Dr Mike T. Nelson: Physiologic Flexibility

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over two years and running. It is 2021, and I am your host, Eric Malzone. I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Stop by futurofitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Hey listeners, this episode of the Future of Fitness is brought to you by our good friends at InsightTracker. Do you want to add more years to your life and more life to your years? Of course you do, which means you need to make a change. And that is what Insight Tracker is all about. Founded by leading scientists in aging, genetics, and biometric data from MIT Tufts at Harvard, Insight Tracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. So what's their secret? First, Insight Tracker uses its patented algorithm to analyze your body's data and offer you a clearer picture than you've ever had before of what's actually going on inside you. Then Insight Tracker provides you with a concrete, science-backed action plan for living a longer, healthier life. And it tracks your progress every day, every step of the way. For a very limited time, Insight Tracker is offering Future Fitness podcast listeners 25% off store wide. Visit InsightTracker.com slash future to get your offer code and try to Insight Tracker today. Insight Tracker, because change is an inside job. And perhaps more importantly, are you saving yourself time and making more money because of it? Well, I'll answer that question for you. You're not, because you can until now. Morpheus arms coaches with accessible, intelligent, communicable client insights to save coaches time and ultimately increase your value and earn more money. By collecting lifestyle data from 90% of the current wearable market and combining that data with cutting-edge proprietary technology, Morpheus provides an accurate and reliable recovery score for all of your clients served up on a simple and elegant dashboard. No more guessing, just the real, honest data alongside the insights from Morpheus into what to actually do with it. In the gym, in a home, outdoors, with personalized heart rate zones for each individual client. Combined with custom alerts, in-app messaging, and other amazing features, this is the ultimate coaching machine. Go to trainwithmorpheus.com to learn more. That's train with Morpheusmo R P H E U S dot com. Please go check out our wonderful sponsors. And if you get value out of this show, I ask you to do three things. Please go subscribe, give us a favorable rating, and share this episode on social media or wherever you like to go chat with friends. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and once again, welcome to the future of fitness. Dr. Mike T. Nelson, welcome to the future of fitness.

Hi, thank you very much for having me on. Really appreciate it.

Yeah, it's a pleasure, man. I've uh, you know, I've been in the fitness game for a while. I've always coming across your work and your content, and a lot of the people that I consult and coach with um refer to your principles and and your guidance and your certification. And I'm selfishly thrilled to have the conversation that we're gonna have today about physiological flexibility and kind of all the warm turning hot trends that people are are going into now. It's it's really exciting stuff. So uh for those of you, those of my listeners that don't know you yet, uh, can you give us a little bit of background of you know how you got to where you are, who you serve, and how you serve them?

Yeah, so probably like most guys, I started out going to college as a six foot three eel-shaped rake at like 156 pounds. And that was after my growth spurred in puberty and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like, hmm, maybe I should try lifting. And I tried it in high school, got buried by just the bar for bench press, and they had that horrible physical fitness uh test, if you remember that, where it's a good idea, but in theory, like when we did it, it was just a way of running through the thing, and no one ever showed us how to train for anything. Yeah, so I placed it like the bottom of every event, and then it you just end up being more frustrated and humiliated because no one really shows you how to train to get better at it. That was just a weird thing. So I went to college and I started taking classes in physiology. I was gonna do uh pre-engineering, but I always thought physiology was interesting, so just took a lot of those classes uh for fun. Uh, took a class on uh weight training, which unfortunately the the coach there took attendance the first day and then disappeared and it was just like open gym again. So I'm like, oh crap, I still didn't learn anything. So I thought, well, I'll take more physiology classes, that'll teach me. And that kind of teaches you the basics and background physiology, but not how to ever apply it. So I was always more interested in that kind of crossover area. So I did my undergrad in Bachelor of Arts in Natural Science, uh, minor in chemistry, and then went to Michigan Tech and did two years postgraduate work there. Uh, ended up doing another two and a half years there for my master's, which I did on uh the time they said, oh, this is for new collision avoidance systems on cars. I was looking at the safety of this uh millimeter wave exposure. And they used it initially they did, and they still do on cars to determine how far away one car is from the next. And I thought it's kind of weird that Brooks Air Force base in Texas cares about collision avoidance systems on cars, but they were gonna sponsor it, and I didn't really care too much at that point. And so we created this computer-generated model of uh heating a monkey with this big gigahertz microwave transmitter. And then you can run all sorts of simulations between, you know, big transmitter, you know, sweating hairy monkey, non-hairy monkey, big fan, small fan. You can do all these different things. And then Brooks Air Force Base actually did uh validate the model. And so then you have a computer generated model, you can look for safety. And it turns out, like five years after I finished, my advisor sent me this little uh article from one of the papers that says uh military declassifies ray gun. And he goes, Hey, this was your research. I'm like, Oh, interesting. Wow. Yeah, and so now you can actually look it up. It's called the active denial system. And it in theory, it works really well. I've actually ran into people in the military when I was doing some uh presentations for DARPA. A guy there was actually tested on him, and I found a few other people who've actually tested it. And you point it at a crowd of people, and it feels like your skin is being burnt by a light bulb, but there's no penetration depth of the transmitter. So you hit all the sympathetic nerve endings in the skin, which lights them up, and it just feels really painful. So everybody kind of disperses out of the way of the beam. So initially, after 9-11, you know, every branch of the military wanted one for non-lethal crowd control, but it's never really been used for that. I think there was something even in the paper just a couple months ago that the media headlines are probably just too scary, you know, local whatever police insert whoever uses ray gun on, you know, protesters or something that just doesn't sound good.

Right. Yeah.

Um, so along the way, I always studied uh physiology, took exercise physiology, a 400-level class just for fun. Uh, got done, I worked for a biomedical cardiovascular company for about 12 years, uh, looking at planable pacemakers, defibrillators. Uh, they did a lot of stuff with uh heart rate variability, also to monitor uh therapies that they were using. And at that time, I also decided to go back to school again. So I did five years for a PhD program in biomedical engineering that I decided I didn't want to finish. So I ended up dropping out of that and went over to the exercise physiology department. So I decided I didn't want to do a lot more high-level math. And literally the first day I have the meeting and fall in the exercise phys department, my advisor looks around the table and he goes, Okay, we have two new projects. One's on heart rate variability and one's on metabolic flexibility. And they both involve math. He looks around the table and he points at me at the end. He's like, Hey, you, math boy, whatever your name is. He's like, These are your projects now. I'm like, oh, like I came over here to start again, and now I'm doing some math stuff. Um, but we looked at heart rate variability under different conditions. Um, is it repeatable with different measurement systems? Did a study on energy drinks, and also did some work uh looking at metabolic flexibility. So I graduated from there eventually, it took seven years, and then currently I work with uh online clients uh through my own program that I designed. Um, just kind of athletes of all types. Uh, most of them are actually trainers in the industry. So it's kind of a cool way to learn more about training by also having someone else do your training for you at the same time. Uh, did some certifications. So I created the flux diet certification and the physiologic flexibility certification that we'll talk about. And right now I'm uh adjunct professor at Rocky Mountain University and then associate professor for the Kerrig Institute of Clinical Neuroscience.

It's an interesting journey, Mike.

Yeah. Yeah, a little wide variety, and it probably helps that I'm old. So I'm like 46. So yeah, get to do a lot of things. I'm not too far behind you, man.

Um so I, you know, I think you're correct me if I'm wrong, but you're you're probably most known for metabolic flexibility, right? Mm-hmm. Give us an insights like from a high level, like what you know, because in this crazy world of human nutrition, um, especially, you know, as fitness and health professionals, we we get tugged in so many different directions, not only from our own educational pursuits, but the media's influence on our clients, right? Um definitely. I mean, look at eggs. How many times have eggs been you know? Good, bad saviors. Oh, wait, it doesn't raise cholesterol. Oh, wait. Yeah, right. Uh give it from a high level, you know, how do how can we kind of wrap our head around the concept of metabolic flexibility?

Sure. In fitness with nutrition, there's just tons of dogma, and everyone kind of has their own biases, more so than anything based on science. And there's a lot of stuff we don't know yet. But it's you can watch the waves come through of you know, it's high carb, no, it's low carb, it's you know, high fat, it's not low fat, it's keto, it's this or that. It's everybody wants to kind of raise one macronutrient and then kind of demonize another one. And even now, protein is you know bad because it's you know changes autophagy and all this other weird stuff. Um, but with metabolic flexibility, we're just looking at okay, what are the two main fuels of your body, which are probably going to be fats and carbohydrates at a high level. You can throw ketones and lactate and get further down the rabbit hole there. So it's mainly fats and carbohydrates. So metabolic flexibility is how well can you use uh carbohydrates when needed, how well can you transition to use fats when needed, and then how well can you transition back and forth between both of them? So you don't necessarily have to pick and try to only use one particular fuel. So if we're just hanging out doing this podcast right now, and we're doing some low-intensity work, or we're gonna go for a walk, whatever it is, you know, ideally using fat is gonna be a better fuel source. We don't need to use any high-energy fuels at that point. And especially if we're concerned about body comp, I would make an argument that that's probably gonna be a little bit better. Uh we definitely have data showing that it is better for health. However, if we're gonna do some high-intensity work, you're gonna do a brutal 2K on the rower or something that's pretty intense, even weight training, then you want the ability to use carbohydrates at that point. It's more efficient, you're gonna be able to get a higher level of output by using carbohydrates. So it's how well do you use both fats and carbohydrates? And can you use the appropriate fuel at the appropriate time?

Well done. And is that that's uh in your certification, right?

Yep, yep. And we have a certification which is the flex diet, where it's kind of a mashup of metabolic flexibility and flexible dieting. So I took like the top eight interventions for nutrition and recovery, everything from protein, fats, carbohydrates, um, meat, so non-exercise, activity, thermogenesis, how much you kind of walk around, move, twitch, uh, micronutrients, like high-fat diets like keto, uh, sleep, and a few other things. And then we rank them in terms of both physiologic and uh psychologic ability. So, for example, uh sleep is very sexy, and everybody's talking about sleep right now for I'd say very good physiologic reasons. But if you've ever had a conversation with your client and try to get them to get, say, one more hour of sleep a night, uh, I would personally probably try to pound my head through a wall. It's probably a more fun conversation. Because at the end of the day, it it just comes down to okay, so the one or two hours I get to chill out and watch Netflix in the evening, you're telling me I don't need to do that and I should just go to bed. Right. It comes down to more of a value judgment kind of their life. And there's only so many things that they can move around. And I made this mistake before, where I'm like, well, look at all these studies, look at all this stuff that goes bad when you sleep only six hours a night and you spend all this time trying to convince them. But uh leverage-wise, it's pretty hard. So I came up something we call coaching leverage, which is the physiologic impact times the psychologic ability of the client to change. So sleep has a really high physiologic impact, like probably nine out of 10 out of a one to 10 scale, but it's like a one in terms of a client's ability to change. So your coaching leverage, so 10 times one is 10. If we look at something like protein, right, there's lots of reasons to eat more dietary protein from recovery, satiety, you feel full longer. Lots of great reasons. Most people, especially for body comp, assume that they just have to eat less food volume per se, but they can eat a lot of protein. So they're kind of surprised by that. And it doesn't take too much education to get them to consume higher protein than where they were before. So protein, while it has maybe a little less physiologic impact, maybe a nine, I found like the client's ability to do it is like a nine. So we're comparing a score for sleep of like 10 to a score of like 81. So even though if you only look at the physiologic impact, there'd be no difference. But if you factor in the ability of the client to execute what you're talking about, then starting with protein. So protein is the first intervention, it's just gonna make the coach's life a lot easier. It's gonna make the client's life easier. They're gonna think you're some kind of wizard just because you're doing something that's relatively simple. But again, you're starting with more of the big rocks and taking all the factors into account.

I really like that, man. Especially, you know, when for coaches who are in the trenches, right? To have something that's reality based and you know, it's a really good practical application of of these principles is a really nice thing to have. People love having a framework to work within. And uh yeah, I I love it. So when you started moving forward into what you're now um focused on, which I believe you termed as physiologic flexibility, give us give us this. Is I'm I'm fired up about this, man. Give it give us some insights. Like what where do you how did you start to walk down this path? And what is that, what does that term mean to you? And what are some of the the key factors that you're looking at now?

Yeah, so when I started with uh metabolic flexibility, like I said, was part of my PhD. So I started looking at that research in probably 13, 14 years ago now, uh, did some studies on it. And a couple of years after that, I was like, okay, so let's say someone has the basics of exercise and nutrition and sleep, that those are all good. Um, what would be the next thing to look at? I'm like, okay, so how can we extend the concepts of uh metabolic flexibility to you as an entire organism? And we'll assume that, you know, you've got the basics kind of down. Uh, at the same time, the question I kept asking myself is same thing. You have the kind of the basics down for an athlete or a client. What is the context and the framework that you can evaluate things in to determine like what is the next level, right? Because there's no shortage of people trying to sell you every whiz-bang thing to you know stick in some orifice or put light in certain places or you know, some supplement, or there's there's a never-ending list of things to come. Uh, but can you have some type of physiologic framework that you can evaluate these against? And as I was thinking, I'm like, well, I think the body is very much organized for survival. It's going to do everything humanly possible in order to survive, right? So if you want better performance, you need to teach your body to survive better. And I started looking at, okay, so what systems within the body do you need in order to survive? And there's a concept called homeostatic regulators. These are systems that are generally held pretty constant in the body because they have to be held constant. If they start going out of range, you're going to be in a world of hurt. The good part is, especially in healthy athletes, your body is already working within these to hold them in the same range, right? So a big one we hear a lot about now is temperature. So humans are what they call homeotherms. We like 98.6. It's a little bit different than that, but we'll we'll use that. However, we can do crazy stuff like you know, go to Finland and sit in crowded saunas that get really, really hot.

Yeah.

And you can go jump in cold water. You can expose yourself to changes in temperature, and your body is able to compensate, adapt, and to buffer acutely some of these temperature changes. And what we see when we look at the research is that overall these uh show to have beneficial outcomes when we do that within a safe area. So even though our core temperature doesn't really change much, we don't want it to change more than a few degrees, or you're going to be in a world of hurt, we can still adapt and get better at cold exposure. We can adapt and get better at hot exposure. So if we extend that into other areas, the next one would be kind of like pH. The body has to regulate pH really, really close. However, if we use the rower as an example again, we can put you on the rower, have you do like a 60-second wind gate where you just go as hard as you possibly can for 60 seconds, you're going to accumulate a lot of what's classically called lactic acid. So lactic acid immediately disassociates into lactate, which is actually a really good fuel that gets burned by other muscles or recycled in liver with a cori cycle to glucose again or glycogen. And you get a lot of hydrogen ions, like that acid, that burning sensation you feel is literally acid being dumped into your muscles. So your body then has to be able to buffer that. And you can go the other end too. You could do some crazy breathing techniques like a Winhof technique and go the other direction, temporarily be a little bit more on the alkalosis side. And then the last two systems would be uh fuels, primarily uh blood glucose, and sort of the backup system to that in starvation, which I would argue is a ketogenic or ketosis, and then oxygen and carbon dioxide themselves. So all those systems your body has to regulate, but we can play around with different changes within that. You know, you could do some type of hypoxic training if you're careful. You could do, like we mentioned, temperature changes, cold water, all these other things. And then what I did is I kind of put them all in a system and then looked at the literature to say, okay, you know, here's what's beneficial. Here's maybe when you should do some of these, here's when maybe you should not do some of these. Yeah. So what I did is I just put them into a specific framework. And then looking at the research, that'll help you determine uh when you should do some of these interventions and when maybe you should not do some of the interventions. So, for example, cold water immersion uh does have the capacity to potentially. Uh blunt some of the hypertrophy response. Again, that's only under very specific conditions. But there is, you know, a potential there. And there's a couple studies now that have shown that. So if you're really trying to maximize hypertrophy to the highest degree, sitting in 45 degree water for 15 minutes after your killer hypertrophy session, probably not the best idea.

So so many questions on this, Mike. I feel like there's there's so much. But I do. And every morning, you know, it's it's from a state of you know alertness to um, you know, a reduction in anxiety or just puts me in a very calm state, right? Uh and I have a lot of friends who, you know, just do hot saunas. Um, but I I guess there's so much more to get to understand in these areas and and which one when it's applicable and when it's not. Um what are how so how do you is there any kind of metrics or guidelines? Like we've talked about HRV. Like is HRV a good way to kind of start dictating from an autonomic standpoint, or you know, really just getting insights into what's going on in your body, when to apply these type of um strategies, or what what do you what do you use to start dictating these decisions?

Yeah, I think HRV is super useful, and I use it primarily to look at what is the cost of everything that you're doing. And if you get too because remember that, like say cold water, so cold water is kind of a I'd view it as a sympathetic stressor. I know that's kind of a the drastic oversimplification, but sure if you do a lot of cold water exposure, it is a significant stressor on your body, especially if you're not accumulated, accustomed to it. And what you will see, and I've had clients don't believe me and test this out themselves, you if you go crazy, you will see your HRV generally trend down, right? So trending down HRV, as you know, is more sympathetic. Um, however, what I've noticed is if you work in some of these physiologic regulators in a more controlled fashion, I haven't seen massive increases in HRV, although sometimes they do get better. What I have noticed though is that the HRV day-to-day tends to be more steady. Like you don't see as many of these like over-excions and dropping uh too low, right? It just seems like you're more able to absorb different types of stressors. There's some interesting research we can get into on like cross-adaptation and things of that nature. So I usually look to see what is the goal of the particular person and you know what do they have exposure to? If they're in Minnesota and it's cold, like cold's gonna be pretty cheap and easy to get. If their shower gets relatively cold, even easier. Uh, Minnesota in the winter, yeah, doing hot might be a little bit tricky, right? You're probably gonna need a sauna or something like that. Um, but if they have access to everything, they're like, hey, I've got access to cold, I've got a sauna, I've got all the fun stuff, then what is kind of their main goal and their outcome? And also how much time do they have? If there's someone who is very new to training, and let's say their goal is more on the aerobic side, and they just haven't done a lot of aerobic training, I'm probably gonna have them do a fair amount of sauna to start. There's some super interesting uh data showing that an untrained people sauna exposure can basically get you kind of aerobic looking adaptations from possibly changes in mitochondria, upregulation of blood volume, all sorts of things. If you're trained, you're probably not gonna see those types of benefits. Um, but there's some interesting data showing that recovery might be better. Uh, there's lots of studies out of Finland showing for mortality and overall health, uh, sauna is great. And what's super interesting for more advanced athletes on sauna, again, there isn't a study that I can find on this, but it appears that the adaptations are by slightly different pathways. So, in theory, if you're doing a lot of aerobic training and you're also doing sauna, maybe you can get a little bit better overall adaptation. And what I've seen just by anecdotally looking at HRV, it doesn't seem to kind of overwhelm the body with a huge amount of sympathetic stress either. Again, as long as you're not going super crazy with it. Uh, sauna has some very interesting effects on heat shock proteins and uh blood vessel function. So, in theory, if we can get better blood vessel function, more blood to areas that are exercising, especially during aerobics, you know, in theory, we would see better adaptations. Um, the other plus with uh heat in general is that there isn't really any negative interference effect with both strength or aerobic training. Again, as long as you're staying safe, the mechanisms there, if anything, may be additive and they definitely don't go against each other. Uh the cold, as we mentioned, if your goal is all-out max hypertrophy, then cold immediately after, probably not the best idea. However, again, there's not a study I can point to for performance on the aerobic side, but there's some interesting mechanistic stuff with cold water immersion post uh upregulation of PGC1 Alpha, which is kind of like the master regulator from more of the signaling uh side of the spectrum for aerobic adaptations. So personally, I will do uh lighter aerobic stuff in the morning, and then I'll do short cold water exposure after that. I'll have two, three, four, five hours to work, and then I'll do my strength training in the afternoon, and then I won't do any cold water after that. So it's kind of a way if you understand the framework of what the pros and the cons are and what you have access to, you can set up uh what does it need best for that particular person.

It's so interesting. And I out of curiosity, uh saunas versus a hot tub, is there similar benefits for for people who do hot water immersion, or is that have a different effect?

Yeah, but I would say potentially there's just not that much data on it, surprisingly. Yeah um and I think one of the main issues is so here's an example. The other part is if you look at what is acute safety. So if I get into let's say cold water immersion up to my neck, I've got a 15.6 cubic freezer in my garage I sealed and filled full of water. Um, if I get in there and it's 37 degrees, it feels horrible, it feels really cold. Every part of my body initially is telling me to get the hell out. But from a safety standpoint, I could literally be in there several minutes and I would be perfectly fine. If you get into water that is too hot, you can immediately have damage right away. So I think the body is a little bit more sensitive to hot water changes, uh, not as much to a sauna. If you've gotten into a sauna, it's really someone's in there and they just cranked it sky high. You can open the door, walk in, sit down, and it's gonna be a few seconds before you're like, yep, there's probably a little bit too much, right? There's a much higher range of safety there. Where with hot water, there's just not that much range of safety. And I think the temperatures that we may need to see might be closer to things that probably are not so safe. Um, and again, like I said, there's just not as much research on it. And I think because of some of the potential safety concerns, that might be why to interesting.

So, you know, if I'm listening to this, I'm a coach or maybe uh a boutique gym owner or you know, someone who's just in the industry. Uh how do I start to and I'm guessing that clients are starting to come to you and asking, you know, every once in a while questions about hot cold, um, Wim Hof breathing, right? Because these are becoming starting to be extreme, especially if you listen to the Joe Rogan podcast. Um yeah. Which a lot of people do. What what do you start? Where where do we start as fitness professionals and starting to understand this and apply in what we would do with our clients? Like what's what's the launching point here?

Yeah, uh I like again looking at what are their goals and is the thing that I'm doing going to benefit them overall, right? So, for example, if we look at just breathing, right? There's all sorts of great breathing techniques and courses, and you know, Brian McKenzie and Rob Wilson have the art of breath, and you know, there's a bunch of great stuff that's out there. My sort of criticism is that unless you're taking a longer certification, there's less emphasis on what do you do when, right? Um, and how do you fit this into the overall big picture? So I had a client who you know did a lot of Wim Hof stuff and did a lot of cold water exposure, and he kind of overreached himself within a couple of weeks. Granted, he kind of did this on his own, and we didn't find out until after the fact. I'm like, why is your HRV just tanking like a stone? What are you doing? And you know, we didn't make any other changes, so I'm scratching my head trying to figure this out. It was like, oh yeah, I started adding a lot more longer cold water immersion and just did like 20 minutes of Wim Hof every day. And you know, Wim Hof technique breathing in general is more of a superventilation, right? So fast inhale, exhale, uh, there is some breath holds and other things, but acutely it is more on the sympathetic side, right? If you get into the details, yeah, you're probably switching maybe sympathetic, parasympathetic, back and forth. But I find that that breathing technique in general tends to be more stressful. So if I look at somebody's training and every day is like high intensity, you know, raise my menstrual from the grave beyond, you know, failure training and interval after interval to body everything, I'm probably not gonna want to have them do a lot of Wim Hof stuff. Yeah, right. I'm probably gonna want them to do some old school aerobic-based stuff. And for a breathing technique, I'm gonna go to the other end of the spectrum. I'm gonna pick more of a what I call the Zen style, go just chill out and stare at a tree for 15 minutes, you know, which for the style of person who likes high intensity, bleed from your eyeballs, see the white buffaloes in the sky, they're absolutely gonna freaking hate it, right? Because now you have to sit with your own brain, you know, which is something I had to get used to. And oof, I used to lock myself in float chambers and almost lose my mind just because I figured that's a good way for me to chill out and not try to distract myself. Yeah, yeah.

Have you done what when you do that? Do you do like a 30-minute session? Do you do I did a 16-minute session a few times and it was yeah, I had to learn to live with myself.

It's hard. Like the first one I did was five years ago, and I did 90 minutes. Um, yeah, the the longest I've done is two hours. I did at um uh Crash, the guy who did Joe Rogan's tanks, uh, his site in Venice. If you've ever been there, it's crazy because he was remodeling at the time, and the the storefronts not that great. You come in and they were in the process of remodeling everything, so it's kind of all ripped up. And you get back to the tanks, and the tanks are just absolutely beautiful, like super nice. Experience was great. But at the end, he literally comes in and yells, Hey, get out. I'm like, you you put all this time and effort into these beautiful tanks that are freaking amazing, and then at the end, you just have some dude yelling at you that get out, I guess. But yeah, it's a bit rattle your cage, right? Yeah. Um, but yeah, I think it's those types of things are great. Um in a perfect world, could I send someone to do that? I think it would be beneficial. Yeah, but again, you're back to the the buy-in. So what I tell them is okay, you're gonna do some wimp hof techniques, but you're only gonna do three rounds. And your goal when you're doing the breath hold is to see how quiet you can get. After you finish your just three rounds of Imhof, take the rest of your time and try to mimic that sensation of being quiet on your own without having to hyperventilate yourself into an altered state, right? So I'm giving them part of what they want to do, I'm giving them the sensation of what the outcome is I want them to achieve. And now I'm trying to get them to do it by a different method. And I usually find that that's a little bit more beneficial transition.

Yeah, so when you uh if if you could because the show is called the future of fitness, if you could look forward a little bit, right? Uh let's say let's give it a period of five years when uh you start to see people um in our industry who are professionals start to harness uh these uh physiological tools, I guess for lack of a better term, right? Hot, cold, pH, breathing, various fuels, all the stuff that you're talking about. What do you think that looks like? Like, is it a place where people can come in and train? And then there's all these, you know, rooms that they can go into. What are you what's your vision for all this?

Yeah, I thought about this a lot. And it'd be great at some point if we ever get a different house or have more space to have the what I call the the sympathetic and the parasympathetic sides, right? Maybe they're just like two ends of the same building or you know, next to each other. So on the parasympathetic side, you've got a fluid tank, you've got maybe classes on, you know, different styles of meditation, yoga movement, you know, photobiomodulation, maybe some pulsed EMI, you know, whatever, right? Whatever, throw whatever modality you want in there. And then you have this under the architecture of someone who's watching the system of all the clients. All right. So they're using some type of HRV, some way of monitoring cost to determine uh who goes where and does what, obviously, performance too. And then on the other side, you've got more of the sympathetic side, which is your standard weight training type, you know, gym. I I prefer loud death metal is my favorite. Um you get it so if it's go time, then it's it's go time. And if it's a test day, then you know it's a test day. You know, most of your training should be a little bit more on the sympathetic side. I like more of a use stress model where the main goal is just to get the work in, you know, and done, but it's definitely more on the sympathetic side. And you can manage people's programs uh back and forth, right? So you could say, okay, everything looks good today, but ooh, ooh, wow, you sent your HRV in the morning, or we monitor it remotely, which is easy to do already. Uh, okay, Bob, you're gonna go to the parasympathetic side and just pick a modality for 60 minutes instead of you know training balls to the wall today. Or, you know, everything looks good. You know, you have eight weeks before your next competition. Okay, today is a simulation day. So today is a distress. Like your whole goal is to get the highest level performance you have, and then we'll take the next two days off, not even worried about it, right? So I think it's a it'd be kind of a cool way to manage people's training, and it gets around the the biggest issue they have, which is two issues. One is just what do you have access to, you know, time-wise, space-wise. It's harder for people to be like, okay, I gotta figure this out on my own, and I gotta go across town in traffic to get to the yoga place or to the float tank, or you know, they can put in their schedule, okay, I have an hour and a half or an hour each day. You know, I show up. And someone they they may not even know what they're doing until they show up, right? Someone says, Oh, okay, you're gonna do this today. Um, and so they're taking care of the the management of them as a an actual organism using uh basically a complete system. And like a lot of professional teams have have done this, I'd say some better than others, but it gets a little messy the more cooks you have in the kitchen and trying to make sure that there's at least you know one person or a system so everybody knows uh what to do. And I think by having it in one area to just roughly split between those sympathetics and parasympathetics, I think that would be a really good start.

Oh man, that sounds amazing. That I I think about that, and especially you know, if you have a tool like the Morpheus Coaching app, right, which will give you all kinds of information and data on your clients. And then, you know, all the client knows is like they're showing up that day, right? Show up this time.

Exactly.

And if you are you have the data, right? And you can obviously have the conversations about the feels, right? How you feeling today, how'd you sleep, all those definitely? But we have now can get insights into someone's autonomic system and where it's at, and then to be able to directly apply it on that day to have a game plan that suits their state, right? Wow, like how much value have we increased as a profession? That's that's crazy cool.

Yeah, and I think you you have the benefit, especially with general population, because I I just assume everybody is an athlete, even if it's a general population person, because they're using their body to make a living, which I stole from Dr. Yarkab at Zhealth. Nice that, like you said, it it simplifies it. Okay, I've got Monday through Friday, I've got one hour. And from the time I get there to the time I leave, Saturday I can do an hour and a half, Sunday I'm off. But by actually putting in these other things, like so physiologic flexibility, you're also making them a more robust person. And there's some super cool stuff, like I said, with cross-adaptation, where they did a study where they had two groups. Uh, the one group they exposed to very short cold water immersion, and the other group they did not. And then they exposed them to uh hypoxia, right? So low level of oxygen, which is, you know, for all humans, a big stressor, right? If oxygen starts going down, that's a stressor to your body. What they found was that the group that had the cold water exposure, they were not nearly as symptomatic under the same level of hypoxia as a group that did not have the cold water immersion. You're like, wait a minute, what the hell? Like they didn't have exposure to hypoxia before. It was exposure to a completely different thing. It was actually temperature. So there's some really fascinating, what they call cross-adaptations, I think, between all of those systems. Right? I think they're much more interrelated to each other via you know, sub-signaling molecules than what we realize. So that study shows that just by doing cold water immersion, they actually got better at handling low levels of oxygen, which at face value, you wouldn't expect those things to be related, right? Temperature and you know, pressure of oxygen. And there's a couple other examples that are similar. So I think by targeting those systems into the entire layout of what you're doing, you can also amplify results and at the end of the day, uh have people be much more resilient, anti-fragile as a human being.

Yeah, uh anti-fragile. That's a whole nother topic. Yeah. Um yeah. Uh, which by the way, was the first book I revisited when this whole COVID thing started. Oh, yeah. I was like, okay, it all makes sense. I'm gonna read it again. Um man, it's fascinating. I, you know, I think when I look at the trends in the fitness industry, is you know, a long question has been how do we increase our value as a profession? Like, how do we get to the point where people look at us in the same way as they see a physical therapist or you know, a medical or a lawyer or whatever, right? Where we're actually a profession. And I think now as the technology and the science and the research and the minds start to catch up, we're really starting to see some clear paths. We're like, wow, we can actually be the intersection between health and medicine, right? We can be that gap, definitely that that preventative piece where people come to us for overall health. And I think that's super exciting. I mean, when what what's your uh what's your take on that subject? How do you think we become better professionals and increase our value?

I mean, I 100% agree with all of that. I think cool in reality it's a little tricky because I mean, yeah, you've got some organizations, you know, the NSCA, you know, ACSM, you've got uh people that kind of argue for exercise as medicine. It's been a tagline of ACSM for quite a while, but there's not really a coherent, as much as I hate the word, lobbying group for fitness. It's just super scattered. Where, you know, if you're a chiropractor or you're a GP or you're um, you know, an RD, there's usually one main group, for better or worse, that allows you to kind of get a little bit more influence. And what I see in fitness is that other organizations are still trying to own each particular area, right? So if you're a registered dietitian, you're like, I only talk about nutrition, no one else should. If you're a physical therapist, you're like, why only do exercise? Um, but if you're an RD, you may not be that good in sports nutrition. You might. Be, but that's something else you would have to study as a subspecialty. Um, if you're a physical therapist, again, I refer to physical therapists all the time, definitely useful. But if you ask most of them, they're probably not the best trained for exercise performance. This is just generally not something that they learn at physical therapy school. Um, but you have other groups that are trying to get part of it, and the fitness professional is kind of left in the middle. So, my opinion is for the time being, I don't think it'll change until the customer actually starts demanding a higher level of service and will actually pay for it. Because it's fascinating to me, like if someone blew out their knee, they're probably not going to go to the orthopedic that's half price of the guy down the street, right? You're probably gonna scratch your head and go, why is he half the price of the other guy or gal? You know, like you, yeah, I don't know about this. But for fitness stuff, you're like, oh, great, no worries, it's half price. I save money. Yeah, right. Um, and again, there's exceptions to that rule, but I think that that'll hopefully force more of it to change. And in the meantime, I think if you're a fitness professional, definitely having a referral system. So if I was to start over again today, I mean, I would find a really good, you know, chiropractor, you know, GP, you know, some maybe in neurology, you know, clinical neurology, uh, potentially an RD, depending on your background state, regulations, that type of thing, physical therapist, uh, psychiatrist. I mean, I would have all these people as a referral network to be like, okay, yep, Bob just came in and his, you know, right hip is effed. Okay, you need to see the physical therapist and potentially an ortho, right? And then once you're done or you find you need it replaced or whatever happens, okay, we'll help you once you're done. Um, and I think that would also help elevate trainers as more integrators, which I think is a much better role. Like what you were saying, you're at the crossroads of all of these things. So having, you know, just enough to know what your limits are and when you should work with someone and when you shouldn't.

Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think, uh, God, who was I just talking to about this? Um understanding our place in the new ecosystem is the way it was addressed. Yeah. Like, okay, now that there's Pelotons at home and there's, you know, uh all these various professions. And, you know, where where do you, and this is like a I'm talking to you, fitness professional, gym owner, entrepreneur, like, where do you find your place in this new ecosystem that has now a technological layer and connectivity layered like it's never had before? You know, uh, it doesn't mean that all this stuff is competition, it just means that you have an opportunity to harness it if you can figure out where you sit in it. And that's that's the new question. And I think it's an exciting question because after all, I do think it offers the people who stick with it and can figure that out a huge opportunity to be, you know, more professional, make a greater living and have a bigger impact. And I think that's what everybody in the fitness profession wants.

Yeah, no, I I agree. And you know, just for myself, I find that solving problems to me is the most interesting part.

Yes.

And, you know, for some other, you know, higher-end athletes, I may just I might actually be looking at blood work, which is only looking in health parameters, and I have a MD PhD and people I can refer to if I get stuck, or send them back to their doc if you know things are out of range. But if it's in the health range, they're in this, you know, again, this sort of weird area where do we is it something actionable? Is it not actionable? Uh, like in Minnesota, I do a fair amount of hands-on work also, um, which again is a very much a gray area. And I ended up doing it because I found that with some things, that was the fastest way to get you know better muscle activation and figure out what was you know going on with the athlete. So again, it's a thing of I think being more of the coordinator of what are the things you can do that are helpful. And if you don't have those skill sets or you know, legality, all those other things, having people you can refer to. Um, because it I know even in the future of some we'll say like individual sports like MMA, this is becoming a lot more common, right? You'll have you know one guy or one gal that is kind of the ringleader, but they'll pull in all sorts of other different professionals and they're kind of coordinating everything together. So all the forces are going to one area. I think doing that more even for you know other athletes and general population, I think also increases the value because especially for guys, like how many guys have even gotten a blood panel from their physician? Like I did a call two weeks ago. I said, Do you even know who your doctor is? No, like you should go find one and get some blood work done. You know, I mean, like this is pretty basic stuff, you know, that unfortunately the fitness professional is the person who's probably gonna have that discussion with them to kick them back to their doc and be like, Yeah, go find someone and get this done, right? Yeah.

And it's it's interesting. I mean, I had to beg for a blood panel with my uh with my physician for my annual physical. He just it wasn't. I'm like, you know, can I please get one? And they're like, Yeah, yeah, sure. Like, man. But then like that's why I love like uh inside tracker is a sponsor of the show. Sure. I can put that in my it's it's now on my control. I can get my blood work done, I can get my DNA, and then I have kind of understanding of what cards I've been dealt and now how to how to play my best hand, right? And uh, and it's all in my control, and they boil it down to the most simplest things like eat more oatmeal. And you know, that's great. That's huge. I mean, it's starting to put, I think ultimately what we're hoping for is that the end consumer, the general population starts to take more responsibility for their own health. And that means seeking out um, you know, proactive things, which is where a fitness and health professional come in. It's very proactive, right? Uh, so yeah, I hope, man. It's so funny you mentioned the blood test thing. It drives me nuts um that my physicians don't ask for for blood tests. It drives me nuts.

Yeah, it's it's kind of weird. I mean, I had uh from a physician, not somebody online, maybe five years ago. And I went in and it was at noon, and guy goes through, does all the exams. He's like, okay. I'm like, well, aren't you gonna do like a blood draw? He's like, eh, you're probably not fasted. I said, No, I'm fasted. It's like it's noon. I said, Yeah, you have to be fasted for blood work. So I didn't eat anything this morning. It's like, are you sure? Like, yeah, I'm I would remember if I ate breakfast. I'm not lying. And like trying to get a vitamin D test was like pulling teeth. You know, I'm like, dude, I wasn't traveling at the time. I live in Minnesota, it's dark, it's overcast, it's a northern climate. You know, insurance will pay for it if you recommend it. And he's kind of like, I suppose, you know, and again, that's I'm not trying to paint a bad picture of all physicians, but I think by having it be, especially for health parameters, you know, anything you can do to have it be more actionable. And, you know, unfortunately, I've recommended some people who don't have a physician to, you know, hey, you maybe you pay out of pocket and you do some type of system and you take that data and you bring it in your physician. You know, they may not be super happy with you at first, but I guarantee you're probably gonna at least have a decent conversation about it, and they can, you know, tell you what you need to do next. Um, so yeah, it's getting better.

Yeah, it is getting better. And that's uh better is better. So there we go. Um, Mike, I want to be respectful of your time, and I know you got to get running here. Um, it's been awesome having you here. Can you give us some insights? Like, where do people find you? Is there um, you know, you got some certifications up? Like, give us the goods, man. Where would you like people to go visit?

Sure. Yeah, the best place is probably through the newsletter. So probably 90% of my content right now goes through the newsletter. And you can get on at flexandiet.com, f l-e-x d I t dot com. There'll be uh join the wait list there at the top. That'll put you on to the daily newsletter. And the flex diet cert opens uh quarterly, so depending on when they hear this, uh be opening again mid-April. And then the physiologic uh flexibility cert also opens quarterly, so they're kind of on uh about four weeks apart usually. And if they go on to the newsletter at flexdiet.com, just hit reply there and tell me that you heard me on the show here and we'll send you a free gift.

Right on, right on. Mike, thank you so much. Uh, it's been an absolute pleasure, and I know we'll uh we'll be talking again very soon, but uh really appreciate your time today. It's been great.

Yeah, thank you so much for all the great questions and uh enjoy Montana there.

I certainly will. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Mike T. Nelson. Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Ministers. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.