Coach Chad, Amber Pierce, and Hannah Finchamp join Coach Jonathan for a deep dive into protein for cyclists, discussing how much endurance athletes of all kinds should be taking in, if you should ingest it on the bike, plant-based alternatives and more. We’ll also dig deep into VO2Max training, training stress and much more.

More show notes and discussion in the TrainerRoad Forum.

Topics covered in this episode

  1. Hannah’s training camp experience
  2. Protein for cyclists: everything you need to know
  3. Are you doing VO2Max training wrong?
  4. When to use and when to ignore TSS

Resources mentioned in this episode

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Successful Athletes Podcast

Science of Getting Faster Podcast

For more cycling training knowledge, listen to the Ask a Cycling Coach — the only podcast dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. New episodes are released weekly.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jonathan Lee: Welcome to the podcast dedicated to making you a faster cyclist to ask a cycling coach podcast presented by trainer road and coach Shannon saline with Cannondale and Trina roads. Amber Pierce. Good morning everybody. And we also have, oh geez, Hannah. I’m going to forget your main sponsorships, but you’re, you’re a private tier with pivot.

Now this much I can remember off the top of my head. I’m so sorry. What is your team? Hannah?

[00:00:28] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, pivot cycles

[00:00:29] Jonathan Lee: and DT Swiss awesome pivot cycles. And, uh, in DT. Swiss is Hannifin champ and our head coach. Chad Timmerman. Hey Chad. Yeah. Have you lost, have you lost the skiing high set? Like, like, is it all worn off now after having that week up

[00:00:45] Chad Timmerman: at powder Creek law?

No. No, quite the contrary. We’re going to go this weekend. Cause I think Switzer’s getting, I don’t know if it’s getting dumped on is definitely getting some

[00:00:51] Jonathan Lee: snow right now. I thought you meant go back to the lodge this weekend though. Yeah, that would be amazing. Yeah. We can only delay a reality for so long.

Right. So, okay. We are going to answer a lot of your questions today. A ton about protein. We get quite a few questions on protein, supplementation, protein intake, uh, all, all of it as how it pertains to athletes. Um, plant based alternatives to protein, lots of stuff. So we’re going to go into a lot of that today.

We’re also going to talk about via max and how to know if you’re doing it right or. Uh, but also above all, we’re going to go into what it is and what the objective is. So then you can have some good guidelines when you’re having to make adjustments or anything else. We’ll talk about training stress.

It’s going to be a good episode. I’m looking forward to it. So, uh, with that one thing I want to ask for everybody listening to this, please go to trainer road.com/podcast. It’s where you typically go to submit your questions, which thank you for doing that, but please, everybody listening to this, go there.

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Hannah’s training camp experience

Okay. With that said, Hannah, your training camp. I want to ask some questions to give our athletes insight into how a pro athlete like you trains and what you gained from your recent training camp.

You went to Palm Springs, California, which for those that don’t know, what’s the elevation there. What’s the weather typically.

[00:03:08] Hannah Finchamp: Oh, the elevation is like 400 feet. So it’s low elevation, which is one of the reasons why it’s form. Um, so the weather was mid seventies, mid seventies to low eighties the whole time.

So it was really nice.

[00:03:22] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And then you typically live in train in salt lake city, which is at like 4,500 feet of elevation, but all your training just goes up from there. So your average training elevation is probably a lot higher than 4,500. Yes, very much so it’s frigid there right now. It’s cold and snowy.

So yeah,

[00:03:40] Hannah Finchamp: twenties and thirties

[00:03:41] Jonathan Lee: here. Yikes. Uh, so I want to ask you some questions about this. How much volume did you do and how long was the camp in terms of duration?

[00:03:50] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I, so I’ve always done really well with high volume. It’s just something that I respond really well to it. And it’s something that I like as well, which I think is an important factor in, at all, is it makes me feel really good mentally and emotionally.

Um, so that’s probably why it works well for me. So my camp was 18 days, um, and I did 73 ish hours on the bike. Um, and then three off the bike workouts a week. So I actually packed up the big Tundra with like a hex bar and dumbbells and plates and all of that and brought it out there and set up a gym in the park, uh, three times a week and did some strength workout as well,

[00:04:31] Jonathan Lee: workouts as well.

So that’s, uh, that’s quite a. Like at the end of three weeks, how are you feeling? Cause that’s another thing a lot of people ask is they don’t know how hard to go on a training camp. Uh, how, how are you feeling with this one, your intent, by the way, isn’t to like, do. Teams sponsors stuff. It isn’t like a teen camp in many respects.

Like this is a proper training camp. So how did you feel at the end? What were the sensations like? Yeah,

[00:04:56] Hannah Finchamp: it’s a really, it’s a really hard experience, honestly. Like all aspects of it. And I’ve been doing this particular type of camp, whether in Palm Springs or someone else somewhere else, um, for four years now.

So I’ve really kind of dialed in a lot of the sensations and every time it’s different and every time it’s also the same. And I think, you know, for me, it usually starts with a lot of anxiousness to be honest. Cause it’s like, these are my three weeks. I got to get it done. Here’s the plan. Why am I not tired yet?

Why am I not tired yet? You know? Um, but then, you know, eventually it really starts to hit and I feel like, um, you know, when we time it, right, which this time I think, you know, we just, my coach and I had just, it really went well, is those first 10 or so days, you know, you find your rhythm, you get in a groove and because this is what you’re focused on, you really start to nail it.

Um, and you, you know, it’s what you’re doing all day every day. And it, it just feels almost automatic at a certain point. And then towards the end. It does start to break down a little bit at least, you know, feel it feeling like it’s breaking down and that’s, you know, since we are doing an intentional functional overreach, you know, we’re trying to get that super compensation.

So that’s what I want. I wouldn’t want to leave the camp being like, oh man, I’m feeling fresh. So usually, you know, those last three days are where it’s like, man, I’m really struggling to make it happen. And that’s my sign that, okay, we’ve done all that. We can, it’s time to wrap it up and, and really focus on recovery.

Cause that’s, that’s the exciting part. Like those last three days, I’m not necessarily going out and setting PRS. I’m knowing that, okay. After a week of recovery, man, I might start seeing that.

[00:06:45] Jonathan Lee: Um, what sort of work did you do? Cause a high volume camp. I think there’s a bit of probably a tendency to have automatic association to just say tons of V2, right?

Like high volume, so low intensity. But did you structure your work at all and was there any higher intensity work?

[00:07:02] Hannah Finchamp: Very much so. Um, most all of it had some element of structure. So I went into it in the threshold phase. So I was doing a lot of FTP style workouts. Um, and those would be structured within the long rides.

So whether it was go out, do these intervals and then finish out the ride on the trails or the opposite, go out, ride three hours, then do these work, these intervals. Um, so kind of playing with stamina and also, you know, hitting those numbers as well. But one of the things I really like to do there is either do my intervals on the road or fire roads and then hit the single track after those, um, and mix in some of that really mountain bike specific type of work.

Cause that can be really hard to get, especially in January. And then it’s hard to hit those technical races come March and April when you’re like, oh man, I haven’t done anything that scares me in a while.

[00:07:58] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And with all the gravel racing, I feel like strangely, well, this is kind of like Amber, you were working toward Cape epic and you were working on your mountain bikes.

But that would have inherently helped you had you done like, you know, rooted Vermont or any of the gravel races to just cause it, it gives you like, I mean, chatty talks about this before, too with training, you try to like, you know, raise the roof or raise the ceiling and raise the roof as well. Right. So like, you kind of like raise both to have room.

And if you do that with mountain biking, you have those skills when you’re completely blown out and you get used to handling a bike when you’re blown out, that is going to really help on the gravel bike. Did you do any other like specific, um, things that you worked on or targeted or tested during this time?

[00:08:41] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I, you know, for me, a few things I think now is the time of year when you can really work on weaknesses and I’ve found that that can actually be really challenging because when you’re working on weaknesses, you don’t always see, um, you know, your best, right? So kind of really being disciplined during these three weeks.

And for me, cadence is something that I’ve really struggled with. I like to stand out of the saddle. If you watch any of my races, you’ll probably see me out of the saddle, like 75% of the 90 minute race, which, you know, I think it’s just a lot bigger toll on my body then I maybe need to. So I’ve spent a lot of time focused on seated efforts and cadence and, um, dialing in my new mock four as well.

Cause this is, this is really a big, uh, I hadn’t really written that bike a lot going into this. So I really got thrown into it quick, put a ton of hours on it and yeah, so it was really fun to kind of play with suspension and dial and all of those things as well.

[00:09:48] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Uh, is that, I mean, seeded powers king, right?

Like, uh, just from the efficiency perspective for sure. Um, get on you. That’s hard to do because it’s not the thing that you want to do. Yes, exactly

[00:10:02] Hannah Finchamp: how I could just stand up. This would be so much easier. Oh, wait. That’s not the

[00:10:06] Jonathan Lee: point. P uh, so P famously like Mo so Brandon, our COO, uh, he climbs very fast.

Pete does not climb very fast. Brandon also stands all the time. Pete never stands. Like the only time people stand is if he is actually sprinting for the line, that is it. Like he never stands. And he used to mock Brandon so much, because as soon as Brandon would get out of the saddle, he’d be like getting a little hard for you, Brandon.

Huh? Like every time, every time. Yeah. It’s funny. Um, so I guess, uh, what else, or what did you learn from this whole process? Like what are the things that you’ve learned after your three week camp that you’re taking into this season of going after lifetime grand Prix? Yeah, I think,

[00:10:53] Hannah Finchamp: you know, obviously there’s things that I learned in terms of.

You know, the physical aspect, like I made huge leaps and bounds on my seated power and on my cadence. And those are things that I learned, but I think, you know, a lot of the stuff that I learned as well as off of the bike stuff and, and what goes on between the years of just looking at the big picture, because especially in a camp like this each day is not isolated.

Um, and in some ways you want to go into the day with an isolated viewpoint because they don’t want to go into the workout thinking, oh man, I might not achieve this because of all of these things, but also understanding that yesterday and the day before and the day before that impacts today and today impacts tomorrow.

And so, you know, there are times when, um, my coach might say something, I think he put in to my workout. Something like easy day day-to-day don’t argue, you know,

Yeah, because, and getting on the phone with him being like, we only have 18 days, why would we have an easy day in here? And he’s like, well, because tomorrow’s going to be really, really, really hard, you know? So it’s not just about what you can do today, just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should do it.

It means there’s a bigger picture. And so I think understanding that and taking that in an 18 day scope and applying it to the whole season is it’s hard and it takes a lot of maturity. And I think I’ll, I’ll be learning at my whole career, but every little inch that I can, can learn that and truly believe it, I think will make a big

[00:12:34] Jonathan Lee: difference.

Yeah. Awesome. How are you recovering after it? Have you like, did you do nothing afterward for awhile? How many days did it take until you got back on the bike? Um, I

[00:12:45] Hannah Finchamp: took, so I took two days completely off and then started building back into it. So, uh, today is one week out and I texted my coach yesterday and said, Hey, I’m feeling really good.

Like I’m ready. Full gas. Get back, get back after it again. We’ll see if he gives me that, but, um, yeah, it took a week to feel really ready to hit it hard again.

[00:13:11] Jonathan Lee: Nice. Awesome. Very Amber is this giving you flashbacks?

[00:13:17] Amber Pierce: Very fond ones. Very fun ones. It’s so fun. It’s so fun to be able to have that time to just, just go full out and dedicate, you know, where you’re just doing nothing, but like eat bike and sleep. It’s

Protein for cyclists: everything you need to know

[00:13:27] Jonathan Lee: awesome. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. All right, let’s get into the deep dive. Uh, let’s talk about protein. So some common questions that we received from, uh, athletes about protein in the past.

Uh, we’re just gonna run through these Chad. You’ve been doing so much research. Oh. And Chad’s that Chad has to jump out for something. So it’s a good time to do this, but Chad’s been doing so much research. He has. I have a massive list of studies. Maxine’s been trying to put them into the YouTube description, but I think we’re going to break the actual length that you, the length constraints for that.

So in the live chat, we’ll throw in a lot of studies. We’re also going to be creating blog posts off of this as well. So you should go do train road.com/blog, and you should subscribe if you listen to this podcast and you don’t subscribe to that, you’re missing out. It’s like absolutely where you need to be.

We have fantastic writers that are always working on stuff and putting in there, but we’re going to have a lot of different things that we’ll cover. Chad, do you want us just to run through the questions here? Um, is there anything that you want to share before we just get into the questions? How, yeah.

Geez,

[00:14:26] Chad Timmerman: we can do this so many ways and I know all of us have contributions to this, so I’m hoping very much that it’s conversational. I kind of just a set aside rather than one long 13 sub topic, deep dive. I would like it to be 13 separate conversations on individual matters. So that’s cool. Ideal. Um, how the questions fold into that?

It might be a little tricky, but I’m sure we can work it out. There are a couple of things that I think will set the stage for what we’re going to talk about. Just some understanding in general of the muscle protein synthesis. And then when, once we get to the aging topic, there’s probably something there that could also kind of stilt all this so that we can.

Build further conversation on it. Cool. Um, so boy, I guess I could first just cover the, the inroad into muscle protein synthesis, and then we can look cause we have, uh, a whole number of questions general to specific and between the three of us, four of us, I know, I know we’ve covered it all quite, quite thoroughly.

Absolutely. Okay. So let’s just start with you don’t muscle protein synthesis or really protein synthesis. Um, and I, I prefer the latter term because if we see this instead as a protein accretion, um, it’s a little more descriptive since this being the building of it. Whereas accretion is the breakdown plus this, and this says, which is really the recycling of amino acids.

And that allows us to see this whole protein turnover process in a broader sense, which is important because yeah, we are largely as endurance athletes, as athletes in general, looking at contractal proteins act in mice, and we’re looking at the stuff that makes our muscles perform better so that we can perform better.

But there’s so many types of protein. A few of them are for instance, structural proteins, think of something along the lines of. Enzymatic proteins, you know, those proteins that facilitate all the chemical reactions that are happening all the time within our body’s defense proteins, such as antibodies and hormones, which are effectively, you’re essentially signaling proteins.

And that’s just to name a few of them. So there are a lot of proteins. The point being that the protein we ingest in our meals oversees a far greater purview than just our muscles. Okay. There’s quite a lot outside of the muscular system that’s taking place. And then I’ll just wrap this up with, there are a couple of primary ways for us to affect protein accretion, um, namely it’s it’s nutrition.

And, and I know we, we snap to proteins all about protein and it is largely about protein, but carbohydrate and fat also interplay. I mean, all three macros work work together in terms of the secretion process and of course exercise. So on the nutrition front, a couple of things, first off nutrition actually activates the signaling.

And in specifically the anabolic signaling we’re pursuing. And secondly, it provides the nutritional building blocks, the actual amino acids necessary for the animalism that we’re chasing. And then in terms of exercise, we’re looking to directly stimulate muscle protein synthesis. That is a consequence of exercise.

And, you know, at least with respect to strength training, this is something that can persist for up to 24 hours. I’ve even seen longer and endurance training in an intensity dependent duration dependent, uh, It’s it’s, it’s a bit contingent on what we do as far as insurance. Training’s a big difference between peddling for an hour at 60% and doing intervals at 150% on off.

But that will influence also what that protein synthetic window looks like. Hmm.

[00:17:47] Jonathan Lee: So that’s like, um, I’m envisioning like the, what was it? The bat signal that they used to put up in the sky, right? So we eat the nutrition, puts it up there and tells everybody to get in line to be able to do that. And then we can build those building blocks and then once we’re actually working them off souls and they can use that to be able to buy weight that’s protein synthesis.

[00:18:06] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. Well, nutrition independently of exercise, exercise independently of nutrition. And then of course the two together influence proteins.

[00:18:13] Jonathan Lee: Pretty simple, really like the, like it’s a, it’s a co it’s an easy to understand concept in that regard, right? Uh, that we take it in and our body gets ready. We do the work, they work together and then it gives us more protein.

[00:18:25] Chad Timmerman: And if we work hard, we get a stronger response, a stronger stimulus.

[00:18:29] Jonathan Lee: Now, the reason that this is so important, Chad, just at a very basic level is because a is particularly with endurance training. Uh, you can break down, uh, your, you can cumulate a lot of fatigue and damage muscle fibers and do everything else with these long repeated motions, uh, over hours and hours.

So even though a cyclist and, you know, a runner, a triathlete might not try to look like, you know, Mr. Olympia or Mrs. Olympia here at the same time, it’s extremely important because you’re rebuilding quite a lot of damage that’s being done. Right. Even though it’s not big lifting big weights.

[00:19:00] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. I mean, there’s automatically associate protein intake, accretion, synthesis, assimilation, all those things with strength training as though that’s the only context in which has relevant and us as endurance athletes, we have so much of our bodies.

And so much of that is dependent on protein. All we, all we really see is carbohydrate because yes, that fuels the work feels restocks our stores so that we can work again. But protein is incredibly, incredibly important. And just going on behind the scenes that entire time, and if it’s not addressed efficiently, most stuff breaks down and it gets even more important as we work into the latter years of our lifestyle.

Especially if we plan to be athletes throughout.

[00:19:39] Jonathan Lee: Um, so, uh, can we get into the questions of basically how much do I need to take in then, uh, for, for athletes? Totally. So a lot of cyclists asked this and we kind of build up in our minds that like a gym rats, just like basically swim in a bowl of whey protein at all times.

And they’re also chewing on like, you know, protein bars while they do that. Uh, and if you look up general protein guidelines, it can be difficult because you might not be getting guidelines for endurance after. So Chad, let’s go, uh, let’s first. I would say that let’s, let’s be respectful and let’s go to women first here, uh, because I assume it doesn’t matter women to man.

And how much should each person be taking in, in those contexts?

[00:20:20] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. And we can, I’ll kick this off and Hannah and Amber can certainly take it from there, but it’s, uh, I have only a little bit of information on the whole male female differences. Uh it’s it’s going to be a quick contribution for me, and it’s not because it’s not important is because there’s just not a heck of a lot of literature out there.

I mean, there’s a ton of blogs. There’s a ton of magazines. There’s a ton of information that you can acquire, but I wouldn’t rely on any of it if I’m on it. Um, the, the issue is that most of the research literature and a lot of the research does include women. It’s just demographics in general, and they typically bracket it by age, just refer to adult recommendations.

So commonly, I mean, super commonly, the recommendations are based on body mass alone. It doesn’t really differentiate between men and women. And it does make sense in the terms of a human, this size needs this much protein in human, this size, it needs this much protein and the muscle mass is probably going to follow in pretty close accordance with the size of the person.

So it does make sense to me and do see more studies surfacing. And I do see a greater, uh, importance placed on the fact that we typically only look at male athletes. We typically only look at younger male athletes and that shift toward older male athletes has definitely taken place. And the shift toward older athletes in general, and to shift.

Female athletes, which is, which is refreshing and nice to see, um, what I did come across, which is kind of interesting, ever so slightly off topic, but is one thing is women in this article just, or this research paper, just surfaces that women respond really similar to strength training in terms of both strength and hypertrophy as men do when we put it in relative terms.

So the changes are super similar. As long as we look at the changes in the increase from baseline. So it was men started here. Women started here, men finished here, women finished here. What was the percentage change, really close across athletes. So the excuse that, you know, men are more anabolic in nature.

Men, uh, have a greater capability to pack on mass. Well, because they’re larger. All these things can, can kind of distract us from the point that women can achieve a lot the same, roughly very closely actually as men. So that’s, that’s encouraging from a strength training perspective on the women’s, uh, female side of things.

And then secondly, women tend to metabolize or oxidized less amino acids. And that’s kind of cool because when we’re talking about, when we’re super concerned with, you know, maybe my carbohydrate intake was insufficient and now I’m going to start leaning on the protein end of things, and that’s not desirable.

And it happens, you know, depending on the circumstances, women seem to have a bit of a estrogen protective effect. So it’s kind of a, a win for, you know, the higher estrogen levels. And then finally, just that the recognized differences are between men and women or male, female are just most evident during, and I quote the main phases of hormonal changes.

So I interpret that to be, you know, during certain times of the monthly Menzies, during perimenopause menopause itself, closely post-menopausal and that’s, that’s really all I have to offer on this matter.

[00:23:20] Jonathan Lee: This is, uh, Amber, you mentioned working with a nutritionist and when working with that nutritionist, you found that you were protein deficient.

Yeah. Can you explain that process, what you went through and what you learned?

[00:23:32] Amber Pierce: Yeah, so I, I, you know, getting to that level, I felt like there was. You start to really break down the really granular stuff. So by that point, I felt like I had the basics down pretty well, and I really wanted to just like fine tune and get, you know, the absolute most possible optimization.

So I started working with a nutritionist and the first thing that blew my mind is when we sat down and looked at what I was eating, um, was how much more I had to eat. Period. I would have told you that I was a really good eater until I sat down with this nutritionist. And we looked at what I actually needed versus what I was actually getting.

And what I was getting was so much less than what I needed. And then it’s kind of breaking that down a step further. Protein in particular was a place where I was not getting nearly enough. And when, when he broke down what I was going to need to eat in order to get to that, you know, we were, we were doing kind of grams per kilogram goals.

And looking at that, I, I, I literally did not think it was possible. I kind of freaked out cause I was like, I can’t do this. It’s so much protein. And that was really, I mean, that was so eye-opening to me because I felt like, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t somebody who was what I would have considered energy deficient in any way.

And I was training and, and progressing really well. But I tell you what, when I started eating enough and I started getting enough protein, I felt world better. It was amazing. And it was in fact possible, but I think it’s so easy to slip into, um, uh, uh, a mental space of complacency where you think I’m good.

You know, if, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Like I can’t put my finger on anything in particular, anything outstanding that feels wrong or inadequate. So I’m probably okay. But having kind of this independent third-party audit what I was doing. Wow. It w it was mind blowing. I really, it’s hard to, it’s hard to overstate that because it was, uh, quite the

[00:25:28] Jonathan Lee: shock.

And was it, uh, what was the recommendation in terms of grams per kilogram? I don’t know if you remember it was it, was it one somewhere between 1.5 and two? I think

[00:25:39] Amber Pierce: that’s probably a good range. I don’t remember off the top of my head, so I don’t want to put, nail down a number and have it be wrong. But it was, I just remember thinking in terms of how many chicken breasts I would need to eat.

And I was like, that’s obscene.

[00:25:57] Jonathan Lee: Um, Hannah, have you experienced this too? In terms of like, uh, I guess that, that same thing of, wow. I actually have to take in more than I thought to hit. What’s considered to be adequate for protein intake.

[00:26:09] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, definitely. I think I’ve also worked with a nutritionist and had a similar experience and that, you know, one of the first things we looked at was, oh, okay.

We need to increase protein. Um, which can be really hard. Like Amber say, you immediately think of like chicken breast or something. And you’re like, I. I’d have to eat that for breakfast and there’s just no way,

[00:26:32] Amber Pierce: but I

[00:26:32] Hannah Finchamp: think too, you know, something that’s interesting, um, for me and, and, and maybe others will relate to this as well too, is when you hear something like you need to drastically increase your protein intake, you immediately think of, okay, well, if I’m increasing my protein intake, I’m probably increasing my caloric intake as well, which means maybe I have to decrease something else or, or make space for this.

And it’s really not the case. Um, whether, you know, at least for me, in my experience, your body really regulates according to the energy that you’re giving it. And so, you know, when I’m really optimizing my nutrition, sometimes I’m eating or I can eat way more calories and maintain the same weight because my body’s using it.

And you’re just, you just have more energy. You’re having better workouts and you’re using that energy versus if you didn’t give yourself. Uh, energy that food, that protein, your body just gave it to you. Um, and so when you hear, you know, increasing protein, it’s not necessarily meaning you’re gaining or losing weight, it’s simply what it is, increasing protein

[00:27:46] Jonathan Lee: that that’s, um, that’s one of the arguments in favor of like paying attention to macros.

Right. Because then you’re making sure that you’re getting like the right sort of thing. Uh, Chad, is there anything else that you want, so, and I want to put this in context. So, uh, if I was so me weighing, uh, geez, how many, I think like 68 kilograms or something. So if I was 68 kilograms and I was eating somewhere around 1.8 grams, that’s like three or four chicken breasts a day.

I think that I’d have to take in, um, in order to hit that three ish a little under three, actually forgive me. Yeah. So that gives you like a good point of reference to be able to understand that just in those terms, but it’s not like we just get protein for meat and we’ll get to that later. We, there are a lot of different sources from which we can get it.

So don’t everybody run out and go get three chicken breasts for breakfast. Uh, Chad, is there anything else you want to share on the gender split side before we run into the next question, which is maybe even a more common one of, okay, well I’m ultra endurance. Do I need protein or I’m a sprinter. Do I need more protein?

[00:28:48] Chad Timmerman: No, and I’m ready for

[00:28:50] Jonathan Lee: that. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s get into that. Cause that’s like, so this is once again, playing on the I’m ultra endurance, I’m not trying to be a big muscly person. So as a result, I probably don’t need as much protein or there’s the other side when they say, well, I’m doing a lot of work and I’d probably need protein.

And then sprinters, just to it’s like, well, I need to be big and muscly. So I need protein. Are any of those assumptions? Let’s just go through and check

[00:29:14] Chad Timmerman: as, and they’re valid to a degree. I mean, different, different intensity levels do yield different protein requirements, different energy requirements in general.

Uh, so if we look at this and I kind of broke this down between protein requirements from the endurance perspective, and then we can later on talk about the strength perspective. There’s some interesting learning there, learnings there, especially if you’re engaged in strength training, along with your endurance training, the first, um, regarding strength training versus endurance training athletes.

I try to encourage people. I’ve tried to adopt this view as well, to see protein requirements and recommendations relative to simply resistive activities. It really doesn’t matter what it is, is any form of exercise or training requires both energy and protein. And those are two important things. And Amber just touched on it.

If you can’t operate in a sort of HANA, you can’t operate in a caloric deficit and expect the results that your hard work should earn you. If you’re providing yourself with in general enough caloric intake in a day outside of whatever the protein concerns may be. Um, I decided to study all these are linked out.

There’s a whole pile of links on this one, man. There’s a lot of information on protein out there as it applies to all things. It’s, it’s crazy, uh, endurance training plus an insufficient supply of amino acids. So, you know, you’re getting enough food, but you’re not getting enough. I mean, acids enough protein exerts or exhibits negative effects on capillary synthesis.

Very important to us as endurance athletes who need to be able to sufficiently perfuse the muscle, deliver the oxygen, deliver the nutrients, and we don’t get enough amino acids that can handle. I mean, again, proteins build things. They build these blood vessels, um, the synthesis and turnover of mitochondrial proteins.

I mean, that’s just laying the stage or setting the foundation for, or a mitochondrial dysfunction, anabolic disorder, uh, sorry, metabolic disorders and all the things that follow. So, but the synthesis and the turnover of those proteins is dependent on those amino acids, surprise, surprise, uh, things like oxygen, transport proteins.

What about our hemoglobin? I mean, that’s a protein and we need hemoglobin to carry that oxygen to these muscles that we’re asking to do so much work point being simply as that everybody needs protein. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sedentary, active, athletic elite across the, across the spectrum. We all need it.

But with more activity, more intensity, more duration typically comes greater protein requirements. So current requirements, I find them shameful are the USDA recommends that we get 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. So let’s take the example of an athlete who has 165 pounds that translates neatly to 75 kilos.

That is a poultry 60 grams of protein a day. Uh, it’s just, I mean, even in a sedentary state, that just sounds insane. So if we look, if we go back to 2011, Stuart Phillips, uh, Luc van loon to two names, you’ll know, well, if you’ve done any research into protein, as it relates to sports, but especially endurance sports recommend the endurance athletes aim for something quite, quite a bit above that between 1.3 to 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.

And this is important distributed across three to four doses. You can’t just sit down and eat all at once and expect the same outcome. So again, the example with that, 165 pound athlete, 75 kilograms that equates to anywhere from a hundred, roughly a hundred up to 135 grams of protein. Um, which has a bit more than 60 grams a day.

I mean, we’re talking on the higher end a bit more than double it, interestingly and forgive this, it’s a bit of a digression, but the experienced athletes may overtime require less. And I came across this and it’s like, why can that be, as it have to do with fat metabolism turns out, at least in part it’s due to an enzyme called interacts with leucine elevates at the onset of exercise attenuates over the course of endurance training, blah, blah, blah.

It took me down a rabbit hole. That’s probably not super relevant to this discussion, but it did point out a very relevant point within one of the studies is that adequate energy in terms of calories, plus adequate carbohydrate intake actually can reduce our protein necessity to about a gram per kilogram per day, as long as we’re only operating at low to moderate intensities.

So this kind of shows us that if we’re sufficient, adequate, whatever term you want in, in the rest of our diet, both in terms of energy and the macro contribution or distribution, doesn’t have to lean as heavily on the protein side of things. Interesting. I mean, take it, take it for what it’s worth. It’s just one point in one paper.

Uh, but importantly, the paper also, and I quote, pointed out that protein serves both as a substrate so we can metabolize it and a trigger for adaptation after both resistance and aerobic exercise. And I want people to cling to that comment. And it’s not just about strength training. It’s not just about resistance training.

Again, it does signal adaptation, post aerobic exercise. It’s not just about carbohydrate. So first takeaway is that protein is important for adaptive signaling, both in strength, training and endurance training. Second takeaway more protein is necessary during periods of high intensity high-frequency long duration.

And that’s when we start pushing towards the upper bound of 1.6, 1.8 grams per kilo. And then finally, I’ll close this little section with a, uh, 2016 endurance training study that put things, uh, uh, put the current recommendations at that time up to the 1.2 to 1.4 grams per kg per day. So a little more in line with what I just said.

1.6 1.8 and then that same year a study by keto and more actually use a control three-day endurance training block to find that protein requirements actually climb into that 1.6 to 1.8 that I just talked about in endurance train athletes during high volume days, the point being that, you know, when you’re doing a lot of training, when you’re asking a lot of your body, your protein requirement increases along with everything else, you need more energy, probably need more carbohydrates, stands to reason, and you need more.

[00:35:05] Jonathan Lee: Another interesting contextual add to this. So a single egg is six grams of protein. So when Chad is saying that a 75 kilogram athlete and like base recommendation is to have one. So if you look at that, that’s basically, if we’re talking like 11 to 12 eggs a day, uh, that doesn’t really seem like the most, uh, if you’re just eating that exists, if it just doesn’t really seem like the best diet to just be eating eggs, but at the same time, uh, that should hopefully give people some sort of context because my earliest, uh, and this is purely anecdotal, but in the individuals athletic or not, that I’ve spoken to knowing that we’re going to be doing this protein deep dive I’ve been doing very unofficial surveying, and just asking people how much they take in.

And I have not found a single person that actually takes in adequate amounts of protein for, to even hit that Bazell rate. Like it’s tough to do so then that’s endurance athletes it’s even harder. So yeah, absolutely. I think that there’s also this, have you noticed this Hannah and Amber too, because there is more like, let’s just face it, there’s more social pressure placed on women in terms of what you’re eating with guys.

It’s like, guys can eat like an absolute dumpster fire, like a college frat guy, and there’s no judgment. Whereas for a woman it’s like, if you’re not eating a salad, then you know, then it’s different. So there’s a lot more pressure on you. Is this assumption that eating excessive protein will make me a bit.

Person and a fat person too, if I’m not exercising enough, is that present for you? Because I want to address this head on, I think it’s a concern that a lot of people do have. Is that perhaps one that you faced in the past as athletes?

[00:36:46] Hannah Finchamp: For me personally? No. Um, I feel more of the pressure on the carbohydrate side, because for some reason, at least in the realm that I’ve been in, um, non-athlete friends are probably more afraid of carbs.

Um, so a lot more of my friends would be more likely to pick up a chicken breast and a salad than they would be to pick up a huge plate of pasta. Um, so that’s usually where I see the biggest difference in my diet. Yeah.

[00:37:19] Jonathan Lee: Yeah.

[00:37:20] Amber Pierce: I think it, I think, um, that, that kind of social stereotypical pressure is more about general quantity and less about one particular thing.

I mean, to be honest, it’s kind of like goes back to why Hannah saying, like protein’s having a real moment right now.

[00:37:39] Jonathan Lee: That’s the best way to put it.

[00:37:42] Amber Pierce: So it’s not necessarily protein in particular, but when you, like I said, like when, when I was working with this, this, um, nutritionist, I was going to say therapist, but they’re like a nutrition therapy,

but when I was working with him, that was, that was, I was, I felt very uncomfortable. About increasing my intake so much because so much of the messaging that surrounds you, not only in life in general, but especially when you move in health and fitness spaces, the messaging is just constantly less, less, less.

You need to eat less, you need to restrict, you need to minimize. And the idea that I would need to eat more was really hard to wrap my head around because it, it really flew in the face of everything that everyone around me was saying. And yet, when you look at the science and you look at the evidence it’s plain as day, there’s no on that front, there’s a lot in science that is really uncertain and sticky and con contextual.

But the one thing that is like absolutely clear is you need to get enough food period. So if you’re not taking in enough period, then there’s a real problem. And I think that was the component that was really was the most difficult for

[00:39:00] Jonathan Lee: me. Yeah. Yeah. Great insight. Um, Chad. Yeah. One other side with this, you mentioned with more demand on the body, we need to increase our protein intake.

So a common question that we get is, well, I’m adding in strength training. So do I need to take in a huge amount more? And the reg I assume the recommendations you just said would cover that situation in the sense that as you increase activity, you then also need to increase this. Is that correct? Is there anything that’s special for strength training when you’re incorporating it with endurance athletes?

It

[00:39:31] Chad Timmerman: does get tricky. I actually kind of lumped this into a brief discussion or a brief offering on weight loss, protein, as it relates to weight loss and strength training kind of tied into that pretty nicely. Cool. So, and I like to first refer to a pretty recent paper by, against Stu Phillips. And if you don’t know the name and you want to learn about protein, you need to know that name.

And he, this paper in particular referred to high quality weight loss, and they were looking at elite athletes. I mean, athletes who actually want to lose a little bit of fat, but they want to retain their lean body mass, no lean body mass sacrifice is allowed. So the endurance training plus fat loss kind of pins that range at the 1.6, it’s not outside of what we were accustomed to based on the discussion so far based on what endurance athletes need, but it puts the high end of that range all the way up to two points.

Grams of protein per kilogram per day. So that’s, that’s way up there. Now, the solar, the severity of the caloric deficit, the intensity of the training, these are things that are going to influence, which end of the range you’re on. You know, are you coming in a couple of hundred calories short of what you require?

Are you going for five to 800, which is ridiculous and unsafe, don’t do it. And that will say, you know, I need to supplant this many of my carbohydrate calories with this many grams of protein. Um, but the example again, using the same size athlete, the 1 65 pounders 75 kg, or that puts the range at roughly one 20 up to 180 grams of protein per day.

And if you distribute that over four meals, it’s a heck of a lot of protein dose, a heck of a high protein dose per meal, somewhere along the lines of 30 per 45 to 45, sorry, which just basically says probably have more doses don’t don’t, don’t try to just bury yourself in protein at each feeding because man, over the course of a day, doing that four times is going to be cumbersome.

It’s going to be a bit of work. So let me direct the sit strength trainings for a minute and refer to a very recent paper. Well, a few years ago by, uh, Brad Schoenfeld, Alan argon, and they talk about they’re looking at anabolic maximization. So they’re looking at it from more strength perspective, probably a physique athlete, people who are trying to pack on as much mass as possible, but there are some takeaways that are, that are valid.

So in the case of anabolic, maximization the ranges again, at 1.6, pushing up to 2.2 that’s, that’s not a big surprise, but they break it down in a more useful way. And they talk about dosing it in 0.4 grams per kilogram per meal, across at least four meals. And there’s that at least you can’t do it across four.

Well, do it across five or six and it doesn’t have to be a whole meal. It can just be a protein snack in between somewhere, eat breakfast at six, you have your snack at nine you’d breakfast at noon. You have your snack at three. Breakfast, or I’m sorry, dinner at six and then a post or a pre-bid infusion at a nine, 9:00 PM.

It’s not that hard to do across a day, especially if your concern is adding muscle mass to hit the upper limit. That, that 2.2 grams per kg per day, that, that shifts up to about 0.5, five grams per kilogram per meal. So the same athlete, 75 kilograms. Now we’re looking at about 40 grams per serving gets you that 160 grams per day equates that 2.2.

So that’s, if you’re really looking to pack on the mass, it’s not necessarily us. And it’s also, it kind of touched on this already, but if you don’t want to eat four times a day, I mean, if for whatever reason you want to do it in less three doses to meet the daily intake. So three squares a day in, in a study that I’ve linked to here actually led to less fat mass sanely mass over 34 randomized control trials.

So we’re looking at a whole lot of trials, a whole lot of people involved. Do you want to do it in three? Go crazy. I mean, it’s, it’s a lot of protein to ingest that. Um, and then Eric Helms is a resource I like to lean on. Anytime it comes to dieting and strength training, one of the, one of the fellows over it, uh, stronger by science.

And he recommended that dieting during strength training you aim for now, this jumps up a bit to 0.3, all the way up to 3.1 grams of protein per kilogram of fat free mass of fat free mass. So you’ve got to deduct your, your, your fat weight first look at your lean body mass, which in the case of this 165 pounds, 75 kilogram person, let’s put them at 12% body weight that knocks them down to 145 pounds, 66 kilograms getting them.

I mean, there’s 150 to 200 grams of protein per day. I mean, you know that 2.3 to 3.1 range, that’s a heck of a lot of proteins. So I guess in the case of adding master, retaining mass and dieting, during strength training, you gotta eat a lot of protein. Um, pro tip regarding this whole dieting plus strength training is the satiety effect.

Uh, is actually kind of tied to meal viscosity. It was just kind of an interesting study that came across randomly. And the point is, is that solid is more induces, more satiety than semi-solid, which induces more satiety than liquid. And the takeaway is that if you lower your satiety, it can translate to higher performance.

There is a link between, and we’ve seen this on the bike, for sure. If you come into it under fueled, I mean, it affects your brain immediately and it affects your body. Eventually, same thing with strength training, you can have the same amount of calories, but if you do it in a more solid form of food, which yes does mean a bit of planning, you’re not going to want to go into it with a full belly of protein prior to a hard workout, but just, just some information to tuck away.

And the more solid the food is, the greater this tidy effect. And then final point when it comes to dieting, uh, whether it’s intense training or strength, training is always strive for preservation of lean body mass. And that’s why these protein requirements are so high, right? They want to lose fat and maintain the muscle.

Mass is lastly, we want to do, I just can’t think of any context where it really makes sense to ditch muscle mass. I suppose we could contrive a couple of bodybuilder who wants to be the best endurance athlete ever. Yeah. Maybe you’re going to shed some, some lean mass, but everyone else can hang on to it.

So some upsides of that, that maintaining that lean body mass, it improves your post-prandial post-meal glucose disposal improves your lipid oxidation improves your, uh,

[00:45:41] Jonathan Lee: Uh,

[00:45:43] Chad Timmerman: basal rate or your basal rate or your, your, uh, resting rate. Uh, and these are all the things that had lists, but th there’s also an obvious potential in most cases for performance effects, more muscle.

I mean, again, why would you want to ditch muscle that can actually do work in most cases? You want to hang on to it? So, so lean body mass preservation also offers further support for slow weight loss. And this is the point that I really want to get at that the study that looked at over 200 subjects and each of them lost in excess of 8% of their body weight, that the loss of free fat mass or fat free mass, sorry.

So lean body mass. And this is often as a result of the rapidity of the diet. If they, if they cut too much, too fast impact their daily energy expenditure saw an increase in appetite and an increase in the eventual weight regained. So by sacrificing that lean body mass, they hampered their, their ability to resist their appetites call and put on more weight than the, than the people who lost the weight more slowly, who didn’t mess with the system as much, which brings me to my final point, which are some general recommendations, not mine.

Although I do agree with these weight loss should take place at a really conservative rate. We’re talking anywhere from half a percent to a percent of body weight per week, and you have to track your body composition. You can’t just look at the scale. You can’t just hop in, hop on there and hope that that’s everything as you want it.

You know, I’m, I’m losing just fat and preserving my muscle mass. This isn’t influenced by waterway. You have to look at all those things. If you really want to be diagnostic about this whole thing, if you want to understand everything that’s going on. This ought to be coupled with an effective strength training program and like the use of the word effective, because it should be effective.

You’re not just going in there and pushing, lightweight around on machines and calling it a workout have to have sufficient protein intake. Think that’s clear by now and obviously adequate sleep.

[00:47:31] Jonathan Lee: I want to recap a bit of what you said, repackage it a bit, Chad, because I think it’s really important to catch.

It’s really tempting to feel like, oh, I’m in this catch 22, because if I’m trying to lose weight and I’m an endurance athlete, I need to make sure I get adequate carbohydrate. And the world’s typical answer to dieting and losing weight is just don’t eat any carbs. And yeah, you drop a lot of water weight when you do that.

You don’t have any glycogen in your muscles. And as a result, you drop a whole lot real quick, but that’s not the goal here. The goal is lasting changes in body composition toward performance and health. So remember, even though you feel like you can’t cut out carbs because you’re doing that. If you just feel yourself properly and give yourself high quality food, you making sure that you’re getting enough carbohydrate on the bike, that you’re making sure that you’re getting enough protein, that half a percent to 1% that Chad said of total body weight that is ideal to be losing.

When we’re talking about that weekly scale, that’s not going to look like a whole lot when you’re looking at a number in terms of what you’re losing. And in many cases, if you’re coupling it with high quality training, you may not be shifting that number because you are increasing lean. However you’re doing the right thing.

You’re giving your body what it needs to perform. And that is so important. Like don’t think of the only way to get to weight loss is to deprive yourself. Perhaps the best way to get to weight loss is to nourish yourself. And if you do that, impair it with activity appropriately, then your body will just simply become what it needs to become.

So when the question is, how do I lose weight with cycling, being an endurance athlete, when that comes up, don’t just go to cutting out food instead, look at how can I feel myself properly and then take it from there. That’s the much better approach.

[00:49:17] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. Just make it, just make it a marginal decrease in your carbohydrate intake, such that you’re not losing weight at two faster rate, recognize that you do need a lot of protein, especially if you want to preserve lean mass that you already have, and that you’re walking a tight rope.

It’s a tough time. You’re not going to not going to dance through weight loss while doing endurance training, coupled with strength, training, and hope. Everything just feels good the whole time it’s going to be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to be too uncomfortable. And if it is too uncomfortable, I would argue that you’re losing mass or losing weight, losing fat, whatever.

It may be a too rapid rate. And if you’re doing that, you’re probably going to sacrifice some of your lean mass and that carries consequence. Oh,

[00:49:54] Jonathan Lee: for sure. And typically like most things with training, once you start to notice the signs, you might have been in a downhill trickle for some time to get to that point.

Uh, so you can put yourself in a hole pretty easily. Once you realize where you’re at and that it’s too far down, then it’s really difficult to actually pull yourself back out of it. So it can be tricky. Can we talk about timing a little bit here, because that’s one thing that we talked about how to fit it in.

You have these meals and then like Chad said, Chad, you recommended fitting in more meals or smaller meals or whatever else you want to do it, but let’s talk about timing in relation to training when you should be taking in protein. Sure. Because this is, this is a really common when people ask, should I have it in my bottles or should I just take it in beforehand?

Should I take it in after like BCAs are a really common thing that people ask if I should have those in while I’m training. So what would you say on the timing aspect relative to training for proteins?

[00:50:48] Chad Timmerman: Yeah, so this, this is a confusing one because it’s all over the place. Um, and here it’s, I think too easily confused or mixed up with carbohydrate intake.

And we’ve learned that unless you’re working out a second time a day, carbohydrate intake is pretty flexible. You can just get it in over the course of the next 24 hours and you’re good to go. It doesn’t, that’s not the case with protein, at least not. If you want to optimize what that protein is doing.

So, uh, harken back to 2013, and I think this was the paper that kind of kicked it all off is a really a who’s who of exercise, nutrition, scientists, and the lead author was Jose Retta. And they looked at maximizing muscle protein synthesis via different forms of protein distribution. And they were looking at strength athletes, but so much of this carries to endurance athletes, just fine.

In the conclusion they reached. Every three hours, ingestion of 20 grams of carbohydrate elicited the highest levels of muscle protein synthesis, you know, close the book and deal. That’s what we need. Everyone’s on the same page, but everyone’s not. But by the way, that’s an, if you do that four times a day, that’s 80 grams of protein.

That’s promotes. That’s probably insufficient for athletes. Pretty much all of them that is insufficient. So this is, you know, in this case, Intermountain necessary for someone up to that, 165 pound example, we’ve been using that 75 kilogram example that does yield 1.6 grams per kilogram, per day. As long as you do it, six times a day.

I mean, you have to ingest that over the course of, like we said, 6, 9, 12, 3, 6, 9, go to bed, that’ll get you the 120 grams. Otherwise you’re probably going to be deficient. So it’s not to say that doesn’t work. It’s not to say there isn’t there isn’t validity to this. And, and the explanation behind it is that you need sufficient leucine.

And we can talk about that. I have some notes on it. If we want to dive into it a little and other essential amino acids in order to promote muscle protein synthesis. And that ability is apparently temporarily muted, following a big protein dose so that you can’t do it all at once. With, with fewer bigger doses, you have to incrementally apply this particular, uh, form of nutrition, this macro, uh, of note.

I’ll just bring it up since we’re on this topic, that the whole claims that frequently. Uh, dietary or, uh, intake, frequency, you know, eating multiple times a day, increases your metabolic rate. It’s not supported. And just in general. And I linked to a study that lays this out very clearly. It’s just, don’t re don’t read into that.

If there’s any effect at all, it’s, it’s insignificant. Uh, also three does appear to be better than too high protein meals. I don’t think that’s really news to anybody, but the takeaway is that from this particular study linked, is that Nicholas. Breakfast protein actually bears on favorable consequences across the remainder of the day and really across, you know, your body, your performance.

I

[00:53:31] Jonathan Lee: didn’t have breakfast today. Yeah. Well, that’s

[00:53:36] Chad Timmerman: something you may want to address. And man breakfast

[00:53:39] Jonathan Lee: is the easiest time you guys keep going in the show,

[00:53:44] Chad Timmerman: but let’s talk about breakfast for a second because it is the hands down. Easiest time to duck out on your protein requirements. So easy to pour a bowl of cereal and some milk.

Sam looks got him four grams, eight grams, 12 grams, whatever my protein is four to five, or my cereal is four to five with a Brit protein. I’m probably fine. I promise you. You’re not, unless you’re eating on Nate quantities of a cereal.

So, and then one other study and it may not seem relevant, but it is. They looked at competitive male rowers and these guys were trying to operate in a surplus so that they could pack on mass and they distributed their protein intake across three meals. And then another group did it across six meals over the course of the day, which is what I just said is, you know, I recommend in terms of small protein doses frequently, but they found that there was no effect on weight gain, no effect on body composition, no effect on appetite.

So if for whatever reason, you don’t want to eat a ton of times a day, this study at least backs up. The possibility that three times a day is just as good as six times a day when it comes to body, weight, body composition, and appetite. Okay. Now let’s talk about one hour prior, one hour before. And this is it at least regarding strength training.

The, the, this study showed that, uh, pre-workout intake is maybe a bit more effective than post-workout intake. So the T the takeaway there is that a pre-workout protein supplementation, or just protein ingestion is more effective at muscle protein synthesis than post. So again, from a strength training perspective, kind of interesting.

And then I think a question that almost always follows is why not make my post-workout protein immediate? Why do I have to wait this this hour? And you don’t have to, you can ingest it immediately, but you kind of want to tie it to the intensity of your workout, perhaps even the duration of your workout, because both of those things can actually reduce gut and do reduce gut blood flow, which can incur for cause a transient intestinal, transient intestinal damage.

And in doing so, this impairs your protein digestion and absorption capabilities during at least early post-exercise recovery. So straight off the bike, straight off of an intense workout, straight off a very long depleting workout, your gut might not be up to the task. It’s not. So you can’t do it just to say, you might not be maximizing your protein ingestion in terms of what protein can do.

If it’s given an intestinal track, that’s ready to accommodate it. So the point is if the intensity was high, the duration was long and maybe a combination of the two. Give it a bit of time. As far as during workout nutrition or during workout protein intake, strengthen. Yes. Endurance activities, both benefit from.

Carbohydrate during to prevent protein oxidation. Right? So, so the carbohydrate, isn’t just a few of the work it’s also to prevent us from oxidizing proteins and then also protein during to stimulate muscle protein, synthetic rates and decrease muscle protein degradation. So, you know, that whole positive muscle protein balance that we’re looking for, it’s not however to increase acute performance.

So the whole idea that we ingest protein while we work so that we can perform better, not much to back that up, really, not, not anything that I came across. However, there’s a whole lot that says that we can support adaptation during exercise versus just pre and post. You know, we can set the stage pre we can obviously facilitate recovery post, but this supports, and there’s quite a lot of support that shows us that we can support the adaptive process while we are actually delivering the stimulus for it.

[00:57:19] Jonathan Lee: So, yeah, contextualizing that, that looks like if you are just have a single race day, it’s probably not important. You won’t, you, aren’t going to race better by taking in protein while you ride. Right. And protein can also, depending on how you take it, it can really mess up digestion and make it so that you don’t take it many.

Exactly. Um, so it’s really tricky, but if you’re talking about training a training block and you’re talking about day after day, sort of a thing. This small level of supplementation could likely help your body continually make the favorable adaptations you’re chasing right.

[00:57:53] Chad Timmerman: Adaptation that will eventually lead to better performance, but not necessarily

[00:57:56] Jonathan Lee: in the moment.

So would that look like taking in something like BCAA or what, like digests easiest when you’re on the bike? Yeah, I

[00:58:04] Chad Timmerman: didn’t, I didn’t look into that. So I really don’t have anything for you. I do know that, you know, whey protein, it seems to have the last, anytime they do studies where they need quickly delivered protein and milk products in general, or a company with lactose, I don’t know too many people who want to ingest milk while doing a workout and I keep it cold first off.

And secondly,

[00:58:26] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know I’ve done it

[00:58:29] Chad Timmerman: actually. It’s not

[00:58:31] Jonathan Lee: pretty.

[00:58:32] Hannah Finchamp: Is this something that you would only recommend for really long-term results? Or what about for something like a stage race?

[00:58:39] Chad Timmerman: Absolutely. Over the course of a stage race. I mean that, that the stress under which your body comes over the course of day in day out racing needs to be facilitating every manner it can be.

And protein is obviously very

[00:58:53] Jonathan Lee: important. The tricky part is just, how do you take it in like, uh, cause I’ve heard before and I have no science to back this up, but I’ve heard, uh, the contrary argument to taking in something like branch chain amino acids is that it’s just simply not a diverse enough profile or not sufficient to actually it’s not the high quality stuff that your body needs.

In other words, right. You

[00:59:15] Chad Timmerman: know, unfortunately, it’s one of the areas that I didn’t get to because the little bit that I did look at didn’t seem to be a heck of a lot. There. It seemed like it would be kind of filler space. Just tell people don’t worry so much about BCAs, worry more about getting essential amino acids and a full profile of amino acid.

[00:59:30] Jonathan Lee: So cyclist, if, or, sorry, researchers, if you’re listening to this, this’ll be super easy to find subjects for. Have people ride at like tempo. It’s a sweet spot for hours on end and have them drink milk and then tell us how it goes. I’m sure that, uh, you’ll get a lot of people signing up for that study. If you can do it the

[00:59:45] Chad Timmerman: right way, you can hit mini marts and actually get cold chocolate

any real work. I

[00:59:53] Jonathan Lee: just don’t see that working out.

[00:59:56] Hannah Finchamp: I actually tried to incorporate some protein during the Breck epic, and it was like nearly impossible in terms of like during the actual

[01:00:05] Jonathan Lee: racing. Yeah. What did you take in, uh, was it like a, what type of food to get the protein?

[01:00:11] Amber Pierce: Um, not

[01:00:13] Hannah Finchamp: optimal. So I think a lot of people would probably try not butters, um, or like bars, but I’m allergic to nuts.

So adds like an extra element for me even. So I was trying, um, sunflower butter and it’s just so high in fat and not high enough in protein that it’s just like, there’s no way you could get enough to be significant without like. Feeling so grabs

[01:00:39] Jonathan Lee: it shuts off the valve for everything else too. Like the car, all the car, carbohydrate utilization that’s going on in there now suddenly hits a roadblock because you’ve put in too much fat and protein.

It’s

[01:00:49] Hannah Finchamp: true. Yeah. I was actually mixing it with applesauce. Um, which everyone listening right now is like, Hannah’s so gross,

[01:01:01] Jonathan Lee: but it made it palatable, right? Yeah, exactly. So this is a good example of us to never curse our, what was it? Middle school teachers when math teachers and they were telling, giving us the word problem of how do you get things across the boat, but you only get a certain things across the board to the other side of the river and not other things nutrition is that problem in real life.

So yeah, don’t say that your teacher didn’t prep you for real life. Um,

[01:01:25] Amber Pierce: this is, I just want to just jump in here, cause this is a really, really good example of, Hey, we can take, uh, an isolated study or two or five that suggests a particular optimization. Um, but just because we can say that based on a well controlled lab study or a few lab, well controlled lab studies doesn’t mean it’s going to be possible or realistic when we’re applying it in real life.

So it’s really important to distinguish what are we looking at in terms of the science? How are we looking at the science? And then how does that actually break down in terms of how we do or can apply that in real life? And I think looking at that, looking through that. We want to think about nutrition in terms of hierarchy.

Right. Get the basics down first. And then once we’ve got the basics, then we can start looking at things like nutrient timing. So, right, exactly. Um, um, we’re focused really, uh, on protein today because that’s the central question that we want to address, but I think it’s also important to know that none of these things can really be, we can’t really look at any one of these things in isolation.

We try to with the studies and the science, but even looking at post-workout nutrition in isolation doesn’t work because it depends on what did you have during the workout? What did you have before the workout? How well fueled have you been over the last few days? All of these things. So what you eat pre mid and post, and then the rest of the time, all of these things work in tandem to create an end result.

So, you know, even though we’re focusing on protein here too fat is also important. Obviously carbohydrates are important. We’ve been bringing those into the conversation a lot here, too. Um, so I think it’s just important to step back and take, uh, like a real life view on what it is that we’re talking about here, because everything, the way that this is going to play out in real life is going to be a little bit more complex.

And we’re going to have to get a little bit more creative sometimes or focus more on basics than on optimization, depending on what’s going on in real

[01:03:29] Jonathan Lee: life. That is such a good point, Amber, uh, because researchers are not marketing. And that is a really important thing to change. So a marketer tells you what to do, right?

A researcher is simply saying, this is what we observed, but just because they observed that does not mean that that is something that then translates directly to our action. It should inform us, and it should stand as a data point with all important context attached. But boy, is it so easy to take a study or even take the title of a study or the central concept of a study and to pull that and just decide that, Hey, this is how I’m going to do companies do this nonstop, but this is exactly what you need to do.

Individuals do this it’s common. So the

[01:04:13] Amber Pierce: important thing is to take and that I don’t want to throw, this is a terrible thing because I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but it’s a terrible, terrible thing.

[01:04:22] Jonathan Lee: Um,

[01:04:24] Amber Pierce: but the science is good, you know? So this isn’t to say that the science isn’t worthwhile, but.

When we’re talking about how we’re going to apply this in real life. Look, think of the science as a guidepost. This is your starting point. So this is what the science suggests. This is a very good evidence-based starting point. Then look at how, how can you realistically apply this in your own life? Give it a try and see how it works for you.

What are the, what are the contextual constraints that you’re working with in your own life? Maybe that’s a scheduling thing. Maybe we’re going to talk about this in a second. I think you’re vegan. And so your options for protein are going to be a little bit different. Um, all of these things are context.

That’s really important. That’s going to impose constraints on how you can apply this stuff. So the science provides an evidence-based starting point from there. You need to look at how, how can I realistically apply this for myself and my own life, and then do some self experimentation too, and figure out what it is that’s going to work really well.

[01:05:19] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, this is, uh, there’s responsibility in interpreting science, right? There’s a, there’s a whole lot to it. So it’s D it’s difficult because we always want to have like the answer and we want to just go, yeah.

[01:05:32] Chad Timmerman: You just have to recognize that research is, is narrowing context, but it just is, I mean, it can get hyper, hyper specific contextually, so it’s all going fine.

It is. It’s wonderful to read that and think that it might carry, but that’s the point of it. It might carry, it might not. Right.

[01:05:50] Jonathan Lee: Chad,

[01:05:51] Amber Pierce: you’re the master of this, like taking the really specific science and then breaking down down, like, okay, well, what does this actually mean in real life? It’s not always, it’s not always the conclusion for what this means in real life is not always going to line up with the conclusion of a study.

Yeah. And

[01:06:05] Chad Timmerman: I’ll accept that compliment happily. That’s very nice of you to say, but it did take me some time to get there. So if you just go ahead and glance or glaze over those first couple of hundred podcasts and then join us a little later in the process, you might see evidence of what

[01:06:18] Jonathan Lee: Amber just described.

It don’t do that. Listen to every PA every episode, please. Thank you with a bit of

[01:06:25] Chad Timmerman: a

[01:06:26] Jonathan Lee: forgiveness. Chad, we have three questions here

[01:06:31] Chad Timmerman: before we move on from that topic. Let me, let me just close out. I did want to address, um, the, the, uh, protein ingestion prior to sleep because it is something that closes out the day.

There was a lot of, I mean, every example I provided had a 9:00 AM dosing and as far back as 2012, and there have been many. They’ve replicated the study to some extent that evidence, that protein ingestion just prior to sleep, you know, 20, 30 grams does in fact, attenuate muscle protein breakdown. So, you know, decreases it and increases muscle protein synthesis leading us to that, you know, sought after positive muscle protein balance that we want.

And don’t fret any added mass this, see this more as positive adaptive effects. You’re not going to bed and you’re going to yoke up as you sleep. This is not what’s going to happen. You’re going to furnish the necessary protein and you’re going to do it at a time where your body wouldn’t be getting it otherwise where typically most muscle protein synthesis, tanks and muscle protein breakdown is on the ascent.

You can actually kind of curb that a bit, especially if you use a slow, slow digesting protein, like a casing.

[01:07:35] Amber Pierce: Oh, go ahead. I would just say, I really wanted to make a t-shirt that says sleep to get swole, but now we can’t and I’m set.

[01:07:41] Jonathan Lee: Gosh, dang it. So babies do it. So I know Hannah, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was

[01:07:49] Hannah Finchamp: just going to totally validate what he said by saying that something that during training camp, um, I was really focused on is, especially when you’re putting in that hard of work and burning upwards of 4,000 calories a day, and it’s hard to get in the necessary protein like that without a doubt.

That was just whether I wanted it or not. I would usually have a protein snack before bed.

[01:08:11] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. There we go. Yeah. I have noticed that as a habit with. Good professional athletes. I’ve been around before the evening runs out. They always make sure that it’s funny. Like there’s like, you know, that meme where there’s the hands that shake and they join over something.

It’s like, uh, it’s like maybe unhealthy people in pro athletes. And it’s a midnight snack right before bed. That’s what they have in common, but it’s, it’s funny to see, like they usually are. It’s, it’s more like macro focused and they’re making sure they’re getting enough protein. And when they’re training back to back hard days, they’re making sure they’re getting even more carbohydrate because they simply can’t get enough.

So it’s cool. Cool to see, um, okay Chad, uh, should people eat more protein on rest days? That’s so this is like the common assumption is rest day, starve myself because I’m not working today. And then I can get back to eating once I do work. And this goes along with the same assumption that we all have naturally, that we need to earn our food, which is a bad one to have.

We don’t need to look at it in that respect. Instead, we should look at it as how do I feel my body to make the changes that it needs to make, whether that’s through training or whether that’s through adaptation thereafter, but Chad, what say you on, on protein intake? Does it need to be periodized at this scale between Workday or.

Eh, this

[01:09:33] Chad Timmerman: is a very simple answer. I think I don’t have any dive on this, but based on everything I’ve read based on everything we’ve talked about so far, it probably just means you lean toward the, the, the lighter end of the range. You’re not doing the work. You’re not experiencing the intensity, the duration, you’re not, the toll is not being exacted upon you.

So obviously you don’t need the higher end of the range. You don’t need to furnish as many, uh, rebuilding building materials as you would, if you had just done quite a lot of work. So if you’re staying on top of your protein work relative to the workouts on the workout days, ingesting it prior during post, getting it across, you know, evenly distributed, distributed across the day, getting sufficient quantities during each of those distributions, then rusty comes around, just look at the workload.

It’s obviously decreased. So shifts toward the lower end of that, of that spectrum.

[01:10:23] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. That’s the thing it’s important to note that he didn’t say only eat protein on rest stays. Cause I’ll hear a lot of people be like, oh yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t work out today. So I’m not really going to eat any carbs.

I’m just going to go protein fats. And it’s just, it’s such

[01:10:39] Jonathan Lee: a slippery slope. Yeah. Well also you put out a very key point that we need to put more weight on Chad. If you’ve been keeping up with your protein supplementation properly, then perhaps you can shoot for the lower end of the race. But that’s a big assumption because most of us probably are not keeping up with that.

And it’s the same thing with carbohydrates too. It’s really difficult if you’re in the middle of a training block to stay on top of it. So your rest day, rather than a day of deprivation, your rest day is actually a day where you can catch back up and you can make sure that you’re giving your body what it’s been deprived of, just because of the nature of training,

[01:11:15] Chad Timmerman: the, and that’s real.

And I think you can play catch up. I just don’t want people to fall into the trap of playing catch up, waiting for the rest of you to catch up on their nutrition. That nutrition needs to be taken place as optimally as possible, all along the course of your training, such that when you hit that recovery day, you are pretty on top of it.

If you have to play any catch-up, well, there’s an opportunity, but don’t use your recovery days as that opportunity.

[01:11:37] Amber Pierce: Yeah. I like, I want to jump in here cause I think this is a great, um, time to talk about. There’s a, there’s a really cool study at the title of which is, uh, nutrient timing, a garage door of opportunity, and it’s an excellent study and it gives a really nice overview.

This is from 2020 aren’t at all. Um, and one of the big take homes from this is we want to think about all of this in, uh, in terms of a hierarchy, right? And this gets back to what you were saying about how do we apply this in real life. So if we’re talking about wanting to get the most out of performance specifically, so this is, this is the goal of performance.

Training, right. You got to train. You have to get that training stimulus. That’s number one second. Most important is your daily intake. So what are you taking over the day? So this goes exactly to what Chad said. You want to be consistently getting enough of protein, carbohydrates, everything. So you want to get enough nutrients enough, caloric intake enough protein on a daily basis.

That’s the next step in the hierarchy. Then once you’ve nailed those two things, you’re getting your training stimulus and you’ve got your daily intake down. That’s when you want to start to consider timing. And so timing in terms of the way we’re talking about this it’s really, and Chad use this word.

Exactly. It’s an opportunity. It’s not a requirement. So really you want to get your baseline requirements, the training stimulus and your daily intake. Those are the really, those are the foundation that you need. And then you have an opportunity with pre mid and post pre sleep. All of these timing, manipulations that you can use, you have an opportunity to perhaps get a little bit more out of it, but really it’s that hierarchy.

When we’re talking about, you know, there’s performance, there’s ability to repeat, we’re talking about potentially being able to avoid injury. And then even some of this has some implications for immune function, but it’s important to think of all of these things working together, because again, they don’t work in isolation and yeah, I would, I would really suggest anybody.

Who’s interested to check out that paper because it gives a really nice contextual overview of kind of the history of the science and where we are now and how you don’t need to panic. If you’ve been trying nutrient timing and you missed a step or something, because really the most important thing is that you’re, you’re making sure you’re in a good energy balanced state based on what you’re doing just day in and day out.

[01:13:56] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, well said, Amber will said, Chad, we have three specific questions and then we’ll have more information, anecdotal information and everything else on recovery windows. Um, as well as some stuff on animal, uh, different, uh, non-animal sources of protein. Chad, do you want me to go through the questions that you have?

Uh, I can read the first one from Mike. Cool. He says, uh, the recommended amount of protein for weight loss varies from one gram to, to get two gram for each kilogram of body weight, body weight, which seems like a large range for weight loss diets. And once again, if you think of it from one to two grams, doesn’t seem a whole lot, but we need to look at it between it’s basically a hundred percent jumped from one gram to two grams.

It’s quite a lot. Right. Um, he says, uh, I’ve also heard that you shouldn’t have more than 20 to 25 grams of protein in a shake at a time because your body can only absorb so much protein at a time. And then the rest gets wasted. Does this apply to lean meats as well? And can you eat enough lean protein to store excess as fat, or does it not making lean meat?

The perfect weight loss food? So there’s a lot of questions packed into this, but I think that the core question that we’re getting at is, is there a limit to how much you can take, you covered that in terms of what seems to be optimal, right. And how you take it in, but the whole like fat storage thing.

Do you want to address? What do you want to address in this question, Chad?

[01:15:17] Chad Timmerman: Whittle it down to it. What I think, I mean, we already covered the recommendations for weight loss, with endurance training, strength training, relative to protein intake. So let’s just look at what happens to the excess protein. So can we just eat as much protein as we want and magically lose weight?

It just goes away somehow. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. It just doesn’t. Um, so, um, for first off, there’s one paper and it used a term that stuck is irreversible oxidative and amino acid catabolism. So meaning that it gets burned, it doesn’t, it doesn’t come back. It really anything over 20 grams per meal is metabolized.

You can burn it, you can use it for energy, right? Or you can store it, whether it gets stored as carbohydrate or fat glycogen or fat, uh, it’s, it’s packed away for later use. It’s not energy, it’s not building blocks or strands, animated into urea and, you know, basically passed or translated into other organic acids.

But, you know, is this entirely accurate? I mean, it is, but does it take place sharply at 20 grams per meal or 20 grams per meal? Thereabouts, the research has in fact demonstrated that muscle protein synthesis is elevated for two to five hours following. I mean the last provision it’s in protein, your NPS is going to bump up for at least a couple hours, maybe longer.

And we’ll, we’ll talk about why that might be. Uh, and then the research has also demonstrated that more amino acids won’t change this. It’s something called the muscle full effect, but they’ve pinned that at 20 grams and called it good, or at least some studies have. And, and these base, these, these findings probably amongst others serve as the basis for this whole, every three to four hours recommendation.

And they also serve as the basis for this recommendation of rapidly digested or fast digested protein is almost always way, right. Which in my opinion is absolutely useful, but I think it’s probably best reserved for post-workout recovery, protein intake. I think a more slowly digesting proteins have a much stronger place in the rest of the diet.

So, uh, uh, I’m not sure what date that was, but flash forward to that, that same paper. I think I may have already talked about probably with Brad Schoenfeld and Alan argon in 2018, they pointed out the limitation in a red test study, which is the one I talked about where you would only get 80 grams over four servings.

And, and, and they weren’t taking aim at him specifically so much as trying to figure out, you know, this is accurate. It doesn’t seem like that’s enough protein for most athletes to operate on. So as a reminder in iterative study, the total intake was 80 grams, which actually equates to less than a gram per kilo per day.

So it’s more in line with the USD requirements, which may be, was what they were after, but in their defense, it was also just a 12 hour study, not a twin on a 24 hour study. So if we do double that, there they’re pretty much right on, right on track. But, uh, Reta also used only fast digesting whey protein, and then I’m not shaming whey protein at all.

That that stuff is legit. And it’s, it’s a terrific source. Um, but in this case, just that, that 20 grams. So this is relevant because when, when protein is ingested with other macronutrients, the rate of digestion changes and, and with it, so does the amino acid assimilation. Okay. So way in particular metabolizes really rapidly talking about 10 grams per hour, hence this whole two hour recommendation, every couple of hours you can reduce again.

And you’re probably stay in right on top of that muscle protein synthesis. And a quick note is this rapid absorption can actually lead to lower overall rates of MPS and higher rates of amino acid oxidation. So because you’re ingesting it so quickly because it’s reacting so quickly, you might not get as much muscle protein synthesis.

As you could out of it. And you might see more of that amino acid intake oxidized, it’s almost too rapidly burning at least as the argument here. So the point is that slower digesting protein is arguably a better option. Most of the time. I agree with that. Uh, and then the same goes for slower digesting proteins.

In general, for example, you were talking about eggs earlier, a cooked egg, the protein metabolizes at about three grams per hour. So very slow by comparison to whey protein. So if you were to eat an omelet and achieve your 20 grams intake, I would take roughly seven hours to metabolize. Wow. So the amino acid distribution and assimilation is going to take place over a much slower time course, which means you’d probably get away with more protein intake than just that 20 grams without wasting the rest of it.

[01:19:44] Amber Pierce: Yeah, I knew. I’ll say two athletes over the course of my career, who were really big on traveling with hard boiled eggs. And you would not believe how many hard boiled eggs they would go through on a daily basis. It was amazing.

[01:19:58] Jonathan Lee: That’s it? That’s an awesome protein source. So that settles it. Everyone should have hard boiled eggs and eat those.

Like, that’ll go great.

[01:20:06] Amber Pierce: Very well for regions though. So we’re going to have to, we’ll have to get, we’ll have to touch back on that, on the

[01:20:11] Hannah Finchamp: bike, on the bike. That’s your own progress? Just don’t eat them on the

[01:20:15] Jonathan Lee: plane. Oh, I know any closed

[01:20:18] Chad Timmerman: spaces.

[01:20:20] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, please doubt. Can we actually move into the alternative sources chat?

Um,

[01:20:24] Chad Timmerman: in a minute? Yes. Let me just close out with a couple more points. Um, so, so what we’re, what we’re driving out here is that the slower digestion leads to less oxidation of the amino acids. So we want, we don’t necessarily want them to be oxidized. That’s not what we look for when we want to oxidize substrate is fuel.

If we’re looking at carbohydrates, amino acids have different different ends. And this leads to a greater whole body muscle protein synthesis, which is the holy grail. That’s what we want. Right. And many factors actually influence the rate of protein, assimilation, metabolism. I mean, you know what, what’s your meal composition.

What’s the size of your meal. There’s just so many other things that this study, like we were just talking about. It simplifies things too greatly in their context, they found out something useful, but does it create. Not necessarily, especially not to athletes who are doing a ton of work in a day, day after day, but the paper’s conclusion, the Schoenfeld, uh, Aragon paper is to maximize anibolism.

So again, they’re, they’re looking more at strength athletes, but their recommendations were 0.4 grams per kilogram per meal across at least four meals. And that will push them up to 1.6 grams per kilogram per day. If you want to be at the higher end of that range, then it’s 0.5, five. So, so do the math multiply your wait times this, and now you have your, your, uh, grams of protein per serving that will nudge you up to that 2.2 grams per kilogram per day.

But let me close with an important point in this endurance context is that this study in particular was about maximization. So endurance athletes are likely to hover around that lower, that lower end of the range, that 1.6 grams per kg, and that bears out across so many other studies, so many other recommendations, but this does demonstrate that more than 20 grams per meal doesn’t necessarily mean that the remainder is going to be metabolized or excreted can get away

[01:22:11] Jonathan Lee: with more.

So. Let’s get into the alternative sources part, because this is, uh, so there are people, whether it’s by a nutritional choice and you choose to be vegan, or whether it’s also by a dietary restriction of another way, if you’re allergic to something within whey protein or anything else to get into the options that you would have, Joe or Joel actually says, I’m a vegetarian and I’d like to be a vegan, but I can’t figure out how to do that.

Without lots of protein supplements, yogurt, cheese, and eggs are all great sources of protein. But for 1.9 grams per kilogram of body weight, this can be 20 to 28.5% of my daily intake, depending on activity level. So this Joel, this is one question from Joel, but we have gotten many, many questions about this in terms of alternative sources of protein non-animal ones in particular, um, from people Chad, but let’s say you on this

[01:23:06] Chad Timmerman: chime in on this.

I definitely have some contributions. Um, mostly there’s in fact, all of them are studies in favor of the fact that you can keep up on a vegetarian, whether it’s Pesco vegetarian. Oh, vegetarian, strict vegetarian. Flexitarian I mean, you, you can make it work. You can absolutely make it work. At least the science supports it.

Um, I do think I was looking over Ambrose notes. I think she’s probably got a better handle on this than I do. I could chime in with some contributions Hannah’s notes or the Hannah’s. Okay. So someone else,

[01:23:34] Jonathan Lee: someone else, Hannah. Um, so we’ll actually, I want to get into this though, this very thing. You mentioned just before this, that we have, uh, depending on the composition of our meal, that means that we can get more or less value out of a given source of protein as well.

That it’s not just, it doesn’t work in pure isolation. And I think that this is where it gets complex too. When you’re talking about vegetarian diets is just the fact that you can get protein for everything from kale to sprouts, to there’s lots of different sources, but it’s a small amount and it may not be as complete as something you would get from an animal protein.

Is that correct? Chad, that’s an assumption that I’ve heard before. I have believed that, but I don’t know if it’s true.

[01:24:17] Chad Timmerman: I think the chief concerns are a couple. One is that all the amino acids aren’t available in sufficient quantities, when you look at plant-based protein alternatives, um, to put that another way it’s will an adequate anabolic response be stimulated and more importantly, will it be, or as importantly, will it be supported?

So really what is, what is a protein quality? And one of the terms I came across a couple of times was this highest biological value, this HPV, which unfortunate acronym, but basically it was you’re looking at what the greatest yield of protein synthesis may be. And this is found when all the essential amino acids are present.

The other concern surrounds the whole idea of pure protein. So if we look at just soy, just wheat, just P just Michael for a fungal proteins that. And this is not limited to plant-based diets. I might add. So it’s, it’s often leveled at them, but I mean, it goes just the same. When we look at me based proteins or animal based proteins, but protein as, as a part of its whole food matrix acts differently than isolated protein.

So when we pull these out and expect the same results from them, and we may not get them in the study that is referenced so often as one by Stephen van Billiet, uh, where he looked at is basically the egg study and it’s titled consumption of whole eggs, promotes greater stimulation of post-exercise muscle protein synthesis, then consumption of ice and Neutrogena.

So basically same protein around amounts of egg whites in young men. So they just looked at whole eggs versus egg whites, same amount of protein. And what they found was it, the whole eggs increased this post exercise muscle protein synthesis more than the egg whites did take away being is that there’s different anabolic effects from whole foods due to the other nutrients that, that are packed with them that may be lacking in pure proteins.

I’m

[01:26:01] Amber Pierce: laughing because in the live chat, Jesse Forsen had an excellent dad joke. He just said, it’s the egg sectional diets.

[01:26:11] Jonathan Lee: Uh, it had to happen. It had to happen to Hannah. You have some, some like some practical guidance and advice on this as well. Um, I think that you’ve, you’ve gotten this from Dr. Stacy Sims, correct?

Yeah.

[01:26:24] Hannah Finchamp: I mean, I think that being vegan or vegetarian, I always really respect those individuals because I feel like they have such, they must have such a great knowledge of protein. Um, because at least for me, I mean that, that is one of the barriers. Not that it can’t be done, but it does require a certain level of knowledge to understand how you’re completing a complete protein, how you’re getting all the right amino acids and all and all of those things.

Um, and so, yeah, from Dr. Stacy Sims, the, one of the things that she talks about, and this goes great with what Chad was just talking about is for example, something like whey protein is digested so rapidly and absorbed so rapidly, um, that if you’re talking about optimizing in a certain window, it’s great.

Uh, because it goes into the body so quickly, but something like soy for example, is, is a lot harder for your body to digest. And so Dr. Stacy Sims comments that you would need 50 grams of soy protein to match the biological effect of 25 grams of whey protein. So it’s just understanding that not all types of protein are necessarily created equally or equal.

Time periods and something like leucine is a critical part of the equation. Um, so she also recommends that for every 30 grams of protein, you have to have three grams of leucine. And she recommends doing that about three times a day. And obviously that’s going to be totally contingent on body weight.

But once again, going on with what’s Chad saying, that’s these doses multiple times a day. Um, but for example, good sources of lutein leucine would include lean meat. If you’re vegetarian, obviously not going to work Greek yogurt, if you’re vegan, not going to work, um, not butter on squatted, sprouted, grain bread, and then BCAA is, can actually be found in green tea.

So there are non-typical sources of protein that you can sneak in a little bit here a little bit here, a little bit here that all add together to create your needs. But I think that you have to get a little bit creative when you’re not having the typical source of protein, and you have to have a pretty good understanding, not just of when the label says, you know, five grams, 10 grams, 20 grams, like what are those really coming from?

And what types are they and how is that affecting your body in particular?

[01:29:00] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, this is. Let’s get into two other points now, uh, one we’ll get into aging athletes and then I want to get into practical advice thereafter in terms of recovery windows in particular, um, and really Hannah and Amber, let you to take that one as in, I mean, I’m just the facilitator here, so not sure what I’m doing here, but Chad, um, in this case, a question from ed, he says, can you address the question of whether older or masters athletes require more protein than younger ones?

And if so, how much? A super common assumption we hear as well?

[01:29:33] Chad Timmerman: Yeah. And this was the question that kicked off my whole interest into, and not just because I’m a masters athlete, because I want to understand what happens to the body as it ages, it’s going to come for us all. So don’t think removed from this threat because I’m pushing up against it.

It doesn’t mean I’m going to get there

[01:29:49] Jonathan Lee: eventually. All right. Let’s say you, okay, let me, let

[01:29:55] Chad Timmerman: me set the stage by discussing a protein as it relates to aging in general. And then we can talk specifically about masters athletes. So the truest threat to muscle strength, muscle function, and therefore performance is sarcopenia.

So if you’ve heard this, this term, it’s just the age related degeneration of muscle of skeletal muscle, both the muscle quality and the quantity and less tissue. So the quantity end of things, just yields less strength, Leal yields, lower physical performance. Lower capabilities in general. It’s not a desirable thing.

Doesn’t matter if you’re an athlete or you’re a sedentary, or I hope at least an active person. This is something that is undesirable to say the least. Sadly. Also there. Equates to a blunted response, to both strength, training and endurance training and protein ingestion. So it carries all the ways that we can, you know, should be able to defy it hard, the ways that it effect or the things that it affects a typical onset.

I mean, it starts as early as mid thirties into the early forties, perhaps, but it isn’t until your fifties or sixties where it becomes most noticeable. And it’s really attacks that type two fibers. If you have to put it in terms of loss per, uh, the loss rate per year, we’re talking half a percent to a percent of muscle mass loss per year.

And that’s where some qualifiers, if you’re actively working against this, that is not you. And not to that degree. Anyway, Dr. Brendan Egan also mentioned that strength diminishes at a greater rate than the loss of mass. So at, at like about 1.5 times, the rate of muscle loss. So this is not a one-to-one loss of strength to mass sorta ratio, unfortunately, and then the real bad news that you can’t stop it, but the good news is it, it can be attenuated.

It can be slowed. I’m sorry. These are hard truths,

[01:31:43] Jonathan Lee: mean fatalist based on what we know so far.

[01:31:46] Chad Timmerman: Good luck. I’d love to say otherwise

[01:31:51] Jonathan Lee: just roses. I love it. Okay. Because we can,

[01:31:56] Chad Timmerman: we can attenuate it so we can slow it. And how can we do this? But through exercise and nutrition, Uh, not to be that cloud of doom, but there are some fun accompaniments, sarcopenia, kick them out of the way, decrease neural capabilities.

And that makes sense, right. If you’re not using the muscle mass, why would the lines of communication stay open? Why would you have that neuro capability decrease anabolic signaling, especially with respect to growth, hormone and testosterone. When I bring those two up in particular, because they’re super relevant to us as endurance athletes, athletes in general, um, increase recovery time.

And what does that do? But lead to lower training frequency and what does that do? But lead to lower performance because we can’t train as consistently or as often and overall. A decrease in the anabolic response, which brings us to what I see as the blanket causes of sarcopenia. At least in the research literature, anabolic resistance.

I do see this as a sort of a chicken or the egg question. Is it anabolic resistance, at least a sarcopenia sarcopenia, at least to anabolic resistance. I’m still not clear on that. If someone can eliminate me feel free, I’m not sure I’m going to care. Pass this deep dive. I just want to forget most of this

so sarcopenia basically, or I’m sorry, this anabolic resistance basically means that the same protein ingested yields a different or a blunted synthetic response. We don’t get the same muscle synthesis, unfortunately. So basically really simply more difficulties stimulating muscle protein synthesis, giving the same amounts of protein.

We typically ingest. And again, it’s our type twos that are really at stake here. They kind of drive for lack of a better description, loss of muscle mass that accompanies aging. And this is primarily due to a decrease in muscle protein synthesis, easy enough. And that seems outweighed the muscle protein degradation, but sarcopenia can lead to does increase muscle protein degradation, but it also leads to decreased protein degradation, which sounds like a win, but it’s totally not because in this case, muscle protein degradation in all cases is a tightly regulated cell repair removal process that is absolutely necessary for the health of ourselves for, for their survival and in skeletal muscle in particular, that threat.

At least one of the threats comes in the form of increased accumulation of non-contractual tissue. So junk. We don’t want in there, it’s not doing work. It’s just hanging on, hanging out and isn’t being a crust or a pop toaster. You make those verbs, but he’s not being disposed of in the way that it’s supposed to be.

This decorative process is it’s kind of broken. So normally our concern is positive protein, balance protein. I said protein, positive protein balance.

[01:34:43] Jonathan Lee: It’s super secret troopers us with that one, you know, like squeak. Yeah. Like maybe he was actually saying Brodie and the whole time we just needed to listen closer.

Oh,

[01:34:59] Chad Timmerman: that was good. Okay. But typically we’re can, that’s our concern, right? Positive protein balance. We want to be on the more synthesis and degradation side of things. But with aging, now we have to concern ourselves with quality control of this whole protein turnover process, which puts a whole different angle on this muscle protein degradation.

So with a and along with aging comes, yeah. Along with aging comes this decline in mitochondrial dysfunction. This decline in insulin sensitivity, this recline in reduced physical endurance. And it all gets laid at the feet of aging. When more and more research is bearing out that this is more likely due to.

Physical inactivity and increase that capacity. And a lot of the time these things get lumped under the idea or the notion or the term chronic inflammation, right? Th that’s just what it is. Chronic inflammation is going to do us all in when we can actually fight it by increasing our physical activity decreasing or fighting at a possibly.

But the real bummer is that all of this leads to lower training frequency, lower training volumes in older athletes, which leads to a lower anabolic stimulus, which creates this vicious cycle. But the takeaway that the light at the end of the tunnel or the light in general is this. We can use nutrition.

We can use exercise or activity to rescue us. And the term activity I use specifically, because there was a study done on the impact of activity, just activity on protein uptake, you know, AKA digestion and assimilation, and at least one aim with nutrition and exercise is to increase our anabolic sensitivity.

So this study looked at how training preserves the whole young muscle response to protein ingestion. Okay. 762 Dutch people aged 18 to 99 were included in the study, but of particular interest to us is that the subset from 61 to 70 years of age, and these Dutch folks exercise or engaged in activity, I should say two plus hours a day in terms of, and it came in the form of cycling and walking.

I mean, that’s, that’s impressive. It’s ridiculously impressive. And then Eric Helms that, uh, stronger by science in, in a subset or an issue of mass, it was at volume five, issue 11 compared this to similar age bracket in Canadian men, 65 to 75 year old Canadian men and noticed distinctly higher anabolic sensitivity in the people with higher activity levels.

So the Dutch vastly outperformed, or at least significantly outperformed the Canadians. So takeaway being is that this provides evidence, that activity exerts an influence on anabolic sensitivity. We don’t have to overthink this. It doesn’t have to be, you know, uh, Um, what’s your intensity on the stair stepper on the bike or how, how, how hard are your intervals?

We don’t have to get that specific. This is just activity walking and cycling and I have to, and study did, did elaborate. I mean, we’re just talking, walking, getting your steps in and don’t count steps. That’s not what I’m condoning, but getting your steps in, you know, going to the coffee, shop, riding your bike, consider taking your car, taking the steps, taking the elevator, all those obvious easy gets.

Um, basically we’re just activity does increase muscle protein synthesis rates. And then just, just a little addition that it wasn’t gonna include, but we’re going to dominate this entire pack as a protein. So I’m going to add it is, uh, just little aspects of age-related sarcopenia that are particularly relevant to endurance athletes.

So we know that the culprits are the chronic inflammation that I just mentioned fewer and less amino acid transporters. So just like glucose. I mean, if the transporters are overwhelmed, you can’t get them to where they need to go. Um, less ribosomes, which are the little organelles that are responsible for protein synthesis and here’s where it gets interesting poor blood flow.

So I mean, if we can’t deliver the amino acids to the muscle, because capillary density is suffering because vasodilation isn’t up to the task. We get this reduction in so many things amongst them are satellite cells, a little guys that are glommed on to the outside of the muscle cell that actually are basically furnished the NES the necessary materials for building stronger muscles.

All these things suffer, but all of these things are we address all of these things are things that we address as endurance athletes. I mean, mitochondria improvements, capillary density, basal dilation. These are all benefits of endurance training. So. This does kind of take me slightly away from endurance training because I feel this provides more support, portray strength training at all ages.

And yes, I’d like it to be in addition to endurance training. But I do believe that if you can only do one, I think there’s more benefit for an aging individual on the strength training side of things than the endurance side of things. Reason being is that the entire muscular system needs love, not just our legs and a cyclist is runners.

That’s

[01:39:39] Jonathan Lee: kind of all we get. So Chad, I’m going to wrap this back around to the first thing that we said when we talked about you can signal muscle protein synthesis by food that you take in, and also by the exercise you’re demanding from your body or putting your body your body’s doing, um, with those two things, uh, in mind, when we’re talking about aging athletes, their process of muscle protein synthesis is not as efficient.

It sounds like. And so as a result, do they need to take in more and then they just need, definitely need to keep exercising, um, and to be able to keep up that end of the equation, but they also need to take in more as well. Is that correct? Maybe.

[01:40:20] Chad Timmerman: Yeah, it actually does. It does in light of new findings. So it’s pretty reliably demonstrated that the more anabolic sensitive muscles, which typically raises younger, incorporate more of the consumed or dietary protein, right?

The more, the more of it that you intake, the more of it actually makes it to the muscles and the other proteins that it needs to build. One study looked at people in their early twenties, 20 grams again. So point 25 or 0.2, five grams per kilogram, roughly thereabouts elicited the highest rates of muscle protein synthesis.

Same study used people who are closer to 70 years of age and it required 50% more to achieve the same, or at least similar rates. 2016 opinion piece by Stu Phillips Luc van loon and others looked at 35 studies from 1998 to 2014, same findings, 20 grams elicited, maximal stimulation on muscle protein, stimulus and younger adults, 20 to 30 bracket.

While 40 grams was the necessity in older adults, 40 to 65 bracket with all this in mind. The very recent study by Daniel Moore looked at masters athletes, proteins requirement, protein requirements, and found that they were basically the same as the protein requirements of their younger athletic selves.

Phots highlights the differences between sedentary and athletic test subjects. So it reminds us that the researchers and us have to keep in mind, is this an apples to apples comparison for looking at sedentary people’s requirements and their responses over time versus someone who’s been athletic, all of their lives, different, different, well, perhaps not different protein requirements as they age.

[01:41:58] Jonathan Lee: Interesting. That’s a

[01:41:59] Amber Pierce: really, really big thing to look for. If anybody who’s listening is interested in reading studies like this, I’m looking at who are the subjects that are being, um, that are taking part in the study and training status is a huge, huge factor that can strongly influence the outcome or the results of the study.

So that’s a really important thing to take into consideration when you’re reading science, but also when you’re thinking about how you want to apply

[01:42:22] Jonathan Lee: it in your own. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of the responsibility that goes with interpreting, uh, research for sure. Let’s get into recovery windows. Cause that’s one, I feel like it would be incomplete if we didn’t cover this and by the way, we’re going to overtime today.

So buckle up everybody. Um, so we have two, two other topics that we have to cover, but we don’t want to leave this part on done. So, uh, buckle up and, uh, let us know if you don’t like long podcasts, go to train road.com/podcasts and use the survey to tell us about it. If the do like long podcast, let us know in that survey.

Good take it. Okay. So recovery windows, Hannah, let’s talk a little bit about, um, the recovery window stuff. Um, what have you experienced as a pro athlete, but then also what just basic things would you recommend?

[01:43:10] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, there’s several things I want to highlight here. And I think first to start with what Amber said earlier, cause I just loved the way she phrased it is, is the importance of training and then nutrition and then the window.

So all of this is really about optimizing. Um, and so first I just want to start by making it really. Um, personal and also I think functional for people to kind of understand the sensations that are happening. And so, you know, you finish a ride. And for me, if I get that protein right away, it’s a system. I do it.

I’m done like check mark. If I don’t get it right away, what happens is I either an hour goes by and then I’m like, oh shoot, I missed that recovery drink. Well, it really seems weird to have a recovery drink now an hour later. So I guess I just won’t have anything like that’s what happens or, and then I don’t have anything.

A bad option or what happens is, well, I don’t really want anything, so I’ll just have a little snack and then I have a piece of toast and then I’m like, well, that wasn’t much. And then I come back later and I have a bowl of cereal and then five minutes later, I have a Clementine and then five minutes later I have, you know, whatever.

And it’s like, okay, now I’ve consumed, you know, 300, 500 calories of what versus I could have just had this little, you know, this drink right away and been done with it and not gone through the sensations of I’m starving for an hour and a half and also eating aimless calories. So I think that’s

[01:44:45] Jonathan Lee: exactly right.

[01:44:46] Hannah Finchamp: So I think the first thing to know is just the window is a great method just for accountability period, so that you have a system to do it. If you miss the window, though, all is not lost. Still, still go for the proteins, still do the same thing you were going to do, you know, or an iteration of it. Don’t.

Forget it I’ll just wait till dinner. Now dinner is only three hours away, two hours away. Well, you’re not gonna make it. You’re gonna like either you’re going to be miserable or you’re going to eat a million snacks if you’re me. So, you know, stick to like have your plan. And if it all goes out the window, just go back to the plan.

It’s fine. There’s no, Nope. You can’t, you can’t have your recovery shake if it’s been an hour, you know, everything would fall apart. No, just it’s fine. It’s okay. So I think first, just that practical example and hopefully laugh at myself a little bit. Someone else out there is like, oh yeah, I’ve definitely done that.

At least I’m not alone. Um, the second thing is to kind of validate that with, um, a little more science. So specifically for women is what I wanted to highlight is that, you know, so I’m taking all of this from Dr. Stacy Sims, which for those of those of you who don’t know her, um, she specializes in sex differences of environmental and nutritional considerations for recovery and performance in women.

So most of these things are coming from her book roar, um, which she takes over a hundred studies in that book is what she’s pulling from. Um, and so, you know, do your due diligence of what works for you, but this is specifically for women, a lot of these things. So the first thing to know as a female is.

Your progesterone increases, muscle breakdown. Um, and with that, you know, it makes it really important for women, especially to get a good dose of protein after exercise. And so to validate that a little bit in terms of the difference between women and men, we can just look at the fact that women’s fat burning post exercise metabolism drops back to normal about three hours after exercise versus men’s levels remain elevated up to 21 hours later.

That is a remarkable difference. So just looking at that fact alone, I think it validates that women are different than men. And so it makes sense that we would have different needs. Um, so you know, another, another fact that she throws in is that in two to two and a half hours after a workout, your glycogen storage drops by 50%.

That’s a lot as well. Um, but if you eat immediately after that exercise, be it protein or carbs, you can help decrease that decline in incidents, insulin sensitivity, and you can keep it elevated for up to eight hours by just having a small snack every couple of hours. So to increase that from two to eight hours, just by eating a little bit.

Is great. I think that’s amazing. And that also, I think feeds the idea that feeding yourself more calories doesn’t always equal, you know, added weight. It means that you’re actually helping your body absorb it better and you’re helping your metabolism and things like that. So, excuse me. So all of that to be said, because of this extra progesterone, because of these limited windows, she really emphasizes that for women, it’s important to get, um, 25 to 30 grams of protein, which is a lot, uh, within 30 minutes of a hard workout.

And she recommends that five to seven of those Graham’s be branch chain, amino acids or BCAs.

[01:48:42] Jonathan Lee: That’s a, and this is like once again, something is better than nothing going back to the original point that Hannah made. If you’re not able to get all of them within the same window, you still it’s. Something is better than nothing.

That’s the general trend that we’ve probably learned from all of this research that we’ve heard today is that instead of letting you know, good be the enemy of great, we should instead just think of good, better, best, right. And just trying to step up toward it. Um, Amber, do you, you already shared a little bit about that.

Like perhaps it’s less a window, a more a garage door. Do you want to cover any more on that or should we move forward?

[01:49:17] Amber Pierce: Uh, I think that’s the basic thing and I think, you know, what Hannah’s saying is, um, really specifically. The, the, the hormone profiles that are relative hormone profiles that women experience, especially through a menstrual cycle, but also around menopause.

Um, The hormone progestin in particular has implications for protein, metabolism and catabolism. Um, but again, all of those hormone levels, I’m just going to reiterate, you know, are variations on the theme of it depends. And it’s because

[01:49:50] Hannah Finchamp: everybody’s cycle is

[01:49:51] Amber Pierce: different everybody’s experience with menopause and

[01:49:53] Hannah Finchamp: perimenopause is different.

And so, um, just

[01:49:56] Amber Pierce: because we see these things in studies doesn’t mean that’s how it’s going to break down for you as an individual. And there’s genetic components to this as well. So it’s important to take this as a good informed, starting point when you want to experiment and apply some of these principles for yourself.

But the most important thing at the end of the day is how is it working for you? And that’s. That’s why I’m sure it gets frustrating for our listeners when they ask these questions. It’s like, it depends, let’s talk about context, but that’s because that’s the truth of it, you know? And, and we’re not going to, it would be a lot easier to sell you a silver bullet and try to convince you that, oh, you just do XYZ and you have outcome ABC.

And it’s not that simple.

[01:50:38] Jonathan Lee: It’s not exactly. Uh, there’s a lot of responsibility once again, in interpreting research and science. Um, and there’s a responsibility on our end in terms of individually applying that. And that’s a process of trial and error and trying to control the variables as much as possible and getting close to recommendations and seeing what those are like, you know, uh it’s but hopefully with this deep dive on protein has done is helped us all recognize the importance of protein that it is.

The prostate is one of the key components of the process of adaptation. And we’re talking about endurance athletics, not just strength training, so, and that all of us should be looking at how much you’re taking in and trying to give ourselves enough. That’s the goal you’re trying to give yourself enough to be able to do the amazing things that your body can do.

Are you doing VO2Max training wrong?

With that let’s skip rapid fire. That’s going to Rob’s question. Um, he has a question about via TMX training and I think it’s a really good one. Uh, so Rob says VO two max training. How do I know if I’m doing it correctly? Uh, but max workouts are definitely the ones I struggle with the most in terms of knowing if I’m doing the right thing and I’ve experimented with a few approaches, short shorts.

Favorite of Chad. Chad’s mentioned that before. What do we mean by short shorts? Chad, describe that or explain that

yeah,

[01:51:56] Chad Timmerman: it’s better. That’s the only way I can do VO two max work because it’s the least painful version of it. So you’ve worked for a short period of time and then you recover for either a time match or a slightly shorter period of time. And then just repeat ad nauseum emphasis on nauseum. Yup.

[01:52:10] Jonathan Lee: Well, while we’re talking, yes.

So we’re talking like 30 thirties, right?

[01:52:18] Chad Timmerman: Yeah, 30 thirties. Microburst no 15 fifteens. Um, all, all sorts of options. Hard starts followed by a proliferation of a bunch of repeated efforts like we just described. But the idea being is that you, over the course of these repeated efforts increase your Arabic uptick

[01:52:36] Jonathan Lee: and how high are your bib shorts rolled up?

We need do this check to

It’s great. So Rob then also says, there’s the other side of doing things which is long and low, like 106%. Like you’re just tipping up into VO two max range. You’re still likely also in threshold range. Remember your, your body is not a system of switches. It’s a system of faders, right? So, but he’s talking lower end to VO two max.

Um, and he says, and recently he’s also been trying hard starts. So the concept of this is that you will start much harder than via two max and then thereafter you’ll settle into likely depending on the duration, it might be a higher percentage or lower percentage of via two max, but you’ll spike. And then after that, you’ll settle in, settle in and then quotes here at VOT max, um, as comfortable as that can be.

So Rob says, when I first tried VO two, all I did was try to maintain the power target, typically somewhere around 120% on. And that depends like a 120% is a commonly prescribed value, but there’s plenty of space that you can explore within the VO two max. He says then on researching, it seems like power.

This is Rob’s assumption. I want to make this clear that this isn’t necessarily like a takeaway or something that we’re saying as gospel. He says, then on researching, let’s get lots of responsibility and researching. It seems like power is just a way to push your oxygen uptake and you should gun for us.

Anything above 90%, max heart rate is a proxy for oxygen uptake. This is when it gets really tricky is when you’re starting to look into heart rate and then power to be able to achieve the same outcome. It gets complicated. So he says I’ve been experimenting with hard starts. I go way over the power target for a brief period and get my heart rate up really high above 90%.

Then back off the power and just keep my, my heart rate up. There’s a whole thread on the forum where he saw this being debated, um, the forum train road.com/forum. You can go there and have awesome discussions with lots of different cyclists. They’ll do it. He says, but this does fatigue my legs. And often I’ll end in an interval at threshold or sweet spot power.

Although my heart rate is still roughly somewhere around 90%. So is this still VO two max training? It’d be great to understand what I should be aiming for and any physiological signs I can check to see if I’m on the right track. A great show. I’ve learned so much about cycling over the past couple of years, and it was great help during the various lockdown periods and turbo training was the only thing available.

Cheers from Rob. Uh, Rob, I’m excited to answer this. Uh, you Rob like me and like many others, we are incredible, incredibly skilled at overthinking things. And this is one, uh, great example. Like when you’re talking about looking for physiological markers to see if you’re doing it while you’re literally doing VO two max training, you’re wondering if you’re doing it.

So, um, this is once again a great sign of a cyclist. We’re fantastic at that. And

[01:55:22] Amber Pierce: this is part of why I love the podcast. It’s an outlet for my overthinking.

[01:55:27] Jonathan Lee: Exactly. Yeah, I like that. Um, so we, you covered this Rob, and we’ll cover this too here, but there are different ways to go about accomplishing VO two max training.

Totally. Um, there are, it’s a, it’s a range that you have to work within and there’s different ways to do it. Chad was talking about short shorts who talked about long are more extended ones. There’s ambers, absolutely favorite workout of five by five , uh, which, uh, Amber has mentioned before is the least favorite thing that she does not look forward to doing, uh, after doing it for so many years.

So there’s a lot of different things, but Chad, can you cover what the goal is? So then we can kind of have like a common thing to understand, or an objective for all these different ways to accomplish VO two max training. What is the point of use max training

[01:56:10] Chad Timmerman: just to increase your aerobic capacity? So, so we’re trying to be able to do as much work as possible.

By utilizing the aerobic system. So the endurance system, and you mentioned all of the, the power levels, you know, 1 0 2 to one 20 and beyond, and you can, you can improve your rubber capacity working at 60% as long as you do it for long periods of time. So we’re just trying to, if you think of a less in terms of, uh, the workout and the numbers and more in terms of the physiological adaptations that are actually driving, what we’re after this, this is the nature of the O two max work, aerobic capacity work.

We’re trying to improve the things we talk about. Often the, the oxidative enzymes that the mitochondrial health and quantity and robustness the capitalization in the muscle itself. So we can perfuse it with more nutrients, more oxygen, and we can do this in so many ways. We can run the whole spectrum from the easiest of work, extended out over long durations to the hardest of work for short, almost the hardest work for short durations.

And then for the truly hard work, but only done like in the, just like we talked about with the short shorts where you bury yourself, and then you ease up and you bury yourself and you ease up where you can use power outputs at 150% of the threshold, which doesn’t look anything like a real big work, but the outcome of the workout is largely an aerobic benefit.

[01:57:31] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. That’s a really important thing to get to, to understand there is that there’s ways to put yourself in that spot where you’re getting a real big benefit that. Just, uh, one specific zone. I mean, that’s, you get a real benefit all the way down from Z two all the way up. Right. Um, so there’s a lot of different ways to accomplish this 32nd sprints.

Yep. Yep. Once you exhaust those anaerobic stores, you’re just left with the robot capabilities thereafter, right? So that’s

[01:57:57] Chad Timmerman: so on the aerobic fibers is still felt, I mean, it’s, you can we use the term and I see it in the notes, many ways to skin a cat. And when it comes to aerobic conditioning, there are many ways.

[01:58:08] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, absolutely. Amber, what does via T max training feel like? Cause this is another thing we’re talking about. There’s a lot of different ways to accomplish it, but what does VO two max training in particular feel like for you? Terrible. Um, pretty

[01:58:21] Amber Pierce: much that’s how you know you’re doing it right. Honestly.

And the thing that’s frustrating about these is even when you get good at them, it just means that you have to put out more power. It doesn’t, it’s that old thing of it doesn’t get easier. You just get faster and it’s true. I mean, your body’s going to continue to adapt as you improve, but that just means that in order to elicit the same stimulus, like we’ve said before, you’re going to have to push a little bit harder.

Um, and it’s, there’s, there’s honestly, there’s no easy way to do VO two max efforts. Um, because if it feels easy, it’s not VO two max.

[01:59:00] Hannah Finchamp: I was cracking up yesterday because one of the athletes, she commented on her ride. Um, to me it was a VOT work workout that I gave her and she come in. I did a good job on this, but I hate VO too.

And my comment back started with, so you did the workout, right?

[01:59:24] Jonathan Lee: Yep. That’s how, you know, you nailed it. Exactly. Yeah. So Hannah, so there’s, so once again, we’re talking about aerobic training, right? That’s the basis of it. VOT max is a very like a, you can get a whole lot of it. Um, in terms of, you know, a lot of focus time at that peak aerobic uptake and everything else, um, takes a long time to get to that if you’re at lower endurance levels.

Um, but Hannah, do you, do you change or periodize your view to work so to speak depending on where you’re at in the season, in other words, do you VO two max, do you do different types of VO two max intervals depending on the time of year?

[02:00:00] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I think there are so many different types of VO, two max and our levels, you know, you can do.

Um, shorter ones, you can do longer ones. You know, we’re talking one minute, five minute type of things. You can do. Even shorter ones with shorter recovery, like 33rd years, you can do recoveries that are one-to-one rest. You can do two minute intervals with eight minutes rest. So there’s just so many different types.

And I think it really depends what type of adaptations you’re after and what type of racing you’re doing. So I think, you know, a standard periodization would be to start at shorter intervals with longer ES and then increase the duration of the intervals. Um, and then there’s also, of course you can go the direction of decreasing rest as well.

I also think that it’s valid to note that it depends what you’re measuring and, and, and that’s gonna influence how you feel or what you’re looking at. So there’s, I mean, we could measure VO two, just based on heart rate. We could measure it just based on power zones. We could even get blood lactate testing going and in all of these cases, you know, for example, if you’re just using heart rate and you’re doing two minutes on two minutes off, you might be.

You know, V O two range the whole time and achieving some type of cardiovascular element. If you looked at your power for those though, you might be decreasing 20 Watts, every interval where at the end of that workout, you’re not in your power range, you’re in your threshold power range. And so, you know, video is a really interesting one in that regard, but I think it depends, you know, are we getting muscular the muscular effect, or are we getting the cardiovascular effect?

And the golden area is where we can get all of those. And I think that’s when you’re really, at least for me, I feel like that’s when you’re really doing a great job with your VO to work is you’re able to do all of those successfully in one workout. But that’s why personally, I like to view VO two as an energy system, because I feel like when I do VO two max work more than any other type of, of, um, training zone.

I know that if I’m at least achieving one of those things in the workout, I’m getting some sort of benefit. So unlike threshold where if. Not hitting the numbers, but my heart rate is through the roof. I’m not really achieving threshold, but if in via too, I’m going to the absolute, best of my abilities and I’m still not hitting the numbers.

I know that I’m still stressing my cardiovascular system appropriately.

[02:02:57] Jonathan Lee: Uh, Hannah, you just built out the perfect advertisement for adaptive training. Cause that’s exactly how it works. I’m glad to hear it. Thank you. Ad break. These emails. Exactly. We don’t have advertisers on the spot guests. So that was it.

That was fantastic because, but that’s just the thing of, of keeping yourself in that, in that in, and I can’t use the word sweet spot, cause it would complete here in this case, but, and keeping yourself in that VOT, max productive zone, you can’t just go out and do five by five right off the bat. You have to work your way into it.

And that’s why we built out progression levels with these workouts. And then they’re all calculated and analyzed via AI so that you’re stepping up at the right amounts. You’re always in that bandwidth, they hadn’t talked about this the way to do it. Um, also welcome to DC Rainmaker who is in our live chat.

I’m sure he’s here for protein. I’m sure that’s what he’s super interested in hearing us talk about today. So that’s why everyone’s here. Yeah, exactly. Um, uh, so it’s, it’s really easy to get in the weeds with via to max and honestly, any type of training, but via to max in particular, it’s really easy to get.

Wait, but we get

[02:04:03] Amber Pierce: in the weeds

[02:04:03] Jonathan Lee: on. Yeah, join us. Water’s fine. But here’s the main thing that at least I personally keep in mind, I’m going, I’m going after trying to accumulate time of peak aerobic uptake. Like, and that’s what, so when it’s taken care of, whereas before I’d like just cherry pick a workout, I’d be like, Hey, that looks great.

I can do it. And I’d usually, but for me, what I end up end up prioritizing is at that peak aerobic uptake. And the one thing I will say is as I get closer to an event, I will specialize further. So my VO two max work might look a little bit more variable if I’m going toward like a crit or something like that.

And it’s more repeated or something, you know, it might be more specific, but those hard starts that you mentioned in this case, Rob can be really difficult to be able to achieve a lot of time at peak aerobic uptake. And the reason for that is because you’ll exhaust anaerobic stores and you’ll just work yourself on those short efforts.

Let’s just say, theoretically, that you could hold five by five . So you get 25 minutes roughly. I don’t know. Let’s just say 20 minutes out of that at peak aerobic uptake, if you’re going to sprint and then settle in, you might not be able to hold that 20 minutes or whatever else by the end of that workout, you might not have accumulated quite as much.

You might get to peak aerobic uptake. But you might be able to sustain it for less time thereafter. So it’s just something to keep in mind. Um, typically what Chad is thinking about when Chad is designing all the plans and when we’re going about our training is he wants you to be really good at dwelling there.

And he knows that really good things happen when you’re at peak aerobic uptake in terms of adaptation. So it’s just trying to find the best way to get you there and keep you there. So you’re on the right track, Rob, don’t overthink it and just, you know, use it after training and it’ll solve everything for you.

When to use and when to ignore TSS

Um, okay. Let’s get into James’ question. We’re going to skip Craig’s question for today and we’re going to get into James’ question just for time constraints. James says I’ve gotten myself ahead for TSS for the week. Uh, pat, I’m sure that there’s a tendency tendency to pat yourself on the back. I have felt that before I have done that, uh, he says my Sunday workout as planned will put me well over my target for TSS for the week.

I’m assuming I should just trim the last day. So as to not overwhelm. And then he says, I’m not sure the details matter, but my target was 542 to 550. My previous week was 486. He says, I’m already at 509 TSS. And tomorrow is 136 TSS as written, man, if you’re new to cycling, you probably don’t know what any of this means.

We’re going to break it down for you. Don’t worry. Uh, he says 150 point increase in TSS seems fairly excessive. I would agree with that depending on what your goals are. I guess, Chad, can you describe the basics of like training stress, the training stress score as it pertains to prescribing training?

Like how it’s used in that context?

[02:07:07] Chad Timmerman: Yeah, it’s really probably the most reliable way we had the quantify stress for a long period of time and it’s still a very reliable way to do it. Um, but I D I don’t like to use it when it comes to, or if the end result is that it bridles a rider. It makes the rider think that I, in my TSS requirement is this my weekly progression rate is this, I can’t exceed that.

If I do, I’m going to be over-trained, I’m going to start going backwards. This is dangerous territory. W I, I like it more as a frame of reference. So I don’t want it to bridle a rider so much as rain rider in. I want them to see these are roughly where I should be, but if I happen to venture outside of this, I know this isn’t answering your question, but it’s just one measure of stress.

There are so many other ways we can measure stress and, and, and. Put it all together to, to steer the ship a lot of metaphors here, but I, I don’t want anyone to focus on any one metric ever. And I think TSS, because it has been the all encompassing metric for so long is interpreted as that. I’d rather that people progress their performance incrementally.

If the TSS goes, lock, stuck in lock step with that, that’s all good and fine. But if there are points where you recognize you can do more and your TSS is the metric that’s holding you back. I’d like people to try to think a bit harder, you know, focus more on what their body is telling them. I do get that if you’re using TSS as your central metric, and it’s a good one, don’t get me wrong and you get to the end of the week and you feel great, but your TSS says you shouldn’t do anymore.

I think that’s exactly backwards. I think there are times where you’ll know it you’ll carry in so much stress and your TSS is pushing up against its upper limit and you know, yep. Nope. This is it. This is where I need to cut things back. But there are going to be those times where, I mean, this is why we have stretch goals, stretch, or breakthrough goals, or geez, what are they stretch workouts, breakthrough workouts.

I can’t remember how they’re classified, but that’s why we have them because there are times where you can outreach the recommendation. And I don’t want TSS to lock anyone into thinking otherwise.

[02:09:14] Jonathan Lee: Yep, absolutely. Uh, Hannah with you and your training camp, I’m sure that you just stepped at the traditional 10 to 12% a week over week, uh, training stress from one week into your training camp, or did you completely explode that?

Um, no.

[02:09:31] Hannah Finchamp: I mean, there’s, there’s certainly a relative amount of, um, increase that you can have. You know, I, my last seven days of training camp was about a 31 hour week. And you wouldn’t want to go from 10 hours to 31 hover Nevin, however, having never done that before, but 31 hours certainly wasn’t, you know, a nice 10% increase over, you know, however many weeks to get there.

It would be ridiculous. It’d be so many weeks. So, um, yeah, if you’re, so yes, it is, it was a big bump, um, from that. And so I think, you know, TSS exactly what Chad is saying is I, I, it’s not the be all end all. It’s just. It’s a guideline. It’s something to hold us accountable. It’s something that when our subjective information gets all confused and we can’t decide how we feel, we can look at those numbers and say, okay, this is about how I should feel, or it can validate you.

Oh my gosh, I’m totally wrecked. I’m exhausted. I need a break. Oh yeah. Well that makes sense. Look at what I’ve done. Um, but when those two metrics are off, if you’re feeling fantastic and your TSS is too high, if you’re feeling exhausted and it’s, and it’s too low, it doesn’t invalidate those feelings and you shouldn’t just keep plugging on word, you know, regardless of how you’re feeling.

And so I think truly TSS is just a guideline and it’s also really valid to look at what you have done and what you’re going to do moving forward to also determine how much. Um, sway, you should have that. Let that TSS give. So, you know, what was this guy’s name? James. Um, James, if, if James has a recovery week coming up next, I say, go for it because you’re gonna, you’re gonna recover if you’re enjoying it.

If you’re having fun and you want to do this big TSS ride, have fun, do it. If you have recovery next, but if you’re on the first week of your build, it might be important to not because you have a lot of work coming up. And if you make dig too big of a hole early, then you’re gonna hit your maximum long before.

It’s time to take that recovery week.

[02:12:04] Jonathan Lee: Yep. And you’ll just miss out on all those gains that you could be getting otherwise, you know, and it’s not as simple thing of like, oh, well I couldn’t finish the workout. So that’s where my progress stopped. If you’re dosed with too much stress and we’re talking excessive amounts of stress, you’re not going to get as much from your training as you would, if you were in an ideal state.

Right. That’s just how it works. So it’s tougher for your body to recover when it’s just overwhelmed like that.

[02:12:29] Hannah Finchamp: And something we talk about all the time too, is one, not as, as we’ve said, not all TSS created equal, and I think we’re going to get into that, but I would also add where is the TSS for all of your life stress.

You know, like where is the TSS for family matters and all of that, it’s just not quantifiable. So we have to be the ones to intelligently factor that in somehow.

[02:12:59] Jonathan Lee: Oh, great point. Yeah. Amber, uh, what are your thoughts on this? Having gone through the life as a professional cyclist, also professionals swimmer, um, I mean, collegiate swimmer, you are pro come on.

Um, and basically, and then now as, uh, as not a professional cyclist, what’s your perspective on training stress as it pertains to it being a governing metric for training load?

[02:13:22] Amber Pierce: I don’t know that I have much more to add here. I think, um, Hannah and Chad have covered this really well. It’s, it’s an excellent guideline, but like any metric you can’t live and die by it.

It’s gotta be a tool in your toolbox that you apply in an inappropriate way. And then I think that, um, Hannah’s point about listening to your body is key here. Like if you’re feeling great and you’re having an awesome time and you’ve got recovery on the horizon, you’re not going to get yourself in too deep of a hole that you can’t get back out of.

Again, on the other hand, if you are overdoing your TSS week-in week-out and you’re not recovering and you, you know, appropriately, that’s a problem. So a one-off, um, when you’re feeling really good and you feel motivated and the fire is burning bright, go for it. If you are feeling down and life has been really stressful lately, and your motivation is a little bit.

Maybe this isn’t the time to push it and that’s okay too. Um, but I think that, yeah, just taking, taking, taking this metric TSS, like we do all metrics in, um, uh, taking it in account, taking it into account in terms of the broader context of your life. That’s

[02:14:29] Jonathan Lee: the key. Yeah. And, and I just want to hit the point home that Hannah mentioned that not all TSS is created equal and can arrive at a hundred TSS by holding your threshold for an hour.

That’ll be a hundred TSS, or you can ride at 50% of your threat, right? Oh, geez. We’re talking about VOT, max V in bed. Um, you can arrive at that by doing a whole lot of writing at 50% at VO of your, of your, um, 50% of your threshold as well. Right? A couple of hours of that. So, or four hours, forgive me. You feel really different after a four hour endurance ride at 50% than you do after one hour, like an hour record attempt, like people can hardly walk after an hour record.

So, so it’s so silly for us to put like all the stock into TSS, being the governing metric. So why, when we designed the plans, um, and we’re going through and designing everything and we’re working with adaptive training, we have the TSS there and we were looking at. But we were not building out the plans.

Like in many cases, plans are built where it’s like, okay, how can we increase T let’s do the same thing, but increase at 10% week over week. And then on a recovery week, we’ll reduce it by 30%. And then we’ll go back into the same progression. That’s not how it actually to get the best training. The best training is to make sure that your training is progressing appropriately.

In terms of the energy systems you’re working on the type of work you’re doing, that your capabilities are just progressing every little bit. So it’s, it’s super important to remember that not all TSS is created equal and there’s better ways to guide your training. Um, let’s get into some live questions and then we’re going to cut this one off.

Sound good. Y’all this has been a good one. This been a fantastic Chad fantastic job on the deep dive, by the way, this is what happens

[02:16:15] Chad Timmerman: when you give me two weeks to get us a single topic.

[02:16:19] Jonathan Lee: Well, I think that this is unleashed you, please save it the best, the best way to prove or to like show that or not show, but to, um, if you really know something, well, you can explain it without having anything prepared.

You can simply, you can explain it simply to somebody effectively. Right? And I think that you’re exemplifying that. Sorry, Jen, we’re just taking it into lead to congratulate you and show my appreciation for you, but you’re fantastic. So that was a conversational, deep dive. That was wonderful. So it was great.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. This one, first one. I’m not going to say your names. Cause once again, one of you will Bart Simpson me one day and we’ll have to bleep me out and I’ll say something I regret. So, uh, how does adaptive training work for recovery weeks? It seems like that for training keeps making every workout productive without a decrease in TSS on week four.

For instance, if you are seeing this behavior of which, uh, that’s not a known bug that we are experiencing or anything else like that, if you are reach out to support because it doesn’t work that way. Um, adaptive training knows when you’re in a recovery weekend, it respects that. So it will not, it will make the appropriate adjustments for recovery instead of making appropriate adjustments for productive work moving you forward.

So it knows the difference. It’s super smart. Also another question that we got in the live chat that I just need to address now is somebody said, what is the background of Chad’s video background? And then somebody said, that’s what the inside of adaptive training looks like. So go ahead and start your rumors.

Now that just adaptive training is Chad in some sort of AI bubble and yeah, it knows all things. So it knows how to handle your recovery weeks. No worries. Okay. Resting heart rate question. Um, y’all he says, I want to know how the team uses resting heart rate data as a proxy for rolling training stress.

Should I be backing off of my resting heart rate is trending, trending higher. I have tracked this in a lot of different circumstances and it does not tightly correlate. Anybody else

[02:18:13] Chad Timmerman: at the same experience, right. I look at HRV also, and I’m not poo-pooing HRV at all. Just if I look at my resting heart rate each morning, if I look at my HRV, it can be, and it often is, which is almost becoming reliable in direct opposition to how I feel.

So, I mean, if that, if that continues and I know the days that it tells me to back off a days to hit it and vice versa, but, uh, I don’t, I don’t think it’s been that reliably consistent,

[02:18:39] Jonathan Lee: which by the way, that’s a future deep dive we want to do on HRV. Um, so stay tuned soon. That’s something that we’re working on.

Uh, we’ve been looking at the research for quite some time on this, and we’re hoping that we can get some more solid research out of it. So that’s, um, that’s what we’ll be looking like for the next couple of weeks here. Uh, anybody else measure this with any sort of utility or usefulness? Okay. In

[02:19:01] Hannah Finchamp: many ways, this question just makes me feel tired.

It’s just, it’s it is valid. I think it’s valid. I think it’s great to measure all of these things, but I just think once again, we get so in the weeds and there’s a million different things you can measure resting heart rate, HRV TSB. And if you wait for all of these metrics to come together to one optimal day, I feel like you’re just never going to feel a hundred percent.

Cause you’re always going to say, well, this metric was off today, but this one was off today. And so for me personally, I keep all of these things in the background so that I can look at it retrospectively when something goes wrong, I can go back and say, oh, well this is what happened across, you know, this month and be able to pull from that.

But for me personally, looking at this, these things every morning when I wake up, it, it really became a weird mental hurdle. I almost had to step over every morning.

[02:20:06] Amber Pierce: Yeah. I think I checked resting heart rate for a little while back when I was racing competitively and I had a similar experience with Chad, like it just didn’t really correlate with anything.

So it didn’t particularly help me. That’s not to say it’s not a valuable metric. Um, but like Hannah saying, I think again, it goes back to, it depends. And what’s the context and far more important than resting heart rate is how you’re feeling in general. So, you know, again, if you’re, if your motivation is high, if you feel energized and your resting heart rate is high.

Maybe, you know, it’s still okay to train and just to offer an analogy. And with the caveat that I was racing professionally. So it was my job to line up at the start line, but I did not get a choice about lining up at the start line. If my resting heart rate was high resting heart rate was off today, or, you know, so there’s so many little things that can contribute.

Like I didn’t get a great night of sleep or no, maybe I’m on my period that week, or there’s so many different things that can affect how you feel that honestly, I literally never once lined up at the start line at a hundred. Ever, um, and the same could be said probably for every training session as well.

I didn’t start every training session at a hundred percent, probably never happened. Um, that doesn’t mean that these metrics aren’t really valuable in terms of providing some guard rails that prevent you from doing too much overdoing it and going into over-training. But if you’re going into a period of overreaching that might be tipping you toward over training, you are going to have a lot of other signals in addition to an increase in resting heart rate, that should be raising red flags.

So if resting heart rate is the only thing that’s popping up as a warning signal, then maybe what, what this is telling you is, Hey, start paying a little bit closer attention to how you’re feeling. Start paying a little bit closer attention to how much you’re sleeping. It might not mean that you don’t necessarily need to train that day, but take it in, take it into account along with everything else that’s going on in your life.

And maybe just step up your awareness to make sure that there aren’t other red flags that are popping up as well. Uh,

[02:22:10] Hannah Finchamp: I’d like to add also that I think another really valuable way to look at these metrics is through trends of what they correlate to. So for me, if I’m noticing an increase in HRV or a decrease in resting heart rate, when I’m spending time meditating that day, or when I’m increasing one of my macronutrients or something like that, that’s when it.

Really valuable data for me because now I, I can really work on something in particular rather than just thinking, oh my gosh, I’m run down. I can, I can measure, well, what element of me is run down? Is it mantle? Is it physical? Is it emotional as a nutritional? And so that’s where I feel like I’ve seen the most benefit of this is when I can track it to a category or even one specific thing to work on.

[02:23:06] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Um, so some people are asking like where we’ve seen variations of the resting heart rate, or sorry with our HRV and yeah. All over the place. And it, it, it changes. And so much of that too, could be also down to the device error that where it’s reading weird one night and then you get a weird, it’s, it’s really difficult to get to say that it’s like a true internal absolute measurement, just like heart rate, even though we can get pretty close with that.

It’s just, it’s prone to all the errors that exist with heart rate when you’re resonating, resting heart rate and HRV as well. And then plenty more. Um, I’ve also noticed that my, so like, there’s this, so people make a big deal about like, oh, this person has a 200 BPM max of their heart rate. That doesn’t mean anything, a person that the other than the fact that they have a high heart rate, that’s it?

But that doesn’t mean anything in terms of they’re more fit than a person that has 150 max heart rate. Chad’s Chad’s BPM is super low. Nate’s is super high. He’s like a little hummingbird. Um, so it’s all different and it doesn’t mean anything. And resting heart rate is similar in the sense that just because one person has a really low resting heart rate does not mean that they are more aerobically fit than another person.

Um, that’s, you know, like Hannah said, maybe you can measure trends over time and get some sort of indication. But typically for me, and I noticed Dr. Tim public art also has mentioned this recently when my resting heart rate gets really low it’s because I’m fatigued and I’m over-trained, it’s not just because I’m suddenly getting more fit.

So imagine the spiral you’d fall into, if you’re looking at this as like a, as a, as a very determining metric when you’re like, okay, my resting heart rate is getting lower now. So I’m going to keep pushing, I’m going to do more. Now I’m getting fit when really you’re more fatigued. I’ve noticed that it goes high when I’m stressed, or it goes high when I’m sick or anything else like that.

But it also just goes high for other reasons. I don’t know. It might just be a bad measurement. It’s complex and a lot of stress here.

[02:25:01] Amber Pierce: It is, it is. And since Nate’s not here, I just, I just have to mention that, you know, there is an effect of elevation on heart rate and whether or not you’re at sea level.

So I got to represent, got a

[02:25:13] Jonathan Lee: represent. There we go. I thought a need often when we were talking about storing protein and protein muscle protein synthesis, and if muscle mass has a big effect on this, cause they’d always asked that question too. He’s like does having a lot of muscle mass like a ton. So these subjects just assume that you have like a huge amount of muscle mass.

Like, I dunno, like you were six foot six or something like that. Yeah. Um, all right. Well, thanks everybody for joining us. Remember, please help us out by improving this podcast. We’re always looking for ways to improve it. And there’s this day where you can tell us how to do it. Go to trainer road.com/podcast.

So where you can also submit your questions and let us know, but there’s a survey link and you can take that. And if you want to, you can enter your information in. So then you can be entered to win a swag pack. We’re going to give away one or so depending we might give away more. If more of you go and do it, so go and do it.

And those that are not subscribed to train a row to be super helpful to have you go do that as well, to get your perspective since you’re not a trainer and subscriber, that’s really helpful for us. So go and do that. Go and use trainer road to train like Hannah, like Hannah was talking about progress, your VOT training appropriately, and we will talk to you all next week.

Thanks everybody. Okay.

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