The Masters Athlete Survival Guide
We explore thriving as an athlete after 40. Each episode, we’ll dive into tips, hacks, and inspiring stories from seasoned athletes and our personal experience. Whether you’re a weekend warrior or a competitive pro, this podcast is your playbook for staying fit, strong, and motivated
The Masters Athlete Survival Guide
Masters Athletes: Cardiovascular & Muscle Endurance
Ever wondered how to maintain peak endurance as you age? Join us on the Master's Athlete Survival Guide, where Scott and I share our personal stories and hard-earned wisdom on navigating the unique endurance challenges faced by master's athletes. We'll discuss the inevitable decline in strength and muscle fibers, focusing on fast twitch fibers, and reveal practical strategies to counteract these changes. Our real-world observations, sprinkled with humor, offer valuable insights on maintaining both cardiovascular and muscular endurance to maximize your healthspan.
In another segment, we dive into the crucial aspects of recovery and injury prevention. Reflecting on our own experiences, we'll talk about the toll intense workouts can take and the importance of proper recovery techniques. Consistency is key, but so is knowing when to push your limits and when to ease off to avoid burnout. We'll share personal anecdotes about lingering injuries, the significance of choosing the right sports for your capabilities, and how age necessitates adjustments in your training regimen to sustain an active lifestyle.
Finally, we explore the intricacies of endurance training. From the benefits of zone two cardio and HIIT to the impact of diet on performance, we cover it all. Scott shares his disciplined dietary journey following a diabetes diagnosis, while I discuss my low-carb, high-protein approach. Join us for practical tips on staying consistent, managing stress, and enjoying your cardio routine, all while keeping your energy levels high and your performance optimal.
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New episodes come out every other Thursday!
Welcome to the Master's Athlete Survival Guide, where we explore the secrets to thriving in sports after 40. I'm John Catalinas and, along with Scott Feig, we'll dive into training tips, nutrition hacks and inspiring stories from seasoned athletes who defy age limits. Whether you're a weekend warrior or a competitive pro, this podcast is your playbook for staying fit, strong and motivated. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:And we're back. This is Scott.
Speaker 1:This is John.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm John. As you have, john and Echo. In the past we've talked about some different ideas of what the tools are, what tools we put in our toolbox as master athletes. I think one of the things that a lot of the athletes that we deal with, john, struggle with or try to figure out how they want to handle it, is this idea of endurance. You and I have talked a lot about it over the few years that we've been training together.
Speaker 2:I think there's a marked difference in endurance. You have cardiovascular endurance, and we're going to get into that, but then there's also that muscular endurance, that sort of short-term gas tank that allows you to, you know, for one minute, go all out on a heavy deadlift or a circus dumbbell or something like that. So I want to sort of explore some of those options and the differences in those things and how they influence masters athletes and you. You know, can we still get a lot of cardiovascular endurance? Can we still get and deal with muscular endurance? Is it something that is just memory at this point in our lives?
Speaker 1:yeah and I, you know, before we go too much farther, I'd like to say that neither scott or I are that kind of doctor. Some of us can say that we're doctors, but we're not the kind that should be giving out this kind of advice. This is all based on our experiences and our observations and a little bit of research that I did, and it's not so much that I want to put false information out there. It's the fact that this is sort of the real world application of something that I think everybody strives for. Right. Like everybody wants to be more fit, everybody would like to be stronger longer. So, um, if more of the scientific side interests you, I suggest a book by peter attia called uh, outlive. It's a recent book and uh, it's great. It is a road guide for how to do all things to maximize what he calls lifespan, not not, I'm sorry, healthspan, not lifespan, because that's the goal.
Speaker 2:Right, it's no fun living to 100 if the last 20 years you lived, you know, in a wheelchair on oxygen, eating cheetos we are never going to get we are never, ever going to get sponsored by cheetos with that kind of attitude and thank you for that veiled reference to me being a fake doctor, as my children used to say You're not a fake doctor, you're just a.
Speaker 1:You're like a podiatrist versus a cardiologist I don't know. Shout out to all the podiatrists out there that are sending me hate mail now no, you did a lot of schooling. You deserve to be a, a doctor. It's just the fact that you're like a doctor of something that's made up and that, in a zombie apocalypse, will help no one, but other than that it is. I am so proud of you. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad this isn't a video podcast, because we definitely would have had to censor what scott just did Most definitely All right, john.
Speaker 2:Yes, agreed, neither of us are medical doctors and neither of us can, you know, really speak to this to the level that some folks have trained long and hard to be part of. A lot of this is just what we've experienced throughout our lives and want to share with um, with folks that we, that we deal with on a daily basis. So I guess my first question is how should Masters athletes really deal with balancing muscular versus cardiovascular endurance?
Speaker 1:You know, I think, spoiler alert. I think that's the takeaway from this whole podcast. From this episode, you certainly can have one without the other. From this episode, you certainly can have one without the other. Um, and I think the way that at least I approach them, or people that I train with approach them, you tend to default to one to the other. My muscular endurance is light years ahead of my cardiovascular endurance. I can spend three hours in gym doing stuff. Fine, put me on the pickleball court for about an hour and, uh, 80 year old ladies are asking me if I'm okay, would you like a shirt or maybe a wet nap there, hun? So, yeah, I mean, the difference is, at least the way we define it. You know is cardiac health versus, you know, the ability to move your muscles over time. And, uh, I can speak a lot more to the muscle side, cause I've done a fair amount of, uh, citizen scientists and have won stuff with this. I mean, there's some undeniable things.
Speaker 1:Uh, when I worked with Buddy Morris for a little while, he just looked me square in the eye and said you know, you lose 10% of your strength every decade and I'd like to say that wasn't true, but, like so much he told me, that hurt my heart. Um, absolutely true. There is going to be a natural decline that you can really strive to kind of outpace and you can successfully outpace that somewhat, but you certainly need to strive to to minimize it because you'll find that, like uh in the research I did that like fast twitch and slow twitch fibers yeah, they both decline, but fast twitch goes faster.
Speaker 1:you lose more uh as you age, which you know I have a hard time being the example of that, since I'm not sure I've ever had a fast twitch fiber.
Speaker 2:And you know what's funny with that, john, with all the strongman training that you and I have done lately, I think I'm physically stronger in many of those lifts than I've been ever in my life. But I think that's just because of a focused training, more so than anything else. You know, when we were younger and when we were, when I was doing things like wrestling and you know football or something like that, I did a lot of longer distance running longer distance, most definitely in quotes because of my svelte figure. You know if I ran two miles or something like that, okay, but I could run two miles. You know if I ran two miles or something like that, okay, but I could run two miles. You know I could do it in what was a decent time.
Speaker 2:If you said to me right now, scott, go out there and run two miles, not a chance in hell. That's the spirit. I can sit on an airdyne bike or an assault bike and pound away for five or 10 minutes at you know pretty high RPMs, but don't look at me like that. I can prove it. But in reality, when we're in the gym, a lot of the lifts that we do, especially in strongman, are one minute max repetitions at X, number of weight you know, and that you can do at x number of weight, you know right and that you can do.
Speaker 2:But in reality I finish that minute and then I will go and stand over to the side and try to catch my breath and my heart's going like a trip hammer, right. So that's the difference that we're talking about.
Speaker 1:So talk more about that if you yeah, and I wonder, tell me in your experience, scott, I mean because you do have a good muscle engine there um, how's your recovery? Do you find it? Mean, because you do have a good muscle engine there, how's your recovery, do you find it? I mean, yes, you can still do the output, but the space between sessions, what do you think Do you have to do? Recover slower?
Speaker 2:I mean, I find I recover slower, but I do everything slower, I think over the last couple of years it started to slow down, ever since I crossed that, that magical 50 number, yeah, but even into my 40s I could work out five days a week and, you know, still getting decent results straight through. Now I find that if I do three heavy, high-end workouts over the course of a week, the body's dragging a little bit, yeah, you know. And then when we get together as a master's group at the compound, we're doing a little less strenuous output. You know, it's grip or it's, uh, maybe a lower level grind or something like something to move, yeah, but for me.
Speaker 2:You know like i'll'll do a Monday night, wednesday night, because I know Saturday, which is a they call it strongman Saturdays. At the gym I'm training with the guys that are 20 and I'll be damned if I'm going to let them embarrass me. Amen.
Speaker 1:Welcome to masters athletics. We may not win, but we're going to beat you, kid.
Speaker 2:You, you know. So I still bank on that gas tank. You know and it's a comment that when I went to nationals this year, one of the guys that I went with, who was a phenomenal athlete, doc Eric Jensen. So shout out to Dr Eric Jensen, he's a, he's a real doctor, he's a real doctor. Anesthesiologist Doc said to me, he says Scott. Doc said to me so, Scott, the thing that's going to serve you well today is that bottomless gas tank. Well, that's great.
Speaker 2:At the end of that day and it was only five events, but it was five events of up to a max of a minute each when I went back to the hotel that night I was spent, I mean, I was done. I had the Gatorade Pedia lights sitting next to me to try to get some juice and some electrolytes into me. So you know, I guess your original question was what's my recovery like? Yeah, Simply because of the training that Tony Kalish has me doing. It was better, I think, than it should have been, given where I'm at. Okay, Because five days a week he wants to be in the assault like doing that five minutes. But it's. I'm finding, like you said, as we're getting older it is a little bit longer, it takes a little bit more, the muscles are a little bit slower and, honestly, that first time I lay down after a hellacious workout oh, does that feel good? The body's like. This is what you're supposed to be doing, stupid.
Speaker 1:Where are the Cheetos? So, again, not sponsored by Cheetos. I would like to point out that you were spent from five minutes of work. That's sad. Five minutes, just five minutes, come on.
Speaker 1:There's 24 hours a day. Five minutes shouldn't have killed you. It would have killed me. But yeah, I'm being sarcastic, obviously, but I guess why I wanted to bring up the recovery thing. And I think this is more of the weekend warrior or the more casual athlete you go out that first couple sessions you go like you did when you were 20, and you hurt. You hurt hard and you hurt in ways and spaces and muscles that you haven't moved in. A bit, especially weird little connector muscles tend to say, hey, we're old now, but that doesn't mean like that shouldn't be. Uh, like a limiter, right, like I mean you need to address that. Like I'm sore. I should probably do some modality on recovery, which we'll cover in a future episode, but I mean, allowing yourself to recover is as much as important as the work. I think.
Speaker 2:I agree with you, and I think that leads me to a question how can we, as masters, athletes like, safely push ourselves, push our limits, making sure that we're hitting those cardiovascular goals or those muscular endurance goals without injuring ourselves yeah, or truly, I guess at this age, without going into a burnout phase? Right, because you know we can talk in a second about that sort of wave theory as to you know how you cycle your training and whatnot. But ultimately we don't want to hurt ourselves, right? I mean, it's too damn old and the longer, the more you hurt yourself, the longer it takes and those injuries linger. Because I, you know, before I turned over to you here and that question I asked you, I remember, I mean, I still have pain in my one thumb and that happened three years ago when we were in Ohio at that gym. Dana White gave them a gym, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Steve Malochich worked there.
Speaker 2:When we were doing and it was the only event that I didn't win that day. What did you not win that day? I think it was log press who won that that day, I don't know. I think Mark won that day. That hurts.
Speaker 1:Who won that that day? I don't know. I think Mark won that day.
Speaker 2:That hurts. But if you remember it was immediately press the axle for one rep, put it to the ground and go to the log and rep out. Well, I pressed the axle, dropped it down, put my hand to stop it from bouncing up. It bounced up and jammed my thumb. And it's still three years ago. I still have issues inside that thumb with some of the stuff we do. So how do we avoid those things? How do we push ourselves but avoid those small lingering issues and avoid burnout?
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, the first step is to take a step back and realize that this is the Master's Athlete Survival Guide, not the Strongman Master's Athlete Survival Guide.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 1:No, I say that with all love because it is a broader audience and I think step one is to pick a sport or pursuit that fits your body type, your goals and your pain tolerance. I mean strongman extracts a price.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you want to be anything more than a casual lifter of things heavy, it's going to hurt.
Speaker 2:You're going to get bruised.
Speaker 1:It's a rough sport, especially in your 50s, to be doing Riding a bicycle riding a great bicycle. There's a lesson I learned A bad Walmart bicycle versus a really nice bike store bicycle.
Speaker 1:And not getting sponsored by Walmart. Yeah, sorry Walmart, but they do sell Cheetos. Oh wait, not them either, but just that right, like riding your bike every day. Um, you know the the surprise injuries are probably less. Now, I think everybody that's listening can think of an thing where they did something or nothing, like they were walking across the kitchen and something went twang I mean, or unplugging something, yeah, from a ground level okay yeah, there's, there's all that.
Speaker 1:So I mean avoiding, avoiding injury is, you know, it's great, it's a part of life is getting dinged up and, as you know, fascia and you know tendons and all that tighten up and get grizzled. Uh, some of it's going to come. So I think the key I mean if you are a master's athlete kind of just starting out or just casual, you know you're not gonna get the same injuries bowling as you are, um, doing strongman, what you know I think strongman's on somewhere to the far end. But I mean I'm sure, like, again, this speaks to the lane you've chosen. Can you imagine you and I trying to be in a master's iron man like, yeah, go run a bajillion miles and bike a bajillion miles and swim, I would drown. Probably first the swimming I could do could you?
Speaker 1:pretty good swimmer. Yeah, fat floats, so I'm good. I was going to say I'm too dense to swim. Well, but I meant muscularly dense and I know Scott is smiling at me because he immediately went with yeah, you are dense, ho ho, ho. But I mean, there's an inherent fear into a lot of Masters athletes too, about getting hurt. I'm sure that comes up Like if a guy rolls off the street into a gym in his 50s and says to a personal trainer I want to do this. I think anybody worth their salt is going to address where they are and how prepared they are to start doing stuff, whereas you just walk into a gym and start moving something you moved in your 20s. You're probably gonna tweak something.
Speaker 2:I mean that. But that goes to what when we uh in in a previous podcast when we talked to mike about posturology, it's that idea of doing that initial assessment a good personal trainer for whatever your sport is and you're right, you know, I mean I talk a lot about strongman, because it's kind of where you and I are at with a lot of these things right now, with the exception of your, your pickleball phase right now. God bless pickleball, god bless pickleball. You've got to have somebody that's willing to sort of do your checks and balances and see where you're at at any given phase and track your numbers. I mean that's a big part of it what's working, what isn't working.
Speaker 2:I think that you know I sort of picked on you a little bit when the first time you came into the gym with a notepad and you're writing things down. You know this is what I did, this is what I ate. This is how I feel. That tracking is a huge part of that. And that leads us to this idea of what type of endurance are we looking for? How is my endurance more so? How is my recovery right? Where do I need to sort of modify because I am 50?
Speaker 1:I'm not hitting those goals yeah, it's funny you bring up. I think there's two things that need to be addressed in what you just said. The first thing is the the journaling that I did for years and years and years and years that I've recently stopped, and I think it's because I just stopped learning things, because I've been doing it so long. I saw the trends but I learned dumb things from writing stuff down like and dumb, dumb, these are going to be no duh kind of moments, like if I went to the Chinese buffet the day I was going to compete or work out.
Speaker 1:I had a terrible competition or workout.
Speaker 2:Shocker. I know that's mind blowing.
Speaker 1:Not to mention that was probably three plate Chinese buffet back in the dark ages. Bad old days, just three plates.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But I mean I learned other, yeah, but I mean I learned other. I mean I learned other trends too. Like I can look back to one of the pages in my journal where I found this online I don't remember who did it someone posted a workout where it was how many reps of 315 could you get in a half hour deadlifts? So I set a goal and tried to knock those out and what you'll see between the pages is that there's a huge gap to the next workout. Nothing is mentioned in the the pages. But the thing is, oh my god, I crushed myself. That was dumb. It was a pointless, not training circus act.
Speaker 1:So something like like doing a journaling, especially when you start out, and just tracking sort of the same variables that you feel are meaningful for you. I mean, there's also a whole industry built now around fitbit, apple watch, whoop or ring, all those trackers. Um, because I did learn that you know less than five hours of sleep before anything was. I should just write it off. I had no gas in the tank when I didn't sleep. Just, I think it's more obvious now, but 20 years ago I don't think sleep was leaned into as hard as far as such a restorative yeah, shocker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think in and you hit it on the head. That's an age thing. Yeah, you know, my son, at nine o'clock at night, could drink two monster energy drinks and at 10 o'clock he is out cold sleeping. You know, and I know we're sort of getting off topic a little bit, but it is there because we're talking about the sort of impact of age on what we're doing. So I think a lot of what we're talking about now is more cardiovascular. How long can we go? Yeah, so let's talk about that for just a quick second.
Speaker 2:Another question here as we get older, what really is more effective for us as masters athletes when you're trying to work out, is it that you're going to be going out for a long distance run? Now, I'm not saying that running is bad, okay. What I'm saying is, running is not your sport. Sure You're. You're looking for the cardio effects of it, yep, so are we doing something that is long distance car or running, biking, you know, stair climber, elliptical insert, cardio machine here or should we be looking more for something that is more that hit type of method? You know high intensity, interval training? What are we looking for there? Well, in our case, is it a grind or is it jump on that assault bike, which you know is really the only piece of true cardio?
Speaker 1:we have right well, it's funny because I think I think it depends on what you want. I I've read so much about vo2 max and uh, uh, just getting cardio in the. You know, the first thing is I saw a zillion suggestions of 150 minutes a week of zone two cardio, which I think is where your heart is elevated.
Speaker 1:But you can still talk and, again, I'm not a doctor, so don't don't hate on me, write it in the comments, complain, send me to med school, I'll be fine with that. Um, the hit stuff is good. It's a great way to compact thing. It's been a great tool in your training, most definitely. But I think the reality is that if you are just the casual athlete, you can do better with something that's a little less impactful in in execution.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is that again, I will keep coming to the back to this throughout the whole podcast um, this isn't a job for any of us. Do do a cardio that I mean. Do a cardio that you love. Uh, you know, being a track and field athlete in college, all my nutty friends loved to run ew, by the way, but I mean it's beyond the training. Like you know, they'd get up after a rough night and go run 10, 15 miles on a weekend, cool, and for them it was restorative and they would run as a group and kind of recap their evenings as well as be training. So I think that's the key.
Speaker 2:I think we got to make the goal, the goal, right, right we gotta make the, we gotta make the goal, the goal, right, right. You hit on something earlier when you talked about the idea of I had a brain fart or a brain epiphany no when. Or brain fart when I would be training and I I'm journaling, and then I see, oh my god, if I have three plates of chinese before or the day of that I'm going to be training, it doesn't go as well. So, as an older athlete, what are you finding? You know and again, we're not mds, we're not claiming to be or anything or nutritionists what do you find helps you when you are going to be doing some sort of endurance work, yeah, be that muscular or cardiovascular right, and I, you know, I think it's.
Speaker 1:It's all the things. It's everything we're ever going to cover in this podcast. It is everything from let's just take a casual runner who's training for a 5k. You know it's your shoe choice and how it fits your feet and does it rub and is it giving you blisters. It is the weather you choose to run and it is the surfaces you choose to run and it's your background, it's your flexibility. All those things come into it and the only way you're going to get like I could not increase my cardiovascular fitness in the near term by just running, because I cannot sustain the output through running that I would need to improve. So that's why we tend to do things like run around with heavy things, so that we can shorten the duration and increase the output yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of times that we look at trying to breathe less hard. I know that's worded incredibly poor.
Speaker 2:No, this is why we're not doctors, because we say things like scott, I think you're breathing too hard when we're doing things and you know, I sort of at it before you go all out for a minute or two minutes on some sort of an exercise and when it's done, you're leaning over a weight machine of some form and you're huffing and puffing, or like we call our friend bellows, the breath just keeps on coming, coming, coming.
Speaker 2:Common it's the idea of how are we going to increase our ability to breathe more naturally while or just after we finished some sort of a crazy, insane sort of intense workout.
Speaker 2:I mean, for me, there are parts of it there, there is the consistency of it, there's the stress, and we've talked in previous podcasts about the way stress sort of impacts us. But when I look at it, if I and I tend to work out later at night because between what my job is and some of the other responsibilities that we all have in our lives, I could be working out as late as 10 o'clock at night yeah, when, when I look and I reflect back, either after the workout's done or the next morning while I'm driving to work, if I look at what I'm eating, it really does impact how my cardiovascular endurance is going to happen or my muscular endurance is going to happen. You know, because of the diet that I follow, I don't take in a lot of carbohydrates, but I think the more fat that I sort of bring into my diet it takes the place of the energy that cardio or that carbs usually pulls out for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, All right. Well, let's not gloss over the fact that Scott just said because of the diet I follow. Let's talk about the diet you follow, scott, because you're very religious about your diet, and that doesn't mean that you just eat.
Speaker 2:I think the word is OCD.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't just eat mana from heaven and water from a rock or anything, but you, you, you are significantly disciplined when it comes to the inputs and I give you credit for that. So let's touch briefly. This is not a diet episode, but let's touch briefly on a typical day eating for scott flake about lord what?
Speaker 2:four years ago now, three years ago now, something like that my doctor said to me you're diabetic. I said you're full of shit. Oh, he said, no, it's what the numbers are saying. And I once told myself, because diabetes runs in both sides of my family, I once told myself, if it ever got to that point, that I would change my diet. Cold turkey, yep. And it got to that point and I said to myself self you have to follow what you said, you have to change your diet. And this is where my OCD actually comes into handy.
Speaker 2:A typical diet for me over the course of a day, I have an incredibly small number of real carbs versus net carbs. Now, net carbs to me are things that might have sugar, alcohol or things that are fiber based. Yeah, okay, I know there's a lot of folks out there Please don't hate John because he said that that are saying, well, fiber is a carb. Yes, yeah, okay, but the way my system processes it, it doesn't impact the numbers that I get when I take my blood sugar. I do my a1c.
Speaker 2:So a typical day for me could be, uh, starting my day out with a protein fiber shake, which is, you know, I make them so it tastes like a creamsicle when I was a little kid. No sugar in the whole thing. Okay, yeah, uh, anywhere from a quarter to a half pound of nuts as a snack. Uh, a little bit later on for lunch. Um, I have the ability to eat the same thing day after day after day, which really does help. Um, lunch for me could be it, you know, it could be uh like a cajun jambalaya that I've made, or like a taco meat where it's just uh, seasoned meat, nacho cheese, uh, some vegetables that are in there that are low carb, those types of things so are you saying that you meal prep for your lunch so you're not surprised and starving and don't know what to do and make bad lunch choices?
Speaker 2:oh my god, do I meal prep?
Speaker 1:no, that's. That's what I wanted to highlight the fact that that's a key.
Speaker 2:I apologize that I glossed over it. Yes, sundays are meal prep days for me. I will have it for dinner and then for the next five days straight that's what my lunch is going to be Put it in a container. I know what I'm going to do. When I leave in the morning, I've got my shake in one hand and I grab my lunch in the other hand. You know each of the the three campuses that I work out of. I've got certain foods there that if I get hungry for something, or if I get the munchies, or I'm sitting in a meeting for so long that I can't get up and get to my lunch at, you know, somewhat normal time, I have snacks that are acceptable and they really fall into like the atkins or the zone type of process and whatnot. Dinner could be steak. It could be like a hamburger without a bun. It could be a salad that is smothered in bacon and cheese, those types of things.
Speaker 1:I think it stops being a salad at that point, by the way. Just the fact that the ratio to bacon, the lettuce no, there's green stuff in there.
Speaker 2:Is that how it works? I can see the green stuff in there.
Speaker 1:I really can okay, we're gonna have to have an episode on like is a big mac a lettuce or is a salad? Yeah, it's a big mac a lettuce. Is big mac a salad? Sorry, I was.
Speaker 2:I was focused on the fact that you actually ate lettuce and you know I know in like a regular keto diet there's a lot of fat that they put into it. You know there's the running joke that somebody put a stick of butter in their coffee, like, you know, turkish style coffee. I've done that. I don't quite go that far, yeah, so I call it kind of a dirty keto and I think that has an impact and allows me to go longer in some of the exercises I do.
Speaker 1:I don't feel as tired with the food that I eat. So, yeah, I don't want to make this a food episode. But, very quickly, I am also a type 2 diabetic. Uh, I do not control it as well as scott. I am on medications, including, uh, monjaro, which we should have episode on my monjaro journey, because that's an adventure and a half. Um, and I will bonk, for lack of a better term. If you know, if you're an endurance athlete, you know about bonking where you just seem like you run out of gas. I will run out of gas and it's because I try to stay lean and I eat a lot of protein and I don't. I think I need to add fat. I think scott doesn't seem to process it or need it as much as I do, but I do. Um, yeah, and again, I don't want to go down too far down the diet thing, but okay, so we got to lunch. Scott, where else are we are, we are, we are we eating everything today?
Speaker 2:no, uh, dinner tonight is probably going to be because I have to go shopping when I leave here, but dinner tonight's probably going to be a steak with um. And shout out to dominica selly, he's the one that taught me the idea of. You know, we always had loaded baked potatoes right when you go out somewhere. Well, loaded cauliflower or loaded broccoli, yep, exact same things. And you can buy pre-packaged sets and you know, they say the thing serves a family of four. Yeah, well then I identify as a family of four, eight, eight, ten, whatever. It's basically cauliflower with cheese and some bacon and some chives on. It sounds delicious and it is unbelievably good.
Speaker 2:And you know like I'll have a couple of little um reese's zero peanut butter cups, yes, and that'll finish me out for the day, you know, but the one thing that I do, and I make sure that I do on a daily basis, is drink anywhere from and I know any doctors that are listening out there. First off, why? And second off, no doctors are listening to this, and second off, I know that it's not always the best for you I'll drink anywhere from three to six or more liters of water a day, which helps to satiate any how many people were worried that he was going to say three to six monster energy drinks I was worried I was concerned and just so you know if you, if you travel to a competition with scott, you need to go to a restaurant.
Speaker 1:It's a lot like the scene from when harry met sally. I would like this, but without a bun, and this on the side. And do you have this? And can I have this? And I'd like you to build me this baked potato without any potato.
Speaker 2:Um but people like me. When I say that no one, they look at you and they sort of wink like who's the idiot?
Speaker 1:that you're here with. Yeah, that's true that there's sympathy. Um, okay, so I don't want to get too deep in diet, because we'll do diet, but it's just the fact two reasons why I brought up diet. One was Scott is incredibly disciplined and it's part of his superpower. The other thing I wanted to bring up is that I increased my cardiovascular endurance by dropping 100 pounds.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:When I was big and strong, I had nothing.
Speaker 2:Now I'm small and weak yeah, had nothing Um now I'm small.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say I'm small and strong ish, and but my cardiovascular endurance is way, way higher and I know it's really stupid and simple, but dragging along pounds you don't need doesn't serve anybody, for a whole host of reasons that we're not going to tell you. You know why, scott? Why? Cause we're not doctors. Well speak for yourself. Oh, that's right, I'm a fake doctor. We're not real doctors. We're not medical doctors. Let's go with that. That seems more dignified. We're not medical doctors. We're not medical doctors, okay.
Speaker 2:I'll take that Okay, thanks. You know my diet and certain ticks that I have the way you tie your shoes the way.
Speaker 1:You have to touch a doorknob 17 times before you leave. I'm getting it down to 15.
Speaker 2:I am making stuff up right now, folks, but I think the one thing that we've hit on before and with you know, talking about my diet and the discipline it took to drop 100 pounds or to to do, you know, go into a gym and do whatever or just literally to get off the couch, is that mental discipline, and I think that's that's a nice way to tie this all sort of together. We can write a program for you there. There are trainers out there far, far better than we are, and I have one, tony, who is unbelievable. Trax knows what I'm doing, knows how to manipulate things to get the best out of me for a comp. But the best trainer in the world can't work out for you. They can't help with your mental discipline, and I think that's a great spot for us to sort of tie this all together. What role do you think that the mental discipline plays in cardiovascular or muscular endurance?
Speaker 1:well, I like that you left it where you left it, because I had earlier in this discussion talked about two things and I only talked about one.
Speaker 1:The next was a trainer and you brought it to Tony and it sort of speaks to that fear of injury as well. I suggest, if you're just getting into sport or trying to elevate your current sport, that you do find a trainer. But you have to do some work because there's a lot of ways that you can get certified and be a gym bro and call yourself a trainer. A real trainer is an invaluable resource, not only just from giving you sets and reps I think that's the least thing they do. I think it's looking at you as a holistic athlete or human and talking about you know you're assessing your needs, assessing your fears. Like, I think, if you have a trainer and you're concerned about breaking a hip and you and you tell that trainer that you can work around that and I think slowly you build that satisfaction that you know that's not going to be an issue and you know again to speak to the correct trainer for you your strongman trainerony is elite when it comes to training strongmen.
Speaker 1:I bet you he sucks at pole vault training. Sorry, tony. No, no, despair. You know tony was probably like an all-american pole vaulter. Now he's gonna tell me that next time I see him. But you know you gotta pick your people. This goes back to the episode we had where we talked about the tribe. You don't necessarily need a trainer if you can find a posse of three, four, five like-minded people and just share war stories, just figure it out together I agree, and that's I think that's where the mental toughness comes into.
Speaker 2:It is that ability to see where we want to go and sort of feel how it's going to work for us.
Speaker 1:But yeah, okay. Um, I don't want to necessarily. I mean we're diminishing, I think what the topic was, and I think we're going to have to bust out muscular endurance a little better and maybe come back to this in a part two. A couple things I just wanted to touch upon to sort of give the listener some grace is um, again, I spoke to your fast twitch fibers uh, decrease earlier, so as you age you're gonna get slower. Sorry, that's just physiology. Um, scott and I both wrestle with diabetes. I have, um, some nerve damage in my foot whatever they call it, there's a word for it that I can't.
Speaker 2:Neuropathy, neuropathy.
Speaker 1:You, maybe you are a doctor. Lev Vygotsky taught me that, yeah, lev, good old Lev from the 1400s Um Latvia, yeah, so I have that and that I mean it's in my toe a little bit and I'm aware of it and bit and I'm aware of it, and it's actually the trigger that made me go to the doctor and learn that I got diabetes, because I was wondering what the heck I did to my toe. But the reality is that if that had happened somewhere in like in my elbow, I would have slower mobility, reaction time and fidelity in my arm, and that's just, that's fine, that's you know. Don't not do something because you can't do it at Olympian level, I think is another thing.
Speaker 1:And then I hate to say this, but there are significant from, at least in my research, and please in the comments if you want to speak up there are significant differences between men's and women's cardiovascular health. Women achieve it and maintain it easier, but they have to work harder to get to it and things like stroke rate and volume are lower because their hearts aren't as muscular or as thick, because you know, that's how we are Thick-hearted, we're thick-hearted men, which is a great band name, by the way. So I think, in conclusion, as always, do what you can do, do it with purpose. Head towards a goal. We always talk about goals. Maybe we talked about goals, we framed it kind of as like achieving some sort of sport goal, but nothing wrong with improving your cardiovascular health, no matter who you are I agree and I think, as always, we're leaving today with more questions than we started with.
Speaker 2:So if you got more questions or if you think we sort of glossed over something, please let us know. Yeah, it's something that we're more than happy to revisit and I think it is something new we need to revisit. But let us know your thoughts and I'm still, scott.
Speaker 1:I have been John this entire time and thank you for listening. Ciao, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post it on your social media or leave a review. To catch all the latest from us, you can follow us on Instagram at Masters Athlete Survival Guide. Thanks again. Now get off our lawn, you damn kids.