2725: The Perfect Fitness/Biohacking Day

0:00If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, Mind Pump with your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, what if you had 24 hours to design the perfect fitness and biohacking day? You have access to tools, things that you can use, gym equipment. You're like, look, I want to make it a day that is amazing and awesome, and I'm a fitness fanatic. Well, we broke it down, laid it out for you from beginning to end, AM to PM.

0:40That's what today's episode is all about. By the way, this episode is brought to you by 8Sleep. This is the most advanced sleep system in the world. It goes on your bed and it controls the temperature of a bed as it monitors your sleep patterns. And it uses advanced AI to individualize the temperature to maximize your amazing sleep. So you burn more body fat, build more muscle. You wake up rested. Here's the best part. You get early access to the Black Friday sale, which will get you up to$700 off. Here's what you do. Go to 8sleep.com forward slash mind pump. By the way, you can use your HSA, your health savings account to pay for this because it's for your health.

1:20So if you got that, go to 8sleep.com forward slash mind pump. Save up to$700 on that link and get amazing sleep. Also, it's Black Friday for us too. Every MAPS program, every bundle, everything, 60 % off across the board right now, biggest sale of the year. Go to maps, fitness products.com. Use the code black Friday for the discount. Also every purchase enters you into a contest. Two people are going to get a week free vacation at the mind pump park city house, plus a thousand dollars to travel. And 15 people are going to get personal training for three months from our coaches. Once again, 60 % off everything maps, fitness products.com.

1:57Use the code black Friday. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you, Why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to MindPumpStore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. What if you had the perfect 24 hours? I'm talking about the perfect 24 hours for fitness and biohacking. What if you could take a day and maximize it from beginning to end to improve your health, longevity, muscle growth, fat loss? What would it look like? We're going to paint that picture for you today. in our episode let's get to it super nervous to do this i just feel like we're setting the table for dave asprey or ben greenfield to do one of those one of those comment videos where they're gonna pick apart whatever you say right here we're not gonna go that crazy no back off the coffee so no yeah yeah no coffee enemas or nostril things this is shoved up anything more more traditional biohacking i want to make this realistic yes both realistic also data driven okay also um you know something that uh that somebody who's motivated would do so realistic this is this is the perfect 24 hours achievable yeah so this is the perfect 24 hours so this is like hey i got the day off i'm really into fitness and health uh i you know plan this week you know saturday i'm going to try this thing out what can i do so it's both the motivated person but also it's got to be realistic and stuff that works like the stuff that the data actually supports It's like, what would that look like from beginning to end to maximize things like insulin sensitivity, muscle growth, energy, circadian rhythm?

3:36You have fun experiment anyway, right? That's right. Well, I know you're setting the table for this as like this biohack day. I mean, I could see this being this incredible, almost like reset day after a long, stressful week. Totally. Right? Hard week at work, stressful, flying places, all kinds of stuff going on. Maybe not the best night's sleep, missed workouts, all the things. and it's like, okay, Saturday, I've got the day off and I'm going to just - We're on lockdown. Yeah, what can I do to just fully optimize my health and my body in a single day? What would it look like? Totally, and this is something that would totally interest me.

4:06If I had a day that was totally off and I wanted to do something like what you said, Adam, either reset or have a workout, but maximize the workout itself with all the tools that I have access to, the ones that the data show actually works, this would get me excited to do something like this. So obviously we're going to start off with waking up right now. This day starts the night before though. I got to say that, right? I don't care. The rest of this doesn't matter if the night before you went to bed. You have a good setup. Yes. If you had bad sleep the night before, if you only slept four or five hours or you drank the night before or whatever, this will help, but it's not going to make that big of a difference.

4:46So this entire day starts with the night before. You want eight hours of sleep. Now that's eight hours of sleep, meaning you're going to bed and waking up, probably giving yourself about eight and a half hours. You want to give yourself 30 minute buffer to fall asleep. This is where I think a lot of people, when they see the studies on seven to eight hours, they don't realize that that's sleep, not just I went to bed. So to set this up the night before, you want to go to bed and then you want to wake up about eight and a half hours later, give yourself about 30 minutes. and then leading up to that bedtime, be off electronics.

5:18Don't eat any food for maybe an hour or two before bed and make sure you have a nice, cool, dark room so you can have a great night of sleep. So that's how it's going to start. Otherwise, like I said, the rest of this is going to be a bit of a waste. Okay, so what do you do when you first wake up, besides use the bathroom? Drink 16 ounces of water with electrolytes and go outside. go outside and be in the sun for a good 10 to 15 minutes uh this sets their circadian rhythm this also has an effect on insulin sensitivity this has an effect on mood um the studies on this are quite uh interesting um and a lot of us don't get this right out the gates what we tend to do is reach for caffeine right away you'd be surprised what some by the way this doesn't have to be a sunny day it could be cloudy but just go outside and get some sunlight for the first like i said 10 15 yeah do that without reaching for your phone i was just going to tell you i wanted to add that since this wasn't on here as like if we are detoxing or resetting or optimizing a day i also think this would be a perfect time to do a day without technology a day without phone technology because you're going to use other biohacking technology away from social media and all that i think has to carry some incredible benefits to some yeah thanks for adding that guys what's interesting um is the way you start your day tends to have an effect that the studies will show by the way this has to do with nutrition this has to do with whether or not you get up and you have to rush out for work uh or you get up and you get like i said you're on your phone and what tends to be on our algorithm are things that um get our stress uh levels up a little bit so It's like news, politics, it's rumors, it's gossip.

7:03And it tends to set the stage. And there are studies that suggest that this affects the rest of the day regardless of what happens for the rest of the day. So don't immediately wake up and go on your phone. Actually be off your phone, get up, drink this water with electrolytes, go outside, be in the sun. And without your phone, what's probably going to happen is you're probably going to think. You're probably going to be a little bored or whatever. That's exactly what we want. We want to set the stage for the rest of the day so that everything else you do is that much more effective. When you're ready, now it's time for breakfast.

7:36Does what you eat for breakfast make a difference for the rest of the day? Yes, absolutely. The best studies show that a high-protein breakfast with some fats will improve insulin sensitivity for the rest of the day, regardless of what you eat for the rest of the day. and this affects cravings, energy crashes, or energy surges that you tend to have. And again, I'm going to go back to what I said earlier. Even if later, which you're not going to do if you follow this, but even if later you eat foods that tend to cause these blood sugar spikes, if you start the day with high protein and some fats, that tends to blunt that response later on.

8:16Long-term stabilizing effect. It's really interesting. So if I'm building the perfect breakfast, I'm doing steak, eggs, and a bowl of fruit. Yeah. I'm glad you threw it. Berries. Yes. Yes. Berries are high fiber, a high fiber, low glycemic index. High antioxidants. High antioxidants. They taste great. And then the high protein, people are like, well, how much is high protein? I'm going to be clear here. It's probably about 30 grams for women, 50 grams for men. And I have to say that because I think when people eat a classic, what they would consider a classic breakfast, which is like two eggs, a couple slices of bacon, you're looking at, you know, what is that?

8:50You know, 15, 20. 15, 20 at most. No, you want about 30, 50 grams. By the way, if you can eat eggs and you don't mind eating a lot of eggs, like a lot of eggs is perfect. You got the fats. You got the proteins. You've got all the nutrients there. Now you throw in a bowl of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. You've got your fiber. And this really sets the stage for, like I said later on, the insulin sensitivity. It also is going to set you up. This is all, by the way, setting us up for a workout later so we can have a really, really good workout. Now, ideally, I know you said you start off with like this kind of wake up.

9:20and would you go for like a little walk before you have breakfast or are you only walking after you eat? Where's the coffee? You can go before two. You can go before two, but after is where we see the best effect. So what they say, postprandial, right? So after breakfast, go for a walk. Now, as little as 10 minutes has a nice effect. Longer walks have a better effect. 30 to 60 minutes is going to make the biggest impact on digestion, on insulin sensitivity, and on hormones for the rest of the day, including the stress hormone of cortisol. So post-meal, go for a walk. Notice I didn't say run or bike or anything strenuous.

10:01You can do that if you want to, but what we're trying to do here is we're trying to set you up for a really good strength training workout later. So what we don't want to do is tap into too much of that energy. Pre-fatigue. And pre-fatigue the ball. This is just a stroll. You're just going for a walk outside after breakfast. I like the idea since you're recommending in the morning, first thing in the morning, to get started with electrolytes, get out in the sun, is I do a 10-minute walk to start. With the sun. Yeah, pre-eating. Love it. So you're kind of killing two birds with one stone right now, kind of getting the body moving, blood flow.

10:35Then go into my meal. Post-meal, I'm doing more like the 30 to 50-minute walk. Post-meal after that, just to speed up that digestive process and really get me going. And what you'll notice is we're kind of setting the day up with this kind of parasympathetic wake up. Yep. Because remember, we're going to get into a sympathetic state later with the workout, right? So parasympathetic is this kind of rest and digest system of the body. Hormones look different. Catecholamines look different. It's a different state of mind. The sympathetic is like burn, drive, go, which is what you're going to want later for your workout.

11:11So you'll notice this is kind of a slow wake up. You're hydrating with the electrolytes. You're getting the sunlight for the circadian rhythm. This all affects hormones. You're getting the walk post-meal for the insulin sensitivity. It also helps shuttle some of those calories into your body. You have way better cognitive performance. I notice that too if I'm really reactionary and stress heavy in the morning. I just don't think it's clearly for the rest of the day. Now next, when you're ready, so this could be, you know, so you could kind of chill, relax a little bit. next, by the way, during the relax period, if you want to add something, I think some kind of contemplative book or podcast.

11:50Gratitude practice would be awesome right here. Yes. Like what is the research on that? I know there's all kinds of stuff that they've done with like the positive benefits of doing something like a gratitude practice. Like this would be a perfect place, in my opinion, to insert this. Yeah. Just to get into that a little deeper, our brains, our minds are not wired to notice positive things nearly as much as they're wired to notice negative things or scary things. Negative and scary things, I don't have to remind you. There is no such thing as a, hey, have a practice where you think of all the terrible things in your life.

12:23That doesn't exist. The Stoics would promote that on some level, the worst case scenario, but it's not. But it's always to set you up with it. So nobody does that practice because it's so natural. It's very natural for us to think about all the scary, stressful stuff. What's unnatural is to think of all the good stuff. That's why it's called the practice because you have to consciously do it. But when you do it, the data shows it totally shifts your mindset from one of stress to one of more joy and happiness and gratitude. What does to show up physiologically, less inflammation, better testosterone levels, better insulin sensitivity, more balance with estrogen or progesterone in women.

13:07But it is a practice. So I'm glad you said that, Adam, because you should probably sit and think, by the way, when you start doing this regularly, and this is not necessarily part of this day, but if you practice this on a regular basis, you notice more good things because you practice noticing more good things. I think it's just such a powerful thing to add here because if we're We're going to touch on trying to detach from the phone also in this day, inserting a positive. I think a lot of people that have never actually tried to build a day like this that have actually intentionally went away from the phone and then intentionally included a gratitude practice, I think you – I don't know too many people that will not feel a difference from that day because how profound it is to already not be looking at negative stuff to start your day.

13:53And then not only that, but go out of your way to practice focusing on all the positive things. I think that person will probably feel, actually feel a difference in the first time that they do that. All right. Now, when you're ready, this is when you're going to have your kind of higher calorie pre-workout meal. It's another high protein meal, but this time we're going to throw some starches in there. What this typically looks like is about 30 grams of protein for women, 50 grams of carbohydrates. for men. It's about 50 grams of protein, 75 grams of carbohydrates. Now you're going to drink another 16 ounces of water with this meal.

14:29And we're using starches because now we're looking for glycogen, right? We want this energy in our muscles. We want a better pump. Starches do this better than other types of carbohydrates. White rice right here. Yeah. This is for me, white rice or sweet potato. White rice with your favorite meat right here. That's right. This is a go-to move right here. And then after this, you're going to go for another walk. So probably another 30 minute walk and then about 60 minutes later now you have your caffeine now justin's going crazy right now i know he's like this is cup number two well actually this is cup one cup zero was when you first right your first cup doesn't get yeah but about 60 minutes after that post meal walk now have your caffeine or your pre-workout this dose is different uh from person to person for me it's about 400 milligrams uh for some people it's as little as 100 milligrams um so i'll do you know like a like a like a pulse is a pre-workout from legion that i'll use sometimes or i'll just have you know just straight up 400 milligrams caffeine now even though we're we're teasing justin a bit about cup zero and really coffee coffee and i probably wouldn't have waited this long to have my first cup of coffee but there are and i know i believe it was it no it wasn't peter t it was uh uh huberman who made this popular but it was was it the first about an hour or two is it 90 minutes i believe it's the first 90 minutes there's there's benefits to waiting the first 90 so at least waiting 90 minutes of that first part of your day before you actually have your first cup again this we're painting the picture of the perfect right right this so you're so you would never hear us talk about this is like on a this is every day yeah this is like i gotta go to work yeah yeah we're building the ultimate planned day right here so keep that and there's also look you could And also, like some people have coffee twice a day, which is fine.

16:11But if you saved all of it for this right here, this pre-workout, not only is your body primed, you were outside, you fed yourself, insulin sensitivity is good. Now you have a big bolus of caffeine. You're going to be ready. Well, we're trying to shuttle this into the strength training session, which is going to be perfect. That's right. After this, so now about 90 minutes later, so this is much less like an hour and a half, two hours after your meal, now you get into a cold dip. and this is the way cold dips should be used. I love this. As a pre-workout. A lot of people will talk about using them post-workout.

16:45There's some value post-workout, mainly as a quick way to tamp down inflammation, reduce damage, which some people say is bad because it cuts down the muscle building signal. For some people, this is a good thing. If you're going to work out again later in the day, like hard training athletes, we're not doing that here. What we're trying to do here is I'm trying to use the caffeine plus the cold dip to get your catecholamines through the roof. you are going to feel psyched and your joints are not are going to feel like there's no pain because of the cold and you're going to be in this cold dip for about two to four minutes which is brutal it's not but how cold is the water typically when you when you uh what do we what do we have set 45 does that sound right justin sounds right 45 at the i think that's the park city's house is set up yeah something like that yeah it's cold it's very cold yeah yeah Yeah, so you get in there for about two minutes, almost ready for your workout.

17:38Now this is a biohacking tool. It's got tremendous data supporting it. You're going to get in front of red light, red light therapy. You're going to do 20 minutes, 10 minutes on the front of your body, 10 minutes on the back. Why are we doing this pre-workout? This has been shown to boost muscle growth. It amplifies the mitochondria. It actually is priming those muscles. That's why we're doing the front and the back of the body. You want to stand in front of it naked to get the full effect. And after this 20 minutes, you're ready to lift. So you did your cold dip. You got your caffeine. You did your red light therapy front and back.

18:14Now go lift, and you're going to do a full body workout. And full body workout just has the best overall effect at sending this huge signal for muscle growth throughout the whole body. Remember, when you lift weights, there's an acute effect, meaning the, or localized effect, I should say, where it's the muscles you train. But there's also the kind of systemic effect. So when you do squats, most of the muscle growth goes to the legs. But the whole body gets a little bit of a stimulus, right? When you do overhead press, most of it's shoulders and arms, whole body gets a little bit of a stimulus.

18:44So a full body workout, what we're trying to do here is we're trying to maximize this muscle. Maximize muscle recruitment, maximize force production. That's right. Your biggest movers are going to be those compound lifts. And you are going to do compound lifts. That's what this workout looks like. The only thing I would add to right here in this, because so far this day is so perfect. In fact, it's got me so excited to want to try this. It's been a while since I built a day like this just to see how kind of a workout I get. Right before I get into my full, and I might even do some of this in front of the red light, is some of my mobility stuff.

19:14Oh, yeah. I might do some of my 90-90s right here, a pigeon stretch while I'm in front of the red light. So kind of killing two birds. with so I was really starting to prime my body to get into this workout because at this point you know as far as priming your central nervous system and getting yourself fed I mean you are caffeine I mean you are ready to go the next thing would just to be kind of mobilized and get loose and get warmed up especially if you know those mobility exercises that move the needle for you the most like totally the internal rotation doing 90 90s would be perfect that's I would do like two of my favorites.

19:47So whatever your two favorite mobility primers are before you get into your lift, I'm probably doing that in front of my red light while I'm getting ready and then it's game time right into the workout. The workout is going to be big gross motor movement exercises. This is what moves the needle. This is what you're in. By the way, because of the setup with the hydration, the food and everything we've done, you should get one of the best pumps you've ever had in your entire life, especially with the red light therapy which is, I've tried this a couple times, it's pretty remarkable so the workout's going to start with either squats or deadlifts then you'll do your bench press your overhead press you'll do something for your arms if you want to do like an exercise for your back like pull-ups you can do that before your overhead press um and you're that's pretty much your workout about three sets per exercise keep the reps around 10 um and you can go ahead and drive the intensity now as far as like hydration right here obviously you are typical of drinking lots of water are you adding another thing of element here are you going to do that okay yes more electrolytes because uh because of the workout but also because we're gonna do after the workout because we're gonna do something else here after the workout so again the workout's gonna look like squats or deadlifts three sets bench press then maybe some pull-ups or some rows overhead press do your biceps and triceps if you want to do some core in there and then you're totally done while you're training you should be drinking at least 32 ounces of water with electrolytes i'm usually higher one to three minute rest one to three minute rest in between sets and minimum i should say at least that on a day like this if this is a day where you're planning all day yeah probably long i might even stretch this workout why not i mean this is a day when you're fed you're primed yeah three minute rest yeah you're mapping it out as the ultimate like this is the day that i'm gonna try and make these long rest periods will really take my time totally but if you like the faster paced workout a minute would be the minimum i would i would do now when you're done with your workout you jump in the sauna for 20 minutes here's what's interesting about this the the data on this is phenomenal uh post-workout sauna boost muscle growth and boost vo2 max what's cool about this you're not doing anything you're just sitting in a hot room so when they do studies on this and they compare groups of people simulates it adding the sauna post-workout doesn't require more recovery doesn't add more damage doesn't you know if anything it reduces inflammation but what it does do is it boosts the muscle building signal and it boosts vo2 max the studies on endurance athletes are remarkable sauna boom boost and vo2 max endurance for muscle building boom you get more muscle growth uh from the sauna so it's really it's the core temperature increase the that triggers that it boosts nitric oxide production it boosts blood flow you're boosting bdnf uh which is you know great for the brain uh it's a great post-workout uh practice uh then you're going to have your post-workout meal after this, so after you rinse off and you're ready to eat, your post-workout meal is going to mirror very closely to what your pre-workout meal looked like.

22:41So 30 to 50 grams of protein, 50 to 75 grams of starchy carbs. But now we're going to include, make sure you include a nice serving of really well-cooked greens. I say well-cooked because you want them to be easy to digest. This is going to help with the digestive process that you just had for your meal. And so, but the day's not over. So here's the cool part. Here's what biohackers never talk about. Now you relax. Is relaxation a part of improving longevity, a part of helping with recovery and muscle growth? Huge for recovery. You want to get back into parasympathetic. Yeah. So we just went sympathetic, right?

23:17Maximize. We just went, so just to break it down, you went caffeine, cold dip. It's like sympathetic like nation, right? You work out, sympathetic. sauna starting to go a little bit more parasympathetic post-workout meal parasympathetic and now so the best uh stretching sequence with that to add in would be our static static stretching breathing watch a movie something that you enjoy that's fun go out relax have a good dinner uh finish the day off with something relaxing that's the end of this this is what our gen z would call calling uh raw dogging silences no i'm serious there's like a trend going you guys seen this there's a trend going on right now i think it's called rod raw dogging silence and they try and not use electronic yeah it's like their version of meditation like can you like completely just have nothing be bored yeah can you be bored for like one hour and so it's crazy that that's become such a big challenge but again i think that's uh incredibly valuable right now probably for me i think the stretching i'm with justin i think that giving myself something to kind of do yes um can be meditative in itself and so i think that's where you would insert what's perfect about all this is so we when we put together we have a a mind pump house yeah this makes me want to go to park city so bad we have a house in park city that has all of this has all this stuff in there has got the red light the cold dip the sauna the garage has a gym it's got the you know electrolytes already in there in fact because that's one of our sponsors um and then we have the movie theater in there yeah so when i think of relaxation and parasympathetic i'm going in a dark room I'm sitting in that room, stretching.

24:51Do a nice dinner, then go watch a movie. Watch a nice movie. Well, this is why you guys, I mean, I've said this before many times. This is my favorite place of our places, even more than the Tahoe place, even though size-wise it doesn't compare to the Tahoe place. I love that it has all of this. I love that I could go there and feel like I can have it. It's probably the last time I did something remotely close to this, to be honest with you. Trying to think the last time that I had such a great setup where I could do all of this in one spot. I know. Last time it was so great because it was being there with my kids, and they just having the ice plunge there was like, you know, inviting.

25:24And so we all just kind of dare each other to do it. And, you know, it was great. They loved it. It's all set up in the garage too. So we have the cold dip and the sauna and the gym all in the garage. So you can do. Well, it's that time of year where we run a cool giveaway for the Park City House. So this is cool. It's cool timing to do this episode, cool timing to announce to the audience that this is, and we did something similar last year. I think we're giving away more this year. We're giving away too. So here's what it looks like, right? So we have our Black Friday, November sale. This is where everything's 60 % off.

25:53All the programs, all the bundles, everything's 60 % off. Every time you get something, you get raffles. You get tickets to enter into our raffles. So if you get a bundle, you get 10 entries. If you get a maps program, you get, I think, five, no, three entries. And then mods and guides give you one entry. Two people are going to get one week stay at our Park City house. That's got all the stuff. It's got the cold dip, the sauna, the gym. It's got the red light. It's got everything in there. So if you want, you could plan one or more of these days. You get a week there. By the way, if people want to look at the place, it's mindpumprentals.com.

26:26Mindpumprentals.com. And it includes a$1 ,000 traveling voucher, too, for your plane tickets. Right. So you get to stay there for a week, plus the travel voucher. Two people win that. And then we also have some other stuff. Five people are going to win three months of one-on-one coaching with our trainers. Ten people win three months of our concierge coaching. so if you want to try and get in there for free go to maps fitness products.com use the code black friday that gives you the 60 off and again bundles give you the most entries uh the second most are the programs the third are the mods and the guides look if you like the show come find us on instagram we'll see you it's at mind pump media thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com.

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