Tyson (00:00.165)
Yeah, we'll jump into it. Right. Yeah, that's, that's recording. Yeah, sweet. Man, before we get into it, you were saying that what just over the last weekend you were out with what you had 45 athletes racing around the Half Ironman World Champs in New Zealand. A busy, busy weekend for you.
Dr Dan Plews (00:16.728)
We very busy weekend. Yeah. So we had 45 athletes racing and it was, and the racing was over two days as well. So we had the women's race on the Saturday and then the men's race on the Sunday. there were, man, there were four days because the start of the, there were, there were waves as well. So it's like, we have a lot of people in the first wave and the last wave. So we were out there for pretty much two full Ironman days really. it was, and we had talks leading into it, you know, race, we went through some of the race courses and we had a
some like Cam Brown come and give us a talk. won the Ironman New Zealand 12 times. And also my dad was racing, he was 72. So he came eighth in the 70 to 75 age group. So I was very proud of him. So I was in full support of him, which was on the Sunday as well. So was really good.
Tyson (01:06.617)
Yeah, awesome. Is that how you found your way into the sport or has worked in reverse? who's coach?
Dr Dan Plews (01:10.882)
Yeah, yeah, that's how I my way into the sport. Yeah, my dad was a... So my dad started as a competitive cyclist and then he got into marathon running and then, yes, naturally he got into triathlon. But as a result, swimming is not his forte. But yeah, that's how... I I started doing triathlons when I was nine years old. Well, I did a swim run just outside Leeds in the UK when I was nine years old, which I think was like a...
about a 200 meter swim and a one mile run or something like that. And yeah, that was my first introduction to the sport.
Tyson (01:45.989)
Man, I think we dipped our toes in the sport in the same kind of way in a different part of the world though. I was in Victoria in Australia and we had one of those classic, it was like a 25 meter swim. You did a 400 meter bike ride and then you finished with a lap run. And I think I'm 37. So that must've been like early 1990s. That was like the OG days of triathlon now. Things have come forward quite a lot, huh?
Dr Dan Plews (02:09.262)
I think those were some of the best days. were the days of when Miles Stewart and Spencer Smith and I know if you know like because I was from the UK and we had like we had Spencer Smith and Simon Lessing who were probably two of the big the big the the were the amongst the best triathletes in the world. Of course Australia had a plethora of high level athletes. So Greg Benny, Miles Stewart, Chris McCormack and Chris Hill was like just so many of them obviously.
Courtney Atkinson and the croc, know, so Bevan, that's it. Yep, so yeah, what an era.
Tyson (02:49.797)
It's a it's funny looking back we used to have like a weekend race I can't like the summer series maybe the week big series or something we called it where Throughout triathlon season. I remember my next-door neighbors dad was into it So we'd go to his house and watch these blokes in questionable outfits go out and do this sport and yeah There's a little while
Dr Dan Plews (03:06.658)
Yeah, because then in Australia, it was very popular that you had the Formula One, the F1 series, if you remember that, was sponsored by St. George. Do remember that in the 90s? And it was, yeah, it was, it was really popular. I mean, I used to remember seeing it. used to be like, it's, guess it's similar to what the Super League or the Super, the Super League is now. you know, very short, different format racing. but it's pretty cool. Really cool.
Tyson (03:14.563)
Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but...
Tyson (03:30.445)
Yeah. Yeah, man. So you sort of just been a part of it like nine years old, you said was your first one and did you just never really leave the sport?
Dr Dan Plews (03:38.158)
No, I've really left the sport. mean, obviously ups and downs of level of involvement. I did a lot of study and I had a lot in the career aspects, but I've never really stopped doing it at all. So always being involved, which has been good. And I'm not really competing now. I stopped competing in 2022. the end of 2023, I did my last Ironman.
So yeah, and I'm taking up some different stuff now.
Tyson (04:10.337)
How did you find that? Is that just so you can focus more on the coaching?
Dr Dan Plews (04:14.254)
Yeah, and like I'd kind of, I've got a young family and the training's a lot and I really, I really not got much left to do within amateur level at least. And I was never going to turn professional because I was 41 by that point. So, so yeah, so I just decided to try something new and, and focus on the coaching, focus on the business and do different things.
Tyson (04:37.445)
Have you found that transition? I finished competitive running in 2014 and I remember like a Tuesday afternoon where I'd usually go out and do 8xK or some threshold session that would take a couple of hours after work. I was sitting at home feeding oats to a magpie going, right, I've got to fill this time with something. Because it was a new transition for me. actually, we had like an Aussie rules player, his name's Mark Blitzhaff. He went from running into footy and I thought I might try and follow his lead.
Dr Dan Plews (04:55.501)
Yeah.
Tyson (05:06.243)
And then when that didn't happen, I'd sort of gone all guns blazing and I'd had so many hours left in my week. Like I wasn't as probably clear on where I was going as what it sounds like you are and where you're at. So I guess that time has probably been filled relatively easily, but was that transition easy or?
Dr Dan Plews (05:20.878)
yeah. Yeah, it was quite easy. I I did a variety of things. So I decided that when I finished, I wanted to really focus on getting stronger. So I did a lot of time in the gym and I on a lot of weight, I did a lot of eating. So, you know, I really tried to pack on a lot of kilos and I went from basically 74, 75 to 89.
Tyson (05:45.349)
dude.
Dr Dan Plews (05:46.05)
Yeah, was pretty quick actually. did it and I made a lot of eating like six times, six times, six 90 minute sessions in the gym, but I really like bodybuilding focus. A lot of, you know, but I kind of, didn't really like it very much to be honest. I didn't feel very good. I didn't like being that heavy. And I felt like my cardio respiratory fitness was just getting worse and worse.
You know, and it reflected in some of my resting heart rate and my HRV and things like this. didn't, I didn't really, I didn't really like losing my cardio fitness. And I think, I think we all as runners who are from endurance backgrounds, we get a bigger endorphin boost from endurance exercise. So, and I was hardly doing, I was doing very, very little. So I decided that I switched it up and I started doing higher ops instead, which has got a much heavier.
cardio focus because there's lot of running involved, right? And that for me has been great because it's much less training. You can do like one to two hours a day of that sort of training. And it's a great balance between strength training and endurance training. I still do, I don't really swimming anymore, but I still ride my bike a lot because it's part of it. And I still run a lot, so I'll still run maybe 60 Ks a week.
Tyson (07:04.259)
Yeah, sweet. It's funny you say that. It sounds like our transition was fairly similar. I didn't go quite as heavy as you. I went from maybe 67 to, I think my heaviest I was maybe 81 or 80 kilos. And I enjoyed feeling strong, but yeah, exactly like you said, my favourite kind of post-workout feeling is always that little endorphin rush you get from a long run. Like I'm about to go out and do some K's after this conversation. And I know I'll get home, I'll be slightly sore. I'll be a little fatigued, but I'll feel mentally...
Dr Dan Plews (07:14.926)
Yeah.
Dr Dan Plews (07:24.407)
Yeah.
Tyson (07:33.369)
really good for it. Yeah, it's interesting. know, do know Ryan Hall, the American Marathon record holder?
Dr Dan Plews (07:38.254)
Yeah, of course. I actually had a, I helped Sarah Hall with some, I had a consult with her just prior to the Olympics with some of her heat adaptation. So, and Ryan was on that call and I spoke to him a lot about, cause that was at the time when I was really focusing on getting bigger. So he gave me a few tips and tricks to really increase the size. And he was, he said, got to eat. That's, mean, the main thing that I find, and I think, and I believe that
a lot of athletes they go, I can't put on weight, I can't put on weight. But I think this is a mental barrier with lot of particularly endurance athletes is they just have to eat. You have to eat so much and almost to the point where you're never hungry, which I personally did not enjoy because I was eating when I wasn't even hungry a lot of the time, which I didn't really like very much. You kind of stop enjoying food so much. don't know how devout bodybuilders do a year in, year out.
quite amazing but yeah that was one of the biggest bits of advice that he gave me was getting the food down.
Tyson (08:42.021)
Were you eating pretty clean or were you just getting the calories in no matter?
Dr Dan Plews (08:45.654)
Yeah, I was eating pretty clean, as clean as I possibly could. Yeah, I wasn't like just eating, I wasn't eating like tubs of ice cream or anything like that. But yeah.
Tyson (08:54.949)
Yeah, that was my bulk phase tactic years ago and yeah, I learned pretty quickly. It probably wasn't the healthiest approach. So I switched that up. It was interesting you had a chat with Sarah about the heat acclimatization or the heat train. This is something I've actually heard David Roche, David Roche the American, he just broke the 100 mile Leadville.
Dr Dan Plews (08:59.16)
Yeah.
Tyson (09:17.921)
record and he had like a really interesting approach. He was on Rich Rolls podcast and he mentioned a whole range of really interesting things from like ketone IQ to baking soda pre intense workouts. But one of the things that he spoke about was for a long time, like we've kind of been aware of the fact that there's a pretty nice correlation between heat training and your body adapting for hot races. But he was mentioning there could be some science around the fact that it's not just beneficial to
racing in hotter temperatures, but also potentially racing in just whatever temperatures. And he was referring to a number of athletes who are, you know, doing some pretty focused sauna work or running in purposely hot rooms. I don't know how much we've done in the science front on that topic, but it was definitely something I'd never really thought about before that conversation.
Dr Dan Plews (10:09.07)
Yeah, it's a great area to cover actually. Actually, my PhD student studied this very topic, so we published a paper on it. And in that paper, what we did is we had two groups of cyclists and we had a performance test. And the performance test was basically you did two hours of cycling and then you did a 30-minute time trial. So you basically produced as much power as you possibly could over the 30 minutes. And that was the pre and the post trial. So for the intervention in between,
One group did all their training in a temperate condition. So that was in the lab. I think it was like, you know, 15 to 20 degrees. And the other group did their, their training in a heat chamber. The heat chamber was 30 degrees and 80 % humidity. But what was quite novel, what we did was we clamped the heart rate. So heart rate was set at the V your aerobic and, know, based on your temperate conditions, VT1, VT2 aerobic thresholds, was set at heart rate.
So what that meant was the athletes who were in the temperate conditions were doing a lot more power. Whereas when you were in the hot conditions, this athletes were doing a lot less power, but the physiological strain was the same. we were equally matched on the physiological strain, but the mechanical load was a lot less. And what we found was the group who did the training in the heat, they improved more over
subsequent intervention over the subsequent time trials after. And one of the reasons that we found was we measured something called citric synthase activity. that was basically a marker of mitochondrial biogenesis. And that seems to be more upregulated in the heat than when you're in temperate conditions. yeah, basically to measure citric synthase activity, have to take a muscle biopsy.
quite a large chunk of muscle from the quad was taken and taken pre and post. Yeah, but there's a whole host of reasons why there's other theories that it might even upregulate heat shock proteins as well, kind of they hold the formation of your proteins within the muscle. They're kind of like a building block, so to speak, that holds the formation of muscular proteins.
Dr Dan Plews (12:36.428)
So when they're more heightened, it may have an impact on your durability as well and how quickly you fatigue. So there could be a whole host of reasons as to why. But with the sauna, there's loads to be said for that as well because it can be an additional thing that you can add to your daily training. So if you're doing your daily training in temperate conditions or whatever that might be.
If you're adding on 20 minutes of sauna every day, it's almost like you're adding on 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise with the addition of increased heat shock proteins and massive increase in human growth hormone as well, could possibly help in assisting in recovery as well. So there's a lot of benefits from adding heat to training regimes for a whole host of reasons.
Tyson (13:24.409)
And so what's going on in the sauna? I noticed when I'm in there, we just got one a couple of weeks ago and I noticed when I get out, obviously my heart rate's pumping, I feel a little lightheaded. It's a relatively new form of, I mean, for lack of a better description, training for me. I was doing it more just for the relaxation factor and I felt healthy getting out of it. And then coincidentally heard Dave Roach speak about some of the health and performance benefits that come with it, which has seen me in there a little more. I mean, I can't speak to the science of.
what's going on. Can you unpack that a little more? The real noticeable thing for me is just that feel of the heart rate pumping after 15 or 20 minutes in there.
Dr Dan Plews (14:03.95)
Yeah, well, says, well, I mean, the heat is a general stress, right? So, and you are getting, it's very similar to doing very light aerobic exercise. And for many individuals who don't do any exercise, even if you're just a normal, like a sedentary person, it's got a very low barrier to entry because people see it as almost like a spa, right? It's relaxing and it's something that's fun, but it's actually a low grade exercise really. And that's why you are seeing some benefits because
I mean, I can sit in there and my heart rate can be, you know, lower, it can be in the low 100s, 110. And I mean, I could run, I could run at like four and half minute Ks at 120 heart rate, for example, right? So, so it's like, it's, is, it is something that's been being provided. But on top of that, it's also doing many other things like, like, like I would mention, like heat shot proteins, which, which are, which are unregulated and they're very important for like basically
controlling your proteins within your body and protein degradation. So, you know, that can help almost cleanse and repair, so to speak, and keep everything in formation. But another thing is we see a lot of hypervolmia. So hypervolmia is, I guess it's the technical term for blood plasma volume expansion. blood plasma volume expansion is very transient. So it happens
really quickly, you can have a very quick response. couple of, generally when we do heat adaptation or we do heat acclimation, we see changes in blood plasma volume really, really quickly. And we want changes in blood plasma volume because the higher the volume of blood we have in the system, generally we can increase the stroke volume and therefore we can increase the cardiac output of the heart. And that is obviously gonna have benefits to endurance performance.
because of that reason.
Tyson (16:03.267)
Yeah, the thing I'm still trying to navigate at the moment, like I mentioned before, that I've got like one of my hardest sessions for the week coming up later today. And so I deliberately didn't have a sauna last night because I'm still trying to navigate the hydration factor and like what's being lost as a result. Like I understand that, you know, some of the aerobic benefits over the long term are good, but outside of just making sure you're replacing that fluid and the electrolytes and things that you're losing.
Is there like a point of diminishing returns? Cause at the moment, I feel like most people are recommending sort of 15 to 20 minutes a few times a week as potentially a good spot, but like in and around intense training and race schedules, is that something you should steer clear of or is it something you can adapt to pretty well?
Dr Dan Plews (16:46.828)
Yeah, it depends. the recommendation is generally around 20 to 25 minutes, 80 to 90 degrees really, somewhere in that range. But with the, when it comes, I always try to think of, I like to think of the sauna as just like exercise, right? So you can make it harder or you can make it easier. So say we keep the duration and the temperature the same, we say 20 minutes, 80 degrees.
you could make that potentially easier if you include, if you start drinking cold water within there, right? And that's gonna help with your hydration. But the adaptation and the benefit probably isn't as good if you're be drinking cold water and hydrating during time in the sauna. because actually some of that dehydration effect,
is important for the blood plasma volume expansion and many other things that are upregulated because of that, because of the lack of hydration when you're in there. So if you are doing, if you wanted to do a sauna, I think it's good to do it regularly, but if you had a hard session the next day, I would be taking some water in there with me and I would be drinking it during, and it might be even cold water just to make it, just to make it that little bit easier. I also find that if I do a sauna late at night, I will generally take water in anyway because
I don't really want to wake up feeling really, really thirsty. And I find I don't sleep as well and a bit restless if I go to bed dehydrated, is something that you don't want to do. And also it depends on where you put it around exercise. So if you did sauna in the middle of the day, when you haven't done any exercise yet, it's much easier than doing a sauna immediately after you've just done a run. So if you go and do an hour run and you jump in the sauna, your core temperature is already elevated. You'll be really hot within a few minutes. Your core temperature is
high straight away, whereas usually it takes a while for it to rise in the sauna. And then it's hard from like five minutes or three minutes on. So there's loads of different things that you can do to make sauna easier or a little bit harder. it's like anything like the greater the stimulus, greater the response. So the harder you make it, generally the bigger the response to the sauna.
Tyson (18:59.469)
Yeah, one of the things I've been doing since getting ready for, so I've just entered the Gold Coast Marathon. been out of, I've been jogging. Like I've been in the sport for a long time, but the training program hadn't been intense, as intense obviously as what it was when I was competing at sort of my highest level. And so I, over the last couple of years, have just been navigating a few little calf strains and balancing intensity and volume and just, you know, welcoming my body back to more intense exercise. And so one of the things that I'm doing in the lead up to the Gold Coast Marathon is,
I've incorporated a lot more cross training into the training program. So I'll do a certain amount of running and then I might jump on the elliptical or I might jump on the, you know, in the pool or on the bike or whatever it might be. Just to continually tap into that aerobic fitness, build that aerobic fitness without so much stress. Would the sauna post run fit into that same category?
Dr Dan Plews (19:50.744)
Yeah, because it's all I mean, you do get the same training adaptation is all is all about molecular signaling. So when you do a training stimulus, you'll generally get enough regulation of some sort of type of molecular signal and all of those molecular signals in the end will regulate something like PGC one alpha, which is something for basically regulating your mitochondria, which is one of the most important adaptations. And and sauna will be doing having other
effects and other molecular signals that are also associated with endurance exercise. So it's a very, a very similar thing. And when we talk about adaptation, we want those molecular signals to be permanently enhanced as well. we generally think that it takes about, that's about set seven to eight hours between for like a molecular signal. When you do exercise, you kind of is heightened for that period of time after then it will come down. So
the more you can kind of just keep on stimulating it all the time, the better because you're getting you permanently in this state of adaptation. and sauna would definitely play a part of that, which is why, can only do so much running, but if you did like running in the morning and then cycling in the afternoon, you would be getting a very similar.
molecular signal of adaptation from the cycling and you would from the running because you're using the same quadricep muscles, vassus lateralis, the vassus medialis, or the some of the calf muscles, the soleus, the gastroc. So you know, you'll get some of the same regulations as you would from cycling, which is why it's very beneficial to cross train because it's off, you're offloading the muscle as well, you're offloading the tendons more as well. So it's pretty, pretty good.
Tyson (21:38.137)
Yeah, I'm not sure if this is in your wheelhouse, but a lot of the time when people are speaking sauna these days, they're also speaking cold exposure. I always know after a cold ice bath or something, I'll get out and I'll feel relatively good. I'll notice the benefit. I don't have one yet, but I'm looking into getting one. But are there any sort of recovery things worth implementing some kind of cold exposure in and around using the sauna as well?
Dr Dan Plews (21:50.509)
Yeah.
Dr Dan Plews (22:04.13)
Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of cold water immersion. I mean, not only from some of the physiological benefits, but also just from some of the kind of the dopamine responses and the mood responses that are really heightened, like I think it's heightened like 200 fold from cold water immersion, which is why when people get in and they do cold water immersion, they generally report feeling much happier and much better.
But if you look at the literature that's associated with cold water immersion, the thoughts behind it originally was it might reduce muscle damage, it might reduce some inflammation, but it's not really been shown to do that. If you look at, so you can measure things like lactate dehydrogenase and creatine kinase for muscle damage, and other things like IL-6 for inflammation in the blood.
It doesn't seem to change that much. But what we do see is we do see quite big changes in an autonomic nervous system. when you exercise, you especially particularly after you do high intensity exercise, you get this sympathetic output. So you get sympathetic with stress, you get a release of catecholamines. And if you're permanently in this kind of sympathetic height and stress state,
This can lead to overtraining, can lead to burnout, whatever you want to call it, or unwanted fatigue. But what we find with the sauna is very, sorry, called water immersion, is it's very good at reactivating your parasympathetic system. So your sympathetic system is your fight or flight system. Parasympathetic system is kind of your rest and digest, which is more of your recovery state. So it seems to be very effective at increasing your parasympathetic activity and making you come into this recovery state much.
much more quickly and then you can start building and repairing. It's a bit like, you know, if you bought a house for a thousand, if I gave you a hundred thousand dollars and you had a house, but this house was smashed down, you'd probably have to spend that hundred thousand dollars on building the house and just to make it livable, right? But if you had a, if you had a house that was already good, you know, you can spend a hundred thousand dollars on building and repairing and getting even better. And that's how you got to think of
Dr Dan Plews (24:24.376)
building your recovery system as quickly you can get yourself into a normal state, that's when the super compensation occurs.
Tyson (24:34.137)
Yeah, yeah, that's a cool analogy. I like that. Like on the subject of recovery, is there anything else that you'd put in the same category as these two kind of things? I don't know, like would you even say, did you say sauna's more recovery or more like an investment?
Dr Dan Plews (24:47.924)
No, not really. mean, there's the there has been I mean, there hasn't been links to sauna improving improving like performance in terms of recovery, but there has been showed that sauna increases human growth hormone under certain temperatures and certain protocols. So to me that, you know, if that is the case, it should theoretically, to some degree, improve recovery. But I wouldn't say there's there's really strong evidence from a
from an actual practical standpoint with it saying how here's a sauna this person could do repeated sprints much more quickly after going in the sauna. That's not really being shown. But I don't think it does any harm provided that you keep on top of your hydration and your electrolyte status as a result.
Tyson (25:27.013)
Yeah.
Tyson (25:37.317)
Yeah, sure. So this is one thing that I feel that I'll answer a lot. You asked before we started recording who listens to the podcast. And I said, well, there's a big chunk of people who are relatively new to the sport. And just as a result of listening to the show, often people message in and just ask for training advice or training tips. And I'll often find myself coming back. Like if I had to have an over or if I had to state an overarching theme in so much of the improvement that comes with distance running, it's around this idea of consistency.
And I mean, it's all good and well to say, just be consistent with the work that you're doing. But obviously, you know, being consistent means recovering, means balancing training loads, it means listening to your body. I'm trying to figure out a good answer to help point people towards developing consistency. And obviously, you know, under the umbrella of the things I just mentioned there, there's, you could dig down and do endless podcasts on the topic. But I guess recovery.
is a really central theme in making sure that tomorrow when you come back, you're good to go again. So when you're speaking to an athlete who is trying to develop this idea of consistency, maybe we could use that as a bit of a foundation for the next part of the chat. What kind of focus points would you have for an athlete like that? Who's like, hey, I'm a little overwhelmed, I'm not sure where to start, point me in the right direction.
Dr Dan Plews (26:56.94)
Yeah, well, you're dead right in the consistency is all about recovery, right? And how well you recover from, recover from exercise because, you know, we go back to that same house analogy that we used before, you know, you're permanently smashing down a house that's not even fully built yet. You're just gonna never going to get anywhere, right? You're never going to improve. You're never going to build on anything. But, when it comes to recovery, I think,
Many athletes in this day and age, look for things that are probably the smaller little sprinkles rather than the big rocks, so to speak. We talked about sauna and cold water immersion, but these are very, very small, minute things that need to be in place. And the things that are most important, I like to think of the three pillars of recovery is sleep, training periodization,
and nutrition. And those are the three bits that probably have the biggest impact on how well anyone's going to recover. And I would say, obviously sleep goes about saying that, you if you're not getting adequate sleep and you're not, you know, trying to get close to eight hours a night, it's gonna be pretty, pretty difficult. And that's eight hours of good sleep. So things, anything you can do within your sleeping environment to aid a good sleep will be massively beneficial. So
So things might be like, as you know, I work for, I work for Pillar Performance as the head of research and we have a triple magnesium product, which is great to take before you sleep because it improves the quality and the consistency of your sleep. I'm just making sure your room is cold, making sure your room is dark. I have something called a sleep aid, which is like a mattress that goes over your bed that cools the mattress. And I think it's just the best purchase I've ever made because it's just,
helps me sleep so much better. And it's a real problem when I go to overseas and go to different beds because I find them so hot and uncomfortable and know, so this great sleeping environment that's really good. So and all the things around, know, just good sleep hygiene. So those things to so when rather than talking about cold water immersion and sauna, think about what you can do around that pillar of sleep to help you get the best sleep you possibly can.
Dr Dan Plews (29:20.558)
And when it comes to training periodization, it's all about just trying to make sure that you've got a good split of intensities within your training week and you're allowing sufficient days of level two training and zone two endurance training between your high intensity days. And really, you know, if you're doing high intensity, most athletes can, most elite struggle to do more than three high intensity sessions a week. So that means that the job public probably are only going to deal with two really high intensity sessions a week.
And then everything else can just be low level endurance. But what's important is you're giving your autonomic nervous system a little bit of time to have a break and you're very strategically and systematically controlling your exercise intensity via heart rate or mainly via heart rate because pace is a bit pointless because of pills or whatnot. And you're making sure that you're keeping all your low intensity sessions below your first ventilator threshold or BT1, LT1.
aerobic threshold. So you're allowing your autonomic nervous system to recover, means you can and your muscular system to recover, which means you can do your high intensity sessions that little bit better. And then finally, you know, making sure that your diet is sufficient to the to what you're trying to achieve. whether you're on a high carb diet or a low carb diet or in between diet, whatever that might be, making sure that your food is timed correctly, you're making sure that you're getting the right the right macros.
nutrients at the right times. I'm under the impression, my feeling now is I used to be quite a low carb kind of guy. And I still am a low carb guy. But I think the most important thing is, for athletes is they have much more protein, much higher protein requirements than many people believe. Somewhere between 200 and 300 grams per day, I would say, for the majority of athletes are making sure that
Tyson (30:59.107)
you
Dr Dan Plews (31:16.78)
You get you making sure that your protein is really high and then worry about the carbohydrates and those ratios after that, however you want to do it. Some people might want to go higher on the carbs, some people might want to go higher on the fats, but the most important thing that all of us should make sure we have adequate protein to, because that seems to be the main thing that aids recovery. My PhD student, did a study on this, we did an analysis and we looked at all the aspects of recovery. What seems to...
We did a massive global questionnaire and then what we did is we did some machine learning and a big data analysis of the data. And the main thing that from a nutritional standpoint, the effects of recovery was the amount of protein in the diet. that was the carbohydrates and fats didn't really have much of an impact. that's the, so these are the things that I would be getting right for a consistency standpoint before. Once all those bits are in place.
then you can start looking at your normal takes and your ice pass and your swaners and everything else. But those are the things that you want to get in place first.
Tyson (32:17.891)
That's really good. How much protein did you say is a good place to start?
Dr Dan Plews (32:22.286)
It depends on the body weight really, but around 200 and 300 grams would be a reasonable amount for most males of like this for example.
Tyson (32:35.429)
It is interesting. It's one thing that I don't know. It's something I've started to hear a little more about. I feel like for a long time protein seemed to be, at least in my world, it was a little bit silent in the conversation around nutrition. was all fats and carbs.
Dr Dan Plews (32:46.626)
Yeah, I say that I think it's like, is it like three grams per kilogram body weight or something like that? Is that about right? Yeah, yeah, I think that's about how it should be. Yeah.
Tyson (32:57.283)
Yeah, of protein.
Tyson (33:01.861)
Yeah, interesting man. And it's that I'm not 100 % sure I've never really counted protein before. So I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, like I'm 75 kilos, I wouldn't know how many grams of protein I have. But like in like that equation, are people going to use things like protein shakes and drinks? Or is that pretty much a
Dr Dan Plews (33:20.14)
Yeah, exactly. I think like, you know, even, even often like a protein shake, protein shakes will have this connotation that they're processed food, but they're probably one of the better processed foods you could possibly have. You know, they're not really, no, they're just, it's just, it's just a protein that's from milk and dairy, right? It's not, but it's a good means to get some more protein. Otherwise, it's quite hard to do.
Tyson (33:49.699)
Yeah, no, that's interesting, man. I really wish I could tell you I was getting better sleep. I've got, like you, a young family. I've got a four-year-old and a two-year-old and neither of them care at all about my running goals. I would've woken up this morning. This is like a theme in our house. It's like a, I mean, it's a good thing for survival. It's a bad thing for performance, but I've been amazed at how little sleep I've needed to function effectively, well, seemingly effectively throughout the day since having kids and.
Dr Dan Plews (34:01.526)
Yeah.
Tyson (34:19.469)
I mean, it ebbs and flows as I'm sure you're well aware of, but there can be weeks where my sleep is just, I can look back and I go, don't think I've slept well for 10 days or 12 days and my wife's the same. I'm not sure if you've got any advice or apart from just hold on for parents out there who are trying to navigate this part of their world, because I find it really frustrating, know, constantly waking up and going, I know this isn't good for me, but I can't just give my kids to my neighbor, unfortunately.
Dr Dan Plews (34:28.652)
Yeah, it's really hard.
Dr Dan Plews (34:45.708)
Yeah, I know. Yeah, I mean, I don't really, I mean, it's just nothing that you can really do really. It's just an unfortunate thing that's part of me. I have the same, mean, but usually it's not, for me, it's not every night, but some nights. But there's not much you can do other than trying to catch up with a nap or something like that. But that's not that easy to do either, right? We were one at the time, so yeah.
Tyson (35:10.693)
Yeah, I'm doing plenty of that. Luckily, I got a good wife who gives me an okay to get out there and do it.
Dr Dan Plews (35:15.118)
Yeah exactly. But yeah, just going back to the protein, just did the calculation, I did the maths and yeah it's about three grams bigger than your own body weight. So for you, 75 kilos will be 225 grams.
Tyson (35:28.727)
Sweet, all right, I'm gonna get onto that. I'll start hunting. Does it matter what kind of protein it is? Because at the moment, so my wife in our cupboard has a, she's right on the collagen bandwagon. And I was looking at that the other day and I noticed that was, I think it was relatively high in protein per serving. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.
Dr Dan Plews (35:46.286)
Yeah, so it's a really interesting one. So collagen is a very different type of protein. So collagen has is made up of three smaller proteins and it's made up of glycine, proline and there's another one which I can't, well it's also got hydroxyproline in there. But the interesting thing about collagen is that it's very good for tendons and ligaments, but it's not necessarily very good for muscle growth and repair.
So the very separate things, so collagen protein and whey protein. So whey protein we would consider a complete amino acid. It's a complete protein. And the most important thing within a whey protein is it has leucine in there. There's no leucine in a collagen. So collagen is very, very important. It's a great supplement that all athletes should definitely be taking. But it should be taken in addition to your whey protein.
So you have to think of them very separately. You've got to think of collagen for tendons and ligaments, particularly for runners. So the way it works is that the collagen will, it's very important for hair, skin, your nails, for example, but it will always be sent to the bit where it's needed. So for athletes, if you're doing a lot of running and you're doing a lot of things that require your tendons to be used, it will go and repair and resynthesize the collagen around your tendons, which is really important.
runners because it helps with injury prevention, also helps with injury with force production. So the stronger your tendons, the more rigid your tendons are, the more you can produce force, right? It's a bit like if you were to, if you were on, if you fell down on road on a piece on some road, right? You'd put your hand on the road and you push yourself up, right? And you'd spring yourself right back up. But say now you fell down on some new snow that was really, really soft and you put your hand down on the snow.
you just wouldn't push yourself or move very much. And that's how a strong tendon is. So you've got a really soft, squidgy tendon. It's just not going to create that force for when you run, jump, do whatever you want. So really, really important. But the whey protein is more of a, is more of a like, it's a muscle, a builder, a repairer, and it's an anabolic agent really. So yeah, very different things.
Tyson (38:05.925)
Sure, is there any other supplement that you'd put in the same category? I know you just sort of, this is off the back of speaking about the importance of protein, so it might be a little bit of a standout feature, but like through my mind at the moment, I've been flirting with the idea of getting like a little more additional magnesium, because I've just been recommended that that might help with muscle repairs and know, prevention of calf strains. I'm not sure, I had about 12 months of pretty consistent running, so I'm not sure I need like the additional.
stuff like that. But yeah, is there anything in the same category as the protein that you would recommend athletes get onto?
Dr Dan Plews (38:38.85)
Yeah, I mean, I think magnesium is one of those nutrients that most people are deficient in anyway. And it has so many implications between neurotransmitters, your sleep, your muscular activations, and there's so many implications that it has. I think every athlete should be on the magnesium. And the thing is we lose magnesium through our sweat. We also lose magnesium through the enzymes associated
high intensity exercise and magnesium is associated with about 200 different enzymatic reactions within the body. So it's like super, it's a super important supplement that is definitely athletes should be taking that. So if you're not taking it, you definitely need to need to get onto it. And athletes need to take more than most because of the amount we sweat. And if you're doing like high intensity exercise in a lot of sauna and you're in the heat, I it's going to, it gets hot in Melbourne sometimes I think.
Tyson (39:34.233)
Sometimes, yeah. If it's your parents,
Dr Dan Plews (39:37.614)
So yeah, you definitely want to be taking a magnesium. I Pillar we have something called a triple magnesium, which has got biglycinate, citrate, I forget the third one now, it's just got off the of my head, a 3NH, not a 3NH, it'll come back to me at some point. But it's one that's three different types of magnesium that are all associated with very, very different, slightly different pathways to help with the absorption.
Yeah, it's a really, really, really good one. So I recommend, I definitely recommend that one. And the other, the other supplement I would highly recommend for athletes is Amiga and Amiga 3. Because it has, it has many, Amigas are really important from many perspectives. So they're, they're just very cardio protective generally. So they're good for the heart. They're good for the brain.
but they're also very good for muscular recovery as well and general recovery from exercise and lowering inflammation. So we can measure something called like Omega-3, Omega-3 index. And you know, we really want that to be over 8 % for it to have the cardio protective effects and the effects, the beneficial effects of helping with recovery from inflammation. But nearly no athletes are there at all. talking...
most athletes are probably in the two to three percent and it's really really hard to get there without supplementation particularly because that ratio the ratio is also highly affected by the amount of omega-6s that we have in the diet so and typically they're hidden in so many foods that we eat in the western diet at the moment so yeah that's another thing that i would recommend
Tyson (41:29.155)
Yeah, interesting. Are these things you can just pick up in your general blood test? Like if you go to a GP, they can pick up these numbers?
Dr Dan Plews (41:36.782)
So with the with the Omega 3s, you can actually pick them. You can actually do an Omega 3 index test just from a capillary blood tip sample. In Australia, there's a company called Omega Quant who can send out tests. And basically they send out the test. You do a fingertip capillary blood sample. You dot it on some paper. You put it back in an envelope that's provided. You send it off and you get the results back. And it's well worth doing. And it's really
really simple. I definitely recommend that for anyone who is interested in this. Then you kind of have a good starting point to know how much supplementation you should need. Because if you're on the lower end, you might be wanting to say we're just talking about the Pillar Ultra Omega, for example, that we have. If you're on the lower end, you probably want to be doing five to six caps a day. But if you're like above 8 % already, you might just stick at three per day. Yeah, but the Omega 3, it's...
there's different types of amigas. There's the EPA and there's a DHA. And they have very different specific roles with how they help within the body. So the EPA is more vascular, so it's more in the vascular system. It helps with muscular inflammation and recovery more within the moment, more within the session. Whereas the DHA, it's more in the excitable cells, so the things like the heart,
brain for example and that takes a lot longer for it to become to get into the into those tissues in high level so you need to be doing it for at least five weeks before you see changes in DHA levels within the brain and within the and within the heart but within the EPA's is much much quicker too.
Tyson (43:23.779)
Yeah, really interesting, man. That's good. I'm going to have to listen back to that to get my head right around all of it. But it's amazing how many little areas there are for improvement. To pivot a little bit and sort of to keep this theme of improvement, one thing that I also find really interesting that I think could be really beneficial, not only to myself, which I've started to be more focused on recently, but to all levels of athlete, is sort of just recognising what period of your training plan that you're actually in. Like the idea of just...
throwing training at the wall constantly and hoping the body can maintain it is probably a recipe for disaster for most of us, because we love the idea of pushing the limits when it comes to intensity and volume. But I've heard you speak from time to time around this idea of periodization and making sure you sort of know which part of the buildup that you're actually in. Do you want to speak to that for a little bit? Because I think that's something that's probably a little foreign to a number of, especially new athletes.
Dr Dan Plews (44:19.138)
Yeah, well, I guess when it comes to periodization, do think a bit of a mistake that many athletes make is they're always looking for this kind of individualization approach. And I think that's that is really important. But when it comes to competition time, I think I do believe that to some extent that goes out the window because regardless, competition is always going to be demand driven. So the training will be demand driven for the competition.
So what I mean by that is, that if you're, to give a running example, if you're doing a 400 meters, a 400 meter running race, highly glycolytic, so big time lactate, very glycolytic activity, high muscular forces, pretty much very, very little aerobic metabolism involved in the 400 meter run. Whereas if you're doing a marathon, it's highly aerobic, very, very little glycolytic activity.
So if you gave your 400 meter runner really long intervals with short recovery, it's going to be pointless, right? And vice versa with a marathon. If you gave your marathon runner short intervals of high recovery, that's also going to be pointless. So the training should be as demand driven as possible. it's specific to the adaptations that are required for that event. And in triathlon,
It's, you know, when we, when we get into competition time, most athletes are doing the same sort of training, there's slight nuances, but there's not that much difference. But the difference is that when we, in the more of the specific phase of training. So typically we might do like a general phase of training where we're doing more, you know, more kind of holistic endurance based, a lot of endurance based work. might be doing some, some like short sprints and speed work, some short VO two work, for example.
And then we might get into a specific phase. And the specific phase would be the point at which I would be then focusing on kind of the individual requirements. So, I mean, if I just look at this through the lens of a triathlete, for example, because that's kind of how I'd always think. Say, they were training for an Ironman and I discovered that, you know, they had a very good fat metabolism. They had terrible glycolytic activity. So they were really, really poor at aerobic.
Dr Dan Plews (46:44.11)
aerobically, the 30 second power was really poor and the anaerobic threshold was also really poor. So the VT2 was really poor. I would be doing, the specific phase, these are the points of time where I'll be individually looking and doing very specific work to try and address those areas of weakness. Whereas we might have another athlete who could be the opposite. They might have a very low VAT max, for example, a good VT2 and a really poor fat metabolism.
So might be doing with them, we might be doing some very specific carbohydrate restricted work to improve the fat metabolism. And then we might do another block where we're looking at doing like a period where we're doing some VO2 type work. So work that might be five by three minutes with three minutes recovery, 110 % of your threshold power. So that's the kind of.
where I would consider periodization with the individual responses being in that within that specific phase and a little bit in the general phase as well because the general phase you're using it to kind of build your training towards what you're to be doing in the specific phase as well because you wouldn't just be doing if you know you're doing VO2 match training in a specific phase of training you wouldn't just go through your whole general phase and do no VO2 match training and go hey here's five by three minutes
Tyson (48:01.357)
Yeah.
Dr Dan Plews (48:01.622)
Surprise! You you kind of build it in and build up to that.
Tyson (48:07.235)
Yeah, yeah, it's so, it's so interesting. Are they tests that you're doing? So if you have a new athlete come to you, and I'm not sure, you're not probably working with just the average community level athlete. It sounds like you've got most.
Dr Dan Plews (48:18.03)
I do both to be honest. I do work with quite a few amateurs as well. mean, with our company in Giro IQ, we have a lot of amateurs involved. We've got another six coaches as well. mean, within Giro IQ, we have educational courses as well. So we've got one on diet, we have one on training, we have one on heat adaptation, we have one on athlete monitoring, we have one on strength training. So...
What's really important for me is when I started the company was that I built these courses because I knew I wanted to take on some coaches and I wanted the coaches. didn't want random coaches with no, with not being within the methodology that we've created at Enduro IQ. So we know we built those courses for the coaches, but also for people who just want to learn generally. So, so we have loads of amateurs and we also have a few professionals as well. But I say most of the company is actually amateur athletes.
Tyson (49:14.525)
Interesting
Dr Dan Plews (49:14.798)
Because of course, there's way more amateur athletes than there are professionals.
Tyson (49:21.103)
course, that makes sense. So say an amateur or you might have different protocols, I'm sure you do. An athlete comes to you and says, all right, Dan, any chance you can help me out here? Are there entry level tests that you do do? Like you just mentioned a couple then, but will you get every athlete to go through a certain number of tests or a certain number of whatever it might be just to get a little bit of a guide as to, or gauge as to where they're at? Or do you just sort of look at the first couple of them?
Dr Dan Plews (49:46.454)
Yeah, yeah, I will. But it depends on it depends on what's available to them as well. So, you know, in an ideal world, by me, I'd take them into my lab at AUT University. And, you know, I'd be doing a step test, we're measuring the fat oxidation, I'd be looking at the glycolytic activity, I'd be doing loads of different things. And I'd get everything that I would need from those testing. But we have the equipment there. We've got, you know, metabolic cards, lactate, lactate meters, you name it, the lab's full. So
In an ideal world, yes, because I really believe that you need to take, if you've got any, if you get a new car and you want to make it faster, what's the first thing you do? You lift up the hood and you take a look inside. And that's essentially what we're trying to do with athletes is that you can't, you can't decide how you can make, how you will make an athlete go faster if you have no idea of what you're dealing with within the athlete. So for me, it's really important that the first thing we do is we take a look under the hood and see what's going on.
So, we can, I can do, that's the first thing is ideally get them into a good lab. I've had a lot of bad experiences with trying to get them in other people's labs because generally it doesn't always come out that well. But other things you can do, like we've set up a calculator, an Enduro IQ calculator that's actually free for everyone to use. It's cycling based and you can do a VLA max test, is basically it looks at your.
your velocity of lactate accumulation, so how quickly you produce lactate after a 15 second sprint. So that gives us a good idea of the anaerobic capacity. And then with that, from a variety of calculations, we then do a five minute power. So that gives us a good idea of what the VIA2 max is. And with those two numbers, you can have an idea of what the fat metabolism is. And then you can also get VT1 and VT2. And it's actually quite effective. So that's something that we can just do at home if we don't have access to a lab.
And like I say, if anyone's got a Latte meter and listen to this podcast, think the www.enduroiq.com forward slash calculators, you can find all the calculators on our web page. And if you've got a Latte meter, we use links to talk you how to do it and you can do that testing yourself.
Tyson (51:54.297)
Yeah, yeah, no, that sounds good. Maybe as a way to land the plane, I knew this was gonna be the problem. I was looking at the list of things that I sent you that I was keen to talk about and I was like, man, we could focus on all of those easily for a couple of podcasts, but maybe just a way to ease it down. The average runner out there, like we've given some broad guidelines or you've given some broad guidelines and also got like fairly detailed on a couple as well.
For anyone who is relatively new to their endurance journey, whether it's running triathlon, whatever it might be, who's just looking for some general landmarks of what to improve outside of training, I think you've sort of ticked them off with the three main things that you said. But is there anything else that you would say are really important to focus on in and around those things to give each athlete the best chance of not only improving, but actually enjoying the work they're putting in?
Dr Dan Plews (52:48.814)
You know, I think, I think one of the main things is, in terms of enjoyment, think a lot of athletes have to think, you know, the idea of no pain, no gain is not a, is not a thing. So you don't have to be suffering every single session to be getting benefit from your training. In fact, you can be running on different terrain. You can be going different places. You can make, take a lot of enjoyment in that. So it doesn't have to be a suffer fest and be comfortable with that.
You know, monitor your intensity. think for people starting out, one of the biggest mistakes they make is that they don't really understand how easy easy is and how hard hard is. And I think that's a really important thing for newbies to get a good handle on because that because training intensity and training adaptation is all governed by intensity. you do threshold training, better thresholds, do aerobic training, you get better aerobically, you do a too much training, you get better at your V2 max.
For most athletes who are starting off, don't really know where that lies. So I would really encourage athletes to do some kind of testing. You can do it at home or something where you can get an understanding of where you're thresholds in your zones lie so you can train, train more effectively. so I would make sure you do that. And that will allow you to build your training in a systematic manner because you'll be making sure your easy things are easy. And that means you can build the volume in a safe and progressive way.
And in the end of the day, improvement in endurance sports is a dose response relationship. So what I mean by that is the more training you do, the better you're going to get. The key is you've got to do it day in, day out, and you've got to do it consistently. So if you can control your intensity, build your volume and training load over time and maintain that, you're going to 100 % improve and get better. So that will be my main bits of wisdom.
Tyson (54:39.877)
Awesome. That's really good, man. Well, I'll make sure for anyone who's interested in finding out more, you've mentioned a few websites and things, so I'll add those in the description to this. But man, as I said, long time coming, one I was looking forward to. So thanks for making the time. Really appreciate you joining us. Awesome, man. I'll leave it there. Dude, that was awesome. I thought I'm not gonna introduce, I'll pause that recording just to save me editing.
Dr Dan Plews (54:55.682)
No, thanks for having me on Tyson. Awesome.