Good Enough Exercise

I’m joined by Dr. Jeffrey Sankoff to talk about three exercise “rules” you may be allowed to break: you don’t always need to spread workouts across the week, intensity doesn’t have to come from a formal interval session, and most short workouts don’t require a complicated hydration or fueling plan.

The Exercise Rules You’re Allowed to Break

Have you ever skipped a workout because you couldn’t do the “right” one? Maybe you didn’t have time for the gym, a long hike, or a structured bike ride. Today, we revisit Voltaire’s reminder that “the great is the enemy of the good” and apply it to exercise. The evidence is reassuring: weekend workouts count, short bursts of effort during the day count, and for most workouts under an hour, hydration hype may matter far less than we’ve been led to believe.

Dr. Jeffrey Sankoff, an ER physician, Ironman triathlete, triathlon coach, and host of the evidence-focused TriDoc Podcast, joins me for this conversation. While Jeff works with endurance athletes, today’s discussion is for anyone who wants to live long and well while still managing the realities of work, family, travel, and everyday life.

First, we break the calendar rule. Many people assume exercise has to be spread evenly throughout the week, but a 2024 Circulation study on “weekend warrior” physical activity found that people who concentrated their moderate-to-vigorous exercise into one or two days still had lower risk for many diseases compared with inactive people, especially cardiometabolic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and sleep apnea. The study was observational, so it does not prove weekend-only exercise is ideal, and injury risk still matters. But the practical message is clear: if weekdays are impossible, weekends still count. 

Next, we break the formal-interval rule. High intensity does not always have to mean a structured HIIT class, a bike trainer, or a carefully timed workout. A 2026 European Heart Journal study found that a higher percentage of vigorous physical activity was associated with lower risk across several chronic diseases and mortality outcomes. Even a small proportion of vigorous activity may matter, meaning short real-life bursts—taking the stairs quickly, walking briskly uphill, carrying groceries with purpose, or chasing a child or grandchild—can become meaningful movement when they raise your breathing and effort level. This study was also observational, so it cannot prove cause and effect, and anyone with medical concerns should check with their clinician before adding vigorous bursts. 

Finally, we break the bottle rule. For endurance races, long workouts, or hot-weather exercise, hydration, electrolytes, and carbohydrates can matter. But for many 30- to 60-minute workouts in ordinary conditions, a formal hydration or fueling plan may not be necessary. The American College of Sports Medicine’s position stand emphasizes fluid replacement to support hydration during physical activity, but the need depends on duration, sweat loss, heat, and intensity. A practical “N of 1” approach is to weigh yourself before and after a typical workout to see how much fluid you actually lose. 

We also discuss electrolytes and carbohydrates. Electrolytes are mostly salts, and they become more relevant with long, hot, sweaty, or repeated sessions. Carbohydrate-containing drinks can help with longer endurance performance, but for a 35-minute walk or a short gym session, sugar in your bottle is usually not the bottleneck. A systematic review on carbohydrates and exercise performance found benefits in longer exercise contexts, but that does not mean every short workout needs sports drinks or gels. 

Takeaways

Don’t let the perfect workout plan keep you from the good-enough workout you can actually do.

If weekdays are packed, a weekend warrior approach may still provide meaningful health benefits.

Look for small bursts of vigorous effort in daily life, and for most workouts under an hour, water when thirsty is usually enough.

Transcript

The Problem With Perfect Workouts

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Have you ever skipped a workout because you couldn't do the right one? No time for the gym, no time for a long hike or bike ride. Well, here's the evidence-based news. You don't need to exercise three to four times per week. Short bursts of effort count, and for most exercise under an hour, don't worry too much about hydration. Well, welcome, my dear listeners, to episode number seventy two. The exercise rules you're allowed to break. Be a weekend warrior. Do short bursts of effort during your day, and don't fall for the hydration hype. I want to begin with an idea often attributed to Voltaire. The great is the enemy of the good. Now, that line applies really well to exercise. Many of us carry around an image of what the right workout plan is supposed to look like. It happens several days a week. It has the right mix of easier aerobic work and harder efforts, and it's supported by a hydration refueling strategy. Sounds good, but life may not give you the time or the energy to do that. Is it a lost cause? Are you destined to poor health? Or are there exercise rules that we hear a lot but really can be broken? Where the evidence suggests that what may be doable actually gives you the benefit you wish. Well, let's find out. Today I'm joined by Dr. Jeffrey Senkoff, an ER physician, a very successful Iron Man triathlete, triathlon coast, coach, and host of his own evidence-focused podcast for triathletes called The Tri-Doc. It's great. You'll enjoy it. We are kindred souls, both interested in what the evidence tells us does or doesn't work. His podcast focuses on endurance athletes who do triathlons. Today, though, we're focused on you, folks that care about their health, but also have a lot of other parts of their life tugging at them. No need to be an endurance athlete here. Welcome, Jeff, to live long and well. Anything you want to share with folks as we begin?

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Gosh, no, that was a great uh opening, and thank you for having me. It's really a pleasure to to be here. I uh I've enjoyed listening to your evidence-based uh take on things. And uh I know I I like the idea that we're kindred spirits because I think we are. I think we are uh very much aligned in the way we view the world and the way we try to cut through all of the hype of uh that that is, like you say, tugging at people uh to do things that may not always be in their best interests.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Well, and I describe myself as an open-minded skeptic, and I think you are too. I think most of the things that you dive into, you know, whether it's creatine or you know, some latest recovery device, I don't think you care whether it works or it doesn't work. You just want to look at the evidence and share what you find with folks, which is really the nature of this whole podcast.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah, agreed. I think that uh more often than not, I am trying, I'm coming at things with this idea. Look, if I can find something that works, great. I'm happy to share that. I'm happy to take advantage of it myself, but too often the hype is just outpacing the reality. And uh I'm uh but again, like you said, an open-minded skeptic, always willing to learn, always willing to be proven wrong in my doubts. And uh occasionally that's the case. That's the way it

Three Exercise Rules To Break

SPEAKER_00 4:28

is.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

All right, before we dive in, here are the three take-home messages. Now, I always worry about whether I should put them in or not because people will listen and they'll be like, well, Dr. Bobby, that was wonderful. Now I get to save another 20 minutes. But here's the teaser. We're just gonna give you the headline. We're not gonna kind of tell you yet how to deal with it or how to do it. But take-home messages. First, if your weekdays are impossible, then be a weekend warrior and do your exercise on Saturday and Sunday. Second, intensity doesn't have to be a formal interval workout. It can actually seamlessly fit into your day if you look for opportunities and they're there. Third, for most workouts under an hour, hydration and fueling aren't necessary. Now, in a few minutes, Jeff and I will explain how to break these rules. So the theme for today is don't let the great become the enemy of the good. You can enjoy your exercise on your time and how it works for you. Now, we'll have three parts to our exercise discussion. One about each rule that you can break. And for each section, I'll set up the rule, I'll introduce the study where evidence supports that approach. Dr. Sankoff will walk us through the study results and what they mean. Then I'll come back and mention a few study limitations. Because a good headline is not the same as proof.

Weekend Warrior Health Benefits

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Part one let's break the calendar rule. Rule number one, you need to exercise throughout the week. The first rule is about timing. Most exercise gurus tell us to exercise throughout the week. And you know, that makes sense. Regular exercise can help build habits and it gives us recovery time. But real life may not make that possible. Work gets busy, travel interferes, family responsibilities take over. You may find that the only realistic window is the weekend. So the practical question is not whether weekend exercise is perfect. The question is if the weekend is what life gives you, does it still count? And does the evidence support you breaking the calendar rule? Now, this is Voltaire's warning in its most common form. The great exercise approach might be a perfectly distributed weekly routine. The good might be Saturday and Sunday. And good turns out to be good enough. The key study here is the 2024 paper, Associations of Weekend Warrior Physical Activity with Incident Disease and Cardiometabolic Health. So it examined 60,000 participants in the UK Biobank, a longitudinal observational study that's uh that's frankly been used many, many times. Okay, in this study, the participants wore a Fitbit or other accelerometer for a week. The average age was about 62, and the researchers classified participants as inactive, regularly active, or weekend warriors. And weekend warriors did their weekly moderate to vigorous activity during one or two days. The investigators then tested whether exercisers in general and weekend warriors in specific got health benefits after about five years, looking at several hundred medical conditions. So, Jeff, what did they find and how should listeners interpret this? Um, how did folks do in general with exercise? And what about those weekend warriors?

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, it's particularly interesting that I think this research found that both the active and weekend warrior groups did pretty well, certainly compared to the inactive groups. Now, that might come across as a little bit surprising for people. They may think that, oh, if I'm only exercising two days a week, that can possibly be as good as exercising every day. And I'm not sure that that's what the take-home point is, but the take-home point here is that being a weekend warrior, somebody who's exercising at least a couple of days a week, is significantly better than doing nothing. And this is backed up by a lot of research that has shown something similar. We know that being sedentary increases your cardiovascular risk, and doing any kind of exercise will progressively decrease your cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. There is a tipping point at which doing too much can actually reverse some of those gains. So there's almost this thought that look, being a weekend warrior might actually be a little bit protective because you're doing you're not getting to that tipping point. But this paper in particular, the 2024 paper, found that uh that weekend warriors definitely had lower risk for a lot of disease types, not just cardiovascular, than inactive people. And again, it just goes to show how being sedentary is so particularly not good, not well suited for uh a healthy long life. Uh these benefits were especially notable for heart-related conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and sleep apnea, which is not terribly surprising. And the practical message here is not just that weekend only exercise is the best possible plan, but rather that just getting some kind of activity, even if you have to do it in a concentrated fashion, remains better than not doing anything at all. And that, again, harkens back to all of the research we've seen over several decades now that just shows that being active in some capacity is protective.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

I totally agree. I mean, my read of the date, and I'll get into some limitations in just a second, is you know, if you're gonna do two to four hours of exercise, you know, doing it every other day is great. But having the same number of minutes on the weekend, which fits into some people's lives better, it's clearly wasn't obviously inferior. You know, that they both got a lot of benefit. And and and you know, I love the Voltaire quote because life happens and it's just we need to figure out a balance that we can sustain. Now I do think go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

I do think there are some not downsides, but I do think there are some things that are not captured by this study. Like, for example, we know that exercise improves mental outlook and improves mental health, it improves our well-being in a lot of ways that are not necessarily measured in this study. And we, if we can find the ability to exercise on a daily basis, all of those other things can improve just as much as our measurable health metrics can. So while I think that, you know, the take-home message here should be don't feel bad if you can only exercise on the weekend, we should get away from this idea that, oh, it's okay to only exercise on the weekend. I think we should still encourage people that if they have the time, if they have the wherewithal, being able to exercise more than just on the weekend is still on balance better than doing it just on the weekend. But again, if you only have the weekends, then by all means, don't feel like you're not getting benefit because you are.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

And this wasn't a perfect study, it wasn't a randomized prospective study. It was a an observational study where they looked at you know Fitbit data for a week and then projected forward five years to see how people did. And, you know, what they did five years ago for one week doesn't necessarily predict what they did the next week and the next week and the next year and the next year. So one always has to sort of wonder about uh studies like this. But it's important to just take this as what we know.

Injury And Heart Risk Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_01 13:32

So here's a question for you, Jeff. Okay, so let's just pause that doing the weekend warrior routine is for your heart and other things, might be just as good or close to just as good. What do you think about injury issues? You know, if you're sort of concentrating your exercise in two days and not necessarily letting your bones and joints recover, have you found, I mean, you're the perfect person because you're both a coach, so you're working with people, and uh you're in the ER, so you get the end result of when things don't go right. So, what do you think about kind of the physical downsides of that concentrated weekend warrior?

SPEAKER_00 14:16

So it really depends on what kinds of activities people are doing. It used to be thought that recreational athletes who concentrated their uh moderate to vigorous physical activities onto the weekends were higher risk for musculoskeletal and potentially even cardiovascular problems. But there's been some larger studies, observational uh still, but pretty large in 2023 and 2024 that came out that kind of suggested that the musculoskeletal injury risk might not be as high as traditionally feared, which is reassuring. And it makes a lot of sense that you would be more at risk of injuries because, like you said, if you don't get that physical adaptation that you get from training regularly, and you just go out on the weekend and you suddenly play a hard game of tennis or play softball or whatever it is that you're doing, and you haven't really trained up to be able to do that, it makes sense that you could be exposed to the potential for these kinds of injuries. That doesn't seem to be bearing out quite as much as we once thought, so that is reassuring, but it's not to say that it doesn't exist at all. So it is still there. The cardiovascular thing is an issue, though. So when you go out and do a high-intensity, stressful kind of exercise, so hockey is a great example. I grew up playing hockey, and when I was still living in Montreal, there was the home of my beloved Canadien, who are into the third round of the playoffs after a dramatic game seven victory. I can't help but give a plug to my beloved Habs. Anyways, um, I played hockey and I was playing old-timer hockey. My brother plays old-timer hockey, and he does not train regularly, but he goes out and he plays, and when he plays, he plays at a very high-level intensity. So he's really raising his heart rate, he's really raising his blood pressure, and we know that it is not uncommon in those kinds of situations, if you're not regularly trained, that when you spike your heart rate, you spike your blood pressure at that, you do put yourself at risk for a sudden cardiac type of event. It doesn't have to be cardiac arrest, but it could be ischemia to the heart. So there are those risks. They do exist, they are real, and so again, it comes down to what are you doing? If your weekend warrior type activity is going out and hiking at a low threshold level, if it's going out playing softball, if it's going out and I don't know, golfing, walking instead of using the cart, those kinds of things, you're not pushing your cardiovascular system to a level that you're not trained for. Whereas if you go out and do something like play hockey, run at a high intensity, those kinds of things you are potentially putting not just your musculoskeletal system but also your cardiovascular system at a little more risk. And it is something you have to consider. So that's really the big thing. I I think that uh we do need to consider overall that it's still beneficial that you can mitigate these things by just being aware and knowing about it. And again, if you can work in some training during the week, especially in season of these things. So my brother plays hockey during the winter. So if he can ramp up some training leading into the winter to make sure his cardiovascular system is ready for those stresses, then he lowers his likelihood of having problems. So that's the kind of advice I give.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

So uh you brought up the intensity issue, and that's exactly where we're about to head. But let me just sort of summarize the takeaway for breaking rule one, the calendar. So here's what I think. If weekends are impossible, uh weekdays are impossible, weekends still count. Don't let the great become the enemy of the good. All right, now we're ready for part two.

Vigorous Minutes Hidden In Daily Life

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Let's break the formal interval rule. So, rule two is that high intensity intervals need to be hard, structured, and planned. The second rule is about intensity. So, for many people, including me, high intensity sounds like a formal workout, a gym class, a bike trainer, a coach, a timer, a heart rate target, maybe three minutes hard, three minutes easy, repeat it until you're exhausted. Well, that kind of workout can be valuable, but it's also not a lot of fun. And for a competitive athlete, that might be the right approach, but for everyday health, intensity may not need to be so formal. And and it could be a lot more fun. So a short burst of effort can happen in normal life. You climb the stairs with purpose, you carry heavy grocery bags quickly, you chase your son or grandson across the yard, you power up a hill on a walk. And none of that feels like a training session. But the question is: does it help me live long and well? Is there evidence to support breaking the intensity rule? And of course, we have evidence. So the key study is the 2026 European Heart Journal paper, volume versus intensity of physical activity and risk of cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular chronic diseases. Now, this prospective cohort study used pretty much the same folks in the prior study, those 60,000 biobank folks who wore the Fitbit, plus a larger group that had some self-reported physical activity. Now, the researchers looked not only at total physical activity volume, but also the percentage of activity that was considered vigorous. And then the outcomes included cardiovascular disease, diabetes, liver problems, inflammatory disorders, and dementia. So, Jeff, what did they find? And should people hear this as join a HIT class, or can they look for short, vigorous efforts when life gives you the chance?

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Yeah, I found this paper interesting. I have to say that I'm not entirely sure how to take it exactly because it seems almost a little too good to be true. But we've seen the case.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Well, we'll tell the audience why it's what the exciting is, and then we can sort of come back and say why maybe it's not true.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, well, we've seen an increasing body of evidence over again the last decade or so that shows that high-intensity interval training is really beneficial across age groups. And it's beneficial to people like me who are doing long distance events, uh, who are training on a regular basis, but it's also very useful for people who train much less frequently and who have different kinds of goals. We know that just getting your heart rate up into a higher zone for a short period of time has enormous benefits, and that you don't have to keep it up that high for an entirely long workout, but just doing it in these intervals, as you mentioned. And so this paper, retrospective again, observational, a lot of self reporting, but basically found that people who had a higher proportion of vigorous activity had lower risks across multiple outcomes. And it didn't have to be a huge amount, like you said. Just getting 4% of your activity as vigorous made a big difference. And that activity didn't have to be Formal intervals in gym sessions. It didn't have to be part of a bike ride where you were just suddenly doing sprints. No, it could be a few minutes a day, up to 20 minutes, as little as 20 minutes per week, and it could be doing the things that you mentioned. It could just be sprinting up some stairs. It could just be going up a hill during your walk, but really with purpose. The point is though, you got to get your heart rate up. You've got to make sure that you're actually moving into a high-intensity zone of perceived effort, of actually measured effort of heart rate and respiratory, and making sure that you're actually stressing your system so that you're getting that benefit. And that is really the key. You have to perceive that you are getting an effort, but it doesn't have to be over a very long time.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

And you know, the the the numbers that I come back to, you said the 4% of your exercise, yeah, which is really just a couple minutes a day. And I hate doing traditional high-intensity intervals. I hate it. It's not fun for me. Some people enjoy it, I hate it. But the thought that I can just keep my eyes open during my day, and it's like, oh, you know, I'm on the third floor of the parking lot. All right, I could trudge my way up with my cell phone talking to my wife and not really, you know, get much vigorous exercise. Or I could say, wait a second, I got to walk up those four flights anyways. I might as well take it two steps at a time, get a bit short of breath as I'm doing it. And it turns out a couple of minutes a day is is great. Um, so I was, you know, again, it's an observational study with all the limitations that we've talked about already. But I was very gratified that you don't have to do anything formal. And again, if you want to be a competitive athlete, yeah, you're stuck doing that stuff. For average folks, don't beat yourself up. Find these things that are really a lot more fun and go do them.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

I I think that you know, I take this with a big grain of salt. I think that yes, if you're if you're not doing a whole lot, then yeah, going up the stairs, that's something. But if you are being intentional about your training in any way, I mean, even if you're just exercising, you're training, I don't know, maybe you just do 5K's with your kids, your grandkids. Maybe you just like to be able to be active with whomever, your friends. If you want to be a little more purposeful about high intensity intervals, I think you need to formalize it just a little bit. But it doesn't have to be mundane, it doesn't have to be crazy. The reality is, is like you said, you don't like them. I actually love them. I feel like they make me push myself in ways that I can't otherwise and in ways that I don't usually. And when I finish a high interval session and I've been successful, it is incredibly rewarding, and the endorphin rush I get from them is really, really positive. So I encourage people to consider making them a part of, and you don't have to do them often, once a week is really all you should be doing, uh, because they do take a toll on you physiologically and you do need to recover from them. And I do want to emphasize, and this is very important, if you are somebody who does not train regularly and you want to incorporate formal interval, high-intensity interval work, please um make sure that you're prepared for it physically. You want if you have any pre-existing conditions, you probably want to talk to your doctor and make sure that uh this is safe for you because you do need to elevate your heart rate, you do need to elevate your blood pressure, some medications may prevent you from being able to do that. So it's the kind of thing that if you have pre-existing health issues, you want to talk to your doctor before you embark upon this. But if you're otherwise fit and healthy and this is something you're interested in, I I I urge you to try it because I think it really makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Well, my dear listeners, you have the the Bobby approach, the less formal one, and Jeff's more rigorous approach, which he loves and enjoys, which is great for him. And you guys it's the coach and me. Yeah, they're both beneficial. You guys can decide what works for you. And give me feedback. Just uh send me a note and and I'll share it with Jeff and I'll let you guys know what comes in through the comments. Okay, now we're on to the third rule we get to break.

Hydration Myths For Short Workouts

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Let's break the bottle rule. So, rule number three is that exercise requires a hydration and fueling plan. So the third rule is about what we drink and eat around exercise. Everywhere you turn, there are water bottles, electrolyte packets, sports drinks, chills, shoes, pre-workout drink, recovery drink. Plenty of folks selling lots of stuff. Now, for endurance athletes like Jeff coaches, this matters a lot. A long ride, a hot weather ride, or a six to fifteen hour race is a lot different than a 40-minute gym workout. And as we'll get into, for most exercise under an hour, we may be solving a problem we don't have. Using Voltaire's language, the great might be a carefully calculated hydration and fueling plan. The good might be doing the workout, drinking only if you feel thirsty, and moving on with your day. So where did the strong belief in sports drinks come from? Rationale number one. If you sweat a bunch, we need to replace those fluids during a workout. So the first hydration idea sounds obvious. If I'm sweating, I must need to replace those fluids during the workout. Now, sometimes that's true. If you're exercising for a long time or in the heat and you sweat a lot, fluid loss can affect performance and safety. But for most exercise under an hour, the key question is not whether you sweat. The key question is did you lose enough fluid for it to matter? A common sports medicine threshold is about 2% body weight loss when fluid deficit starts to make a difference. Now it's not a magic line, but it's often used as the point where dehydration becomes more relevant for performance, especially during long exercise or exercise in the heat. So for a 160-pound person, 2% is about three pounds. So, Jeff, does it make sense for folks who think they need fluids to actually test it out? How could they test whether their reliance on drinking a bottle is actually necessary for them?

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Well, I mean, most people who are doing a standard gym workout 30 to 60 minutes, they they're probably not losing that much. And if they are losing fluids, which they probably are if they're working to any degree of intensity, replacing it during that workout is just not going to be that important. It's not going to affect anything. And I'll give you a great example. I swim uh regularly two to three times a week for an hour at a time, and I guarantee you I'm sweating when I swim because the water's warm and I'm sweating. I don't you don't perceive it because the sweat is immediately removed into the pool. I don't drink anything during that hour. I I get out of the pool and I I'll I'll drink afterwards, and I'm none the worse for wear. And uh I would wager that I'm probably sweating more than a lot of people do when they're doing their average gym workout because I know that I sweat heavily. So uh it's a it's a great example that I use to remind people that you can do a workout for an hour and not take in any fuel, any fluids, and you're gonna be just fine. The issue though, I think, is keeping in mind what's your status before you start. If you're going into a workout underfueled or dehydrated, that's a different situation. And so I always caution people make sure that you're appropriately fueled and hydrated when you start a workout, and then you won't have this issue, especially if you're working out for 30 to 40 minutes. But if you want to test it out just the way you were asking, uh Bobby, the best way to do that is just to do a plain old weigh yourself test. Start off by weighing yourself dry. Uh so before you do your workout, you want to do this with as little clothing on as possible, maybe a pair of underwear, something like that. And then go do your workout, and then after the workout, come back and weigh yourself again wearing exactly the same clothes and uh hopefully as minimal as possible, so like uh, you know, pair of underwear or whatever it is. And that difference is going to be the amount of sweat that you lost and will be the amount of weight that you lost. And in fact, we do this, I do this with my athletes to get them an average sweat rate based on um when they're doing high-intensity biking or running, so that we have a sense of how much fluid they need to replace uh over the course of a long distance event. But if you're doing this to find out how much you sweat over 30 to 40 minutes, 40 minutes, you will find that you're probably not losing that much, and you definitely don't need to worry about replacing it in an ongoing fashion in a short workout like that.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Lovely. So we're gonna bring data to the question, and folks can determine uh whether they need their fluids. I mean, I'm old enough to remember that when I used to work out in my 20s, nobody carried around a water bottle. Yeah, maybe there was a drinking fountain in the gym, but nobody did. Nowadays, everybody's tethered to a water bottle, not just at the gym, but they carry it around all day long. And I do have a podcast episode if people want to re-listen to it. Eight glasses of water a day. Good guidance or an urban myth. Surprise, surprise, it's an urban myth. Your kidneys know what to do. If you're not thirsty, don't worry about it. Okay, let's move from fluids to rationale number two for having our sports bottle, electrolytes.

Electrolytes Hype And Real Dangers

SPEAKER_01 33:15

And really, the electrolytes are the same issue. So, like fluids, electrolytes matter when you lose a bunch. Long exercise, heavy sweating, heat, humidity, repeated sessions, or in people who lose a lot of salt in their sweat. But for a typical short workout, people don't run out of salt in their bodies, especially again, if you're only losing a pound or two of sweat, you're not losing enough electrolytes to worry about it. And for most Americans, we get more than enough salt in our diet. So, Jeff, what do you tell your athletes about electrolytes? Do they need to put stuff in their water bottles or spend money upon the latest electrolyte cocktail? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah, so in general, this is a such a widely misunderstood topic. And it comes back to when marathon running really became popular, people understood that hydration was a big factor in being successful. They would run their marathon, they would find out if they didn't take fluids in, they would suffer and they would just not be able to finish. And as marathon running became more and more popular, you started seeing these water stations pop up along the course, and people would drink lots of water. And what would happen is as they were sweating, they were losing water and sodium, and they would replace it with free water, and they would dilute the sodium in their bloodstream, and they would get what's called hyponatremia or low sodium. And that would result in them having very serious health problems. They could become comatose, they could uh they could have all kinds of issues, and people died from this water intoxication essentially because they were getting hyponatremic. And over uh time people came to realize that when we have a profuse amount of fluid loss from sweat, we need to replace not just water, but we need to replace these electrolytes. And so we started to see these balanced electrolyte solutions come into play, and over time safety uh was restored, and we don't see these kinds of issues anymore because people are drinking water and they're also getting some sodium, which is very helpful again in longer events where you're sweating a lot. But that has now filtered into like everything. Like now it seems like I'm going for a walk, I better take my electrolyte uh solution because who knows how much sodium I'm gonna lose when I'm walking. Uh, and we see it promoted continuously. I see this stuff all the time. Liquid IV, and uh I I see people uh my races, they're carrying baggies of s of like salt tablets, and they're taking so much salt that we're now getting the reverse. People are now getting hypernatrich because they're taking so much salt that they're overwhelming their kidney's ability to dilute it, and they can't hold on to enough water, and so they end up with elevated levels of sodium, and so it's become completely ridiculous. And so the reality is you don't need to if you're doing what I do, these long distance events, you don't need to take in nearly as much salt as you think. You definitely need to take some, but you don't need to take nearly as much as people are making you think you do. And if you're doing these 30 or 40 minute workouts, you don't need to take any zero, just drink water. If you want to drink Gatorade because you enjoy Gatorade, fine. I'm not gonna stop you, but I'll tell you right now, there's more sugar in Gatorade than there is salt. And if you're drinking the sugar-free stuff, that's fine. There's still not a lot of salt, but that's okay. If if you prefer having flavored drink, then by all means go for it. But you know what? There are other ones that you can get that taste just as good, cost less, and have equally piddly amounts of salt in them. So, but it but like I said, I I don't begrudge people who want to drink these things. Just understand that when you take excess electrolytes for a 40-minute workout, all you're doing is peeing it out. Because, like you said earlier, Bobby, your kidneys are going to know what to do with because our whole system is designed to maintain what's called homeostasis, normal, kind of like this level, uh you know, keep everything at the same level all the time. And so a second you take in excess electrolytes, your kidneys are just spitting it all out. So all that money you spend on that stuff is is just expensive pee.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Absolutely well put. We were going to chat a little bit about the sugar, the Gatorade, but I think we'll do that another time to keep this to a manageable length. Um, again, if the the punchline is if you're doing a three-hour marathon, five-hour marathon, long time out in the sun, sweating, exercising, yeah, having electrolytes, having having Gatorade, having some sugar in there is a great idea. But for your 30 or 40 minute workout, save the money and save the calories.

The Simple Takeaways And Resources

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Okay, it's time to wrap up. Let's return to Voltaire. The great can become the enemy of the good. Now, in exercise, the great often looks like a perfect plan, a perfect weekly schedule, a perfect interval session, a perfect hydration strategy, the perfect refueling plan. But the evidence says something different. It gives us permission to be more flexible. If weekdays are impossible, happily exercise on the weekend. If formal intervals are not happening, use short bursts of effort when daily life offers them to you. And if your workout's under an hour, don't let hydration hype distract you from the exercise itself. The goal is not a perfect exercise. The goal is exercise that happens often enough, sometimes hard enough, and a way that fits your real life. The workout that counts is not the perfect one you imagine. It's the good enough one that you actually do. Jeff, thank you for your wisdom and guidance, folks. Do check out his Tri Doc podcast. And if you want individual endurance training coaching, Jeff, how are folks gonna find you?

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Oh, I would love if they would reach out. They can email me at Tri underscore D O C at iCloud.com, or they can give me a follow on Instagram at Tri Doc Coaching, all one word. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

Well, it's been great fun. And uh I think now that we've talked about exercise, it's time for me to take my afternoon nap and just recover from it all. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Take care. Uh thanks so much for having me.