Sports Science Dudes

Episode 98 - From Navy SEAL to PhD: Blaine Lints' Journey

• Jose Antonio PhD

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Dr. Blaine Lints shares his extraordinary journey from teenage ultra-endurance athlete to Navy SEAL to exercise science PhD, offering unique insights on human performance optimization and resilience. His remarkable background includes completing 100 miles in 18 hours at age 16, surviving the grueling SEAL Hell Week, breaking the SEAL deadlift record, and conducting groundbreaking research on ketone supplementation for cognitive performance.

• Started endurance sports at age 12-13, completing his first half Ironman at 14
• Ran 100 miles in 18.5 hours during a 24-hour run at age 16
• Enlisted in the Navy at 18 and became one of only 11 original members to complete SEAL training in his class
• Describes Hell Week as a 125-hour ordeal with minimal sleep and constant physical activity
• Broke the SEAL deadlift record during his service
• Earned his PhD researching ketone monoesters for mitigating cognitive impairment during hyperthermia
• Suggests Zone 2 training is most valuable for athletes training 15+ hours weekly
• Plans to continue researching interventions for brain injuries in tactical populations

Listen to our podcast for more fascinating discussions with experts in sports science and human performance optimization.


Jose Antonio PhD:

Welcome to the Sports Science Podcast. I'm your host, dr Jose Antonio, and my special guest today probably has the most unique background of anyone with a PhD in our field. It is Dr Blaine Lintz, and actually your bio is actually quite extensive and you do a lot of things that are very unique in terms of Well, first of all, you enlisted in the Navy in 2011, at the age of 18. I want to know, or tell the audience sort of why you made that decision, because not every person thinks about enlisting in the Navy. You graduated from SEAL qualification training in 2013, and you completed two overseas deployments to the Middle East in support of counterterrorism contingency operations and Operation Inherent Resolve. I'm not sure how much you could tell us about that.

Jose Antonio PhD:

However, from an exercise science standpoint, I think when Dr Sean Arndt, who was your PhD advisor, he had described you as you made a transition from distance running as a teenager and then you joined SEAL Team 5.

Jose Antonio PhD:

And then later you became a pro triathlete and PhD student. But you also do quite a bit of strength training, which for most people, if they want to be good at something, it's sort of like okay, do you want to be an endurance athlete or do you want to be a strength power athlete or kind of mediocre at both, although you seem to be pretty good at both. So the first question I have is when people hear SEAL Team 6, seal Team 5, or SEALs in general, they're always mystified by number one how difficult that training is. So for people who are not in the service I never was in the service you see videos of how they train you and I've always wondered what are the characteristics that allow those that make it versus those that, for lack of a better term, quit? And if you now, having a PhD in exercise science, what would you do different in terms of training warfighters? That's different than what's being done now? I know that's a lot of questions in one, but sort of take it away, blaine.

Blaine Lints PhD:

All right, yeah, let's start with the. Actually Sorry, could you just rehash the first, the first part, because I had some thoughts with it and then I got a little sidetracked.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Well, the first part is you sort of transition from distance running to really sealed training, which is an entire world unto itself. And then you know pro triathlete. But you also do a lot of strength stuff. I mean, you're not, you're pretty strong, so on those things, at least from a training standpoint, tend to be somewhat mutually exclusive.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah, so they are definitely harder to do together than independently, obviously. Right, if everyone was able to do both, they probably would be better at both of them. I think a lot of what I did and was able to do was kind of dependent on the fact that I started out very young, I mean, you know relatively, but I think when I was around 12, 13, I started getting into like really high endurance sort of stuff. I started with cycling. I noticed I had a knack for it, picked it up pretty quickly and then kind of picked up swimming again in high school, because I swam when I was younger and then started running um and you know, naturally triathlon was going to be the the transition there and I started doing okay at um at triathlons and eventually, when I was 14 and 15, did two half ironmans and my first one was five hours and 37 minutes and that was when I was still like I was pretty chunky when I did that and that's a respectable half Ironman time, and the next year I got a little bit more into it and then I did that one in 450.

Blaine Lints PhD:

And I kind of saw that moving in the direction of me being able to turn pro in the next couple of years, once I turned 18. And I think that would have been a reasonable goal, but I kind of felt like my progress is stalling a little bit. I wasn't going to be a D1 runner or anything like that, and so I was like, what can I be the best at right now? And so then I was like, okay, ultra distance running, because that's, that's safe, like as far as. Like I'm not going to fall off a bike from riding for 48 hours and falling asleep or getting hit by a car, um, and so really, it's just, you know, is your body going to hold up and can you push yourself? Um, and so that was pretty, pretty enjoyable to get into for a while. I ended up doing, um, a 24 hour run when I was 16 around the university Washington track and I ran a hundred miles in 18 hours.

Jose Antonio PhD:

And how much did you weigh at the time? What was your body weight?

Blaine Lints PhD:

Okay, so interesting, when I, when I was my best at multi-sport um so triathlon and uh, some other multi-sport racing that I did, that was, you know, eight plus hour races I was about 510 and 140 250 pounds. But actually when I did that 24 hour run and I ran the 100 miles in 18 and a half hours, I believe I was closer to 175. So I wasn't as lean anymore. I had started strength training a little bit more as part of it. But while I was doing that I, you know, was then just looking to the next challenge. So before I had even done the 24-hour run, I learned about Navy SEALs and I heard that it's the hardest training in the world. So I was like I have to do that because no one's going to call me a loser if I go.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Well, not many people have ever thought of doing a 24-hour run, I mean, particularly at your age. I mean most of the ultra endurance people, at least that I've met, tend to be older. They do it because, okay, they've lost a step, they're not fast anymore, but they can always just keep going and going and going. So I mean I would not minimize a 24-hour anything, because that's kind of what is well, um, but anyways, just sort of hold on to that. Not because I want to know what you think, now that you have a phd, about, you know, fueling for a 100 or, excuse me, for a one day run, um, because obviously there's issues related to just getting enough calories and whatnot. But anyways, go ahead and talk about your SEAL training Super hard stuff.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah, so it started getting ready for SEAL training, um, right, as I was, uh, I mean, to my 17th birthday and I trained for about in a year and a year and a half, finishing out high school, um, and went to buds when I was, uh, I mean, I went to boot camp two weeks after I turned 18, so the first ship date I could, without having to get a waiver to go or, you know, get parent signature to leave before I turned 18 and I was really just to finish high school and enjoy my summer a little bit, um, and yeah, I went through steel training with, uh, pretty much no hiccups. Um, it was very smooth. I didn't fail anything. Um, I was, I was one of 11 originals to make it in class two. Nine, four out of um, I mean, it was, you know, 275 at the very beginning and that's not like the absolute number that makes it through. There's people getting rolled out of the class and rolled into the class and so you end up graduating with 30 to 40 people. But, you know, weirdly, even though I didn't fail anything during the training and I was one of the very few originals to make it, it wasn't really reflective of my ability to be a good SEAL.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I struggled a lot the first year to two years when I got to the SEAL team because I was I mean, there were a bunch of reasons I was 19. Everyone else was, you know, in their mid to late 20s. I wasn't. I've never been that big into drinking. I'm a little antisocial and I kind of just drinking mandatory. It's basically it's it's such a big part of the of the SEAL culture and it depends a little bit on the, on the platoon, but it's just kind of like a core personality fit. And I also struggled a little bit with um, you know, finding the motivation to actually do do a good job as a seal, when you know, the last couple of years have been so focused on on just becoming a seal and I'd always been so like goal oriented on like what is the, what is the milestone I need to hit, and I didn't really plan for anything beyond becoming a SEAL Um, even though you know I knew the thing that I was training for, obviously, um, but if I were to, so, so when I was training for it, uh, I was trained by a SEAL who, who, who, really put a lot of time and effort into me for pretty much nothing in return.

Blaine Lints PhD:

And, um, his name was Dan Cirillo, he, he passed, uh, just over two years ago now, um, but he was in the SEAL teams for, I believe, 13 years and and then did some contract work. But he, he was working for SEAL fit at the time, which kind of was a little bit related to CrossFit, and so there's a lot of like long Metcon type training. Um, everything was like a hundred percent, Um, and luckily I had a very, very big endurance background to like support all of that, and so it worked out okay, um, but I was at the same time, very afraid to lift heavy because I thought it would detract from my running. So, knowing what I know now, and if I were to go do it again with with better knowledge or the way that I prepare people, um, if they're wanting to go to buds, is I still believe in having a really big endurance foundation? I don't think there's any.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I've heard some people who are SEALs even, who train people for selection courses, who say you only need to run three times a week and that seems blasphemous to me, because you run every day in buds, you're probably accumulating at least 10 to 15 miles a day, even though most of it's slow. But if you don't have the durability, like the structural support to support all that movement and then the economy to you know, prevent that from being exceptionally taxing on you, I just think you're going to set yourself up for failure. So I think really that the bulk of it I still believe in it being a huge endurance foundation. I do suggest that you know guys do like a marathon or an ultra at some point in their preparation for going to buds, because it's a good confidence boost. If you know you've run further than most of the other people in training and you know you've run higher mileage before, then you can have some confidence that you're not going to have an overuse injury, um, when that is what gets a lot of guys, um.

Jose Antonio PhD:

But some things I would. Yeah, well, typically though, at least just from videos I've seen um seal team members aren't built like distance runners, though they I mean, certainly you guys have a lot of endurance, but they're they're larger than your typical distance runner. So would the let's say you're a division one, you know, miler, would that?

Blaine Lints PhD:

be a phenotype that would do well in in buds yeah, I, I think the, the, the really good distance runners actually do great, I think, at buds.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um, of course there is a big mental component, um, but what you see a lot of the time is there there's definitely a run or endurance bias when going through selection.

Blaine Lints PhD:

But a lot of guys they finish the selection and then they, you know, don't they're, they're kind of burned out from from doing that sort of stuff.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So the emphasis then goes to, like, you want to look big and be strong and, um, you want to train how, however, you want to train, and usually just guys don't feel like doing a bunch of endurance training, nor does it necessarily, you know, the training schedule doesn't necessarily lend itself to, you know, spending hours a day doing endurance training.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So you might, you know, if you really want to be motivated, you could have an hour to two hours a day, but what ends up happening is the training gets so busy that a lot of guys actually don't even train that much. So you know there's there's a lot of discussion and you know exercise is about how do we optimize the training of of special operators, even because people think like, oh they're, they're at this really high level, but really, if you just got them to do something every day like that would be, that would be an improvement. So there's a lot of low hanging fruit that doesn't really get acknowledged, and some of that has to do with, like you know, the drinking culture which I just said. If you're drinking all the time, then you're not going to want to work out.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So when you say if you could get them to do just something every day, meaning maybe run or maybe lift or just any type of exercise, training, yeah, like if you had a structured lift three days a week and then like you had runs three days a week, like it could be as basic as that, that would be an improvement for half of the guys. Oh, really, yeah, there are people who are really concerned with being in as good of shape as possible. I would say the people who are too concerned about their fitness usually are worse at their jobs. I was probably one of those people, honestly, where I had to find goals within exercise to keep me really motivated to do that and it helped me be a better SEAL after I sort of got past that initial struggle I had for the first one to do that and it helped me be a better seal after I sort of got past that initial struggle I had for the first one to two years.

Jose Antonio PhD:

But yeah, what's the attitude in terms of so, while you're going through buds, attitudes regarding the use of any kind of sports supplements to help you? Did I give you advice on, you know, proper hydration? Or is it literally a war of attrition? It's like which you guys really could just do this brutal training. And last, and you know, I guess, how much direction would you be getting it? You know, I sort of liken it to when I was doing my PhD. There were two types of students. One I remember, one of my closest friends. He said, god, I wish I would get more direction from my advisor. And I always responded I'm glad my advisor leaves me alone. I prefer to be like. Everyone sort of works differently. Now, when you're going through this and I would imagine obviously no one's used to the training because you know when you're going through buds, what advice are they giving you in terms of you know how to recover, you know things like that.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So yeah, you mentioned supplements first, so I'll naturally my mind jumps to drugs, but something that they're very against any sort of performance enhancing drugs and even anything with a supplement label is not allowed.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So if you get caught with, you know, creatine, um anything that's not. I think protein powder is the only thing that is allowed. Um, but they say if it has a supplement label on it and like, got a nutrition label. I don't, I don't know exactly about that distinction, but um, I believe anything that has supplement label can get you kicked out.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Um so that's caffeine. Caffeine is basically yes no caffeine.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um, I don't remember, even if they had coffee. Luckily, when I was going through buds, I didn't have a coffee habit at that time, so I I never felt the need to drink it. I think I had had caffeine like once or twice in buds and I can't remember if it was because of like something specific. But, um, yeah, I think it was sometime in the last year. It might have been last two years, but there was a student who got pneumonia during hell week and died in the hospital. I believe that's what happened. They did die and I and they determined somehow afterward that he had been taking some performance enhancing drugs and of course the attribution to his death got, you know, put on performance enhancing drugs, even though it was the pneumonia. I don't. I don't think they were really related at all.

Blaine Lints PhD:

But then then came this huge crackdown on on supplements drugs, anything like that. They started PED testing. Um, to some extent in buds I, it might just be test to epi test ratio or something basic like that. That's a little bit cheaper, but they're very against uh any of that. And they're very clear about uh, you're going to get booted from training if you get caught with anything.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um, but the advice piece um, they really don't give you any advice in buds. They'll give you minimal information as part of like classes and stuff, but really buds is designed to to get people to quit and just see who they want to um, keep and keep for SEAL qualification training. The basic amount of advice they do give you is things like you know you can reset your mind, right, you can do 10 seconds of anything. So if you can do 10 seconds of anything, then just reset and do another 10 seconds and just do that over and over. They tell you things like people don't usually quit during an evolution or activity, right, it's when you're doing it.

Blaine Lints PhD:

It's usually not that bad. A lot of the a lot of the quitting happens in anticipation for things like right before hell week starts. There's a lot of quitting at the beginning of hell week knowing that you have you know this this really long ass thing to do that. That kind of sucks, um, so that's the kind of stuff they tell you. Yeah, I might have mentioned box breathing a little bit if you need to calm yourself before you're doing something like high stress, but really there's not much in the way of teaching or anything didactic early on. Uh, most of that comes after you finish BUDS and you go into SEAL qualification training.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Describe Hell Week real briefly. What is that like?

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah, hell Week is the fourth week of the first phase of BUDS. Buds is six months about and it's approximately 125 hours. So you start on Sunday afternoon and you go until Friday late morning. From Sunday to Wednesday you get no sleep at all. You get a two hour nap on Wednesday and you get a two hour nap on Thursday and there are conflicting reports on this, but some you travel between 100 and 200 miles on foot with a boat on your head through through the week. So your physical training for I mean like 20 hours a day. The rest is, you know food or you're getting surf, tortured or whatever, but there are no breaks during the whole week. It really is the, the real deal.

Blaine Lints PhD:

And um, one of the stories I love to tell um, one of my buddies, andrew, he, he went through bootcamp with me but he ended up getting rolled for stress fractures and pre buds and so he went to the fleet for two years, uh, ended up coming back and he knew that. You know when, when you go to the fleet and come back to buds, that's your last shot. Um, and as he was going through buds, he started getting the stress fractures again and he knew if he gets rolled for the stress fractures at that point, or dropped he's. You know, that's his last chance, he's not going to become a seal. So he kept pushing through it and on I think it was wednesday night of hell week his femur snapped out of his leg like full fracture, wow, um, and he ended up getting rolled forward after that and he became a seal and now he's working on becoming a pilot, um, but that, yeah, that's the kind of that's the kind of stuff that happens like it's.

Jose Antonio PhD:

It's, it's the real deal and you know I don't know if I've ever heard of someone's femur just snapping, especially if you're a young, healthy male.

Blaine Lints PhD:

That's, that's crazy yeah, you might have had kind of kind of weak bones or something but you have a lot of guys getting, uh, getting fractures in their feet and shins and femurs um, a lot of infections. Um, the water is extremely dirty, um, yeah, folliculitis is the water exceedingly cold?

Blaine Lints PhD:

yeah, the the water it varies. During the summer it's not bad, so when you get, you know, surf tortured, it really isn't that bad because you'd have to sit in the water all day to to really get cold, uh. But during the winter there are some times when you know the oceans move in in the right way and you get the cold water where the water's in the 40s. And yeah, if you go jump in 40 something degree water, you know, 100 times a day, that shock gets really really old pretty quick and that's that's what buds is. It's six months of doing that constantly. Um, and yeah, it's not, it's not always that cold, but you're dealing with a lot of other stuff too, like really bad chafing and stuff right.

Jose Antonio PhD:

I can see why it's not miami flor, because the water is like the bathtub water.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So you wouldn't get any hypothermia.

Jose Antonio PhD:

So so you were on the seals. For how many years?

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um, so I was in the Navy for six years total, so that's kind of the the minimum contract that you can sign up for if you want to be a seal. So they say, you know, if you graduate seal training then you have four more years so you can do two deployment cycles at a team.

Jose Antonio PhD:

And then you did, you go to GW for your master's in exercise science, Georgia Washington University.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah. So I was getting out and I knew I did my bachelor's online while I was in and I knew I was going to want to do more school, but I wasn't exactly sure what it what I do it in, and so I was tinkering around with like like medicine or psychology or things like that, and I ended up taking like two years of working in Silicon Valley before I you know I was. I was working for an NGO and they wanted me to start like training people physically and I was interested in doing that sort of stuff too. I was very interested in human performance and while doing that, they're like you should get some some like letters next to your name. So they suggested so. So I went and looked into it and I was like, oh, the CSCS is the hardest one to get and probably the most respected of the strength and conditioning certifications.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So I started studying for that and that was, yeah, I had no formal education at that time, so it was my first time hearing what the Krebs cycle was or anything like that, and it was really cool, because you know a lot of people have a hard time with the CSCS. But I came into it with no formal education and, within a couple of weeks, took the exam, have a hard time with the CSCS, but I came into it with no formal education and, within a couple of weeks, took the exam. Just, I just read the book straight through and I felt like I mean, I'd never taken in information so easily and retained it so well and it really made me excited. So I was like, oh, this is awesome, like because it just all made so much sense to me and I was like this is what I mean I already knew about, like you know, fat oxidation and stuff.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I just needed the, the physiological terms to attach to them and um, so it came really easy, took the cscs and then I was like I have to do more um. So. So then I I found, you know, gw had an online master's in exercise science. So I did that for two years while continuing to work in Silicon Valley and after that, that's, I knew I was going to do the PhD.

Jose Antonio PhD:

I had to do the PhD also, but that's that's how I ran into Sean when I was applying to programs after, yes, so when you were thinking of your PhD especially if you don't really know who's doing what in terms of research, especially if you don't really know who's doing what in terms of research how did you, you know, meet Sean? And also, did you look into other programs? Or it was just kind of fortuitous that you met Sean and it's like, oh, this, this should be a good fit. How did you do that?

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah, I, um, I was originally going to, uh, do my PhD at GW and they had just started a exercise science PhD and they're, you know, they're a little bit more, you know, public health focused, Even though the department at USC is technically public health. But I was under the impression that I was going to be a shoo-in to the program and ended up getting rejected.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Talking about South Carolina or GW.

Blaine Lints PhD:

From GW. So then that was in February of 2021. And so, kind of in a frenzy, I started really aggressively looking at every program in the US that didn't have like a hard deadline in their admissions, some sort of rolling admission process program in the US that didn't have like a hard deadline in their admissions, some sort of rolling admission process. And I started, you know, you know, looking at all the advisors, research and stuff like that, and ended up finding a few different schools that that all seemed like okay fits and then found Sean and my master's advisor. One of them, todd Miller, was close friends with Sean and I told him, hey, I'm looking at USC and he's like, oh, let me like, let me reach out to Sean. He's a good buddy of mine. So he put in a good word for me and I reached out to Sean and the next day had a zoom, zoom meeting with with Sean and then we kind of scheduled me to come visit the school after that.

Blaine Lints PhD:

But yeah, it seemed like a pretty good fit right off the bat, just because Sean had already been doing research that was funded by DOD and SOCOM, um, and I really wanted to be able to. You know, I knew my academic background wasn't, uh, that strong, right I? I had all online school. Up to that point, I had no real research experience, so what I had going for me was like I'm not an idiot and I was a SEAL. And then I had some other, like you know, exercise accolades to add onto that. But so really I had to find programs that valued that SEAL experience and so I wanted to be able to use that going into the PhD, and that's what I was able to do with Sean. So they ended up being a good fit and I'm glad I went with that.

Jose Antonio PhD:

I think not being idiot is is a very good quality.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So anyway, anyone listening?

Jose Antonio PhD:

who's thinking of pursuing a PhD. Just make sure you're not an idiot, because if you are, it'll be a torturous time for you now. So you already. You defended just really a few months ago, which, which is great Congratulations. I was honored to be on your committee, so you've gone through all this schooling, and I always I'm always curious to ask those who've gone through formal schooling to sort of look back on how they trained for whatever, whether it was a triathlon or the 24 hour race or or SEAL training yeah, what they would do different. And what was it about your prior training for whatever? You know? Pick whatever event that you're like?

Blaine Lints PhD:

damn, I didn't know what the hell I was doing, or maybe you knew you were doing exactly what you should do.

Jose Antonio PhD:

So sort of look back, here's what I know now as a PhD. And then like, hey, when I was 18, I was doing this and, wow, maybe that wasn't the best thing to do. So give me your thoughts.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Okay, wait, okay, wait so. So, just to clarify, you're asking what, what? What did I, kind of in hindsight, not do great in my preparation for athletic endeavors? Okay, um, yeah, when I was training for the ultras, um, when I did that 24-hour run, I was running very high volume, super low intensity, um, and it was because, like I knew, I wasn't that fast. So I was like, well, I can run for a long time and I don't seem to get that tired, um, and so I was like let's do more of that. Um, so I I had some like 200 mile weeks.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um, I would do really goofy things like, uh, like stare at a you know an analog clock for several hours just to, like, you know, I thought I was training my mind. Um, I would wake up in the middle of the night in high school and like go do a mile of lunges, you know, with with like five mile runs on both ends, like that sort of thing. Um, so I was just running a really high volume and I thought if it's hard, then it's going to make me like tougher and I'm going to end up doing better at this running. And, um, in hindsight, I I don't really know how much. Uh, yeah, I don't really have like a hard opinion on like how um much mental toughness can be trained. I think some of it's kind of inherent to the person and maybe their motivation and the circumstances and all that. But, um, I, if, if I were to go back and do that differently, I would have done a lot more. I would have trained more like a cross country runner, um, with some more key long runs in there. I would have probably dropped my mileage down a lot. And there's a balance there because, like, I do think it's important to run very high volume if you want to train for that stuff, um, but it's not absolutely necessary. And I think, like David Roche, the, uh, the guy who won Western States, I think, last year, um, he, he broke the course record but he, he does a lot of faster work and he, he says, you know, he trains a lot more like a, like a 5k runner, um, and he just kind of gets a little bit more specific before the big races. But I think there's a lot more thinking around like, um, you don't necessarily need to do a ton of volume to do well at these very high volume events. Um, I think for some people it works well and some people it doesn't, and whatever. But yeah, I would.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I would do that a little bit differently, um, for if, if I were going to go back to buds again differently, I would do. I wouldn't be afraid to lift heavy. I probably would emphasize heavy strength training a little bit more. I think you know, knowing what heavy strength training can do for economy and running like that sort of thing, I think I could have had a little bit of a stronger structure going into it that wasn't just being loaded through like very easy running and I would have done a little bit more high intensity work, running, um, and I would have done a little bit more high intensity work, so kind of, yeah, everything would have been focused a little bit more on on training like a more conventional athlete, um, and less just like more, more, more, um, those are the big ones and um, actually in 2018.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Well, so when I was a seal, I broke the seal deadlift record, um, so I got really into powerlifting, did that?

Blaine Lints PhD:

I never, like competed in any sort of meets or anything like that, but lifted for fun and was doing well at it.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I've always naturally been kind of stronger and able to put on muscle a little bit easier.

Blaine Lints PhD:

But in 2018, I trained for a hundred mile ultra marathon in Hawaii, uh, while also doing, uh, a lot of strength training. So that was kind of like the peak of my hybrid training stuff and, um, I got coached by Alex Fiatta for that, who who's a really big name in the hybrid training, so he's the one who coined the term like hybrid training, um, but he is super smart guy and I was really glad that he he was willing to help me out, um, but that's kind of when I got a little bit more formal understanding of you know, how, how can you concurrently do these different things at a semi-high level, um, which normally wouldn't support each other, so that's yeah. At that point I was like, oh, like I learned a lot from lot from that, because I, you know, had someone else kind of guiding me through it who knew what they were doing more than me, and so after that, that kind of that was a seems to be sort of the most difficult initial step.

Jose Antonio PhD:

You know they take classes, you know that's easy, just pass your classes. But you know, when you ask, like first or second year doctoral students, like hey, what's your dissertation going to be? They look at you like you're from Mars or something. Your doctoral students like hey, what's your dissertation going to be? They look at you like you're from mars or something. So obviously you were around other grad students. How did you, you know, sort of figure out what you wanted to study in that sense, or was it? Did it sort of happen? Naturally, because I know a few phd students where projects literally just fall into their lap and they're like, oh, I think I'll do this because basically it was a natural transition from, let's say, a prior you know, a prior grad student.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah, I. So I have my SEAL background and I knew that I was going to want to do work, at least in some capacity, in that area after I finished the PhD. So, because you know, because I do want to give back to that community, and so I knew I wanted to do something relevant to that for my PhD work. And of course it depends on the lab and I think with Sean you're not always getting, you know, you might not always get to pick your your dissertation work, so you may or may not have some input with that process. Hopefully you do.

Blaine Lints PhD:

But I was lucky in the sense that one of the first studies I was in charge of leading was the study funded by Momentus in the Air Force which used caffeine and theocrine, and after that, you know, we had that one down.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So I was like, okay, can we, can we get this one more Like that's in the same area, with like a tactical population or a population that is relevant to that or a concept that I can apply to um special operations.

Blaine Lints PhD:

And so I had this idea for using ketone monoesters to basically mitigate cognitive loss during hyperthermia induced by exercise in the heat, and it seemed like a very obvious thing to test that no one had looked at before. You know, ketones have been shown to benefit cognition and a few other different environments and mechanistically it just made sense that they would work for heat stress. Um, so I, yeah I I ended up submitting for a couple of grants from Navy SEAL foundation and SEAL future foundation to get some some money to support that, and kind of went to Sean with like hey, like he already knew about the idea, but like hey, I got some money for it, like let's do this, it's a cheap study, like I can, I can knock this out in like three months and I ended up hammering it out the last semester of of the program. So that's kind of how that worked out for me.

Jose Antonio PhD:

So talk about a little bit more about the ketone monoesters in terms of, you know, affecting cognition. Would would it help, let's say, a sleep deprived college student who's taking an exam, something practical like that.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah, so there isn't evidence as far as I know specifically to do with sleep deprivation, but my intuition is they've been helpful in any other state where your cognition is impaired below you know your baseline state, um, so I would imagine that they would be helpful and you know if, if I were going into a very important um you know exam or something like that, and I had the money to spend 40 bucks on a serving of ketones, um, then you know.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I'd be yeah, yeah, they're like, they're like 40 bucks to get get a serving that's going to raise your, your blood ketones to, uh, you know, legitimate concentration. Um so they they are expensive and they're definitely not for everyone and they taste like dog shit, but, uh, I mean they taste awful. Um so, yeah, I, I mean, yeah I, if I'm sleep deprived and I have something important, like I'm taking some ketones and like a big dose of creatine and uh and some caffeine, um so, yeah.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I do believe they'd be helpful for that. And and mechanistically, uh, they've been shown to improve or increase cerebral blood flow. And you know, when you become hyperthermic you can have a reduction in cerebral blood flow, and that's part of the potential rationale for why you might have impaired cognition when you start to overheat.

Jose Antonio PhD:

So what's the effective dose in grams roughly.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um, so it depends a little bit on the size of the individual. In our study we use two doses of 25 grams and that was able to increase people's blood ketone concentrations. After after that 25 gram, the first dose, they got up to an average of 2.2 millimole and after the second, uh, 25 gram dose, they got up to 3.8 millimole and it's a little bit. It's not clearly understood what the optimal range for what sort of things is and how individual it is. Um, there's just not a lot known about that, but generally, if you're in that two plus millimole range, that's considered sort of being in ketosis and we were really looking to have people at least at three millimole by the end of that study when we took those last blood measurements.

Jose Antonio PhD:

That's a huge dose.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I mean, I can see why it would cost so much.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Okay, in the interest of time, I just a couple, a couple of questions, and the first one is sort of word association. I'm going to tell you something, or give you a word, and I want really your first thoughts, and this has to do with a lot of stuff media, et cetera, et cetera. So the first word is well, first question is what are your thoughts on zone two, training, just whatever comes to mind, because on zone two training, just whatever comes to mind, because everyone talks about zone two, training on x.

Jose Antonio PhD:

It's the greatest thing in the world longer and I'm like, oh, come on, but anyways, yeah, yeah I, I love zone two in the right context.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um I right, and so if you're exercising two hours a week, um, you don't need to be worried about your, your, your training zones. Like, did you go harder? Um, I think one thing I started to see when I started working with um athletes, especially ones that weren't quite as motivated, was they started to get very interested in zone two and it sort of became just an excuse to train easy, um and right. If, if you're just not doing enough, then there's no reason to need to do that. But if you're, if you're training, you know, 15 plus hours a week, and the intensity distribution starts to become increasingly important the more you try to do, then I think that's an instance where zone two can become very valuable. And for someone who's at the very high end of endurance, who's doing, you know, maybe 20 to 30 plus hours a week, I think you know zone two is a necessity 30 plus hours a week, I think you know zone two is a necessity, um, so, yeah, depends overall.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Like I like it. I love training in zone two for myself. I do a lot, though You're not doing two hours a week, you're training a lot.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Um.

Jose Antonio PhD:

I think that's one thing people don't understand is when they look at these elite distance runners, I tell them they're training a lot of hours a week. I mean sure, they do zone two, but they're also doing very hard running. I mean they're doing sprint intervals, they're doing high intensity interval training, they're doing hill work. So yeah, they're doing zone two, but for most people I call them jolly runners or jolly joggers. I'm like you're running three times a week. I mean zone two, really.

Jose Antonio PhD:

That's crazy, okay, okay, one other word. What are your thoughts on um cold water immersion ice baths?

Blaine Lints PhD:

oh so I yeah, I mean obviously like I'm sure everyone listening to this knows the basics right don't do it after lifting, or or you're, you're right if you don't want to blank your adaptations and don't don't do it right after training, um, I would say I like, personally, I enjoy them.

Blaine Lints PhD:

If I had the money, I would put, I would put a cold plunge in my in, like next to my master bedroom, uh, in my house, just to like I, I like the feeling of it sometimes and I do. I do get the feeling that if I'm really sore it helps me feel a little bit better and um, but I, the main, the main time when I like it is I love to sauna, like really aggressively and then jump in a cold plunge because I get this. Um, if you've ever done it, you might get this like euphoric feeling for several minutes after and um, I just feel like after doing a couple rounds of that, like after the session, I feel better. But that's not something I do when, when I'm training a lot. So that's kind of just for my like personal feel good stuff yeah, there's a reason.

Jose Antonio PhD:

I live in florida is because I hate cold any amount of cold. So so if you ever see me voluntarily putting myself in an ice bath, something's wrong. I don't know what's going on. So, um, all right, we're running of time. Tell the audience what you're doing now and what your future plans are.

Blaine Lints PhD:

Yeah, I, uh, I am kind of between jobs right now. Um, I'm, um, yeah, I am hoping to start working for an industry company soon, um, the the startup. The startup is working on their, you know, getting the terms figured out with the investors. So that's, yeah, what I'd like to do. Industry I'm not looking to get into academia right now. I could see that being something I do, maybe in a teaching capacity later on.

Blaine Lints PhD:

But really, the thing that's most interesting to me right now is, back in January I participated in a study with UT Austin on on Ibogaine, um, and it was a study with all special operators with traumatic brain injury and I had a a lot of benefit from that and the research on it that has been published. Um, you know, stanford did a big study that was published in nature medicine last year and the results were, I mean, as miraculous as they get in that sort of field effect sizes of two to three with, you know, 80 to 90% reductions in depression, anxiety, disability and cognitive improvements across the board. And they did a very, very in depth cognitive testing. So, like when I did it, I a very, very in-depth cognitive testing. So, like when I did it, I had to do about 10 hours of cognitive testing pre and post intervention. Wow, that's a lot. And yep, several hours in an MRI doing EEG, doing clinician administered work, doing computer stuff, eye tracking, whatever.

Blaine Lints PhD:

So I'm a big believer in that Um there, yeah, there are some incredible case studies that have been published, uh, with Ibogaine helping MS and Parkinson's Um. So that's what I'm interested in and I'm talking to a um, the, the founder of a private institution which is working under religious exemptions in Texas to hopefully start doing research for them. So that would start out kind of observational but they're about to start working with Ibogaine and yeah. So that's really what I'm super passionate about because of how helpful that's been for the special operations community and I think it can be more helpful if more people become aware of it and we get more research out. That's the same idea with the ketones. I want to keep working with the ketones too, because of the benefits that they can have with brain injuries.

Jose Antonio PhD:

We'll make sure. I think the NSCA tactical conference is in Orlando next year. You should be a speaker, clearly. You would be a great fit for it. So, um, I think I'll apply this to talk give a talk there as well, but I think um, if you want to stay in sort of the semi-academic realm, where you're giving talks but you're not necessarily working in academia.

Blaine Lints PhD:

I think that'd be a good thing for you yeah, I, I would love to talk at um tactical. I actually was told I would get get asked to speak at it last year and then, yeah, I don't know if the guy that was in charge of putting together the roster or something didn't like me or something, but yeah, it was kind of a weird situation. But yeah, I ended up speaking at the NSCA National Conference about some more fighter health and human performance stuff and I'd love to speak there again.

Jose Antonio PhD:

Awesome. Well, dr Blaine Lentz, I want to thank you for your time. Um, you have one of the most interesting stories, certainly, that I've heard, so I appreciate your time and uh.