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everyone. Welcome to ask me anything episode number 32. I am joined today for the very first time on this podcast by Nick Stenson, who you'll get to know during this episode, but basically Nick has been working with me well off and on for 10 years, but he's been working with me specifically around the podcast since we decided to do this, which is God. We're coming up on four years ago it.
The spring of 2018. I think when we made that decision and neck is going to be taken over for Bob on the AMA. It's a totally different vibe, but we had a field day. I felt this was probably a little bit more conversational. And the hope is that, because Nick is quote unquote, a lay person and doesn't have the technical background that Bob does that maybe he'll be interrupting me, more and asking more questions and maybe that will provide a more valuable experience. So, in today's episode, we talk about a bunch of things. We started off by doing some follow-up questions on Blood Flow Restriction, which we had some great questions following the podcast with Jeremy Lin.
Key, I think we go from that then into talking about some of my favorite lift. So squats, deadlifts and hip thrusters though. Not through the lens of Blood Flow, Restriction, but just more broadly talking about the importance of those lifts how they fit into the overall ballpark of a centenarian Olympic Training Program, and after a pretty deep dive on all things related to lifting, we get into testosterone replacement therapy, both for men and women. So we double click on some of the things we discussed in the previous Ama.
Testosterone replacement therapy specifically around the risks of cardiovascular disease, but also we do a little bit more of a clinical discussion around how we actually replace testosterone, what our targets of therapy. Are one of the, some of the do's and don'ts and then we actually get into some questions about females and testosterone replacement therapy. This is an area for which we have far less data. So there's a little bit more speculation. But we also talk about that. If you are a subscriber and you want to watch the full video podcast, which again, I generally recommend you do because we go through a number of figures here, you can find it on the show notes page. And if you're not a subscriber,
Brr. Well, I hope you become one, but you can certainly watch the sneak peek at this video on our YouTube channel. So without further delay. I hope you enjoy am a number 32. All right. Well, here we go. Another am a, of course. I'm joined with a new co-host for this episode next Ensign and Nick will save the intros till the end, but you're ready to jump into
this. Yeah. Let's do it. We compiled some good questions here. I think should be a fun
one. Yeah, you
Read me the list that you were working on and it's got me a little overwhelmed. If we can get through it. I'll be super impressed. But you've got a good group of question. So just tell me where you want to start.
So we got a lot of good questions following the Jeremy Lin, icky and some of the exercise podcast. So I thought we'd kind of start there and there's some Blood Flow Restriction questions, but I thought it might be helpful for people before we get into some of those specifics. Just what is your current exercise routine look like each week. I know.
It's always changing. But if you can give people a rough overview, I think that will be helpful as we get into some of these other questions.
Yeah, I mean, the actual macro structure of what I do has not changed much in the last year. The micro structure has changed a lot. Meaning, the exercises have changed a lot, but the macro structure is that on, let's see, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, our cardio days. So tuesday-thursday Sunday, our Zone 2.
Saturday is either a zone two, followed by a zone five. That's kind of a separate work out. So each of those are 45 minutes own twos and then kind of like a 30-minute zone 5 as a separate work out that's done almost immediately after. So basically getting out of bike clothes and putting on stair, climbing close alternatively. I might just do a longer bike ride on Saturday and make it more of an anaerobic workout.
Then from a lifting standpoint, it's Monday. Wednesday. Friday-sunday is Lifting and about, I don't know, nine months ago. I switched to an upper body lower body split. I used to lift three days a week and do upper body lower body every day. So each day. I was doing kind of pushing pulling in hip hinging and now the lower body component I think is monday-friday. The upper body is Wednesday Sunday and I
Always lift after doing cardio because I think the reverse has been demonstrated to erode strength training. Gains
Peter what happens if you miss a day because I noticed you didn't say day, 1 Day, 2 Day 3. You were very distinct on the days of the week. I know you typically don't miss a day. But if you miss Wednesday, do just scrap those exercises and then just continue with your program or are you trying to make up in the interim
know, like yesterday, Sunday would have been a ride followed by lift day, but I,
Was on the track the whole day and I knew that in advance. So I just ended up doing that lifts on Saturday, but obviously was shortchanged on the Zone 24 yesterday. So I will pretty much will never compromise a lift. I will always get those for lifts in during the week. No matter what and sometimes, it just means moving the days around or doubling up on a different
day. And what about timing? Do you have a preference morning afternoon evening? Is that flexible as well, within kind of your schedule
a little more flexible?
Weekends. But Monday, through Friday and pretty much no flexibility. Those lifts have to be done first thing in the morning and not first thing in the morning. So morning routine is kind of more about the kids and stuff like that. But once they're out the door to school around, 7:15, 7:30. That's when I'll typically
lift got it. I know from the Jeremy Lin icky podcast. You were talking about how you were starting to incorporate Blood Flow, Restriction. So, I think one of the main questions we saw from subscribers after that was, how are you utilizing that into your
Exercise program. Is that something you do every day? Is a day is like, you mentioned, where you were, just not really feeling it and it was injury, prevention. Or if you had an injury, you were trying to recover. How do you utilize that throughout the week?
So I have really enjoyed Blood Flow Restriction, especially since I got new cuffs. So when I started I was doing it purely ghetto style and I still I enjoyed it but I wasn't even coming close to tapping into sort of what the potential of that was for the
Just. Oh God, probably three months. I've been using the brand is actually called smart cuff and it's a night and day difference. So they're kind of absurdly expensive. I don't remember how much they cost. I want to say like $600 for the for cuffs to upper body to lower body. Plus the device which is what really makes it so essential. Meaning, the device that is measuring occlusive pressure and pumping each time, but it makes such a difference that in my mind. It's just totally worth it. I do plan to try a couple of other devices out.
There's even more extreme versions of this that apparently have better features like the katsu one, but my guess is, there will be no bigger jump than the one I took from going from basically 20 dollar junkie bands to to these ones. And so I do bfr every day that I lift and I just do at the end of the workout. I'll typically do one to two exercises dipping in the muscles. So today, for example, at the end of a leg session. I did a bfr leg, press set.
And of an upper body session, I'll probably do a bicep set and a tricep set. And I'm always doing it in the way that we discussed on that podcast, but just for folks to remember it's 30 reps rest, 30 seconds, 15 reps rest, 30 seconds, 15 reps rest. 30 seconds, fifteen reps. That is the standard prescribed procedure for bfr. You're doing this at a weight that is 30 to 40 percent of your one rep max. So the easiest way to calculate
that is to take the weight that you can barely get 10 reps with. So what is your best 10 rep? Wait divide that by 0.75. So your best 10 rep weight is about 75% of your one, rep max. And then you multiply the resulting figure by somewhere between point three and point four depending on how strong you are. So use an example, if your best 10 rep of curls is 40 pounds, you would divide 40 by
Point seven five, which what is that that takes you up to 57 or something? I'm guessing and then you would multiply that by somewhere between point three 2.4. I typically tend to go closer to point for that becomes the weight that you'll use for the bfr with these smart cups. You have a whole additional variable which is, it comes at three different pressures. So, it calculates the pressure and again, just for the refresher for folks. The purpose of Blood Flow Restriction is to operate at about 30%.
Out of the occlusive pressure, the arterial occlusive pressure, which when you're using kind of crap, you know, just bands you don't really have a sense of what you're reclusive pressure is unless you're applying a Doppler signal to your distal extremities, which is very cumbersome instead when you use these, cuffs that come with an inflation device. They're actually measuring the occlusive pressure. So the first time you do it, it takes a little longer. And then it says, okay, now I know what it is for your arms and your legs.
You want to go at the highest level of intensity medium level intensity or lower level of intensity, which basically just adjust the
pressure and you mentioned Doppler signal for your other bands. Can you just remind people what that is in case they're using this with cuffs that don't have kind of what yours have? You have a
Doppler device, you have to buy one and that's the reason I think. Like if you're going to go to the trouble to buy a Doppler device, you might as well buy a smart cuff or something similar, but it's basically a medical device that we used to use in the hospital all the time. When you can
It feel a pulse. Like if you put your hand on your radial artery here. You can feel the pulse. Hopefully if you're healthy, but in people who have peripheral vascular disease, you can't because their pulses two weeks. So the Doppler is basically looks like a little pain. You put it there with a little bit of jelly. So it has better sound conduction and it's basically sending a sound signal to the artery, and it's recording that sound. So winners complete occlusion. You'll hear nothing. And if there's only partial occlusion,
You'll hear like a whoo. Whoo. Whoo and it's sort of picking up that that sound. So what you would basically do is use this device to figure out how tight to go. But of course, then you're like trying to figure out like how tight to make the band to get to that occlusive pressure. And then how do you even know how to back off it? So you'd have to use a cuff that at least allows you to know how many millimeters of mercury or putting in to figure out what complete occlusion is and then backing it down in my opinion? It's just not worth doing that.
Now that makes sense. One of the things I was surprised by because I was in your gym the other day and was just the difference between the two cuffs and I think because of that, I asked you to pull them out just so you can show people. Do you have them
quick? Yeah. Yeah. So these are kind of what my cheap 20-dollar cuffs were that I used for many months. You have two of these and you would kind of wrap them around your arm and your leg and it, you sort of look like a bit of a heroin addict because you're sort of like trying to squeeze this thing. Again, I would just York on them. Really.
Hard until I would, my guide was once it hits seven out of 10 pain. That was probably the right spot, but I find that's very inaccurate. The current cuffs. This is the arm cuff. So it's obviously a much more rigorous cuff and you apply this, slap it on. Then a little device hooks on to hear that hooks up to a little pump. That's where I program this thing and that will achieve the occlusive pressure. The other thing I really
She ate now is like, look at how thick this thing is just for the arm, right? Look at the leg one like totally different, right? Because I could never get, I was never really doing bfr for my legs. When I had that little blue thing. Whereas with this thing. Wow, you get it. You get you really are getting the true occlusive
effect. And what are you using to measure the difference there? Or how do you know like it's working? How can you tell such as feel
subjectively? Yeah.
It's not hurting where the band is compressing me. I'm feeling that sensation of basically lactic acidosis throughout the entire leg as opposed to just the pain of being constricted where the band is. When it's a thin band. It's interesting to note. The pressure of occlusion is much higher than systolic pressure because it's a function of how wide the band is. So, I noticed today when I did my legs, the occlusive pressure was 158 millimeters of mercury.
Three. Well, that's way above my systolic pressure. My systolic blood pressure is very low. I tend to run super low and blood pressure as evidenced by the fact that I face-planted in Brazil last month and my upper body occlusive pressure. Would those cuffs is about 58. Mm, of mercury. So you have one that's like our sorry, 9 94 millimeters of mercury tends to be an approximate occlusive on upper body, 154 something 158 on the lower body. But again, it's also a function of the width of the
Cuff, so that's why I realize just knowing your blood pressure isn't enough to do
this. Yeah, and you mentioned you always do it at the end of the workout. I assume that's purposeful. Have you ever played around with like prior to your actual workout
and maybe others could speak to it for me? Personally. I just think when I'm doing my heaviest most neurologically demanding component of exercise. I want to be a little fresher and I don't want to be as taxed. Whereas I kind of like using this as sort of a finisher.
Sure or near the end. Sometimes I'll do I'll still do something after this. But you know, I'll do a dead. Hang is usually the very, very last thing I'll do. So kind of mix up a bit.
You'll never do a dead. Hang with a BF
archive and I tried it didn't it didn't matter. It didn't, it didn't impair the ability to do it at all because the dead hang is really about grip. And that didn't seem to be impaired by the upper body bfr, but I have tried it
once. What's your record for dead? Hang these days,
like a little over 3310.
Chase.
But that's at the end of a workout and I think you know, if you do these fresh, I think you can go a little more.
Yeah. Do you have a goal set in mind that you want to hit?
I was super happy to get over 3, I mean most days when I do it. I just want to go to 2230 and not go to failure and just kind of build strength without failing every time lately. I've been doing a lot of finger pull ups. I think I showed you that device. Yeah. Yeah, that thing is sinful super painful.
Gives you a new respect for those
climbers. That was the first thing I thought of because walk people through, you're not doing all four fingers, right? You only are doing three and you're just straight and the pull up
position. I do both. So I'll usually start with four fingers, but that's very easy relatively speaking. But the jump from forefinger pull-ups to three finger. Pull ups is so much harder than I would have ever
guessed. Oh, I can't imagine. And are you looking to do two finger and one finger? Is that the goal is just to just lift yourself.
Up,
if I can do four sets of two, three finger, pull ups at the end of doing, you know, maybe three sets of four, four finger pull ups. That's pretty good. For sure.
One other question we had on the bfr was, do you ever do it in zone 2 training? Like have you ever played around with that?
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