stress management

How to use the Burst Cardio Protocol for Accurate Exercise Dose

August 18, 2016 By Dr. Chris Hardy 8 Comments

This is the third in a series of articles developed from Dr. Chris Hardy’s live presentation at Dragon Door’s Inaugural Health and Strength Conference. Click here to read the first article of the series.

The Stress Cup dictates the beneficial, hormetic exercise dose. To apply this concept to our training, we need a scientific foundation—but it’s also an art. Elite coaches like Marty Gallagher—who has coached for over fifty years—have intuitively figured it out. In this article I will try to give you a foundation so that you won’t need all those years of trial and error to figure it out. Applying this science to your clients is the art of training. Since you already know how to adjust sets, reps, intensity, and volume, you’re already ahead of the game. We will try to hone your art with these concepts.

First, there are no hard and fast rules, this is more a conceptual thing. Remember that all of your clients are individuals and can’t all train the same way. Plus, their environments and stresses change from day to day. Our approach will allow for this day to day individualization.

Case Studies:

Our first example is someone with a “tall” stress cup. What’s filling his stress cup? On new client intakes, do you ask about their health problems? How about their stress levels and how they sleep? It’s really important that they tell you about these issues. This client has a small stress cup and a large amount of lifestyle stress will put him in allostatic overload. We will know that he’s been in this state for a long time if he has a disease resulting from a failure to adapt. Diabetes can be thought of as a failure to adapt to a lack of exercise, poor sleep, and/or terrible nutrition. The body will try to adapt to those stresses, and even though it does bad things for the body, diabetes is actually an adaptive condition.

Stress Cup Size Chart

So, how would we train this client? What would we do for strength training and for cardio? Like many other people, our client also doesn’t have a lot of spare time. One approach to consider for a guy like this is a stripped-down linear progression with a bit of a hypertrophy bias, in the 5-10 rep range. Diabetics and people with metabolic diseases work very well in that range and it helps clear out some muscle glycogen too. It’s beneficial, but it’s not the only way.

Let’s assume for example that he has diabetes and high blood pressure. Of course he could be walking but we could also try high intensity interval training—even low amounts of it can have incredible results for diabetics. Basically, it bypasses the normal insulin signaling mechanisms and gets some of the glucose from the blood stream back into the muscles. Emptying those glycogen tanks is really beneficial too, because lower glucose in the muscles will pull a lot more glucose from the blood. This process will increase insulin sensitivity for at least 24-36 hours.

Burst Cardio Protocol Chart

But, while high intensity interval training is a really good approach for the diabetics, our example client also has a small, and nearly full stress cup. We need to figure out how much exercise is too much. With our example client it would be very easy to overdo it, so we need to remove the guesswork. We will use the Burst Cardio Protocol we describe in Strong Medicine. You don’t have to use it with all of your clients, but it is a fail-safe. When working with a client who is at risk of exercise overdose, but who could really benefit from high intensity training, the Burst Cardio Protocol is a very good choice.

This protocol uses heart rate to set both the interval duration and recovery times. Depending on the state of the client’s stress cup, they will respond to the same exercise differently from one day to the next. Heart rate response will be our window to the state of their stress cup. We will start with heart rate max, which is not the most scientifically accurate, but will be a close enough estimate for most of you clients. So, we’ll start by leading them to warm up, then we will start their interval exercises as hard as possible. The goal is for them to reach 95% of max heart rate, though 90% is the requirement. Once the client reaches the heart rate goal, they stop and recover until their heart rate is back down to 70%, then they begin another interval. This works well for a 20 minute session and can be done with kettlebell swings or snatches, or other modalities like the hand bike, elliptical machine, medicine ball slams or even burpees. You can choose anything anaerobic that will rapidly increate the client’s heart rate.

The key point of this whole protocol is that on the day when the stress cup’s load is low, there’s room for a higher exercise dose. Since a low stress cup equals parasympathetic dominance, this means the client will recover faster because the parasympathetic system will lower the elevated heart rate from the exercise. Faster recovery times will also allow the client to do more intervals during the set period of 20 minutes. If they are recovering more quickly, they’ll be able to start the next interval more quickly, too. When the stress cup is nearly full, there’s less room for exercise, and the sympathetic system is dominant. Recovery will be slower. If the client gets up to 95% and they have slept poorly, they will recovery more slowly since the parasympathetic system won’t be able to bring the heart rate down as quickly. The client will not be able to do as many intervals in the allotted time.

I’ve tested the protocol myself for a few years. One workout I tried a couple of years ago used the twenty minute time period. I did a hideous alternating combination of kettlebell snatches and medicine ball slams. It was rough. You can see on the chart below that I spiked up to 95% pretty quickly. I recovered and managed to get six intervals in 20 minutes—and that was on a day when I was feeling great.

I waited a week later and tried the same workout when I had had a night of poor sleep. When I did the exact same workout with the same time period, look what happened on the chart below! I spiked up to 95% again, but then it kept taking me longer and longer to recover. After the 4th interval, it took me so long to recover that I never dropped below 70% before the 20 minute session was over.

So, even though I had fewer intervals, the protocol allowed me to exercise but not overdo it. My heart rate was a window into the state of my stress cup and adjusted the number of intervals for me.

The Burst Cardio Protocol automatically adjusts to the correct dose on a given day. As another example, let’s say that I’ve done a strength training session before my burst cardio. The strength training will affect the nervous system, along with my recovery time and the interval itself.

You can also use the Burst Cardio Protocol to train multiple clients with different stress cups. One client may end up doing more intervals during the time period, but since they will be regulating their own intensity you can concentrate more on watching and coaching their exercise techniques. When one client wants to know why they are not able to do as many intervals as someone else you can also explain how recovery itself is a trainable event. Between the intervals we can also coach our clients with breathing exercises and techniques to help them recover. A simple breathing technique such as breathing in, filling up the diaphragm, then slowly exhaling while watching their heart rate on a biofeedback device will allow a client to feel like they’re still training while they are resting. This technique will help them recover faster, too.

The protocol also works for mixed modalities—clients can do kettlebell swings for one round, the elliptical machine for the next, etc. I’ve tested it and found that when someone gets to 95% with kettlebell swings, it takes a lot longer to get back down to 70% as opposed to getting to 95% on the elliptical. The Burst Protocol also adjusts for the given modality. While it’s not necessary to use the Burst Protocol all the time, it is very useful if you are worried about overflowing someone’s stress cup.

The next post in this series will cover another common training scenario and how to use HRV and the Self-Rated Health Scale.

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Chris Hardy, D.O., M.P.H., CSCS, is the author of Strong Medicine: How to Conquer Chronic Disease and Achieve Your Full Genetic Potential. He is a public-health physician, personal trainer, mountain biker, rock climber and guitarist. His passion is communicating science-based lifestyle information and recommendations in an easy-to-understand manner to empower the public in the fight against preventable chronic disease.

Folding Inner Space: Part I – Iron Zen: Exercise-Induced Altered States

October 1, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 12 Comments

Iron Zen

Tibetan Lama Dungse Jampol is the son of a Tibetan meditation master. At a young age he asked his father to explain to him, “What is the nature of the mind?” and “What is ‘pure existence” and what is the meaning of “enlightenment?” His father sat down and said to the boy, “Come closer.” The boy came within arms length of the father who gestured him even closer by wagging his finger. When the boy’s forehead was within six inches of the father, the elder lama unleashed a blood-curdling scream that literally sent the youngster reeling. Dungse recalled, “That scream was so loud and so intense and so unexpected that I was paralyzed; shocked, my mind was completely cleared of everything – instantly. My father excitedly said, “See! There it is! There it is!”

It is my contention that intense physical effort, the kind of effort generated during limit-exceeding weight training sessions, offers an entranceway into higher realms of consciousness. My Zen master friend, Ken O’Neil, and I have talked frequently about this phenomenon at length and in depth. I have long sought out others that have experienced this Iron Satori in my ongoing effort to bring attention to this rarified and refined quality of consciousness attained during “Iron Zazen.”

Exercise-induced altered consciousness, or, alternatively and more poetically, The Zen of Pure Physical Effort, is a higher awareness induced by intense physical exercise. Superhuman effort opens the “heavy door with rusted hinges.”

I have been a hardcore weight trainer for 54 years and a meditator for 43 years. Nietzsche once noted “true greatness requires long obedience in the same direction.” To which I would add, over time and with continual repetition the ability to enter into exercise-induced altered states of consciousness becomes easier. The longer and more often the athlete enters these zones of heightened sensory awareness, the deeper the experience becomes and the easier it is accessed: vividness and clarity magnify with repeated visitations.

The exercise-induced altered mindset offers a “shortcut” method, a meditational way in which to fold inner space.

We can jump the beginning meditator ahead; throw them into the deep end of the pool, metaphorically speaking, through the precise application of Iron Zen. Intense physical effort shortens the meditation learning curve, depositing the Iron Zen adherent into an advanced state-of-being. Entry is dependent on the quality of the individual workout: if the effort is deep enough, sincere enough, intense enough, Huxley’s Doors of Perception swing open and the exerciser is predictably enveloped in blissful state of exercise-induced nirvana.

Conscious thought is the enemy, the destroyer of optimal human performance. The elite athlete understands this fact: they embrace and inhabit a wordless state that characterizes optimal human performance. Intense physical effort attacks the human body on a variety of fronts in a variety of ways: we self-inflict body trauma in order to induce beneficial stresses. The optimal workout creates stress. The poison is in the dose.

Our subtle task is to create sufficient stress to invoke the adaptive response–this in order to reap all the considerable benefit associated with expertly applied progressive resistance training. Too little self-induced stress and nothing of any physical or psychological consequence occur. What are the stress categories?

Mental stress
Hormonal stress
Central nervous system stress
Muscular stress
Internal organ stress

How do we create beneficial stresses and not overdo or under-do the dose?

The requisite stress dose appears when we approach, equal or exceed some measure, some current performance benchmark. Hypertrophy, strength, power and exercise-induced satori do not and cannot appear or occur in response to sub-maximal effort. Pushing up to or past capacity–in some way, shape or form–is what triggers all the good stuff.

The elite athlete is able to will his body to perform past its realistic capacity. This ability is one of the contributing factors to why the elite are the elite. At the highest levels of athletics, regardless the sport, everyone has the genetics and everyone has the work ethic, everyone is fast, everyone is strong and agile–so what separates 1^st form 5^th place?

In most cases superior or inferior placing correlates to the mental attributes (or lack there of) of the athlete. Some athletes are natural competitors and rise to the competitive occasion while others shrink and fall apart at the actual competition.

Human Nervous System

The elite athlete is willfully able to invoke the primordial fight-or-flight response, the necessary precursor to extraordinary effort. Successfully triggering the flight-or-flight response sets in motion everything of benefit that follows. How does one “artificially” invoke fight-or-flight? They create a system of psych.

Successful superhuman effort requires a singularity of mind. A person does not casually exert superhuman effort.

Elite athletes develop individualized mental methods by which they psych themselves up in order to achieve superhuman levels of performance. Athletes do not care one wit about attaining higher levels of consciousness; elite athletes only care about improved performance. An experienced, mature, seasoned athlete uses a highly developed psych designed to elevate the quality of the individual workout and elevate performance in actual competitions.

Recalibrating the mind is the necessary precursor to elevating performance. The “Psych” is a conscious, willful act. The athlete executes a mental checklist that they have developed over time. They recalibrate their mindset to prepare for the training session. Once the actual training session is underway, a highly individualized psych-up routine is used repeatedly in each exercise, drill or protocol.

By consciously focusing, concentrating and using tunnel-vision focus, the seasoned athlete optimizes their capacities and abilities. This singularity of purpose improves the quality of, and results derived from, the workout. The key to continual improvement is being able to string together long series of quality workouts, like pearls strung together on a necklace strand.

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Marty Gallagher is the author of Strong Medicine, The Purposeful Primitive and Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method. Gallagher coached the United States team that won the IPF powerlifting world team title in 1991. He is a 6-time national masters champion and national record holder. He was the IFF world master powerlifting champion in 1992. He currently works with elite athletes, spec ops military and governmental agencies.

Quieting the Mind-Monkeys

September 17, 2015 By Dr. Chris Hardy 10 Comments

Quieting the Mind-Monkeys

“This restless monkey, which is thought, has broken up this world and has made a frightful mess of this world, it has brought such misery, such agony. And, thought cannot solve this, however intelligent, however clever, however erudite, however capable of efficient thinking, it cannot, thought cannot possibly bring order out of this chaos. There must be a way out of it, which is not thought.”

J. Krishnamurti

This quote from the brilliant Indian philosopher Krishnamurti references the Buddhist concept of “mind monkeys” or what is sometimes known as the “monkey-mind.” These monkeys are the thoughts comprising an incessant internal dialogue driven by worry, fear, anxiety, and rumination. They are constantly chattering and screeching, creating a cacophony in our mind that pulls us away from the present moment. They create imaginary scenarios, reliving recent past events and anxiety-producing worry about potential future problems.

How many times have you arrived at a destination in your car and can’t remember exactly how you got there because you were so immersed in an internal dialogue? For many of us, the monkeys are chattering all day in the background without our full awareness of their presence. The monkeys are not just distractions, but have real health consequences.

Strong Medicine discussed in detail how the mind-monkeys of worry and rumination put us into a constant low-level flight or fight response (sympathetic nervous system) and activate the stress response with real physiological consequences, contributing over time to chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and even cancer.

I knew I had a mind-monkey problem, but did not realize the magnitude until I removed all outside stimulus from my environment. I found myself in this almost unimaginable situation during my first experience with a sensory deprivation float tank. The float tank is a futuristic looking pod filled to a depth of only ten inches of water. The water is super-saturated with epsom salt (magnesium sulfate) and warmed to skin temperature. The high concentration of salt allows you to float effortlessly almost on top of the water, and because the water and surrounding air is kept at skin temperature, it is difficult to tell that you are even in water. When the pod door is closed, all light and sound disappear and you feel like you are floating in a void with minimal sensations coming from outside your body.

Floatation Tank

Inside the float tank, the call of my mind monkeys was deafening. There were no outside sounds or sensations to compete with the monkeys in my brain and they made their presence known in an alarming way. I have had training in mindfulness meditation practices, but it still took me almost 30 minutes of floating to quiet these chaotic creatures of thought. I use mindfulness practices often at home and usually feel that I can get to a quiet state, but this experience has led me to question how effective I really am in silencing the monkeys. At home, there are still background noises and bodily sensations that may dull my perception of the monkeys still likely whispering in my head.

After the first 30 minutes in the float tank I was able to start tuning in to the state of my body’s internal workings. I could feel and hear my heartbeat stronger and start to barely detect my intestines rhythmic machinations. I was finally able to strengthen my sense of interoception, sensations from within my body. I used the sound and feel of my heartbeat to get into a deep meditative state. The sound of New Age music drew me out of this sustained mindfulness, gentle notes hitting with startling force as I had been without external sensation for close to an hour.

The short time I spent in this deep state of meditation, tuned to the interoceptive sensations from within my body was the most profoundly relaxing experience I have had with mindfulness. This was the benefit of the sensory deprivation tank for me. It was nothing mystical or transcendental; it recalibrated my ability to detect the mind monkeys. Now I know how loud they really are behind the distraction of the modern environment, with products of industry and technology resulting in sensory pollution, obscuring the howl of the monkeys.

Knowledge is half the battle when confronting a problem. I have a new standard for my mindfulness practice, and re-tuning with periodic floats in the sensory deprivation tank will be integrated into my self care. Remember that the health benefits of reducing the chattering monkeys are real, with a foundation in modern neuroscience and wellness practice. This is a part of how we rebuild a brain physically and functionally changed by chronic stress (see more in Strong Medicine).

The availability of sensory deprivation float tanks is increasing. A one hour float is usually less expensive than a massage session. The experience of floating without external sensations has been invaluable to me personally. I was given a reality check; my monkeys were (and still are to some extent) running wild.

The Stress Cup and Training

September 10, 2015 By Paul Britt 9 Comments

Paul Britt, RKC Team Leader with Dynamometer

How full is your stress cup? For those that have not read the incredible book, Strong Medicine, the stress cup is a great way to view your overall stress levels. The cup can only hold so much before it overfills and starts to spill. If your cup is running over then you are not able to train effectively and other areas of your life will suffer also.

As Dr. Hardy writes, there are a lot of ways to check on your stress and oxidative inflammation levels. You need to know what your cholesterol is, the levels of associated lipid profiles, and markers of inflammation. If you do not know your levels, you do not know where to go and what your end goal should be. But, you cannot check these numbers on a daily basis. I personally chose to have lab work done about every 4 months or so. That time frame corresponds with the 120 day life cycle of the typical red blood cell. I have found that any changes I have made will be detected and quantifiable in that time frame.

But, you also need to use something that will allow a daily check of your stress cup. A little background before I go any further. My stress cup is pretty full most days. I have three kids, run my gym and training business and I am a full time student in Parker University’s Doctor of Chiropractic program. I leave my house at 5:15am and often return home at 7pm. My days are long, and at 47, tend to be pretty stressful. My school goal is to maintain a 3.2GPA and my current training goal has me training for the Beast Tamer, 48kg kettlebell pistol, press and pullup. I had to find something that would allow me to check my stress level on a daily basis to maximize my training and not add any extra stress or lengthy procedures.

Dr. Hardy spoke about Heart Rate Variability at the Dragon Door Health and Strength Conference as an indicator of the health of our autonomic nervous system. To live the Strong Medicine way we want the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to be the main operating system in our daily life. It is the “rest and digest” system. However, in today’s society, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is often running at a low volume in the background. The everyday stresses that we allow to affect us keep the SNS pump primed and stress hormones continually trickling into the body. The SNS keeps the stress cup filling all day long and that affects training.

I looked into Heart Rate Variability (HRV) as a method to measure my stress levels for training. A quick, easy explanation of Heart Rate Variability looks at the spacing between heart beats. The more regular the space is between beats, the more the sympathetic nervous system is piloting the ship. You want there to be some variability between beats as that means the parasympathetic nervous system is in charge of everything. The drawback for me was the need to wear a chest strap to measure pulse rate during sleep as HRV is measured upon waking and prior to getting out of bed. It added a little to my stress cup as I did not sleep well with the monitor strap around my chest at night. Sleep is one of my cup fillers that I am working on as it is, but that is for another article.

Dr. Hardy mentioned grip strength as a possible tool to measure the stress cup on a daily basis. There are studies that have shown that a decrease in grip strength is correlated with strokes, heart attacks and overall longevity—it made sense that it would also be an indicator of Central Nervous System health. I also liked the fact that it was a quick and easy check that I could do daily before I trained.

I did some research on the subject and found some others had used grip strength for the same purpose with pretty good results. What I did not find was a consensus on numbers. Everything I read indicated that you need your baseline number, but everything else was across the board in regards to what constituted having a full stress cup. Dynamometers are pretty cheap online, so I bought one and began to play with it.

My initial baseline was an average of three different readings after two days of rest. I measured, waited five minutes, measured and repeated one more time to develop my numbers. The first training session using the dynamometer was the next day. My grip strength was dead-on my baseline and it was a great session, my press and pistol were really strong that day. I monitored my grip strength on a daily basis while using a program based on Easy Strength to train. My testing procedure is the same every time, I perform it in the same position and close to the same time that I initially tested. I try to keep the outside variables at a minimum. I feel that this is the best way to get an accurate reading.

I found on days that grip strength was at baseline or higher, I had incredible training sessions. In fact on days that it was higher, I was using a 44kg kettlebell for my lifts. But what about those days below the baseline? I tried to push through a few of those days to see what the result would be. The days that I tried to push hard, even though my grip strength was not at baseline, were rough. I did not make my numbers and I would lose a few days of training.

I looked at my daily numbers and came up with a guide that works pretty well.

Baseline: Green light to train heavy
3-5% decrease: Yellow light, medium day
6-8% decrease: Light or recovery day
10% or more decrease: Take a break and rest

Remember, this is a quick test to determine how full your stress cup is—it is just a piece of the puzzle. You need to know your numbers on blood work, body composition, and determine as many other numbers as possible (such as amount of sleep) to help you maximize your health and avoid overfilling your stress cup.

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RKC Team Leader Paul Britt has been an RKC kettlebell instructor since 2006. He is currently earning his Doctor of Chiropractic, while still training clients at Britt’s Training Systems, his award-winning Hardstyle Kettlebell Training Facility in Rockwall, Texas. Paul is a Certified Kettlebell Functional Movement Specialist (CK-FMS) and PCC Instructor and has worked with the top Chiropractors in North Texas. Please visit his website brittstrainingsystems.com or Britt’s Training Systems on Facebook for more information.

Finding a Balance Between Building and Repair: Part 2 Intermittent Fasting

July 16, 2015 By Dr. Chris Hardy 1 Comment

Finding a Balance between Building and Repair part 2

Prolonged calorie restriction seen in many fad diets is not a sustainable practice. Weight will be lost for sure, but a significant amount of the disappearing pounds will be from valuable muscle mass. Loss of muscle mass with prolonged caloric restriction has a huge health cost in the long term, especially for those with metabolic diseases such as diabetes and the aging population. Adequate muscle mass is vital to maintain metabolic health and prevent frailty as we age. It is also impossible to work out at high enough intensities to achieve the beneficial adaptive responses to exercise while undergoing long term calorie restricted diets. Our engines need adequate fuel to perform optimally.

Prolonged caloric restriction has been shown to extend the life span of rodents, worms, and fruit flies, but longer life spans have not been seen from fasting in higher primates and humans. What is clear is that periodic fasting has been shown to improve the health span in humans and can be highly effective in reversing chronic diseases if done properly.

The issues with prolonged calorically restricted diets for weight loss and the proven benefits with periodic fasting have led many of us to experiment with intermittent fasting (IF). Intermittent fasting is the practice of scheduling short term periods of calorie restriction, followed by normal caloric intake. Recent science has shown that many of the metabolic benefits of fasting can be achieved with IF without the loss of our prized muscle mass. For this reason, IF has gained popularity in recent years. For some IF works fantastically to achieve a lean physique and metabolic health, while others have not been so successful with their experiments with short scheduled fasting. What gives? Why do some people see great results with IF and others crash and burn? Much of the variability with results likely is from the “environmental” context IF is used. Let’s go back to first principles to establish a framework for successfully using intermittent fasting.

Intermittent fasting is an environmental stress (remember that our environment includes all aspects of our lifestyle) on the body and brain. The short-term stress of IF activates the repair and recycling system of autophagy we covered in Part I. Intermittent fasting will temporarily shut off the mTOR building pathway in favor of repair. The autophagy system improves the health and metabolic efficiency of our cells which translates into beneficial effects for our entire body. “Dosed” correctly, IF can be the missing link in your quest for optimum health, body composition, and prevention of chronic disease. The important point to remember is that although potentially beneficial, intermittent fasting like all caloric restriction contributes to your daily “stress cup” (aka allostatic load discussed in Strong Medicine).

Calorie restriction with IF contributes to your daily Stress Cup

The proper dose of IF is a moving target, as the other contributors to your daily stress cup determines how much caloric restrictions you can handle (if any) on any given day. If you have had a night of bad sleep and significant work or social stress, there will be very little room for the added stress of intermittent fasting. If you don’t take into account a nearly full stress cup and press ahead anyway with a significant fasting period that day, your stress cup will overflow (allostatic overload). This will create a substantial response from the HPA axis (stress system) and increase your cortisol levels. Your brain is protecting itself utilizing increased HPA axis activation and resulting high cortisol levels during allostatic overload situations. This response ensures the brain has adequate glucose, even if it has to get it from your precious muscle mass (from amino acids using gluconeogenesis- see Strong Medicine for more).

We can frame the “dosing” of IF using the concept of hormesis. From Strong Medicine, we know that hormesis is the phenomenon of something that is potentially bad for us can be beneficial at the proper dose. Calorie restriction certainly follows the concept of hormesis- small amounts produce a beneficial response while large amounts lead to a starvation state. A crucial concept to understand is that the same dose of fasting can be beneficial one day detrimental the next day depending on the state of your stress cup. This is how hormesis and allostasis are intertwined.

Area “B” represents the optimal dose of calorie restriction this day. The level of your stress cup is relatively low allowing a longer period of fasting resulting in a beneficial autophagy (repair and recycling) response.

This is a day when your stress cup is filled with other sources of stress such as poor sleep, social stress, or high levels of exercise. The length of your fasting this day has to be reduced (to the area of the green”B”). If you did the same length of fasting you did in the first example (yellow “B”) you would “overdose” fasting and overfill your stress cup. On especially high stress cup days, fasting periods should not be attempted.

The benefits of IF-induced autophagy will not be realized if you overdose your fasting period. This point deserves repeating- intermittent fasting is a stress on your body and has to be balanced with the other stresses in your life to do it successfully.

Exercise and Intermittent Fasting

Finding the right mix of high intensity exercise and fasting can be a very tough to consistently pull off. High intensity resistance training and interval training stimulates the mTOR building pathway, increasing/maintaining our muscle mass and promoting fat loss through the actions of growth hormone. High intensity exercise is also a significant stress (which is why it works) on the body and needs to be figured into your daily stress cup evaluation. This type of training directly after a period of fasting can be especially stressful and should be approached with caution and careful assessment of your stress cup.

General guidelines

For the lucky few that live idyllic lives (my Strong Medicine co-author, Marty Gallagher, comes to mind) and have relatively empty stress cups, you can get away reckless forays into fasting experimentation and be just fine. Most of us are not that lucky and need a few guidelines to keep us out of trouble:

Assess your stress cup daily. Fasting is never a good idea with an already-full stress cup.
Start with brief fasting periods when beginning IF. The most popular is fasting from dinner the night before until lunch time the following day.
Avoid fasting when planning high intensity exercise sessions that day (“feed your activity” concept from Strong Medicine). Fueling your post-workout time periods will help maximize mTOR and muscle building. If you are getting good results starting your work out in a fasted state, make sure you feed yourself adequately post-workout.
Avoid fasting after a night of poor sleep. Poor sleep is one of the biggest contributors to the stress cup.
Plan fasting on your non-exercise recovery days. This can help maximize effectiveness of the repair/recycling autophagy system.
If you can’t handle complete fasting try a reduced protein day. Recall that amino acids from protein are potent triggers of the mTOR building system and reduced protein intake will trigger autophagy without abstaining completely from food. Meals consisting of high fiber vegetables with additional fats from olive oil/coconut oil or avocados will work well for this reduced protein strategy.
For those of us pushing middle age it is important that we give potent stimulation of the mTOR pathway to slow the muscle wasting of aging (sarcopenia). It is harder for the aging trainee to stimulate mTOR compared to the younger person. If this applies to you, consider a weekly schedule with less overall fasting and more attention to resistance training with increased protein intake to find your optimal balance between building and repair.

Conclusion

Intermittent fasting practice that is informed by daily monitoring of your stress cup can be hugely beneficial. The key is to be flexible and not overly rigid with planning your fasting. If you are having a high stress cup day, don’t be afraid to ditch your fasting plans. Failing to take allostatic load (stress cup) into account will just hurt you in the long run and slow progress to attaining your fitness and health goals. Start slowly with short fasting periods and increase with small increments. Using the conceptual framework we have created with intermittent fasting and the stress cup you can find your optimal individual balance between building and repair.

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Kaizen and Strong Medicine

May 14, 2015 By Michael Krivka 8 Comments

Kaizen Strong Medicine Lead Photo

Strong Medicine has over six hundred pages of text and illustrations that will dramatically change how you perceive nutrition, training, and how you can effectively manage the stressors in your lifestyle. The concepts and how they can be applied are laid out in such a manner that, with the some simple planning, discipline and implementation, you will have no choice but to be successful. This blog post is going to provide you with some tools and strategies that you can use in order to implement the concepts presented in Strong Medicine in such a way that you will not only succeed, but will be able to do so with the least amount of stress possible.

Change… Sucks!

Making drastic changes in your life does not lead to dramatic results–it usually leads to dismal failure and a lot of brow beating! Anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution only to have it crumble within a matter of weeks (or in some cases, a matter of hours) knows that making changes (big or small) in your life is hard to do. Everyone starts out with good intentions and a wealth of willpower only to see the good intentions crumble and the willpower dissolve like a puff of smoke at the first impasse. With all of these bad past experiences surrounding change, I’m sure you’re convinced that you can’t make any changes in your life and might as well just quit now. Wrong! Just because you failed in the past doesn’t mean you’ll fail this time–especially if you are honest with yourself about the plans and tools you need to succeed. So… how do you begin making changes? The same way you’d eat an elephant–one bite at a time!

Kaizen = Continual Improvement Kaizen Diagram

Kaizen is a Japanese term that has been borrowed by the business world. Roughly translated, it means “change for the better” or “continual improvement”. As a business major in college (many, many, many years ago) I learned about the concept of “Kaizen” and how it was successfully implemented in the Japanese automotive industry. Kaizen gave everyone–from the guy sweeping the floor to the VP in charge of making million dollar decisions–the power to change how things were done on a daily basis. In other words, the power was placed in the hands of those who could make the most difference. Since then, the concept of Kaizen has been applied to banking, healthcare, government and other areas where complicated processes need to be considered and improved to increase efficiency and consistent outcomes.

How does this apply to you and how will it impact the implementation of what you’ve learned from Strong Medicine? You need to develop a simple but effective plan for implementing the nutritional and training guidelines presented in Strong Medicine. Your plan should be created and executed in a way so that changes can be small, easily managed, and built upon. Remember that the best plans are the simplest effective ones that also have the latitude for change and modification on the fly.

NOTE: Understand that these plans are best implemented one at a time. Trying to make too many changes too soon and with too much accompanying stress will make this process a lot harder than necessary. With this in mind, I feel that the concepts behind Kaizen are the best common-sense approaches to implementing any nutrition, training or lifestyle modifications.

“Eat like an Adult”

Strong Medicine goes into great detail about what and how you should eat–and how those choices are will effect you over the short and long term. There are many scientific theories and big words involved–which can be daunting to some people–but you will need to absorb it to understand what Dr. Chris and Marty are trying to do. They successfully make many complex ideas and concepts simple to grasp, and that’s vitally important for the subjects of nutrition and training. I admire people who can take complex problems and explain solutions in simple terms everyone can understand. For example, when Dan John said, “Eat like an Adult” during a lecture a couple years ago, it really stuck with me. His comment was simple, direct and to the point. Those four words make choosing, preparing, and eating the right foods a lot easier! I know those four words help me get in the right mindset when I’m preparing, ordering, and even shopping for food.

Start with the Beginning Small Daily Improvements

“Eating like an Adult” will help you succeed with the Strong Medicine guidelines. But first you need to know where you stand. The easiest (and the most eye-opening) method I know is to keep a food log for ten days. (Before you start grumbling and groaning, hear me out–the food log will give you some great intel into what’s going on and how to fix it!) Keeping a food log is as simple as folding a piece of paper into sections, then writing down everything that goes in your mouth. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, drinks, etc.–it all goes in the food log. Once you have all this information you’ll be able to create a baseline for what kind of food you are eating, how much you are eating, and what is missing from your diet. Remember, keep this as simple as possible and don’t stress out about what you are writing down. It’s just information you’ll use to create a plan!

Once you have ten days of information, what do you do with it? First, find the gaps in your nutrition. For example you might notice that during those 10 days the only time you ate any vegetables (not counting the lettuce and tomato on your hamburger) was with dinner. Over ten dinners you had a handful of salads, a couple baked potatoes (not to mention French fries), and several servings of broccoli. If that was the case, then introducing more vegetables into your evening meals AND including them as part of breakfast and lunch would be in order.

Getting Started

Does this sound like a big step and a major hassle? Not really! It just takes a little forethought and preparation and you’ll have it nailed. Prepare by having the food you need on hand, and by creating and using shopping lists. Your shopping list will guide you through the grocery store. For the most part you’ll stay in the periphery, where the vegetables, meat and dairy products are found. (Stay away from the middle of the store where the Mountain Dew and Fritos are located!) Grab your list and shop either once a week or several times a week, whichever is more comfortable or convenient for you. Remember, you’re only shopping for the things on your list! NOTE: if you don’t have a shopping list, you can Google “shopping list” for plenty to choose from and modify as needed.

Now that you have all this food in the kitchen, what do you do with it? Well, you will need to start making your own meals based on the nutrition gaps in your food log. It will be easy for the most part–in the above example, we simply need to increase the amount of veggies throughout the day. We need to make this change as simple as possible. Think about this: it only takes a minute or two to cut up some peppers or cucumbers and throw them into a plastic bag or Tupperware for later in the day. Grab some veggies and prep them for the day while you’re standing around waiting for your coffee to brew in the morning!

I can hear the whining and moaning already! “Veggies for breakfast and lunch? How am I going to do that?” Easily! Just add vegetables you like to meals you are already eating. Still confused? Here’s some ideas to help you jump start the process!

How to add vegetables to breakfast:

Add avocado and salsa to your scrambled eggs
While frying your eggs, sauté some spinach in bacon grease and serve it on the side or as a bed for the eggs
Warm up some sauerkraut for a tangy side (or kimchi for something spicy) with your eggs
Brown onions, tomatoes and mushrooms and make an omelet
Slice up some hard boiled eggs with ripe tomatoes
Slice red or yellow peppers, clean out any seeds and whatnot. Put the slices in a frying pan and add an egg inside the gap for peppers and eggs over easy
Grab a container full of sliced veggies (that you prepared the night before) and a container of yogurt for a quick and easy breakfast on the go
Chop bacon into bite-size pieces and toss them in a frying pan. Add onions and peppers then simmer everything together. Drain the excess oil, then toss the bacon and vegetables on top of scrambled or poached eggs

Small Steps Lead to Big Results

I guarantee that if you take a little time and mental energy and apply it to filling in the gaps of your nutrition, it will pay huge benefits in the short and long term. I’m not proposing massive changes. On the contrary, I think the best and most effective way to ensure your success is by making small changes that you can easily adjust to before moving onto the next step. Remember what you learned in Strong Medicine about how stress (in all its forms) adversely affects the body. Adding stress by making big changes in your nutrition will be counter-productive. Keep the concepts of Kaizen in the forefront of your mind–small changes leading to big results–and you will not stress out at all!

NOTE: The training for life guidelines will be in part two of this blog post. In the meantime, I want you to start improving your nutrition. Small increases in nutrients will have a major impact on how you feel and move. By getting your nutrition plan in place now, you will establish the foundation for a successful training program.

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Michael Krivka is a Senior RKC with Dragon Door and has been training with, teaching, and sharing the gospel of the kettlebell for over a decade. As a life-long martial artist, he is a Full Instructor under Guro Dan Inosanto in Jeet Kune Do (JKD); the Filipino Martial Arts of Kali, Escrima and Arnis; and Maphilindo Silat. He lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland with his wife and two sons. He owns CrossFit Koncepts where he runs strength and conditioning classes with an emphasis on kettlebell training, mobility and longevity. Follow him on Facebook.com/CrossFitKoncepts or Instagram.com/Michael_Krivka

Editor’s Note:

Where the Strong Medicine book is the template for lifestyle change and taking charge of your health, Mike has the beginnings of a Strong Medicine Operational Manual with this first post. The philosophy of Kaizen melds so well with our philosophy of lifestyle change that I am kicking myself for not including it the book, but this is why I try to surround myself with talented people like Mike Krivka.

In keeping with the mission of the blog for a two-way exchange of information, please share your perspective on lifestyle change in keeping with the Kaizen philosophy. Fantastic job, Mike!