37 Modulating Extremes While Exercising

The Power of Ten workout, as discussed here at The Inform Fitness Podcast, is a high-intensity, slow-motion strength training protocol closely modulated with your very own one-on-one, personal trainer.  Here in Episode 37 we discuss the potential dangers of not closely modulating a high-intensity exercise program such as CrossFit, excessive spin classes, or marathon training.  Working out under very extreme conditions could result in a rare but serious health condition called rhabdomyolysis (rhabdo).   Rhabdo occurs when muscle tissue breakdown results in the release of a protein (myoglobin) into the blood that can result in kidney failure.  In this episode, we explain the symptoms rhabdo, the short & long-term effects, and how can you avoid it? Good Morning America recently reported on the dangers of rhabdo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqMXSN-1HA4 To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.com To purchase Adam Zickerman’s book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTen If you would like to produce a podcast of your own just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at [e-mail]

Show Notes

The Power of Ten workout, as discussed here at The Inform Fitness Podcast, is a high-intensity, slow-motion strength training protocol closely modulated with your very own one-on-one, personal trainer.
Here in Episode 37 we discuss the potential dangers of not closely modulating a high-intensity exercise program such as CrossFit, excessive spin classes, or marathon training.  Working out under very extreme conditions could result in a rare but serious health condition called rhabdomyolysis (rhabdo). 
Rhabdo occurs when muscle tissue breakdown results in the release of a protein (myoglobin) into the blood that can result in kidney failure.  In this episode, we explain the symptoms rhabdo, the short & long-term effects, and how can you avoid it?
Good Morning America recently reported on the dangers of rhabdo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqMXSN-1HA4

To find an Inform Fitness location nearest you visit www.InformFitness.com
To purchase Adam Zickerman’s book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution click this link to visit Amazon: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTen

37 Modulating Extremes While Exercising Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, workout, exercise, intensity, extreme, talking, adam, crossfit, minutes, modulating, myoglobin, muscle, fitness, podcast, pushing, intense, clients, happening, technique, episode

SPEAKERS

Tim Edwards, Mike, Adam
 

Adam  00:06

No, our motto has been, for a long time, the exercise you need to live the life you want. And part of knowing what exercise you need is basically, if you want to get down to it, we're modulating your intensity, how intense is enough to get the responses that we need. Exercise is not about building and seeing how much you can endure, you know, and the more you can endure, doesn't necessarily mean you are getting healthier and healthier, the more you can endure, and it ends up getting into law of diminishing returns. I mean, you don't get out 10 times more results or fitness or health by doing 10 times more work.

 

Tim Edwards  00:52

Inform nation, welcome to episode 37 of the inform fitness podcast 20 minutes. With New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zckerman and friends. Now we say 20 minutes, but you know, as as the show continues to evolve, so do the topics and 20 minutes sometimes just doesn't seem like enough. So we may have to change the name here pretty soon. But

 

Adam  01:15

I remember I remember when we were working, thinking about the concept, going back and forth about how we're going to do it. And I was like, if we can't explain something in 20 minutes, then it's not that we don't know our subject well enough, you know, and like, so much for that or subjects. Well,

 

Tim Edwards  01:32

so much for that.

 

Adam  01:33

Theres a lot to talk about. I mean, we try our best. 

 

Tim Edwards  01:36

Well, just the opposite, I think because there's

 

Mike  01:38

the workout on its own is 20 minute workout. In fact, it's quite a bit less than that, you know, when you add up the actual time that you're under load on all the machines when you're in the workout, but yeah, sometimes these these topics that need to be discussed or questions with clients, they this they run out a little bit and usually, I mean, it's stuff's complicated, oftentimes, the answer is there is no answer, we have to sort of look over time and see, you know, try to locate patterns and, and hypothesize and go from there. 

 

Tim Edwards  02:06

And that ties into the podcast too, because you know, when we initially tried to keep the podcast, the approximate length of of a traditional workout at inform fitness. But these topics, there's actually I think just the opposite what you said Adam, earlier was, they're so complex, that 20 minutes doesn't even seem like enough. And that's proven itself.

 

Adam  02:27

Well, what I want to start doing going forward, actually, with some of these podcasts, these episodes, what I've been noticing, while we've been doing it, and looking back on all this is that we have, we've taken on broad subjects, and we've talked we've had some very broad, but within the subjects that are there are topics among themselves. So like, that's what I'm gonna we're gonna start doing some narrowing down a little bit some of these issues that we've been talking about, for example, last week, when we're talking about two weeks ago, when we're talking with Doug Brignole, we did those two episodes with Doug, you know, Rhabdo came up or or rhabdomyolysis came up. And that that's a condition where your muscles literally bust apart and their innards kind of spread out. And it causes all kinds of problems, which we're going to go into, you know, that that in and of itself is a subject, which is what we're going to talk about a little bit today. And Rhabdo is a good example of a subject that comes up in broader talks now. So for example, we were talking about intensity when Rhabdo came up, and how intense is intense. And how intense should something be how often. And that's what I kind of want to get a little bit deeper into this idea of intensity, this idea of going to extremes. And Rhabdo is just a symptom of that. Oh, by the way, Rhabdo is short for rhabdomyolysis, lysis meaning to explode. And what happens Rhabdo which is short for rhabdomyolysis is through. Usually it's a condition that happens through trauma. Like they call it crush trauma, where you're in a car accident, or you fall two stories out of a window or something like that. That's probably the most common cause of Rhabdo. And of course, during this type of trauma, your muscle cells break open and the myoglobin in particular comes out all the fluids come out, and your kidneys have to deal with that and flush it out. And that can be an overload and you get into all kinds of kidney problems. And you might have to go on dialysis if it's bad enough. It's something that's really never been talked about unless you're basically an ER physician. It rarely was something that talk was talked about in exercise, but it's been coming up a lot and it's been around in exercise I mean endurance ultra endurance athletes who are experiencing Rhabdo you know, marathon runners, the Tour de France and you know, they probably been you know, each year in the endurance athletic world 25 50 cases a year. would occur. And now we're reading about it in The New York Times, which is, it's been so not only do we talk about it last week with Brignole but and when it comes up when you talk about intensity, but now it's coming up in pop culture, like the New York Times article talking about, it's in its fitness section in the science section, it talks about Rhabdo. Wow. And why is that? Why is it all of a sudden being picked up and its causes become prevalent in the exercise world, more so than even in the medical world where there's trauma

 

Mike  05:33

and cited more specifically, and in spin classes, high intensity spin classes, with newcomers?

 

Adam  05:41

So it brings up this whole idea of, of extremes of how much how intense is enough. And a lot of my clients brought me the article mentioned, the article said, Hey, Adam, you do a really intense workout. Is this too intense? For me?

 

Tim Edwards  05:56

you know, when we I first started my work out about now close to almost a year and a half, two years or so, I have some people in the medical community in my family, and they were initially warning me about this, they said, you know, it too intense, you know, could really, your muscles can explode. And you could have kidney issues, and they didn't use the medical term Rhabdo. But they warned me about that. But after a year and a half, I mean, I know we don't get too intense at inform fitness for that to happen, because you trainers catch us, right? When we hit failure.

 

Adam  06:32

You know, our motto has been, for a long time, the exercise you need to live the life you want. And part of knowing what exercise you need is basically, if you want to get down to it, we're modulating your intensity, how intense is enough to get the responses that we need. Exercise is not about building and seeing how much you can endure, you know, and the more you can endure, doesn't necessarily mean you're getting healthier and healthier, the more you can endure. And it ends up getting into law of diminishing returns. I mean, you don't get out 10 times more results or fitness or health by doing 10 times more work. You know, if it wasn't exercise, and you and the people that work out hours a day, if they weren't doing it on a bicycle, and it was spending that kind of working that hard on a daily basis. If it wasn't on a bicycle, it'd be called manual labor. And nobody's ever said the manual labor is good for you.

 

Mike  07:31

I think it's it's an interesting question. Like what you just mentioned, how much can you endure, there's a lot of people who when they exercise, and frankly, I was attracted to workouts that were that would push me beyond the edge, you know, and I loved workouts, I love taking bike rides, where the wheels were higher, and I and being with a trainer who would who would just push me so far beyond my limits that I'd have to fall down on the ground, I couldn't I couldn't do anything after that. And I'd love to like brag to people about it, you know, like oh my god, you got to do this this is unbelievable inside and there's there's a certain type of people person that is attracted to workouts like that, which is which is something we have to be very, very careful for we have a lot of type A clients that come here and getting them to understand going to intensity in a safe way. But also understanding a certain level of restraint is as equally important and how you set up your, your dose of exercise your way, same way you set up your dose of food and your dosage of sleep, there is a certain amount that is different for everybody. And as Adam said is our job is to modulate this and to customize it based on the person who is in front of us our workout is generally the same idea like the power of 10 workout is slow weight training on machines mostly, but not necessarily. And we we start slow and and way below what we think they can actually tolerate and then graduate to an intensity that we think that they can they can manage safely and etc etc.

 

Tim Edwards  09:10

And you know, you're you're doing the your one on one to with your clients, unlike some of the other workout facilities such as I will just say CrossFit, because if you were to just Google Rhabdo, it's tied in with CrossFit. And a lot of the interviews that I've seen on YouTube, for those who have experienced Rhabdo. They're in a CrossFit class where they're not necessarily one on one, but they feel that peer pressure with all of those in the class to take themselves beyond that limit. And that's a very significant distinction between what you do at inform fitness and in the CrossFit community.

 

Adam  09:44

These coaches in these bootcamp type facilities, these coaches, just just push pushing people too hard, too often and too long. It's a combination of not only the intensity itself for how long have you been exposed that intense within a given workout, is it a 20 minute workout 15 minute workout is an hour workout, the spin classes can sometimes be on and off in varying intensities for 45 minutes to an hour. You know, for a somebody that hasn't built up to that, that can be too much too soon. But maybe 20 minutes is fine. So not only you varying and building up to intensity, but how long it lasts and how often you're doing are you doing it every day? Again, we have this mentality is more is better. So the CrossFit stuff and these boot camps is that they're kind of telling you to come every day and you're doing it for an hour every single day. And and a lot of these people like Mike was talking about there's this this group culture right that this this camaraderie that goes on and they see some of the veterans doing it. Some of the people that are that have gravitated to it that are made for that kind of activity, and then everyone else and the masses are looking at the few people that really excel at it. And they try to do it as weekend warriors as baby boomers as as normally sedentary people. And that pushing themselves to the max right off the bat. And that's a badge of honor. And I don't know if they still do but but CrossFitters have kind of used getting to Rhabdo as as a badge of honor. It's crazy.

 

Mike  11:21

It I think like looking at the instructors are the guys who are in and girls who really excel at it and using that as a model for what you can do also is it sometimes lead you down a bad road and I think a lot of people you know they do that in every sport to our every exercise a lot of people they go to a Bikram yoga class, for example. They say oh my god that those those teachers are unbelievable. Look at those hot like bodies in the in Bikram yoga, but you know that usually they those are the type of people who've been doing it for a long time. And they've been they they're they're probably former dancers, and they've had a body that was like that before they even did the Bikram yoga and therefore, is easy for them to show that excellence in the practice as well, you know, for what they're trying to do.

 

Adam  12:07

There's a common thing you know, you see somebody that excels at a particular thing and the tighter their game and you think if you do what they do, you'll be there too. And it's just not the case. It's the causation is the opposite. We I think we've talked about this in prior episodes. I mean, we look at we look at a dancer and how great they are Pilates. And we think that Pilates made them look that way or dance made them look that way. But they actually is the opposite. They dance because they look that way. They just have that genetics for we had a very interesting conversation with Doug last week about intensity, and you have to find your intensity. All right, so just I just want to kind of recap and where do you go from? What do you do with this information that we're talking about this idea of modulating intensity? I know we talked about in the last episode, with Doug and I agreed with him 100% on this. And by the way, I'm going to be making commentaries on the last episode, though, because a lot of people said to me, Oh, that was really interesting. But it sounds like he said some things counter to what you've been saying. And I don't want these episodes to be so sterile and to be just all my opinion, you know, like Fox News, and you bring everybody on that's gonna agree with, with your viewpoint or CNN for that matter. I want I want to bring in all viewpoints and but I do want to comment about some of the things that were talked about on that and clarify a couple of things and bring up some points. One of the points that we talked about that I do agree with was this idea of in the proper way to work out and and what intensity is best for you is something that you find, alright, it finds you it's not like you have to find the perfect intensity, the right intensity will actually find you if you are strategic about approaching it. And this, this is the takeaway. All right, first of all, where the workout with us is, this is what we do, we take on a new client. And then what you should do for yourself. First thing you do is learn a technique, learn what the technique is going to be to reach this level of intensity we talked, we recommend slow reps, nice and controlled. Don't lock out your joints, all the biomechanical stuff that we like to incorporate. Right and do it slowly and work it out and learn how to do it. And if you're not experienced with really high intense exercise and taking the muscle to its limits, don't just flirt with it for a while and then take it to the next level and see if you can and you're timing yourself. So what you can do is you can very easily say oh I lasted 20 seconds last summer a minute and 20 seconds last time. I'm going to use the same way. But now I'm going to last a minute 25 seconds just add five more seconds. You can be very conservative with this. Alright, and just get good at the technique and and keep pushing yourself until eventually you really can really wipe out that muscle pretty much you can't lift it anymore. Still breathing properly. Not putting yourself in harm's way still going slowly. And after five or six exercises like that. If you're pretty feeling pretty spent you did your job for the most part and then you take it from there and you keep bearing intense in your in your monitoring intensity by timing how long it takes you to get to a certain level of fatigue.

 

Tim Edwards  12:28

But a key component here to Adam is rest, though, unlike some of the other,

 

Adam  15:10

well, this is the so so that's the point with the technique. And then the other part about approaching this whole thing, and making sure you don't even get close to reaching something as severe and as serious as Rhabdo is, it's gonna be very hard for you, if you modulate your intention, you learn how to work on intensity, and you only do it for 20 minutes at a time. Alright, and you only do it once or twice or three times a week even. Alright, it's gonna be very hard to get to that level, because that's not what causes Rhabdo usually, all right, the cases of rap the first of all, I've been doing this 20 years, I've been doing this 20 years, and even at the beginning, when I was overzealous and I pushed people probably a little too hard at the beginning and didn't understand this as well as I do. Now, I still didn't have anybody that reached Rhabdo. Alright, and it's been 20 years now. All right. And I don't think we've even come close to having somebody reach Rhabdo a couple of vomiting sessions here and there. But that's about as far as it's gone, you know, so. So, you know, that that's the trick that the reason we haven't is because not only is it learning how to work up to a certain level of intensity, but it's modulating that intensity in terms of frequency, and duration. Those are the three things you have to monitor and balance. And if it's not too long, and you're not doing it too often. And you build up to a level intensity, for you to reach Rhabdo or anything close to it, you'd have to be that freak that has a genetic propensity for it, which is also another thing about this is not everybody that joins CrossFit or spin classes and starts hitting it hard right from the beginning is going to most people are still not going to reach Rhabdo even if they don't do what I suggest. Alright, there is a certain level of some people just they have a propensity to reach Rhabdo. I mean, yeah, you know, they're just generically speaking, they're probably a little bit on the other side of the genetic coin.

 

Mike  15:30

Yeah, I think this is a very, I mean, it's newsworthy, and it needs to be mentioned by the times, and the fitness community does need to know about it. But even in CrossFit circles in spin classes, it's a very outlying condition that I don't think most people will ever, ever, ever have to be concerned about. But the Add was big point. And whether it's you're doing slow weight training, or any exercise for that matter, I think the most important thing is to at first, learn the technique, get an expert who you can, who can teach you the technique, a big part of technique, and this is going off in another direction, but I'm just gonna mention it is just knowing how to breathe and a lot of a lot of problems that sometimes people have an exercise, it's just because they're not breathing correctly, or they can't perform, because they're not breathing the way that activity demands. And our our technique in itself, also, if you could be doing things slowly, but if you're not breathing correctly, you can run into problems in that as well, you know, and another thing that has to be carefully considered when you're doing intense exercise.

 

Tim Edwards  18:02

Now, for those that are doing this on their own, this type of workout or any type of workout, can you give me some of the symptoms of Rhabdo for those that might be going too far.

 

Adam  18:13

First of all, there's a very quick blood test that you can test for Plus, your urine turns on dark brown, red, reddish brown, that's from all the myoglobin, that that's being filtered out, very fatigued, hard to move the limbs, muscle soreness, nausea, dizziness, you know, that that's not getting better. You know, it's different from feeling a little lightheaded after a hard workout. It's accompanied by a lot of stiffness and pain in the affected areas, swelling and real fatigue like hard to move the joints, it's, you know, it's pretty obvious when somebody is in that state. And if you were to be brought to emergency room, first thing they do is you know, hydrate you. One thing that happens, besides your kidneys being overloaded with trying to clean out all the myoglobin is that because your cells explode and the the water pressure within the cell drops, all the fluids from outside the cell rush in like getting a hole in your boat, right? And what happens the leak starts coming in. And when that happens, you become severely your your, your, your blood volume drops, and therefore you can go into shock. Yikes. So this is a very it can be a very serious situation. This is beyond happening. In fact, it's happening more often than the exercise industry is concerned is reason for concern. So that's why we're talking about it because, again, it's happening more often in the exercise world and that's ridiculous. You know, shouldn't be so that's so anyway, 

 

Tim Edwards  19:55

is this more prevalent in the exercise community than say a sports injury?

 

Adam  20:00

That's not so much a sports injury as much as like just over exertion your muscles just basically they give out.

 

Mike  20:04

Okay, its associated with training

 

Adam  20:06

its associated with a lot of training, I mean, again, yes, endurance, athletics and sports, they've always had a percentage of that happening, you know, training camp football training camp, you know, basketball camps are they're just pushing, you're pushing, you're pushing, you know, Bobby Knight style, you know, and that's where it's been known to happen. But that's extreme high elite level athletics and they take it too far. And, again, they can be a genetic propensity, you know, I think Len bias, for example, right from the Celtics, and how he just dropped on the court, there's probably some kind of congenital thing that happens as well. But the fact is happening to everyday people. Now more often that's concerned, because we're about we're about preaching, exercise for health, not not exercise to become a world class athlete, you know, and we don't want people to confuse a lot of these activities with with having it have better results are burning a lot of fat and this extreme mentality, that we honor people that can do that we look at Navy SEALs, and we admire them, you know, but that doesn't mean that training like a Navy Seal is good for your health. It's a big difference. And, and because we admire a Navy Seal, for example, we want to emulate that, including the way they train, and it makes us tough makes us strong, it feeds our egos, but it's very unhealthy behavior

 

Tim Edwards  21:21

ultimately

 

Adam  21:22

And you got to remember why we exercise we exercise, maintaining strength as we get older and not screw up our joints in the process, not really undermine our health in the process. And getting Rhabdo is undermining your health for sure. And we're not talking about again, you know, if you're lucky, you overcome it, if it's not a severe case, you overcome it, you go to the hospital, they give you they, they hydrate you because like I said, your, your your fluids dropped dramatically, and your kidneys are overloaded. So they flush you out, basically, and they give you a lot of fluids. And if that's not enough, they'll put you on dialysis. And if it's really severe, you might have some long lasting muscle damage, and long lasting kidney damage. And in the worst of it, you know, so it's not worth it, you know, and we you don't ever have to work out that hard and get that close to reaching a condition like that, to get healthy to get fit. You know, and I think a lot of people that gravitate to these types of activities, I think, and this is definitely open for discussion, and we can bring some people on in the future about this. I think they're replacing it with something else, some other void in their life. And it's really not about health. I think intuitively a lot of people realize it can't be good for me doing it this much. And I think they're filling a void. And you know, for example, a lot of anorexics, a former anorexic. So people that have eating disorders, that trying to overcome it, they end up over actually going into programs with over exercising now, you know, you have a lot of people that that bariatric patients, people that have lost dramatic, dramatic amount of weight that used to have that used to eat tremendous amounts of food that that now they can't, they just can't because the surgery they had doesn't even allow them to eat like that anymore. So now they have to find some other outlet for whatever caused them to be over eating like that in the first place. And they end up now joining CrossFit and they end up putting themselves in another kind of addictive state or place. And I'm very sensitive to that, because I've seen it over the years happen over and over again, people that, you know, recovering drug addicts or recovering alcoholics, they end up overcompensating with something else.

 

Tim Edwards  23:36

So what would seem like a healthy option, a healthy a new choice can be taken to the extreme to their disadvantage. Clearly,

 

Mike  23:43

I think it's associated with certain psychologies and certain personalities, it's and it's something that even I think sometimes people feel that this fulfills that for them as well. Sometimes they're not looking at it. Maybe when they first come in here, or there's an element of its of the intensity that is involved that people may actually use for that.

 

Adam  24:05

Absolutely. And we have to we have to pull it pull the reins back on our clients who asked to come do this three times a week or they say to us, um, do I have to do something else so they end up joining other programs.

 

Mike  24:16

we hear that all the time. I've had I had a client just this week, she's She literally wants to come four times. I'm like, You have any idea what you're talking about. Yeah, and the thing is, it's it is actually it is associated with I think a compensation and something else in her life. But um, regardless, you know, 

 

Adam  24:34

this is why guys buy Porsches,

 

Mike  24:36

we yeah, we went we went into this. We went into talking about Rhabdo today, and I think the parent topic I think is about going to extremes, modulating where extreme is appropriate, and where it's not appropriate. And I think

 

Adam  24:54

actually kind of extreme is rarely appropriate. You know, I mean, there's no reason that go through extreme ranges of motion, there's no reason to restrict your calories in extreme way. There is no reason to work out extreme levels of intensity. I don't know. I mean, give me an example where no extreme unless it's life saving, you need to do anything extreme.

 

Mike  25:19

I think that's true. What I'm talking about is perception of things. Because I'm I know that people think that what we do is extreme. And I know that, for example, like we talked about this yesterday morning, and you're like other people who think keto, Adam has had tremendous success in doing a ketogenic diet, conjoined with some intermittent fasting and to a lot of people. That's extreme. Yeah, you know, and so I that's what I that's my point is that this is

 

Adam  25:46

so who am I talking about? Be careful of being extreme when you just did a ketogenic diet. Adam, right. I mean,

 

Tim Edwards  25:51

we've talked a lot about intensity on this podcast over the last year and a half or so. And people's perception might be that we do take it to the extreme. And so this episode can dispel that, that myth,

 

Mike  26:05

well, people's perceptions. People's perception oftentimes is their reality. And even saying, like, for example, forget even danger. Just a statement, Oh, I did this workout, it's once a week for 30 minutes, 20 minutes or whatever. Like that is an extreme statement that most people based on what their beliefs are about exercise are. That's extremely ridiculous.

 

Tim Edwards  26:27

On the other side of that, though, when you explain to them those that are saying that that's ridiculous, and there's no way you can see results when you tell them? Well, the reason I'm seeing results, because I'm being pushed to muscle failure, and then hold for 10 seconds. And that's where they go, Oh, that doesn't seem safe. And, you know, like you said, hadn't been doing this for 20 plus years, and I've never seen a Rhabdo case, once with an all the

 

Mike  26:52

great, the great many of we've had, you know, tons of wonderful publicity over the years. I mean, but I gotta say and, and, and we've done marketing websites, and so many different things. And we have our podcast here and we have lots of fun guests, but I gotta tell you, what really brings people in here are the refer our existing clients and their results. They they refer somebody and they come in like, listen, I thought it sounded ridiculous, but you know, so and so is stronger and they lost all this weight. They only work out once a week and I thought this is crazy. And so now I'm here and and that's literally what you everybody's BS detector goes off. Usually when they hear like, Oh, this 20 minute workout, but you know, it's and that's what I'm, there

 

Adam  27:37

if there was a children's book that that that represent who we are. As a philosophy would be, you know, Goldilocks and the Three Bears? No, not not, not the wolf. And the three pigs not that one. Not. Hansel and Gretel.

 

Mike  27:57

 Cats for sale

 

Adam  27:58

we call the Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

 

Mike  28:01

You haven't read curious, George goes to CrossFit and gets Rhabdo . That's a good one. Boy, he was so curious.

 

Adam  28:12

So that's not the children's story that our represents who we are.

 

Tim Edwards  28:17

But the one of the one that would would be Goldilocks, right? So explained. Goldilocks,

 

Mike  28:23

you lost me at Goldilocks.

 

Tim Edwards  28:30

So she's eaten the porridge?

 

Adam  28:31

its not too hot too cold? Just Right. Right. Right. Oh, we're trying to find what's right, hard enough, but not too hard. You know, that that whole deal. And and that's not always very sexy to everybody. But it's a golden rule that we learn at a very young age. And we have to constantly remind ourselves of that golden rule, I think

 

Mike  28:50

yeah, you know, what I was thinking before going back to the parent topic of extremes and everything, I wanted to consider something that because I mean, from our experience, we've never, Adam and I've done this a long time. And we've never experienced a Rhabdo case or anything even is close to a Rhabdo case, frankly. But the idea of going to extremes is something that is relevant it I think to everybody and whether you're working out with a trainer, or on your own, or in a team setting or whatever, in a group setting, figuring this out is a lot easier said than done. And you know, when you're exercising in a worthwhile fashion, you want to think about worrying what you imagine what your limit actually is. And finding that is sometimes difficult and then what you want to do is just go outside of that outside of that range just a little bit and then come back into that range. You want to be slightly outside your comfort zone and back in and that's the trick and how to restrain

 

Adam  29:48

there's no rush but but at the same time you you do have to learn to push yourself and keep going 

 

Mike  29:52

yes, that's that's and that's that's a trick and the thing is the thing that I was thinking about while you were talking before was that There are people that have cardiovascular endurance levels, and muscular strength levels. But sometimes they don't have the orthopedic strength or the joint strength or the mobility in order to do certain things. And I think that is something where you really have to take what we're saying into consideration because people can run, they have the endurance to run 10 miles at a seven minute mile pace. And they can, their heart can support that, but their knees can't support that. And there are people that they don't listen to their knees. And when they're trying to actually figure this whole thing out. Those are the types of things that we need to consider, as you know, in our workouts right now is where are our limitations, because we may have strengths in one avenue like cardio, but not so strong in something else. And finding that balance Goldilocks style is, is literally, that's the challenge for all of us as trainers and as clients and as everyone.

 

Tim Edwards  31:03

Alright, thanks, guys. Great discussion today. That was part one of a two part episode regarding modulating intensity. Since we spent the entire show today discussing the need for modulating intensity in your exercise program. Next week, we'll shift our focus to our diet. If you're a subscriber or a regular listener of the podcast, you know that earlier this year, Adam adopted a ketogenic diet. Some would say that that would be an extreme decision, or is it? How safe is it to make extreme changes in your diet? We'll discuss all of that and more next week. Hey, if you've not yet stepped inside an inform fitness location, and you're lucky enough to be near one of our seven locations across the US. What are you waiting for? Become an official member of the inform nation and give the power of 10 workout a try for yourself. Seriously, just 20 to 30 minutes of safe, modulated intensity with your One on One trainer, and you are done for the entire week. Burn off the fat, build up the muscle and join the movement. Visit informfitness.com for all of the locations across the country. All of our podcast episodes are there and a ton of videos. And finally, check out the show notes for today's episode for link to Amazon to pick up Adams book power of 10 the once a week slow motion fitness revolution. You can pick it up in the Kindle version for like less than 10 bucks. I'm sure you noticed that we missed our buddy Sheila Melody today. She'll be back with us in just a couple of weeks. So for the rest of the team, Mike Rogers and Adam Zickerman. I'm Tim Edwards with the inbound podcasting Network.

What is The InForm Fitness Podcast?

Now listened to in 100 countries, The InForm Fitness Podcast with Adam Zickerman is a presentation of InForm Fitness Studios, specializing in safe, efficient, High Intensity strength training.
Adam discusses the latest findings in the areas of exercise, nutrition and recovery with leading experts and scientists. We aim to debunk the popular misconceptions and urban myths that are so prevalent in the fields of health and fitness and to replace those sacred cows with scientific-based, up-to-the-minute information on a variety of subjects. The topics covered include exercise protocols and techniques, nutrition, sleep, recovery, the role of genetics in the response to exercise, and much more.

37 Modulating Extremes While Exercising

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, workout, exercise, intensity, extreme, talking, adam, crossfit, minutes, modulating, myoglobin, muscle, fitness, podcast, pushing, intense, clients, happening, technique, episode
SPEAKERS
Tim Edwards, Mike, Adam

Adam 00:06
No, our motto has been, for a long time, the exercise you need to live the life you want. And part of knowing what exercise you need is basically, if you want to get down to it, we're modulating your intensity, how intense is enough to get the responses that we need. Exercise is not about building and seeing how much you can endure, you know, and the more you can endure, doesn't necessarily mean you are getting healthier and healthier, the more you can endure, and it ends up getting into law of diminishing returns. I mean, you don't get out 10 times more results or fitness or health by doing 10 times more work.

Tim Edwards 00:52
Inform nation, welcome to episode 37 of the inform fitness podcast 20 minutes. With New York Times bestselling author, Adam Zckerman and friends. Now we say 20 minutes, but you know, as as the show continues to evolve, so do the topics and 20 minutes sometimes just doesn't seem like enough. So we may have to change the name here pretty soon. But

Adam 01:15
I remember I remember when we were working, thinking about the concept, going back and forth about how we're going to do it. And I was like, if we can't explain something in 20 minutes, then it's not that we don't know our subject well enough, you know, and like, so much for that or subjects. Well,

Tim Edwards 01:32
so much for that.

Adam 01:33
Theres a lot to talk about. I mean, we try our best.

Tim Edwards 01:36
Well, just the opposite, I think because there's

Mike 01:38
the workout on its own is 20 minute workout. In fact, it's quite a bit less than that, you know, when you add up the actual time that you're under load on all the machines when you're in the workout, but yeah, sometimes these these topics that need to be discussed or questions with clients, they this they run out a little bit and usually, I mean, it's stuff's complicated, oftentimes, the answer is there is no answer, we have to sort of look over time and see, you know, try to locate patterns and, and hypothesize and go from there.

Tim Edwards 02:06
And that ties into the podcast too, because you know, when we initially tried to keep the podcast, the approximate length of of a traditional workout at inform fitness. But these topics, there's actually I think just the opposite what you said Adam, earlier was, they're so complex, that 20 minutes doesn't even seem like enough. And that's proven itself.

Adam 02:27
Well, what I want to start doing going forward, actually, with some of these podcasts, these episodes, what I've been noticing, while we've been doing it, and looking back on all this is that we have, we've taken on broad subjects, and we've talked we've had some very broad, but within the subjects that are there are topics among themselves. So like, that's what I'm gonna we're gonna start doing some narrowing down a little bit some of these issues that we've been talking about, for example, last week, when we're talking about two weeks ago, when we're talking with Doug Brignole, we did those two episodes with Doug, you know, Rhabdo came up or or rhabdomyolysis came up. And that that's a condition where your muscles literally bust apart and their innards kind of spread out. And it causes all kinds of problems, which we're going to go into, you know, that that in and of itself is a subject, which is what we're going to talk about a little bit today. And Rhabdo is a good example of a subject that comes up in broader talks now. So for example, we were talking about intensity when Rhabdo came up, and how intense is intense. And how intense should something be how often. And that's what I kind of want to get a little bit deeper into this idea of intensity, this idea of going to extremes. And Rhabdo is just a symptom of that. Oh, by the way, Rhabdo is short for rhabdomyolysis, lysis meaning to explode. And what happens Rhabdo which is short for rhabdomyolysis is through. Usually it's a condition that happens through trauma. Like they call it crush trauma, where you're in a car accident, or you fall two stories out of a window or something like that. That's probably the most common cause of Rhabdo. And of course, during this type of trauma, your muscle cells break open and the myoglobin in particular comes out all the fluids come out, and your kidneys have to deal with that and flush it out. And that can be an overload and you get into all kinds of kidney problems. And you might have to go on dialysis if it's bad enough. It's something that's really never been talked about unless you're basically an ER physician. It rarely was something that talk was talked about in exercise, but it's been coming up a lot and it's been around in exercise I mean endurance ultra endurance athletes who are experiencing Rhabdo you know, marathon runners, the Tour de France and you know, they probably been you know, each year in the endurance athletic world 25 50 cases a year. would occur. And now we're reading about it in The New York Times, which is, it's been so not only do we talk about it last week with Brignole but and when it comes up when you talk about intensity, but now it's coming up in pop culture, like the New York Times article talking about, it's in its fitness section in the science section, it talks about Rhabdo. Wow. And why is that? Why is it all of a sudden being picked up and its causes become prevalent in the exercise world, more so than even in the medical world where there's trauma

Mike 05:33
and cited more specifically, and in spin classes, high intensity spin classes, with newcomers?

Adam 05:41
So it brings up this whole idea of, of extremes of how much how intense is enough. And a lot of my clients brought me the article mentioned, the article said, Hey, Adam, you do a really intense workout. Is this too intense? For me?

Tim Edwards 05:56
you know, when we I first started my work out about now close to almost a year and a half, two years or so, I have some people in the medical community in my family, and they were initially warning me about this, they said, you know, it too intense, you know, could really, your muscles can explode. And you could have kidney issues, and they didn't use the medical term Rhabdo. But they warned me about that. But after a year and a half, I mean, I know we don't get too intense at inform fitness for that to happen, because you trainers catch us, right? When we hit failure.

Adam 06:32
You know, our motto has been, for a long time, the exercise you need to live the life you want. And part of knowing what exercise you need is basically, if you want to get down to it, we're modulating your intensity, how intense is enough to get the responses that we need. Exercise is not about building and seeing how much you can endure, you know, and the more you can endure, doesn't necessarily mean you're getting healthier and healthier, the more you can endure. And it ends up getting into law of diminishing returns. I mean, you don't get out 10 times more results or fitness or health by doing 10 times more work. You know, if it wasn't exercise, and you and the people that work out hours a day, if they weren't doing it on a bicycle, and it was spending that kind of working that hard on a daily basis. If it wasn't on a bicycle, it'd be called manual labor. And nobody's ever said the manual labor is good for you.

Mike 07:31
I think it's it's an interesting question. Like what you just mentioned, how much can you endure, there's a lot of people who when they exercise, and frankly, I was attracted to workouts that were that would push me beyond the edge, you know, and I loved workouts, I love taking bike rides, where the wheels were higher, and I and being with a trainer who would who would just push me so far beyond my limits that I'd have to fall down on the ground, I couldn't I couldn't do anything after that. And I'd love to like brag to people about it, you know, like oh my god, you got to do this this is unbelievable inside and there's there's a certain type of people person that is attracted to workouts like that, which is which is something we have to be very, very careful for we have a lot of type A clients that come here and getting them to understand going to intensity in a safe way. But also understanding a certain level of restraint is as equally important and how you set up your, your dose of exercise your way, same way you set up your dose of food and your dosage of sleep, there is a certain amount that is different for everybody. And as Adam said is our job is to modulate this and to customize it based on the person who is in front of us our workout is generally the same idea like the power of 10 workout is slow weight training on machines mostly, but not necessarily. And we we start slow and and way below what we think they can actually tolerate and then graduate to an intensity that we think that they can they can manage safely and etc etc.

Tim Edwards 09:10
And you know, you're you're doing the your one on one to with your clients, unlike some of the other workout facilities such as I will just say CrossFit, because if you were to just Google Rhabdo, it's tied in with CrossFit. And a lot of the interviews that I've seen on YouTube, for those who have experienced Rhabdo. They're in a CrossFit class where they're not necessarily one on one, but they feel that peer pressure with all of those in the class to take themselves beyond that limit. And that's a very significant distinction between what you do at inform fitness and in the CrossFit community.

Adam 09:44
These coaches in these bootcamp type facilities, these coaches, just just push pushing people too hard, too often and too long. It's a combination of not only the intensity itself for how long have you been exposed that intense within a given workout, is it a 20 minute workout 15 minute workout is an hour workout, the spin classes can sometimes be on and off in varying intensities for 45 minutes to an hour. You know, for a somebody that hasn't built up to that, that can be too much too soon. But maybe 20 minutes is fine. So not only you varying and building up to intensity, but how long it lasts and how often you're doing are you doing it every day? Again, we have this mentality is more is better. So the CrossFit stuff and these boot camps is that they're kind of telling you to come every day and you're doing it for an hour every single day. And and a lot of these people like Mike was talking about there's this this group culture right that this this camaraderie that goes on and they see some of the veterans doing it. Some of the people that are that have gravitated to it that are made for that kind of activity, and then everyone else and the masses are looking at the few people that really excel at it. And they try to do it as weekend warriors as baby boomers as as normally sedentary people. And that pushing themselves to the max right off the bat. And that's a badge of honor. And I don't know if they still do but but CrossFitters have kind of used getting to Rhabdo as as a badge of honor. It's crazy.

Mike 11:21
It I think like looking at the instructors are the guys who are in and girls who really excel at it and using that as a model for what you can do also is it sometimes lead you down a bad road and I think a lot of people you know they do that in every sport to our every exercise a lot of people they go to a Bikram yoga class, for example. They say oh my god that those those teachers are unbelievable. Look at those hot like bodies in the in Bikram yoga, but you know that usually they those are the type of people who've been doing it for a long time. And they've been they they're they're probably former dancers, and they've had a body that was like that before they even did the Bikram yoga and therefore, is easy for them to show that excellence in the practice as well, you know, for what they're trying to do.

Adam 12:07
There's a common thing you know, you see somebody that excels at a particular thing and the tighter their game and you think if you do what they do, you'll be there too. And it's just not the case. It's the causation is the opposite. We I think we've talked about this in prior episodes. I mean, we look at we look at a dancer and how great they are Pilates. And we think that Pilates made them look that way or dance made them look that way. But they actually is the opposite. They dance because they look that way. They just have that genetics for we had a very interesting conversation with Doug last week about intensity, and you have to find your intensity. All right, so just I just want to kind of recap and where do you go from? What do you do with this information that we're talking about this idea of modulating intensity? I know we talked about in the last episode, with Doug and I agreed with him 100% on this. And by the way, I'm going to be making commentaries on the last episode, though, because a lot of people said to me, Oh, that was really interesting. But it sounds like he said some things counter to what you've been saying. And I don't want these episodes to be so sterile and to be just all my opinion, you know, like Fox News, and you bring everybody on that's gonna agree with, with your viewpoint or CNN for that matter. I want I want to bring in all viewpoints and but I do want to comment about some of the things that were talked about on that and clarify a couple of things and bring up some points. One of the points that we talked about that I do agree with was this idea of in the proper way to work out and and what intensity is best for you is something that you find, alright, it finds you it's not like you have to find the perfect intensity, the right intensity will actually find you if you are strategic about approaching it. And this, this is the takeaway. All right, first of all, where the workout with us is, this is what we do, we take on a new client. And then what you should do for yourself. First thing you do is learn a technique, learn what the technique is going to be to reach this level of intensity we talked, we recommend slow reps, nice and controlled. Don't lock out your joints, all the biomechanical stuff that we like to incorporate. Right and do it slowly and work it out and learn how to do it. And if you're not experienced with really high intense exercise and taking the muscle to its limits, don't just flirt with it for a while and then take it to the next level and see if you can and you're timing yourself. So what you can do is you can very easily say oh I lasted 20 seconds last summer a minute and 20 seconds last time. I'm going to use the same way. But now I'm going to last a minute 25 seconds just add five more seconds. You can be very conservative with this. Alright, and just get good at the technique and and keep pushing yourself until eventually you really can really wipe out that muscle pretty much you can't lift it anymore. Still breathing properly. Not putting yourself in harm's way still going slowly. And after five or six exercises like that. If you're pretty feeling pretty spent you did your job for the most part and then you take it from there and you keep bearing intense in your in your monitoring intensity by timing how long it takes you to get to a certain level of fatigue.

Tim Edwards 12:28
But a key component here to Adam is rest, though, unlike some of the other,

Adam 15:10
well, this is the so so that's the point with the technique. And then the other part about approaching this whole thing, and making sure you don't even get close to reaching something as severe and as serious as Rhabdo is, it's gonna be very hard for you, if you modulate your intention, you learn how to work on intensity, and you only do it for 20 minutes at a time. Alright, and you only do it once or twice or three times a week even. Alright, it's gonna be very hard to get to that level, because that's not what causes Rhabdo usually, all right, the cases of rap the first of all, I've been doing this 20 years, I've been doing this 20 years, and even at the beginning, when I was overzealous and I pushed people probably a little too hard at the beginning and didn't understand this as well as I do. Now, I still didn't have anybody that reached Rhabdo. Alright, and it's been 20 years now. All right. And I don't think we've even come close to having somebody reach Rhabdo a couple of vomiting sessions here and there. But that's about as far as it's gone, you know, so. So, you know, that that's the trick that the reason we haven't is because not only is it learning how to work up to a certain level of intensity, but it's modulating that intensity in terms of frequency, and duration. Those are the three things you have to monitor and balance. And if it's not too long, and you're not doing it too often. And you build up to a level intensity, for you to reach Rhabdo or anything close to it, you'd have to be that freak that has a genetic propensity for it, which is also another thing about this is not everybody that joins CrossFit or spin classes and starts hitting it hard right from the beginning is going to most people are still not going to reach Rhabdo even if they don't do what I suggest. Alright, there is a certain level of some people just they have a propensity to reach Rhabdo. I mean, yeah, you know, they're just generically speaking, they're probably a little bit on the other side of the genetic coin.

Mike 15:30
Yeah, I think this is a very, I mean, it's newsworthy, and it needs to be mentioned by the times, and the fitness community does need to know about it. But even in CrossFit circles in spin classes, it's a very outlying condition that I don't think most people will ever, ever, ever have to be concerned about. But the Add was big point. And whether it's you're doing slow weight training, or any exercise for that matter, I think the most important thing is to at first, learn the technique, get an expert who you can, who can teach you the technique, a big part of technique, and this is going off in another direction, but I'm just gonna mention it is just knowing how to breathe and a lot of a lot of problems that sometimes people have an exercise, it's just because they're not breathing correctly, or they can't perform, because they're not breathing the way that activity demands. And our our technique in itself, also, if you could be doing things slowly, but if you're not breathing correctly, you can run into problems in that as well, you know, and another thing that has to be carefully considered when you're doing intense exercise.

Tim Edwards 18:02
Now, for those that are doing this on their own, this type of workout or any type of workout, can you give me some of the symptoms of Rhabdo for those that might be going too far.

Adam 18:13
First of all, there's a very quick blood test that you can test for Plus, your urine turns on dark brown, red, reddish brown, that's from all the myoglobin, that that's being filtered out, very fatigued, hard to move the limbs, muscle soreness, nausea, dizziness, you know, that that's not getting better. You know, it's different from feeling a little lightheaded after a hard workout. It's accompanied by a lot of stiffness and pain in the affected areas, swelling and real fatigue like hard to move the joints, it's, you know, it's pretty obvious when somebody is in that state. And if you were to be brought to emergency room, first thing they do is you know, hydrate you. One thing that happens, besides your kidneys being overloaded with trying to clean out all the myoglobin is that because your cells explode and the the water pressure within the cell drops, all the fluids from outside the cell rush in like getting a hole in your boat, right? And what happens the leak starts coming in. And when that happens, you become severely your your, your, your blood volume drops, and therefore you can go into shock. Yikes. So this is a very it can be a very serious situation. This is beyond happening. In fact, it's happening more often than the exercise industry is concerned is reason for concern. So that's why we're talking about it because, again, it's happening more often in the exercise world and that's ridiculous. You know, shouldn't be so that's so anyway,

Tim Edwards 19:55
is this more prevalent in the exercise community than say a sports injury?

Adam 20:00
That's not so much a sports injury as much as like just over exertion your muscles just basically they give out.

Mike 20:04
Okay, its associated with training

Adam 20:06
its associated with a lot of training, I mean, again, yes, endurance, athletics and sports, they've always had a percentage of that happening, you know, training camp football training camp, you know, basketball camps are they're just pushing, you're pushing, you're pushing, you know, Bobby Knight style, you know, and that's where it's been known to happen. But that's extreme high elite level athletics and they take it too far. And, again, they can be a genetic propensity, you know, I think Len bias, for example, right from the Celtics, and how he just dropped on the court, there's probably some kind of congenital thing that happens as well. But the fact is happening to everyday people. Now more often that's concerned, because we're about we're about preaching, exercise for health, not not exercise to become a world class athlete, you know, and we don't want people to confuse a lot of these activities with with having it have better results are burning a lot of fat and this extreme mentality, that we honor people that can do that we look at Navy SEALs, and we admire them, you know, but that doesn't mean that training like a Navy Seal is good for your health. It's a big difference. And, and because we admire a Navy Seal, for example, we want to emulate that, including the way they train, and it makes us tough makes us strong, it feeds our egos, but it's very unhealthy behavior

Tim Edwards 21:21
ultimately

Adam 21:22
And you got to remember why we exercise we exercise, maintaining strength as we get older and not screw up our joints in the process, not really undermine our health in the process. And getting Rhabdo is undermining your health for sure. And we're not talking about again, you know, if you're lucky, you overcome it, if it's not a severe case, you overcome it, you go to the hospital, they give you they, they hydrate you because like I said, your, your your fluids dropped dramatically, and your kidneys are overloaded. So they flush you out, basically, and they give you a lot of fluids. And if that's not enough, they'll put you on dialysis. And if it's really severe, you might have some long lasting muscle damage, and long lasting kidney damage. And in the worst of it, you know, so it's not worth it, you know, and we you don't ever have to work out that hard and get that close to reaching a condition like that, to get healthy to get fit. You know, and I think a lot of people that gravitate to these types of activities, I think, and this is definitely open for discussion, and we can bring some people on in the future about this. I think they're replacing it with something else, some other void in their life. And it's really not about health. I think intuitively a lot of people realize it can't be good for me doing it this much. And I think they're filling a void. And you know, for example, a lot of anorexics, a former anorexic. So people that have eating disorders, that trying to overcome it, they end up over actually going into programs with over exercising now, you know, you have a lot of people that that bariatric patients, people that have lost dramatic, dramatic amount of weight that used to have that used to eat tremendous amounts of food that that now they can't, they just can't because the surgery they had doesn't even allow them to eat like that anymore. So now they have to find some other outlet for whatever caused them to be over eating like that in the first place. And they end up now joining CrossFit and they end up putting themselves in another kind of addictive state or place. And I'm very sensitive to that, because I've seen it over the years happen over and over again, people that, you know, recovering drug addicts or recovering alcoholics, they end up overcompensating with something else.

Tim Edwards 23:36
So what would seem like a healthy option, a healthy a new choice can be taken to the extreme to their disadvantage. Clearly,

Mike 23:43
I think it's associated with certain psychologies and certain personalities, it's and it's something that even I think sometimes people feel that this fulfills that for them as well. Sometimes they're not looking at it. Maybe when they first come in here, or there's an element of its of the intensity that is involved that people may actually use for that.

Adam 24:05
Absolutely. And we have to we have to pull it pull the reins back on our clients who asked to come do this three times a week or they say to us, um, do I have to do something else so they end up joining other programs.

Mike 24:16
we hear that all the time. I've had I had a client just this week, she's She literally wants to come four times. I'm like, You have any idea what you're talking about. Yeah, and the thing is, it's it is actually it is associated with I think a compensation and something else in her life. But um, regardless, you know,

Adam 24:34
this is why guys buy Porsches,

Mike 24:36
we yeah, we went we went into this. We went into talking about Rhabdo today, and I think the parent topic I think is about going to extremes, modulating where extreme is appropriate, and where it's not appropriate. And I think

Adam 24:54
actually kind of extreme is rarely appropriate. You know, I mean, there's no reason that go through extreme ranges of motion, there's no reason to restrict your calories in extreme way. There is no reason to work out extreme levels of intensity. I don't know. I mean, give me an example where no extreme unless it's life saving, you need to do anything extreme.

Mike 25:19
I think that's true. What I'm talking about is perception of things. Because I'm I know that people think that what we do is extreme. And I know that, for example, like we talked about this yesterday morning, and you're like other people who think keto, Adam has had tremendous success in doing a ketogenic diet, conjoined with some intermittent fasting and to a lot of people. That's extreme. Yeah, you know, and so I that's what I that's my point is that this is

Adam 25:46
so who am I talking about? Be careful of being extreme when you just did a ketogenic diet. Adam, right. I mean,

Tim Edwards 25:51
we've talked a lot about intensity on this podcast over the last year and a half or so. And people's perception might be that we do take it to the extreme. And so this episode can dispel that, that myth,

Mike 26:05
well, people's perceptions. People's perception oftentimes is their reality. And even saying, like, for example, forget even danger. Just a statement, Oh, I did this workout, it's once a week for 30 minutes, 20 minutes or whatever. Like that is an extreme statement that most people based on what their beliefs are about exercise are. That's extremely ridiculous.

Tim Edwards 26:27
On the other side of that, though, when you explain to them those that are saying that that's ridiculous, and there's no way you can see results when you tell them? Well, the reason I'm seeing results, because I'm being pushed to muscle failure, and then hold for 10 seconds. And that's where they go, Oh, that doesn't seem safe. And, you know, like you said, hadn't been doing this for 20 plus years, and I've never seen a Rhabdo case, once with an all the

Mike 26:52
great, the great many of we've had, you know, tons of wonderful publicity over the years. I mean, but I gotta say and, and, and we've done marketing websites, and so many different things. And we have our podcast here and we have lots of fun guests, but I gotta tell you, what really brings people in here are the refer our existing clients and their results. They they refer somebody and they come in like, listen, I thought it sounded ridiculous, but you know, so and so is stronger and they lost all this weight. They only work out once a week and I thought this is crazy. And so now I'm here and and that's literally what you everybody's BS detector goes off. Usually when they hear like, Oh, this 20 minute workout, but you know, it's and that's what I'm, there

Adam 27:37
if there was a children's book that that that represent who we are. As a philosophy would be, you know, Goldilocks and the Three Bears? No, not not, not the wolf. And the three pigs not that one. Not. Hansel and Gretel.

Mike 27:57
Cats for sale

Adam 27:58
we call the Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Mike 28:01
You haven't read curious, George goes to CrossFit and gets Rhabdo . That's a good one. Boy, he was so curious.

Adam 28:12
So that's not the children's story that our represents who we are.

Tim Edwards 28:17
But the one of the one that would would be Goldilocks, right? So explained. Goldilocks,

Mike 28:23
you lost me at Goldilocks.

Tim Edwards 28:30
So she's eaten the porridge?

Adam 28:31
its not too hot too cold? Just Right. Right. Right. Oh, we're trying to find what's right, hard enough, but not too hard. You know, that that whole deal. And and that's not always very sexy to everybody. But it's a golden rule that we learn at a very young age. And we have to constantly remind ourselves of that golden rule, I think

Mike 28:50
yeah, you know, what I was thinking before going back to the parent topic of extremes and everything, I wanted to consider something that because I mean, from our experience, we've never, Adam and I've done this a long time. And we've never experienced a Rhabdo case or anything even is close to a Rhabdo case, frankly. But the idea of going to extremes is something that is relevant it I think to everybody and whether you're working out with a trainer, or on your own, or in a team setting or whatever, in a group setting, figuring this out is a lot easier said than done. And you know, when you're exercising in a worthwhile fashion, you want to think about worrying what you imagine what your limit actually is. And finding that is sometimes difficult and then what you want to do is just go outside of that outside of that range just a little bit and then come back into that range. You want to be slightly outside your comfort zone and back in and that's the trick and how to restrain

Adam 29:48
there's no rush but but at the same time you you do have to learn to push yourself and keep going

Mike 29:52
yes, that's that's and that's that's a trick and the thing is the thing that I was thinking about while you were talking before was that There are people that have cardiovascular endurance levels, and muscular strength levels. But sometimes they don't have the orthopedic strength or the joint strength or the mobility in order to do certain things. And I think that is something where you really have to take what we're saying into consideration because people can run, they have the endurance to run 10 miles at a seven minute mile pace. And they can, their heart can support that, but their knees can't support that. And there are people that they don't listen to their knees. And when they're trying to actually figure this whole thing out. Those are the types of things that we need to consider, as you know, in our workouts right now is where are our limitations, because we may have strengths in one avenue like cardio, but not so strong in something else. And finding that balance Goldilocks style is, is literally, that's the challenge for all of us as trainers and as clients and as everyone.

Tim Edwards 31:03
Alright, thanks, guys. Great discussion today. That was part one of a two part episode regarding modulating intensity. Since we spent the entire show today discussing the need for modulating intensity in your exercise program. Next week, we'll shift our focus to our diet. If you're a subscriber or a regular listener of the podcast, you know that earlier this year, Adam adopted a ketogenic diet. Some would say that that would be an extreme decision, or is it? How safe is it to make extreme changes in your diet? We'll discuss all of that and more next week. Hey, if you've not yet stepped inside an inform fitness location, and you're lucky enough to be near one of our seven locations across the US. What are you waiting for? Become an official member of the inform nation and give the power of 10 workout a try for yourself. Seriously, just 20 to 30 minutes of safe, modulated intensity with your One on One trainer, and you are done for the entire week. Burn off the fat, build up the muscle and join the movement. Visit informfitness.com for all of the locations across the country. All of our podcast episodes are there and a ton of videos. And finally, check out the show notes for today's episode for link to Amazon to pick up Adams book power of 10 the once a week slow motion fitness revolution. You can pick it up in the Kindle version for like less than 10 bucks. I'm sure you noticed that we missed our buddy Sheila Melody today. She'll be back with us in just a couple of weeks. So for the rest of the team, Mike Rogers and Adam Zickerman. I'm Tim Edwards with the inbound podcasting Network.

- 1 -
00Transcribed by https://otter.ai