have a different class, I would prefer to teach that. So they were like okay, you don't have to teach anatomy your first year so yeah, because anatomy I mean.

Speaker 1:

Schools are always looking for anatomy instructors, because no one knows anatomy. So what, what will they? Will they have you teaching three classes per semester?

Speaker 2:

four classes or what.

Speaker 1:

What do you think they'll be?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so they kind of told me. So it's going to be two sections of introduction to exercise science, then one section of um, testing and performance, or I forgot what they call it. It's kind of like the lab kinesiology tests and measurements kind of thing, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

And then the last one they're still thinking on they wanted to give me anatomy, but now they probably will give me some adult fitness class or something like that. Um, so, just four classes and then I probably will start writing some, some irbs in the summer to start some studies probably have any studies in mind that you might be working on.

Speaker 1:

I guess that would be fall of this year, winter of 2026 yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

First of all, the collagen study, right, because what we saw is we were giving people like 60 grams of collagen and we had placebo, we had the control group and we saw some positive changes in Achilles tendon thickness following the muscle damaging protocol and supplementation.

Speaker 2:

We saw no changes in muscle or muscle stiffness or muscle size. So it's possible that collagen might have a positive effect on Achilles tendon remodeling acutely following muscle damage. But we did not supplement with vitamin C. So I would like to repeat the study and to add vitamin C and then see if that's going to make a difference, because vitamin C is literally what makes the collagen protein synthesis work and we wanted to have more of a generalized effect, right? Because if somebody goes to the store and buys collagen protein powder, they will not know that they need to supplement with vitamin C. So we initially wanted to see if that's going to work. Plus, vitamin C has the antioxidants which have been shown to help with muscle damage. So we kind of wanted to avoid that. But now I would like to repeat the study with vitamin C. And then I have some some like acute studies in mind with myotone, the device that we use to measure muscle stiffness and decrement and things like that on the muscle.

Speaker 1:

Will you be the primary person doing sports, nutrition type work at Tampa?

Speaker 2:

yeah, they have, I think, one more guy who does that, but I don't think he does kind of like research on that. Um, because they have Dr D'Souza, who does hypertrophy stuff. Then they have Dr Ann I'm not great at pronouncing his last name, so we'll just go with that. He does sports science, and then they will have me, who's going to be doing more supplement stuff?

Speaker 1:

Wow, well, that's gotta be exciting and I know you well. I know in your job search, how, how, what's the word should I use? You were, you were going crazy trying to decide what to do, because it's kind of. It is a weird process because you could be offered a job that might be your second choice. It might be a great choice, but you don't know if you want to take it.

Speaker 1:

But it also might be your only choice, but you don't know that, so there is something about it. You know I be your only choice, but you don't know that, so there is something about it. You know I tell people getting their any newly minted PhD you'll get a job somewhere. You just got to decide.

Speaker 1:

If you want to limit your choices Now, I would say staying in Florida is better than going anywhere else, so that you know, I doubt you'd want to live in Montana or Idaho, you know freezing your butt off for like six months out of the year.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, or in a city with what? 3000 people who offered a job, which would have been great, but I probably would have been going crazy, even more crazy. You probably would be getting a lot more text than you do now.

Speaker 1:

Wow, 3000.

Speaker 2:

That's tiny, that's like that, would be like a small town in iowa I know they took me on the walk to downtown and they were like we're going to walk downtown. And I was like what do you mean we're gonna walk? And they were like, oh, it's a seven minute walk. I thought like a 20 30 minute drive to downtown but, it was such a small city.

Speaker 1:

I mean that could be kind of cute for a little while, and then after a while you probably just go crazy after a while, after, like, probably a month okay. Well, katie, hey, it's been nice having you on the sports science dudes. Um, appreciate your time and certainly you know I wish you good luck in tampa and hopefully you can. You know we need to work on getting an ISSN University Tampa workshop at your university that would be really cool.

Speaker 2:

Okay, love the idea.