In short
The Body Pod Episode Summary: Programming for Real Life Bodies | Strength, Cardio, Fat Loss & Longevity with Dr. Andy Galpin
Podcast Overview The Body Pod is hosted by female fitness expert Hailey Happens and beauty practitioner Laura, focusing on health, fitness, beauty, and wellness for women over 40.
Episode Highlights Guest Introduction
- Dr. Andy Galpin, an expert in intelligent training programming, discusses fitness for midlife bodies, emphasizing that they don't require a distinct set of rules compared to elite athletes.
Key Themes and Concepts
- Intelligent Programming
- Defined as the thoughtful selection of exercises based on pros/cons, workout organization, and how they fit into long-term training goals.
- Avoids choices based on trends or personal preference without analytical backing.
- Training for Midlife Bodies vs. Elite Athletes
- Training principles for both groups are fundamentally similar, focusing on well-structured programs regardless of one's athletic status.
- Differences arise from individual life circumstances (e.g., family obligations for midlife individuals).
- Programming Framework
- Emphasizes the importance of planning workouts across various timeframes (days, weeks, months).
- Specificity vs. Variation: Tailoring training to be specific to goals while incorporating enough variation to prevent overuse injuries.
- Recovery and Sleep
- Introduces the Sleep and Recovery Quadrant System to balance professional life, family, personal health, and recovery.
- Stresses the importance of recovery, especially as sleep quality can decline with age.
- Fat Loss Approaches
- Acknowledges that fat loss becomes more challenging with age due to physiological changes and lifestyle factors.
- Encourages personalization rather than one-size-fits-all solutions, emphasizing the need for long-term adherence to chosen strategies.
- Science and Coaching
- Discusses the intersection of scientific research and practical coaching, noting that while studies inform best practices, individual responses to training can vary significantly.
- Coaches must adapt their approaches based on client needs while relying on evidence-based guidelines.
- Biohacking and Technology
- Critiques the overwhelming nature of biohacking trends and gadgets.
- Suggests focusing on foundational health practices over the latest technological fixes.
Practical Recommendations
- Workout Structure:
- Suggested a 5-day workout plan balancing strength training (2 days) and cardio (3 days), focusing on whole body movements and complex exercises.
- Monitoring Progress:
- Encourage clients to track their recovery and adjust based on individual responses to training and life stressors.
Conclusion Dr. Galpin emphasizes that effective training for midlife individuals requires intelligent programming, a recovery-focused mindset, and an understanding of individual needs. Sustainable health and fitness are achievable through evidence-based practices tailored to each person's unique circumstances.
Find Dr. Andy Galpin:
Website
[Absolute Rest](https://absoluterest.com)
Social Media
@AndyGalpin on various platforms
Call to Action If you enjoyed this episode, consider giving a five-star rating and sharing The Body Pod with friends!
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VODr. Galpin's Journey
0:45 to 2:48
Dr. Galpin shares his path from earning a PhD to becoming a public figure in fitness.
“It feels like it's been fun watching your career just kind of jump up the ranks.”
Training Similarities: Athletes vs. Non-Athletes
2:48 to 4:44
Dr. Galpin discusses how training principles apply to both elite athletes and everyday individuals.
“So if we look at elite athletes, what, what are the similarities and we obviously know the differences for someone that's maybe like mid life versus an elite athlete.”
Understanding Intelligent Programming
4:44 to 7:23
Dr. Galpin explains what constitutes intelligent programming in fitness.
“But the philosophy, the problems we're trying to solve, like I said, are the exact same.”
Yearly Programming for Longevity
7:23 to 11:04
Dr. Galpin outlines key components for designing a training program over a year.
“It's not good because it felt great or I had a better burn or somebody famous or that looks physically great, wrote about it.”
Establishing Foundations for Fitness
11:04 to 14:03
Dr. Galpin emphasizes the importance of foundational fitness before advancing training.
“Where are we at with muscle quality and joint pain?”
Understanding Movement Limitations
14:03 to 15:00
Learn about the varying physical capabilities across different age groups and genders.
“Like it's just some people are in a better spot and others are in a worse spot.”
The Importance of Foundations in Training
15:00 to 17:24
Discover the significance of starting with a solid fitness foundation before progressing.
“How long would it take for you for a beginner person, um, to even get them into.”
Client Communication and Expectations
17:24 to 19:04
Explore strategies for managing client expectations while maintaining their motivation.
“and you may have to dose them with a little bit of a, we always do this like at the end of training program.”
Assessing Fitness Programs
19:04 to 20:35
Understand the complexities of evaluating fitness programs without context.
Structuring a Weekly Workout Plan
20:35 to 22:34
Learn how to create a balanced workout plan for someone with limited time.
“And they only have say five hours a week.”
Show all 27 chapters
Integrating Strength and Cardio
22:34 to 27:09
Find out how to effectively integrate strength training and cardio into a workout routine.
“So we're not just going to do like a, um, a leg press.”
Navigating Recovery and Sleep
27:09 to 28:00
Discuss the importance of recovery and sleep in relation to fitness goals.
“So, um, five day a week off the cuff for that, with that information might look something like that.”
Understanding the Quadrant System for Life Management
28:00 to 29:05
Learn about the quadrant system to balance various life aspects effectively.
“This is why we have to have that bigger framework.”
Importance of Personal Health and Recovery
29:05 to 31:00
Discover the significance of prioritizing personal health and recovery in life.
“So I use something that my dear friend, Kenny Kane came up with, and it's called the quadrant system.”
Making Prioritized Decisions in Fitness
31:00 to 33:48
Understand how to make informed decisions about fitness based on pre-set priorities.
“The rule of thumb we have here is personal health is at a minimum ever two, and recovery can only ever be half as much at the minimum, not the maximum, but the minimum of your personal training.”
Challenges of Midlife Weight Loss
33:48 to 36:29
Explore the unique challenges women face in weight loss during midlife.
“So, um, for our highest performers, pro athletes or our executives or other folks, that's the system we use.”
Navigating Conflicting Health Advice
36:29 to 39:47
Learn how to navigate through the conflicting information in health and nutrition advice.
“You're going to get way more clicks if you post stuff like that.”
Understanding Scientific Miscommunication
39:47 to 42:00
Understand the distinction between scientific facts and personal preferences in health.
“the research that we have access to, and then where coaching comes into that, because, you know, like that study will come out tomorrow that will, that will counter what we said here.”
The Distinction Between 'Is' and 'Ought' in Nutrition
42:00 to 43:52
Learn how scientific data ('is') contrasts with moral judgments ('ought') in nutritional advice.
“I mean, I think I know, but maybe I don't.”
Applying Protein Recommendations: Individual Needs
43:52 to 46:33
Understand how individual client needs shape protein recommendations in coaching.
“The people I work with, and it's now all my moral judgment slash my experience and me trying to explain to you what I think your audience probably wants to hear, their context, right?”
The Art of Personal Coaching in Nutrition
46:33 to 48:08
Discover how personal coaching adapts scientific principles to individual cases.
“could get benefits from a variety of, you know, a variety of programs and it doesn't have to look one specific way.”
The Future of Personalized Nutrition Research
48:08 to 52:40
Explore advancements in personalized nutrition and the importance of individual data.
“You eventually had to get to something squirrely.”
Critical View on Biohacking and Technology
52:40 to 56:04
Examine the complexities and potential pitfalls of biohacking technologies in health.
“Now, I'll throw myself under the bus here.”
Evaluating Health Tools and Biohacks
56:04 to 57:28
Learn about the effectiveness and expectations of various health tools.
“but it's when it's like i only had 200 to spend and i spent it on that and then i expected to burn 20 pounds of fat.”
The Importance of Biomarkers and Mental Health
57:29 to 59:50
Understand the key health markers to focus on for well-being.
“If you're not paying attention to mental health at all, then that's going to be a problem.”
Challenges of Sleep in Modern Life
59:51 to 1:01:45
Explore the factors impacting sleep quality in today's world.
“Every other part of medicine has, except for sleep.”
Research on Sleep and Hormones
1:01:46 to 1:02:20
Discover ongoing research exploring sleep patterns related to hormonal cycles.
“not from an aura or a wearable or a questionnaire, from ultra-high fidelity testing, and if it is relevant to your hormonal changes at all at the individual level, we'll be able to see that and know that.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hi everyone, my name is Haley, and this is Laura, and welcome to The Body Pod.
0:11Welcome Dr. Andy Galpin to The Body Pod. We are thrilled to have this conversation with you today. You have been on my list for a really long time, so this is super special for me to have you here. Well, you guys have been on my list for a long time too, so equally excited. Well, here we are. Andy, I want you to just take a quick second. I'm super curious. We were just talking about this, Laura and I, before you jumped on. And I want to know, how did you, like once you got, you were getting your PhD, how did you go from here to like Andrew Huberman and having this podcast? It feels like it's been fun watching your career just kind of jump up the ranks.
0:56So what did that look like? oh geez what a question uh i mean it's probably not that different from your average you know overnight 20 year success right where you know it looks like you have these big jumps but it really wasn't um i mean andrew specifically i've known for a very long time yeah i knew him before he had any social media presence we'd worked on studies together and um i helped him a lot when he when he wanted to get going in the public space um so you have these weird things where like, oh my gosh, how did you get the attention of Andrew Huberman? I'm like, I didn't have to. I've known him for forever, right?
1:34Same thing. I can name you a hundred people in the industry like that, where you met as undergrad students or you whatever, and then they turned into having something. So it's really that. I mean, I started as a graduating college. I was working with professional athletes already, right out of college. And I can tell you how I got exactly there. I can tell you any of these inflection points and they're probably not going to be the stories that you think, right? They're not the, I had a rich uncle or my cousin played in the NFL, or it wasn't that it was just grinding consistently, taking a hundred thousand shots at a time, saying yes to everything, trying to over produce and over deliver every time.
2:20And then when you do that a thousand times, one of them ends up being a tiny, tiny break. And then you do it a thousand more times. And then that next one ends up being a tiny, tiny, tinier break. And you just start stacking those breaks and eventually, you know, you get there. And so it is, is a lot of that is a lot of goodwill and a lot of good overproduction. And then of course, just loads of luck. So, um, I could happy to go into exact examples if you want there, but I'm not sure how long would answer you want. So I'll stop there. So if we look at elite athletes, what, what are the similarities and we obviously know the differences for someone that's maybe like mid life versus an elite athlete.
2:59Now there's obviously a lot, but is there, is there any crossover on how you would train someone? Um, clearly there's a lot of differences, but anything that, that would cross over there. Yeah. It's almost the exact same. Actually. The, the differences you're referring to are the, honestly, the really obvious ones. So easy example would be if I'm training my, not that I ever would, but let's say for example, I was helping my wife train. There's a 0 % chance you would ever listen to me, right? So let's just assume a theoretical fake world where she would listen to my training advice. So you have a 44 year old woman.
3:32And at the same time, I have a 35 year old professional UFC fighter, right? So male, female fighter, let's just put them on the thing. If I had to do their programs, you would not be able to tell the difference. Like you would not be able to see it where you would see it as when, Oh, okay. She leaves and then goes and picks up kids and then he leaves and he goes and fights in a cage for another hour of the day. That would be the only difference. But if you looked at their training program, if you looked at their nutrition, their recovery, you would not be able to tell the difference. With actual athletes or even non-athletes, but people that have a specific hard date.
4:09So we have a wedding we're trying to get ready for or a big thing at our work event or whatever the case is. Then we start to get more precise. We start to take more risks. We progress faster because we have targets and dates. But the programs themselves, it's the same philosophy. It's the same exact thing we're trying to solve for. With athletes, you do an athlete-specific stuff. You hit golf balls. You practice your sport. Great. We're more aggressive because we have timelines. There's direct payouts. Our body is what we're making our money for. Where other people, it's not. So those things are obvious.
4:44But the philosophy, the problems we're trying to solve, like I said, are the exact same. It's just, we're willing to take more risks because we have to go on and do things faster with an athlete. Okay. Well, if we look at this has, I love when you've said this in multiple podcasts, you've talked about intelligent programming. And I feel like I always say this and people will always come to me and say, well, what's intelligent programming? What does that look like? And what does that mean for you? That's a really great question. Thank Thank you for that. Nobody ever asked that. So awesome. It means things like you didn't choose your exercise because that's an exercise that looked cool on Instagram.
5:24Dr. Andy Galpin:Yeah, that's not an intelligent choice. You chose your exercise because you thought about what the pros and cons of that exercise were. You thought about how that was organized throughout your workout, how that laid on that week, how that laid on the month before and how that laid on the month after. And even past that, a really good coach is thinking about all that stuff. So I'm not picking the exercise, the order, the volume, the intensity, because me as a trainer or coach, that worked for me. I'm not picking any of those things because I saw somebody else famous do that. Or I heard about that technique in a seminar.
6:03That is not an intelligently designed program. It might work. and if you are the DIY person and you're you know running your own programs even though you're you know you actually work in finance or something fine and you're just trying to hear things you're trying to get ideas cool I'm not calling you stupid but I'm saying that's also not intelligently designed and so what we want to pay attention to are all those factors we get this a lot when when I rarely post clips of me working out because it doesn't matter it's not my like feeling myself training is just like very weird. But nonetheless, anytime I do, people are like, oh, what's the program?
6:37And I'm like, it doesn't matter. It has no bearing on, you should never look at the exercise I'm doing. I have a coach that I pay and he is thinking about everything. And so whether I'm doing, for example, I was doing some rowing yesterday and there was a friend of mine who's here. And he's like, why is your foot in this position over there? Is that better? And I'm like, no, it's not better. But for some reason, my coach wanted my foot over there this time. We don't normally do it that way, but he's thinking about what other joints we're working today and what order. Again, what have we been working on?
7:09What else is coming up this week? What have we been just working on the past couple of months? And now he's either trying to add more stress to a particular part of my body, or he's trying to remove it because something else is coming that he wants to avoid. So that is what we mean when we say intelligently designed. It is not just happenstance. It's not thrown together. It's not good because it felt great or I had a better burn or somebody famous or that looks physically great, wrote about it. Intelligence is all those other things. Okay. So if you look at a programming year, so I tried to get women to look at at least, you know, a few months at a time.
7:44So we're not just like jumping from program to program or like you're doing orange theory this month. And then the next month you're doing some YouTube. And then you come to me for a month. If you look at a, like a well-designed program over a year, what are the key components that you would have? And let's just talk about a midlife, a midlife woman or, you know, or male, but I don't train men. So a midlife person, what does that look like over a calendar year for the average person that's like, I just want to get fit and have some longevity benefits and I want to feel good in my body. Yeah. It's actually, it doesn't matter if you did this as a male example or a female example.
8:23Yeah. It wouldn't matter at all. Cause the answer would be the same. It is thinking about specificity versus variation. That's ultimately what we're coming down to. The more specific you are, the faster you get to a certain place. So if I said, hey, I need you to leave your house and go to Walmart right now, and you pulled up a map, and you're like, what the hell is the closest Walmart? And then you follow the exact right path there. That would be the fastest way to get you there. If I left your house and said, go to Walmart, I didn't give you a map, but you didn't know where it was, and you kept driving, you would eventually get that, right?
8:55It did. It might take you literally years or could take you minutes. Who knows? So specificity gets us to our goal, the fastest path. However, if I were to drive that exact same route every single day, well, you can see how this analogy extends, right? That actually creates limitations. It creates potential for overuse and the tires wear down and the road starts to get worn down and so on and so forth. So if I'm doing the opposite and if I'm just going in random directions every day, it can be very wasteful and it can be burning a lot of energy and time and getting literally nowhere. And so the key to planning a year is thinking about that.
9:30How specific do I want to be for how long? How do I balance that out with variation so that I'm getting the best of both, actually getting something done, specificity, and minimizing overuse slash making sure I'm not working on one or two things only when I should have a more well-rounded program across months and years. You don't have to be well-rounded for six weeks or even six months, but you have to be well-rounded for six years. If not, you're going to get very limited results or it's going to be body parts or movement styles or energy systems or connection pieces that are going to get bad is maybe an aggressive term, but they're going to become suboptimal?
10:13Are they going to get inefficient or what the case is? So with an athlete, we need a higher level of specificity. With a non-athlete, again, male or female doesn't matter. You want to probably head towards a little more variation because the average person on aggregate wants to be able to do multiple different things or rather they don't want to be limited per se. They don't want to have to be like, oh, I can't play basketball because I know that's going to hurt. It's like, okay, you want to be able to do things and not hurt and pay the consequences for it. Where an athlete would say, I'm fine being really, really slow.
10:47I just have to be able to run for six hours. Oh, okay, great. So you're willing to give up some normal thing where the average person would be like, I don't want to look like that. Okay, fine. So we're going to be more buried. So that's the biggest thing I think to a year long program is considering that specificity versus variation balance.
11:04Dr. Andy Galpin:How do you recommend for your clients? Do you look at it in a year or do you do 12 weeks at a time or we do day week month quarter year decade and many decades that is the entire roadmap uh for every client whether they start with us at 25 years old or 65 years old we have that plan and so the the one that jumps out the most is something like muscle imbalances and pain. So if we were to get that 45-year-old female to come in, and we get these all the time, the very first question I'm going to ask them is, I don't care at all about your body fat or your VO2 max or any of your other goals. Where are we at with muscle quality and joint pain?
11:53Why? Why? Because I'm thinking 60 years down the road. I'm not a six-week transformation coach. I don't post pre and post pictures. I don't care none about that. What I'm looking at is saying, even if you leave me after six months, you're going to leave here set up way better for the next 60 years or at least six years or a minimum six months. Like being realistic. I can't control what's going to happen 60 years from now. I don't legitimately mean that, but conceptually is what we're trying to get at. And so the framework should be established so that we can continue to have healthy practices for as long as humanly possible.
12:28So for that 45 year old woman, I'm going to be thinking about that question. Where is our joint health? Where is our muscle quality? Do you move reasonably well? I don't need you to be a professional athlete, but I can't have huge movement limitations because you might change the exercises you like 10 years from now or something else might come up. And now that will be a limitation at 45. You're still super pliable. And I got loads of time. Give me a year. what give me a year we're gonna go and we're gonna find movement asymmetries not every single little one that doesn't matter but huge ones glaring ones other problems and we want to rebuild foundation then we can come back and optimize you you know you'd like to be good at the deadlift great you want to be great don't care if it's a physique goal if it's a performance goal, whatever.
13:19We can deal with that later. The opposite case would be if you come in, you're 45 and it's like, Hey, you move pretty well. It's not perfect, but it's like good enough. No real pain, no huge limitations. Okay. Do you want to, what do we want to look at? What is our biggest weakness? None. Everything's pretty well balanced. All right, fine. Is there something you like to train for? And then, and then we're going down that algorithm. Yes. Okay, great. We're going to head towards that. No. Okay, great. Well, this is what I think we should do, but that is our fundamental thing. So we always want to make sure that before we start hitting the accelerator and put our foot in the gas, then we make sure that our other foot's not on the brake and causing excessive breakdown and slowing and things like that first.
13:56So that is, again, the example I gave was for a 45-year-old, but that is how we start everybody. Because we see a bunch of 22-year-olds who can't move at all either. It's not just old people. It's not just women. It's not just menopause. Like it's just some people are in a better spot and others are in a worse spot. And we take everybody with exactly where they are at. So this is where it gets really tricky because if you have someone come in and, and I see it all the time, I mean, I sell online programs, but it's like, yeah, I want to do, you know, I want to jump from here. I haven't been doing anything to here.
14:32And I'm like, hold on slow. Like let's rewind, rewind, rewind. And no one, it's, it's kind of hard. I feel like a lot of women are kind of picking up on it now. Um, Um, but you, you have to start with that foundation and be able to move well with like body weight before you go to loading and then all of that. But it's kind of a hard conversation when, when they want to just be like, no, I want to do this. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. How long would it take for you for a beginner person, um, to even get them into. Yeah, I, I get the point. Um, what you asked me was what I would, what would be the best for the client?
15:14What you didn't ask me is what's the best business model, right? Cause like it's a terrible business model. Like I do not optimize for client retention. I don't have to make my living on that type of stuff. So this is a very fair point. Um, you're absolutely right. You have to show results very quickly. Your clients leave. If this is what your livelihood is on. But that said, we have never had a hard time seeing immediate noticeable results in two weeks, 30 days at minimum. If somebody has a little bit of a tight shoulder, you can probably get it untight really quickly. And so it's just the framework can be there of us saying, hey, we're doing this big thing.
15:52But they will start to feel something different really, really fast. If you need to see changes in body composition or something like that, then you can just pull some calories real fast. Okay, great. You'll start to see the scale move. But the reality is you know what you're really doing, which is saying, okay, we're setting up there. The second thing I'll tell you, and this is what I've taught every one of my students for over a decade, is lie to your clients.
16:20Lie. I didn't see that coming. What I really mean is this. You don't have – your clients don't necessarily need to know your entire philosophy like they have a master's degree in exercise physiology. Sometimes if we over-explain, we kill motivation with information. So you can know exactly what you're doing, and you can be really looking at this like six-month rebuild thing. But if they come in going, I don't care about any of that. Like I just need to look good in the next five weeks. You can go, okay, well, do you trust me? Yeah, you trust me? All right, here's the plan. We're going. Same exact plan you're going to do anyways.
17:04You're not literally lying to them, and you're not going to bait and switch them. I'm not advocating for that. But you don't have to necessarily be like, no, no, no, no, we shouldn't do that. We should do this. If you say, yes, your goals are A, B, and C, I heard you, right? That's what you want. Yep, got it. And this is what you want. I'm hearing you, all that. Do you trust me, and this is how we're going to get there? Yeah. Then we're off and running. and you may have to dose them with a little bit of a, we always do this like at the end of training program. The last exercise of the day is dealer choice.
17:35So somebody comes in being like, oh, I want bigger glutes, want bigger glutes. Great. And you go, yeah, but really we got to work on your neck and your foot and your shoulder. And all you give them is foot and neck and shoulder exercises. And they literally don't use their glutes at all for six months. They're gone. They're gone in the first 20 days. So I'm fine. Do all the things you know are real. And then the last workout of the day, Let them do a thousand hip thrusts until they can't walk. Fine. Like you're not hurting anything there. They walk out going, I told her I wanted to work on my glutes.
18:03I left feeling my glutes. We're all winning here. But that doesn't mean you have to necessarily do a glute specific workout six days a week and do nothing else the entire time. So when I say lie, like that's really what I mean is they don't necessarily know. If you ignore it entirely, you're going to have problems. But if they come in going, I want to work on my biceps, like give them some biceps work. But you as a very educated coach should be able to go, okay, I know how I can do that while still keeping that shoulder out of danger because I know that that shoulder is a problem. So I'm going to modify the type of exercise we choose.
18:36I'm going to modify the style, the loading pattern, the tempo. That'll keep the shoulder healthy, but they'll still feel like we're getting the biceps and we kind of are. That's why exercise is a science, right? This is not a weekend certification thing because you have to understand anatomy. You have to understand physiology to be really good, to be able to do stuff like that where you can still hear the client, actually try to meet their demand, but then still really be doing what's the best for them down the road. So do you work in all rep ranges? Yeah, of course. And is there any absolutes in fitness?
19:14Very few. Very few. so really when you look at a well-rounded program that's vacillating between all different rep ranges you wouldn't just keep somebody in in one rep range all the time no this is why it is impossible for me or anybody else to just look at a random person's program and tell them if it's good or bad yeah it's almost impossible and this is actually when i hate people do those stupid ass reaction videos and stuff on social media like you have no idea the needs evaluation here you have no idea the client history their access what they want what they don't like all like a thousand things that go into making a good program if i'm just literally seeing the numbers to your point on a paper i have no idea i don't know what they just did six months before what they're going to do in the next phase so there's very few programs i can ever look at and be like that sucks like yeah you'd have a 99 % pass rate of me going oh that could be good I don't know what the situation is I have no idea is this a 12 year old or 94 year old or like well I have no idea even if you gave me some information I still would need to know so many more things and you guys probably deal with this too but this is also why when somebody like dms me this stuff I'm like I'm sorry like I'm not trying to be a jerk but I haven't I can't answer that I have no idea what you should do when you gave me like a paragraph of information like i need way more um to be able to get it so yeah no you you couldn't ever look at a thing um mistakes you could make is if like this is your training program you do and that's all you ever do then we would probably then we could make some answers saying okay you might be a little bit suboptimal but yeah um we will use anything from one repetition per set to 100 plus and everything in between Yeah.
21:01Okay. So if you had, if you had just like a basic, obviously this would be individual, but if we're looking kind of scoping out and saying for an average person, that's midlife that has all these other additional stressors on that, you know, are happening in their life. And they only have say five hours a week. Would you a lot, you know, a couple to strength training, a couple to aerobic, what would that look like if they didn't have a preference? And they're just like, again, longevity. And you know, that's kind of my goal. Yep. Understood. Um, if how many days a week do we got, you got five hours, how many days?
21:42Let's say five, five. Okay. An hour a day. It's easy money then. Super easy layout, right? Most people were always hearing like two to three at most 45 minutes each session. That's harder. Okay. Let's say you have five days a week. Well, think about it this way. I would say at minimum, I want you doing strength training, whole body strength training twice a week. Let's just say for the example, uh, we're going to do, um, what do you think you want to work out every Monday through Friday, or do you want to take a break and do like a Monday, uh, midweek break and then one weekend session? Yeah. Okay.
22:14Let's do that. All right. So let's say we're going to train Monday and Tuesday, take Wednesday off, train Thursday, Friday, Saturday, right? Monday, Thursday, we're going to lift weights, whole body. That gives us plenty of time to recover all of our muscles. We're going to do complex movements. This doesn't mean complicated ones. We mean multiple body parts moving at once, probably multiple steps. So we're not just going to do like a, um, a leg press. We could do that, but we would rather do something that involves multiple steps. Um, and so we're getting kinetic chains moving. So our right knee gets integrated with our left shoulder and we have movement patterns being established.
22:52We're still going to load it. We're still going to heavy all those things. We'll probably select one to two exercises on both of those days that are really funny looking. And this is your, um, uh, spider stretches and just like weird stuff where you have multiple weird positions at your end to keep us limber, to keep us mobile and keep us connected there. Combination movements, two of those. Then we'll probably pick two to four primary lifts. This could be a leg press. This could be a bent row. It could be single or a single arm or single leg or unilateral bilateral. It could be complicated or very straightforward.
23:32It could be a machine bench if we need it to be that. No big deal. Then we will probably finish on one to three exercises that are closer to what we just got done talking about. What's the client like the most? Oh, you really want to focus on your shoulders? Got it. Let's do some shoulder burnout stuff. Or we have some known weakness or limitations, so on and so forth. Those are going to be 45 minute workouts. You got a couple of things done. We hit multiple body parts. We hit big stuff. We hit isolation stuff. We hit client stuff that they want. We hit stuff that we want them to do as their coach.
24:04And we hit kind of multiple repetition ranges. We're probably going to do those first couple of exercises in the 15 to 20 repetition ranges. The primary exercises, the bigger ones in the middle. We're going to be doing six to 12 repetitions per set, kind of as heavy as you can. And then we might finish with 25 to 30 repetitions per set in those last ones, something even higher than that. Both of those the same day. So we got some strength stuff in there. We got some muscular endurance. We got some hypertrophy stuff in there. Not an overload of any of it. They're probably not going to get hurt with any of that because we're not doing enough load or volume on any individual body part, but it's enough to drive stimulation and adaptation.
24:42That's Monday, Thursday. Tuesday, Let's just say, for example, we're going to match that with some longer duration steady state. So this is going to be something zone don't care, whatever, right? There's a lot of strong feelings out there. Oh my God. Like, geez, relaxing your zone. Who cares? You want to do 25 minutes plus, ideally closer to 30 to 40. it doesn't have to be truly steady state but it is something that you can move at so you want to take a peloton class maybe not peg it all the way or you want to take a run or a swim or something that you can move we want to think about this is no breaks but we're also not trying to go maximum effort here either that's going to give us a good amount of recovery Wednesday we're off we're feeling fine Thursday we're going to actually we're going to switch that we're going to make that Tuesday actually a hard day that's going to be a higher intensity interval day that could be whatever protocol program you want assault bike, sprint, take the Peloton class orange theory, don't care whatever it is ideally this is cardiovascularly driven not weights driven because we lift it pretty hard on Monday but we're going to get our heart rate all the way up and back down if you want to go 30 on 30 off, you want to go Tabatas like any combinations, don't really care should be a shorter and sweeter session but we're doing that because we have Wednesday off we're beat up pretty good yeah cardiovascular neurological system tissue needs a break we're gonna come back on thursday then hit our second lift can be just like mondays okay no big deal friday we'll hit that lower intensity session that i just described because it'll be a little bit of recovery and then we got plenty of juice left on saturday and now we have freedom to do whatever we want to do you want to hit another lift cool we're fine because we got sunday off you want to hit another interval session awesome you want to hit another lower intensity longer duration well we got juice left for whatever you want to do if you want to have fun you want to play a sport oh this is when you play your paddle ball or your pickleball great or you'd like to go play tennis or awesome you like pick up basketball like we have loads of things we can play with here or if your jam is the the group fitness class and you know it's gonna be weights and it's gonna be cardio and it's going to be Pilates, like fine.
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27:05We're totally good here because we're plenty recovered and we have time that it's not going to mess with our following session. So, um, five day a week off the cuff for that, with that information might look something like that. Perfect. So let's go into sleep and recovery. So sleep at this age, freaking sucks for, for most, for most, for a lot of reasons. But if we're not getting adequate sleep, how does that play into what we just recommended and recovery. And would you forego a session for say like a sauna or a cold bath or whatever? Uh, or would you kind of stick to the plan? Yeah, we have to know the goal and we have to know the phase that we're in because the answer is either one, right?
27:48Sometimes our answer is suck it up and like, get through it. Don't care. Sometimes it's be smart, right? This is one of the hard parts about that piece of advice is like, Hey, be smart. Listen, your body We're like, but when do I listen? When do I tell it to shut up? Like, we don't really know. This is why we have to have that bigger framework. If I know, for example, that this quarter is insanely difficult for you at work, you're recording loads of podcasts, you're launching a thing, blah, blah, blah. Then we might go, hey, this quarter is really at its highest level of maintenance quarter physically.
28:22So when we get to that decision on that random Saturday, we already know in our brain. Juice is not here because blah, blah, blah, half work. I'm switching it out to recovery session. If it's the opposite and we go, Hey, last quarter was a maintenance quarter. This quarter work never gets easy. It's never easier, but this is the quarter we decided already. We're going to push it. I need you to get after it. You had last quarter to recover. We're don't, no skipping at this time. This is when we get after it. But if we don't have those decisions in mind ahead of time. We were just guessing always.
28:56And life just continues to rule. This is where being an athlete makes things easier because you have in season, out of season, post season. We know those phases. We need to take the same approach as humans. So I use something that my dear friend, Kenny Kane came up with, and it's called the quadrant system. And so we ask all of our clients to go through the quadrant and we reassess it every quarter, sometimes every month, sometimes more frequent, less frequent, but the quadrant system says you have 10 total points, 10. And we're going to spread those 10 across four categories. So those four categories are category one, your business, professional life, vocation, you know, whatever it means to that.
29:38Number two is your family. Number three is your physical health. And number four is your recovery. All right. So again, people define these things different. So your recovery doesn't necessarily mean have to mean sauna, cold plunge. It could mean sleep. It could be spending more time with friends. It could be whatever like really recovers you. Family could be dating, could be your kids, could be like conceptually put whatever into whatever bucket makes actual sense for you. So you got 10 total points. So here's what we ask is, okay, let's start with business professional. If that is five out of 10, great.
30:17We have five points left to spread across your relationships, recovery, and your own personal health. Okay, great. Well, if you're a woman, you're by default going to put your personal health dead fucking last. Always, right? Like you're going to be dead last and recovery is going to be a zero. So you're going to be like five to kids. And I'm going to be like, nope. It's not, it's not, it's not a negotiable. Like it's, is not possible. We cannot do that. We can't put you there. If you just had a kid a week ago, then great. You are at a zero, basically. You shouldn't be, but that's what you're going to make the decision, right?
30:50We still would say, I don't care. There's not a scenario you can put in front of me where I would say, it is okay for you, mom, to put yourself at zero. It's not because we just know where that story ends. It's not a good idea. We have to keep you at some level. The rule of thumb we have here is personal health is at a minimum ever two, and recovery can only ever be half as much at the minimum, not the maximum, but the minimum of your personal training. So if your personal physical health is at a four, we can't do recovery to one. It's not going to work. We're going to, this is the problem. So that's the algorithm we have to run.
31:26So when we ask that, then we have accountability marks. So we say, okay, we decided this quarter business is at a six got blah blah going on fine we're gonna be at a geez i'm not gonna ignore my kids so keep them at a two great well now six plus two is eight we got two left we're gonna go one-on-one you have to do equal recovery to equal training
31:52you have to there's no points left you can't go two zero you're not gonna make it to the quarter you're gonna end up dumping on your personal health that's what's gonna happen a male it's going to end up being dumping on the kids like kids family go to zero they keep their training like that's just no offense but that's just generally what happens right you're going to prioritize everybody's different i know don't sue me but you get the point right we get it we're having those that's the conversation we're having we're saying unacceptable we have to be here and then every week we hold you accountable to that like you promised me you take recovery into a one what have you done this week you've done zero actions for recovery it's been another week You promised me one.
32:29That's two straights. It's been three straight weeks. Like you're at a zero, zero, zero, but we have some accountability. We have something there. And we say, what have you done? You read your book this week. Did you, whatever the thing is that you like recover with physically, emotionally, spiritually meant like don't really care. Some intentional action that is at least half of the resource demands, energy, time, money, whatever resource is for you as your own physical, personal health. and that reflects on there. So that is the system we have. So when we have those really hard decisions, you're traveling, plane got delayed.
33:04Oh my gosh, whatever. I had to go pick up kids early at school and I don't have time for that. The decision has been made already. Well, if I got time for one of the three things I was going to do today, I already know that I'm going to get my interval session in or I'm going to get my breath work session in or I'm going to get my whatever in. You know the answer because we've already prioritized our system. And then to the very beginning of your conversation, just like we prioritized, periodized our training over the year, we do the same thing with this. So we say this phase right now, we know the choice is get your intervals in.
33:40Next phase though, you committed to recovery. Now we're going to prioritize that or whatever the other thing is. So, um, for our highest performers, pro athletes or our executives or other folks, that's the system we use. Okay. So let's move on to, uh, fat loss because I've yet to meet, I've met very few, very few women that don't come and they're like, I want to lose weight. And it's, I don't know why it's not, you know, why it's so much harder at this age. Well, I can tell you why there's 900 other things running in your life, but it's really hard because half of the time when they come in, they're, they're like desperate.
34:26They're, they're, they're fed up and they're just like, help, help me. I want to lose weight. How does that play into everything else that we've talked about? And that programming, is it harder for someone midlife to lose weight than someone, you know, maybe a teenager? Is it the same? What does that look like? Yeah, of course. we would be silly to think that somebody 40 years old is going to have the same ease of losing body fat as a 16 year old. It doesn't happen. There is an age component, absolutely. There is obviously with females, we've got midlife menopause to contain with too. There's a lot to say on that topic.
35:06There is a lot of unnecessary fear mongering that happens here. And there's a lot of, um, thinking that there is some unique physiology that is completely foreign that we've never learned. But at the same time, we need it. We certainly need more information here. There's no question. Abby is probably great for this stuff, but yeah, things change. What you want to pay attention to here, I think the most helpful thing we can say, it's about the individual. And what I mean by that is if somebody comes to me that says, oh my gosh, I'm doing the exact same things I was doing for the last 10 years. And now I'm put on five pounds of clear fat right on my stomach.
35:43That's never been there before. I believe them.
35:46Dr. Andy Galpin:Yeah. But at the same time, I'm also not going to program every female that ever comes into our program. Like all of a sudden they've got these perimenopause symptoms or something special happened in their body. And then we have to do everything different because they're now 44 years old. That I think is a disservice because that's not, not objectively true. And so if somebody is saying, and I would say the same thing if it's a man, if it's a man comes in, okay, okay. It's about the individual. If they think if something is happening, then it's happening. It's real. We believe them and we treat them like the individual person.
36:17And so what that means is that fat loss approach, you got to find what works for them. Not categorically, not all women at this age should be doing this. This I think is where we have, we're having really problems with this, this field in particular, in terms of scientific communication. You're going to get way more clicks if you post stuff like that. But it's really unfair to most women to be like, if you're this age, do this, or you can't do that. That's what's causing the confusion and the frustration. Yeah. I mean, and the hard thing is, is the boring stuff of you got to see what works for you.
36:51This might work for somebody. This might work for someone else. It's harder to have somebody take that information because they they want to be told exactly what to do and that just isn't how how it works yeah so we we can help that person i'm sympathetic to that right um number one this is why hiring a single coach is a good idea if you can because then that person's not over here going okay well i got my dietician or right in my training program or my nutrition program then i have my strength coach or my personal trainer right in that i have somebody else, land my concierge stock. And we're just like, okay, nobody's going to win here because they're all, they're all probably, all of them might work, but their systems are a little bit different.
37:35And so you're conflicting the entire thing. Go with one system, go with one system, be consistent and give it several months, right? If you're having huge negative reactions immediately, okay, stop. But if you're trying, you, you get really excited about low carb. Great. Give it some time. Don't give it 30 days. It's probably, you're not going to really see what it can possibly do. Give it three or four months. If you're going to go away from that, go low fat, higher carb, same thing, right? If you're going to try, you're going to try intermittent fasting. Fine, fine. Do whatever. You're going to try carb.
38:12Fine. All of these probably have the equal chance to work if your adherence is the same, if your effort is the same. Now it is possible you might find one that just clicks with your system really well. Awesome. But even if that's not the case, if you start hopping every three or four weeks, you're very, very likely to find anything that works. So you might miss something that would have worked had you been a little more diligent to it. So for that person who's like, I can't afford to hire a coach, I'm doing this whole thing on my own and there's so much conflicting information. I hope my message says this.
38:48It's very unlikely, very unlikely that there's one magical solution out there that you have to do yeah extremely unlikely so pick one thing be good with it stick to it try it if it doesn't work move on but i don't want that thing in the back of your head giving you terror all the time going like oh my god oh my god like i just there's probably something out there that's perfect for me and i don't know what it it's very unlikely that that exists extremely so pick anything that's based in evidence from a nutrition standpoint from a training standpoint from whatever be consistent give a good effort and then give yourself some grace and give yourself some time if you do that you're more likely to see something work and if that doesn't work it's still okay you try like that's that's the best you can do here and don't worry too much about what else is out there?
39:46So if we look at the, the intersection of the science, like the, the research that we have access to, and then where coaching comes into that, because, you know, like that study will come out tomorrow that will, that will counter what we said here. And, and you may know that there's not a lot of differences in there. It's like, well, it all comes down to you know this and that for the tempo changes like do we just throw slow eccentrics out now that they work the same whatever where does that intersection meet and how do you balance that with the science that you've got versus real life experience okay really watch this separately two ways first extremely unlikely that a single study will ever come out that fundamentally changes the basic principles of exercise, nutrition, sleep, so on and so forth.
40:43Dr. Andy Galpin:So that's number one. You don't throw a whole fields out with one study. That does not happen. Not one meta-analyses, not anything else. It can shift our programming a little bit. It can inform us some more, but there's no chance that a study is going to come out and all of a sudden be like, oh, this style of training that we thought worked in the previous 60 years doesn't work at all zero. Yeah. Yeah. That does not happen. And so it's, for the average person, it is confusing. It feels like that. But trusted people in the industry know better than that. And so when you hear things like that, the first thing you can do as a consumer is just have a red flag go up.
41:23Say, okay, great. I mean, is this really rewiring the entire history of strength and conditioning? That's a little aggressive. Probably not, right? So that's number one. Slow down on our interpretation of single studies or single, even three or four or five. It's interpret with caution, move slower. The second thing we can do there is understanding the difference between what's called an is and an ought. This, I think, explains more scientific miscommunication than anything else. So are you all familiar with the logic construct of is versus oughts? No, enlighten us. All right. I mean, I think I know, but maybe I don't.
42:06Logical fallacy, the is, refers to known truth. In this context, the data, the research, the science. Ought is a moral judgment. So I can say three plus three is six. This is virtually inarguable. However, if I said something like, do you like five better or do you like six better? This is an ought, right? This is a moral judgment. This is a personal preference, right? I'm stretching the explanation here a little bit. Logistics is like back off on me a little bit. But you get the point here. Here's why I'm bringing this up. If you were to ask a scientist on a podcast, how much protein should the average person be eating?
42:54A scientist is likely to answer that based on an is. What do the data specifically say? If you asked a coach the exact same question, they're likely to answer with an opt. they're likely to say, oh, what should you do? And now they're thinking about context, experience, what's worked in their clients and their goals, what people follow through on more, what people fail on more. So they're making moral judgments based on context and practical relevance where scientists generally tend to stick to the exact data. Does that make sense? That difference is versus odd? Yeah. So here's a very small word difference.
43:31If you ask me, Andy, what's the minimum amount of protein most people should be eating to stay healthy? I'm going to go to is. If you ask me, Andy, how much protein do you recommend to your clients? Now you've asked me not. Well, we want the answer to both. Hey, here's where it's confusing. Here you go. there's a lot of research on protein specifically you're going to generally see something like 1.2 grams per kilogram is the minimum number and in fact if you go higher than that you're probably not conferring any health benefits to more protein than 1.2 grams per kilogram ish if you go below that you will start to see negative health consequences but if you ask me how much protein i generally put my clients on it's going to be almost double that i like to see closer to 2.2 grams per kilogram or one gram per pound so when people ask me how much do you like andy or what do you do with your clients i'm going to give them the ought because i'm thinking about the data but then i'm also thinking about well my clients oftentimes train twice a day my clients are also going to be controlling body composition my clients will adhere to this better.
44:55The people I work with, and it's now all my moral judgment slash my experience and me trying to explain to you what I think your audience probably wants to hear, their context, right? So if you hear me on a different podcast, I will give a different answer to that same one because I'm thinking, okay, you got a mostly female audience here. What are the most likely to be their goals, their situations? Where if I was on a podcast talking about kids training i'd give a different because i'm different goals different assumptions right yeah not all educators do that right not all uh information consumers are differentiating between that so it's like man i'm so confused in the protein you have some experts over here saying it's you know it's way lower some is way higher we're actually generally not but even the scientists and the coaches themselves don't realize that they're conflating is as an ox in their own recommendations so that is how we we stay away from it so if you ask me to go back to the beginning in this case, there is a minimum amount of protein that most humans should probably consume.
45:57Below that, you're increasing your chance of something bad happening. Above that though, we don't have any good evidence to suggest you'll be in itself, because of that variable alone, any healthier. However, when it comes to practical application, I have personally found people do better, more likely to succeed if they go to that higher number. I think if we said everybody in the room and said that very few people would actually disagree but it's not that level of communication we're happening on social media and a podcast is Dan so we're getting this confliction between is and odds okay I love that and I love that when you pull back there really isn't like you said somebody could get benefits from a variety of, you know, a variety of programs and it doesn't have to look one specific way.
46:51No. Provided you put an effort. Yeah. I mean, it is true that there are such things as individual responders. No question, right? We have genetic profiles that are wildly different and past experiences and we live in different parts of the world and different air quality and food. Like, all that's true. So you should be coaching the individual. Here's where research, well, I'll answer this right back on the previous one. This is an is and an ought. Generally, science tells us what is true for most people most of the time in most situations. It can never inform you on what you ought to do with your individual client.
47:34Yeah. It can't do that. science is not geared, it's changing actually, but the entire history of science, especially in this field, has never been geared towards giving you individual personal client recommendations. You have to take the data, the is, and say, what do we think is most likely to work and most people most of the time? And that's where we start. And then from there, you coach. You coach, you coach, you coach the individual. So by the time that story ends, your program might look very far from the quote unquote evidence base because you started there and it didn't work and it wasn't great.
48:08You eventually had to get to something squirrely. But that's still evidence-based. That is the actual art of personal medicine or personal nutrition or personal coaching. That's how you get there. And that is how you can be evidence-based. But again, I pull up that program on my phone from your client and I go, this girl didn't know she's doing it all. This isn't evidence-based.
48:30Where do you see the science going in the next, like over the next decade? Yeah, I mean, as I just alluded to, personalized health nutrition program stuff is becoming real. So we can actually start to do studies in this lane. Probably 10 years ago, people started doing away with group analyses and started including individual responses in scientific papers. That was a huge step forward. Here's what I mean. In the past, if we were to do a study, uh for example we recently published a paper where we looked at um 16 8 intermittent fasting so this is you eat all your calories in an eight hour window you fast for 16 and we had men and women in this uh in this study and we actually were different because we looked at maximal muscle growth and strength this was not a weight loss study this was people trying to get as strong as they possibly can and they were in a caloric surplus not caloric deficit so what we want to know is if you're putting as many calories as possible in the system, does fasting help harm, hurt, or have any neutral?
49:40Okay. In doing that, what we would typically have done in the past is you would finish the entire study and you would summarize everybody into one number. Okay. So the group in the fasting increased their strength by 3 % and the group in the non-fasting increased it by X percent. Well, the reality of it is, as you all know from basic math, some people are going to respond by 25%, some people by 1%. And then all of a sudden you smash that together to get a group average. And then does that really reflect what actually happened? And so a number of years ago, a bunch of us were just like, this is not fair.
50:16We need to report to people, every single individual person in that study. And so you could look at it and go, okay, some people got really good some people got really bad and so the net result doesn't actually tell you much what you want to see is if there was 10 people in the study if nine got better and one got worse that's very different than if we smash that all together and we can say well on average it didn't matter it clearly did matter 90 of people got better like that's a very different thing where that is transition now and by the way i can go back and give you the answer to the intermittent fasting thing if you want but but where this is transition is the ability to say okay can we actually run individualized studies.
50:52For example, there was a great paper published in Cell a number of years ago where they did what we effectively do in our coaching program. But they came in and they said, we'll take microbiome analyses. We're going to take blood markers. We're going to look at sleep metrics. We're going to look at questionnaires, subjective questionnaires. We're going to take some strength performance measures. We're going to throw all that into a learning model. From that, we want to see if we can predict somebody's postprandial glucose response. In other words, can we see how you respond to glucose having no glucose testing at all?
51:24And in fact, the reality of it is it absolutely did with basically perfect accuracy. So what that was saying is, hey, we can actually start to model and progressively predict problems. We can run better prognoses. We can see things happening if we have enough individual data on that person. So rather than saying that person came in being like, oh, you're a 44-year-old Caucasian woman, I have no idea how your blood glucose is going to respond. With that information, I have nothing. But with all this biological information, I can tell you exactly what it's going to do without ever even directly testing it.
51:55That is precision nutrition. That is precision medicine. That paper is almost a decade old. So there's been an enormous amount of consumer products that are becoming available that are out there and coaching programs like ours where we can do this stuff very seamlessly because we have 10 years of data and lots of experience and hundreds of clients and things like that. So no longer can people hide behind the idea of like, well, how you feeling today is like the only metric. It's probably the best one to be clear. Probably like the single best thing you could ever ask a client, but we can do much more things now because consumer level coaching at this style of precision is not just a fantasy anymore.
52:35It's not only a reality, but it is much the commonplace. It's quite fascinating. So if we look at really quick, because I know we're almost out of time, if we look at biohacking, so I just went to this menopause conference and I walked away and was like, I don't know what just happened, but the biohacking recommendations were almost like overwhelming. And if they were overwhelming for someone that it's you know i don't know yeah like it goes to the average consumer the average female that's like okay hayley what do you what are you taking like do i need to be doing this and this and this and this and all of these biohacking where are you with that are there any that you that you do yourself that you're like this is everyone should be taking this i mean you know my answer here
53:26you can't put a single piece of technology in front of me that I will say, yeah, everyone should use this. Now, I'll throw myself under the bus here. So I don't want to pick on anybody else. I have a sleep company. I am financially incentivized to sell people sleep products. And there's not a single thing that we use in every single client there. Not one. Because sometimes those things work. and sometimes they actually make things worse. There's something called orthosomnia. Orthosomnia is a clinically induced insomnia in response to data obsession. Wow. We see this routinely. People can give themselves, I'll repeat, clinical insomnia because of obsession over specifically sleep trackers.
54:20I have a sleep company. I'm incentivized to sell you those things. And I'm telling you right now, they can make your life. No, we don't sell that at AppSuppressed. But you get the point. So there's not a single piece of technology I'll ever be like, you all should be using this. When you get to stuff like red light and PEMF, there is some science there. But do you need it? Well, that's an entirely separate question. This is an is versus an ought. Now we have gone to way down the road of ought into going, well, hold on here. there are a thousand things we can do that are more impactful than what you're jumping to.
54:59Even if you were like, most of my clients have literally unlimited money. I mean, basically unlimited money. I could, they could buy everything in the world and they wouldn't even ask. They wouldn't even look at the invoice, like wouldn't even be on their radar. And we don't do it because it's not only the, the, the false problem with the biohacking space is like, well, there's no harm. There actually is. In fact, genetic testing is one of the worst there's there are very clear data at this point people take advice when they think it's based on their genetics far more seriously yeah so when you're giving them bad advice they're more likely to take it which can cause actual problems direct harm so genetic testing for health optimization or wellness is absolutely atrocious it's horrifically bad and this is actually causing an enormous amount of problems because people are being more adherent to really bad advice so we're seeing a whole cascade of clinical issues coming as a result of direct-to-consumer genetic testing i could go on and on but this space is is really really problematic now if somebody spent up 200 bucks on a red light device like you're not gonna fine whatever but it's when it's like i only had 200 to spend and i spent it on that and then i expected to burn 20 pounds of fat.
56:18Yeah. Those are now where we're like, okay, you are really harming people. Not physically, but all the other ways that we're getting there. So all of these tools are fine. I have used every biohack with our clients you could ever think of when we need that. What problem are we solving? Why would this specifically help that problem? Then I'll go use anything. We have some clients that spend seven figures a year on basically tools and we will continue to like literally but because we have very specific data on certain things that we're trying to poke and prod and and to a good right if you're a professional athlete on a 700 million dollar contract a million a year is nothing yeah because every small little movement it matters right but if that's not you if your starting place is buying a pemf mat then we're going to have problems and just expect to have an epic failure here.
57:15Dr. Andy Galpin:So if someone asks you what biomarkers or performance markers you should watch that really move the needle, there's not really things you recommend. You recommend it based on the individual. Yeah, a hundred percent. Look, there's the big rocks, right? Let's not be over cute here. If you're not paying attention to mental health at all, then that's going to be a problem. If you're not paying attention to physical health, if you're not paying attention to sleep, if you're not paying attention to something that represents your internal physiology. Again, I have conflicts of interest here. I have a sleep company.
57:54I think you should all test and use your sleep. I think you should all buy my sleep product, right? But I have a blood work company. We do blood work for high performance. I think blood work is very, very important. But the reality of it is exactly what I actually just said right before that. You can make a load of health progress without ever testing your blood. You can make a load of progress without ever testing your sleep. Those things can be helpful, but no one has to get any of them to make now now i feel like i'm gonna go peruse all of the sleep i know that you have because this midlife sleep i'm telling you is a doozy it's a doozy and i want to say that i never rely on any sleep aids i wish i could say that but i don't but man that's a whole other well So this is a thing, perhaps a different time, different conversation, but the sleep field itself is one of – I'll give you some context here.
59:02Globally, we're spending about$600 billion a year on sleep, and it's one of the few health metrics that is continually declining. Yeah, why? Well, I can tell you a bunch of reasons why. Many of them being our world is different. Our world is physically brighter than it's ever been. There's this cool thing called SkyGlo. We actually just published a paper. You can go read it. It's totally free. We published a paper on the environmental factors that are influencing sleep in your bedroom. It's open access. We paid like three grand so that everyone could download it without any special login or access.
59:35We have a summary table in there that tells you exactly how much light to have, how to measure it, sound, odorants, smells, all kinds of things like that. every environmental factor it's all free in that paper uh to democratize that as well our physical environment is different you're also running companies via the internet which means you're expected to be up at different hours because you can run a company with your employees across the country or world yeah the world is more stimulating than it's ever been you have direct access there's like all these small reasons to big reasons um but the field of sleep medicine the gold standard in sleep medicine is still the same as it was 50 years ago, technologically.
1:00:18Hasn't changed. Every other part of medicine has, except for sleep. So we are ignoring everything besides basically sleep apnea. It's the only thing people deal with. And it's very unlikely that you're dealing with sleep apnea right now. So there's a billion solutions for midlife. I cannot tell you how many perimenopausal women have come to absolute rest for sleep stuff. We're not perfect, of course, but we're very good. There's a thousand things you can do that are not just a CPAP machine. There's a lot of stuff you can do. In fact, we're doing the first ever study right now. This will perk you guys' ears.
1:01:03My student, Zoe, is about halfway through data collection on our study where we're looking at sleep. across the entire menstrual cycle. Now these are not perimodal, these are young, healthy, because we had to actually normalize that. But we have ultra high fidelity testing, part of the technology we developed at Absolute Rest. So we can run full clinical sleep studies on women every single night from their home. And so we match that with urine and blood markers. And so not only do we know the phase, we're directly confirming their cycle phase, and we are directly confirming hormonal status. So no dislike, oh, it's a 28-day cycle and you're ovulating day 14.
1:01:41We will know the exact day you ovulated, the way day you didn't. And if anything does change in your sleep, not from an aura or a wearable or a questionnaire, from ultra-high fidelity testing, and if it is relevant to your hormonal changes at all at the individual level, we'll be able to see that and know that. So we're actively collecting that and looking for more participants on that study. So we love these questions. We deal with it a lot. So yeah, we can help sleep for sure. Okay. Well, there's a hell of a lot at work. Well, if anybody wants to come check us out at Absolute Rest, and you're struggling with sleep, any of you ladies, we've seen you a lot.
1:02:23I know. You're going to see two of us, right?
1:02:26Dr. Andy Galpin:Okay, where can everyone find you? All over the world. Just everywhere. My face is on too many podcasts. Okay. And you have your own podcast. Yeah. We're actually about to start filming season three in a few weeks. It's called perform. I only do like 10 or 12 episodes a year. So season one and two are out. You can go check those out on all your providers. And it's Andy Galpin is just on all social media and websites. It should be my website. It's just that. And then you can check out absolute rest.com. Okay. I'm going there right now. Uh, Andy, thank you so much. I'm so glad that Abby introduced us.
1:03:08And, um, you said yes to this podcast. I was so thrilled and this has been such a great conversation. So needed. And I love how spot on you are with what you, um, recommend. So thank you for your expertise and your time today and for being on the body pod. Ah, thanks for letting me run my mouth a whole bunch. And it's fun being here.
1:03:28Dr. Andy Galpin:Thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and sharing the BodyPod with your friends.
From the publisher
This episode covers how to balance strength training and cardio for busy schedules, how to plan workouts across the day, week, month, quarter, year, and decades for muscle growth, metabolic health, and longevity, and how to keep progress from falling apart when life gets hectic. Galpin introduces a simple sleep and recovery quadrant system, explains why biohacking often distracts from the fundamentals, and clarifies how to approach fat loss in midlife without falling victim to conflicting fitness advice.
The conversation also explores how to properly interpret exercise science and research, separating what science says is true from what a coach actually recommends in real-world training. If you’re looking for evidence-based fitness, sustainable training plans, and long-term performance and health, this episode delivers.
