[00:00:00] Bret: [00:00:00] This

[00:00:01] Bret Contreras: [00:00:01] is the superhuman channel evolution just got kicked up a nudge. The following, following pay program does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the staff and management of trisector productions or the superhuman channel. Dry, separate productions and the superhuman channel are not responsible for any claims, warranties, or guarantees made during this , bro.

[00:00:23]Hey, Hey. Welcome back to another episode of super human radio. We have a great show planned for you today. During the first hour we talking with Brett Contrares. We're going to talk about unilateral leg training. It's something that. Is by and large ignored, uh, within the, uh, fitness and strength community.

[00:00:38] But it should not be. And we're going to talk about that a little bit and then we're going to change it up. And we're going to be joined by dr Peter Elwood, and he is with the Institute of primary care and public health at the Cardiff university school of medicine in the UK. To talk about a recent study that he published that shows that exercise in men [00:01:00] can mitigate the onset of chronic disease, and more importantly, dementia is something that we are plagued with today in this country.

[00:01:07] Just want to mention that superior hardcore peptides has a special offer for the superhuman nation only, and that is. 30% off all peptides and on orders above $75 free shipping. When you use the coupon code, S H R three zero. That's  check it out. peptides are all the rage. Welcome back to the show, Brett Contraras.

[00:01:32] How are you?

[00:01:33] Bret: [00:01:33] I'm great. Thank you.

[00:01:35] Bret Contreras: [00:01:35] Good discussion. We're going to have right now, and it's an important discussion. It's one that we all forget about and it's, you know, um, I think it can be said accurately that we live life. On one leg at a time. But when we train, we always train both legs like presses, leg extensions, like curls, squats, and dead lifts and hip even hip thrusts for that matter.

[00:02:00] [00:01:59] So why don't more people consider unilateral leg training? You think?

[00:02:06] Bret: [00:02:06] That's a good question, Carl, and I'm. You met, you said earlier that, uh, when you introduced the topic that it's ignored. I would say that it's, I would say a lot of bodybuilders will do lunges. That's pretty much it. And then most power lifters ignore unilateral training, but strength coaches embrace it.

[00:02:31] And so do females, I've found, so I wouldn't say it's ignored, it's just highly underutilized. And I think it comes. A lot from the power lifting culture. They've found, you know, the, the, the, the, the squat and the deadlift are, are bilateral. So most of the powerlifters, you know, they'll experiment with anything, but a lot of them have found that it doesn't transfer.

[00:02:55] You know, it doesn't give them as much bang for their buck once they've, you [00:03:00] know, demonstrated some proficiency with single leg training that they get more from doing bilateral training. For the assistance lifts and focusing on, you know, squatting and deadlifting variations. And so they, they swear by bilateral training.

[00:03:14] And so anything else, you know, is, you know, like I've, I've read so many power lifters say that, you know, unilateral training is for pussies and things like that. And it's

[00:03:24] Bret Contreras: [00:03:24] because then, because, because this is a family show. When you say pussies, you mean for kittens and cats, right.

[00:03:29] Bret: [00:03:29] Yeah.

[00:03:29] Bret Contreras: [00:03:29] Okay. So, so, okay. But let's talk about the realities of that.

[00:03:33] Right. Um. I can leg press. I mean, I can put every plate on both upper stems and lower stems and do a good three, four or five presses with it. I cannot put half of that weight on and do any work at all with either my left only or my right only leg. So doesn't that tell us that if we started to focus on unilateral leg training, [00:04:00] that the bilateral work would actually become stronger.

[00:04:04] Bret: [00:04:04] Well, I, I do agree with that, but it depends. So you, you mentioned the leg press, and that's, I would venture to guess that most people would do better, you know, with the leg press, uh, w  in reference to their single leg strength compared to their double, then say something that required more balance, like the Bulgarian split squat, uh, you, you give those to some beginners.

[00:04:30] And it, you know, the, some, you know, a lot of times they're terrible at it at first. And let me tell you a little anecdote. I worked with a powerlifter guy. This was about six years ago, and it was, uh, not your typical power lifter who was well developed. This guy was a big guy and he just did everything with such a rounded back, you know, he.

[00:04:53] He, um, he squatted like a squat morning. He dead lifted with a rounded back squat

[00:04:58] Bret Contreras: [00:04:58] morning. I like

[00:04:58] Bret: [00:04:58] that. Yeah, exactly. A [00:05:00] squat morning. And, um, and he, he, um, he would pull, his is kind of funny though, cause the reason he approached me, this was just in the gym. He, he knew, he knew that, you know, I had a reputation in the gym for being the guy to go to.

[00:05:13] So I keep pulling my adductors on the lat pulldown machine. He'd do lat pull downs and he'd, he'd pull his adductor muscles. And I just said, you probably just have really weak adductors and weak leg strength. Let's start. Let me see if you can do it. Bulgarian split squat just with body weight. You know, he couldn't do one.

[00:05:33] He couldn't do one with good form. His legs were so weak. Now this was probably like he probably weighed 280 pounds. He's a big guy. So the thing, you know, a single leg squat would be challenging for him. But anyway, to make a long story short, I told him to start adding in leg cause all of his assistants lists were like, you know, good mornings and things like that.

[00:05:54] And I said, that's not going to help you right now. That's just going to make your form, you know, it's not going [00:06:00] to help improve your form. You're never going to use your legs when you do things. And so he prioritized single leg training for a matter of like two months and his strength went through the roof and its form improved.

[00:06:12] So in his case it helped a lot. But in you, you take another power lifter who uses his legs well and has short femurs in his well-built for squatting. He doesn't necessarily gain much from focusing on single leg strength. But. But, uh, I will go in another direction. Call the strength coaches have found single leg training to be very, very useful.

[00:06:36] And, uh, one of the primary reasons is because it's, you know, you have less loading on the spine. So, you know, like if you're training a, a high level athlete, you don't want to injure that athlete, but you want to strengthen their legs. Well, when they get up to where they can start squatting and dead lifting a ton of weight.

[00:06:57] It becomes more risky.

[00:06:58] Bret Contreras: [00:06:58] Yeah. So you drop the [00:07:00] weight and you go to one leg.

[00:07:01] Bret: [00:07:01] Exactly. And, and here's what I want to say to the listeners. I would, I would venture to guess there's one study showed that they looked at, um, I think it's both. Yeah. Bulgarian split squats versus squats and the hormonal response was greater.

[00:07:20] With the single leg, with the Bulgarian split squat, the testosterone increases were greater with the single egg, even though you were using a lot less weight, like half the weight, do you think,

[00:07:32] Bret Contreras: [00:07:32] do you think it's because when, when we, when we minimize stability. We maximize, uh, acuity, so to speak. Uh, the, the focus of the exercise, you know, it's, it's a lot easier to squat than to do a split squat or even a shoot the duck with bodyweight, uh, because you really have to concentrate not to tip over.

[00:07:57] Bret: [00:07:57] Well, I think it just shows that. [00:08:00] So that's one theory is that the stability aspect, you're using a lot more muscle, but little of a smaller muscle to destabilize. But I would just say overall, you use a greater, you know, possibly a greater amount of muscle mass, which I think the powerlifting community would laugh at.

[00:08:17] But, uh, if you ever tried doing, you know, I remember seeing Ronnie Coleman's videos. He loved his parking lot, lunges.

[00:08:24] Bret Contreras: [00:08:24] I remember them. He used to put that. The bar on his back with his boots and walked through the parking lot, like at a, you know, 90 degrees days. Yeah,

[00:08:31] Bret: [00:08:31] yeah. No, it was like a hundred degrees. I mean, Texas had Metroflex and I, I think branch Warren and Johnny Jackson would do the same, but they would do.

[00:08:40] You know, they'd have like, like one 85 on their back and they do it for super high reps. But I remember seeing videos of another bodybuilder using like 405 and 495 pound lunges. It was insane. It's on YouTube. Can't remember the guy's name. But anyway, the point is, you can get very strong at these single leg exercises.

[00:08:59] I [00:09:00] have a strength coach friends who I'm like, one of my, my buddies was a training. Uh, I believe he's a college football player and you know, the guy could front squad, you know, like probably three, 15 for 10 reps. So he started prioritizing single leg strength. Anyway, he got to where he would Bulgarian split squat 315 pounds for five reps with both legs.

[00:09:24] And that, that is insane to me because. No, I don't think I've ever, I've, I think I can do two Oh five but not, not even two 25 it's tough.

[00:09:32] Bret Contreras: [00:09:32] Is it? Is it, is the reason, the reason that single leg work hard is harder because of the stability, the instability contribution, or is it because the, the triangle of the hip girdle is disengaged.

[00:09:50] Bret: [00:09:50] I would say it's, I wouldn't say it's harder. Here's, here's, here's, here's my thoughts on it. It's harder in that [00:10:00] your stability is a, you know, in a frontal plane is, is less like your, your leg wants to cave inwards. You have to focus really hard to keep your knee tracking over your toe properly. But from front to back, like in a sagittal plane, you're, you're balanced.

[00:10:18] Well, with the, with like the lunge of the Bulgarian split squat, you don't want to tip forward or backward, like within a squat, you want to bend forward, you know? Um, so I, it's a, it's a tradeoff there, but, but back to what I was saying earlier, and then I'll address what you said. If you've done a high rep, like I remember doing, I spent about six months of my

[00:10:42] Training. Really it was, it was actually when I first learned hit training. High intensity training was that to failure, and I'd never experimented with this before, but the walking lunge was one of the exercises I picked to work my

[00:10:54] Bret Contreras: [00:10:54] law, who is

[00:10:57] Bret: [00:10:57] a brutal, and I would do one set to [00:11:00] failure. This was like when I was, this was probably.

[00:11:03] 13 years ago. But anyway, I started out with like 135 pounds, and I would, there was a, I had this awesome gym, world gym, it's not even there anymore, but it was, had its big walkway. So you could, you know, an aisle that you could do walking lunges, barbell without hitting anything and without, you know, running into.

[00:11:22] Gym members. I start out with one 35 for 20 and it killed me, but I kept adding weight. One one 55 one 70 I got to where I could do 225 pounds for 2020 steps a. It got to be so brutal that, you know, I would be on the ground. For 10 minutes trying to catch my breath afterwards. And I remember reading these articles about how, you know, lunges are for sissies.

[00:11:47] And I'm like, what the, who in the world would ever say that when I've taken the time to build up their strength?

[00:11:52] Bret Contreras: [00:11:52] Well, keep in mind that a lunge really does bridge the gap when the way you were doing of the anaerobic anaerobic thresholds, because. You're, you're [00:12:00] doing them beyond the body's capacity to anaerobically produce power and you have to start working aerobically.

[00:12:06] So I would say that that's really a high intensity workout. If you're going to do lunges to failure, there's a lot that has to fail. I have to believe that the mechanism that protects the heart would shut down first before the body would shut down. That's just my guess, and that's why you are breathing so heavy after afterwards.

[00:12:24] Bret: [00:12:24] It's definitely at that threshold where. The lungs and you know, and, and, yeah,

[00:12:28] Bret Contreras: [00:12:28] the pulmonary system and the cardiovascular system are really what's collapsing at that point because you probably have some more neuromuscular activity that could go on, but the body goes into a protective mode and it says, look, we're not going to let you kill yourself.

[00:12:40] Let's do this. Um, I want to take a break before I take a break. I want to mention what were some of these discussions are arising? You have a new book that you just published, right?

[00:12:50] Bret: [00:12:50] Yeah. It's a published by human kinetics. It's called body weight strength training. Anatomy. And

[00:12:55] Bret Contreras: [00:12:55] a lot of these discussions are arise from some of some of what you've are revealed in the [00:13:00] book, right?

[00:13:00] Bret: [00:13:00] Yeah. I mentioned a lot of this thing, you know, because body weight training, you've got to learn how to keep loading your muscles. And so single leg is the way to do it, you know?

[00:13:08] Bret Contreras: [00:13:08] Yeah. And where can people get the book bread?

[00:13:12] Bret: [00:13:12] Uh, you can type it into Amazon. Uh, just do a Google search. It'll, the Amazon link will come up or it human kinetics, you can buy it through there too.

[00:13:19] Bret Contreras: [00:13:19] And then of course, a favorite book of mine that's giving, uh, any woman who wants to put the effort. A fourth, a a booty to be proud of and, uh, plug that book. Also, you're, you're a recent .

[00:13:31] Bret: [00:13:31] Yeah, that's called strong curves and that's a publish through victory belt. But that's, that's like my Magnum Opus for, for glute development.

[00:13:39] I poured so much energy into that, and I'd wrote that with Kelly Davis. Um, and it's, yeah, it's, uh, focuses on the glutes

[00:13:49] Bret Contreras: [00:13:49] and I got to believe that Hollywood has found that book too, by the way. But we'll talk. No, they

[00:13:52] Bret: [00:13:52] haven't. They haven't. And Carl, we can talk about that when we

[00:13:56] Bret Contreras: [00:13:56] get back. I stay tuned. We're talking with Brett Contrarez.

[00:13:59] The [00:14:00] discussion will continue on the other side of the break.

[00:14:03] Bret: [00:14:03] He's asking the hard questions.

[00:14:05] Bret Contreras: [00:14:05] Where are the convictions for the drugs that are being used right now that are killing people? That government is too afraid to answer. See all the attorneys, Hey, if you develop cancer up to taking this up on the call, our law office, because we've got a class action suit coming together.

[00:14:18] Carla know what's wrong with you? People on super and radio jumping higher and and more. It's super true

[00:14:27] Bret: [00:14:27] and radio.

[00:14:28] Bret Contreras: [00:14:28] Yo, Mike, check my check. Yeah. Here you go.

[00:14:34] Welcome back.

[00:14:38] Later in the show, professor Peter Elwood will join us to talk about a study that confirms what we in the superhuman nation know and believe exercise mitigates disease and dementia. Right now we're talking with Brett Contrarez. We're talking about. Unilateral leg training and the, the, the, the importance of it.

[00:14:57] But let's go back to what I said before. So you don't think Hollywood [00:15:00] has picked up strong curves yet? Huh?

[00:15:02] Bret: [00:15:02] Well, so they have not, and, and, and it's funny cause, uh, I'm pretty naive sometimes. I remember when my, and then this whole Miley Cyrus. Um,

[00:15:13] Bret Contreras: [00:15:13] yeah. When her butt was jiggling on TV. Right.

[00:15:15] Bret: [00:15:15] Right. And I, I posted a blog thing, you know, Miley, I will train you.

[00:15:19] I want to help. I think Miley's beautiful and I would love to help her get better glutes. Plenty. I found an article from. Someone sent me the link. It was like her Pilates instructor, you know, talking about how great she looks and how great her let you know, like her body looks and I'm going, okay. Did they

[00:15:37] Bret Contreras: [00:15:37] not, did they not see that, that, uh, that, uh, twerk event?

[00:15:42] Are you kidding?

[00:15:42] Bret: [00:15:42] I mean, yeah, she was all over the world and, and it's frustrating to me because. Well, first of all, I said this in my blog post. You sh, you know, like you should be proud of your body. And she's beautiful. She's thin, she looks, you know, she looks

[00:15:55] Bret Contreras: [00:15:55] great young, she's young. Wait til she gets

[00:15:57] Bret: [00:15:57] older.

[00:15:58] So I feel bad like being [00:16:00] like a glute snob, but it's so, but I do this for a living. I, I train women and I help them get better glutes. And it's so easy for me. And I. I wrote a blog post, but it, you know, there's no way she's going to take me up on the offer because here's why. I have friends who are, you know, who trained celebrities and they tell me about it.

[00:16:19] And it's this, um, you know, like, uh, you hear. Like there's fads in Hollywood,

[00:16:27] Bret Contreras: [00:16:27] like Tracy Anderson is a fat, women shouldn't lift anything heavier than a two pound dumbbell.

[00:16:34] Bret: [00:16:34] So that's what they tell me. They said, it's so bad. And here's the deal. They're very wealthy. They're happy to pay the, you know, you know, several hundred dollars an hour to perse for personal training, but they're going to dictate the way they train.

[00:16:50] They don't say, you're the expert. I put my hands in you, you know my faith, and you just train me the way you want to train me. They, every, every, anytime [00:17:00] you push them hard, they say, you know, I don't want to get bulky and I don't, he said, you have to, you have to meet the client in the middle. Or they wouldn't, you know, cause these, these trainers need to have, you know, they need to be in business.

[00:17:10] They need clients. So my, some of my colleagues have to trick their, you know, these celebrities and achieving a good workout. Most mostly the women, the men. You know, like you see that, like I wrote a blog post on Hugh Jackman when he, when he,

[00:17:25] Bret Contreras: [00:17:25] yeah,

[00:17:25] Bret: [00:17:25] yeah. But he, so he like, he trained hard. And so the males, I shouldn't say they don't, the women don't train hard.

[00:17:32] It's a different type of, they don't want to lift heavy. They don't want to, you know, they're so fearful of getting both.

[00:17:39] Bret Contreras: [00:17:39] I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll, I'll give you some exceptions to the rule. And I, and I know these, these for a fact, because I know who trains them. Dr Peter Ralph's trained. Scarlett Johanson for one, wasn't she in one of the, um, I'm trying to think what action movie she was in.

[00:17:54] Was it, what was it, iron, one of the iron man. Yeah, she's,

[00:17:58] Bret: [00:17:58] yes, she's been

[00:18:00] [00:18:00] Bret Contreras: [00:18:00] trained her, she was doing Bulgarian split squats. She was doing heavy lifting. She was, he had a dead lift and he had to do and all that stuff. And when she stepped on stage, she looked hot.

[00:18:09] Bret: [00:18:09] Yeah. Good for so good for Peter and good for Scarlet because it's very hard to get an answer.

[00:18:16] Kudos to those actresses who will listen, but I will say, you know, there's this, uh, the, the fitness industry is so black and white, you know, like what were the topic we're talking about right now? There's all these fierce debates, single leg or double leg. Like why did they have to be one or the other? Why wouldn't you do both?

[00:18:35] Like, it doesn't have to be black and white, one or the other. This binary. You know, one or zero, you should do both. Well with, with, um, we'd like to, you know, you always hear fitness professionals say. Women can't get bulky and they can. Depends on the woman's preference. I have trained some women who, whose quads got too big for [00:19:00] their liking.

[00:19:00] Now it doesn't ha, it's a very small percentage though. So the, it's very over-exaggerated. This whole women will get too bulky, but ultimately depends on the woman's goals and how she wants to look.

[00:19:12] Bret Contreras: [00:19:12] A lot of times, a lot of times the muscles grow. And then when they lose the sub Q Fathi, the leg ends up being thinner than it was originally.

[00:19:20] Bret: [00:19:20] All of that's a very good point. Women get, you know, get down to their contest condition. How many of them have too big of legs like the bikini? You know, 

[00:19:31] Bret Contreras: [00:19:31] they look a lot of them, a lot of them lose their legs. I don't, I don't want to get too deep into this because I want to get back to the subject, but the point is well taken that Hollywood does not embrace this type of training, but they're missing the boat because there are some, uh, movie stars out there who are.

[00:19:47] And they're training with good people and they're putting on muscle and they have curves and they look fantastic and Hollywood needs to get with the program. Good luck. Can we segue back? Did you want to recap anything real quick before?

[00:19:58] Bret: [00:19:58] Well, the only thing I'd like to [00:20:00] say about that is that some of my colleagues have found ways to trick the client into, cause they, they like, um, if you studied biomechanics and then you'll realize that.

[00:20:11] Let's say you do a single leg, a bodyweight Bulgarian split squat, or a body weight, single leg, hip thrust, you're gonna put, put a certain amount of torque loading on the hips, and that's going to achieve a certain amount of. Glute activation, and you're going to put torque loading on the knees, and that's going to achieve a certain amount of quadriceps activation.

[00:20:29] You're going to work the muscles in a certain, you know, depending on the loading, but a body weight, body weight, single leg movement is, you know, you can achieve high levels of loading even though you're not holding a bar. Like if you do a, a Romanian Detlef with just the bar, that's really easy. That's not going to be a lot of loading.

[00:20:49] So, but with a, when you train someone who's afraid of bulking up. They might be, you know, you hand them a barbell or a heavy kettlebell or something and heavy dumbbells, they're going to be [00:21:00] squeamish. But if you give him a single leg movement, there'll be okay, this isn't, you know, they equate it to load and load doesn't equal torque.

[00:21:07] There. You also have to factor in the lever arm so you can use these single leg movements to kind of trick people who are fearful of getting too bulky into achieving a good workout. And so that's what I wanted to mention about that.

[00:21:20] Bret Contreras: [00:21:20] Okay. So let's get back to, uh, what, what does unilateral, uh, leg training translate to best if it doesn't really benefit the more elite power lifter, uh, who does benefit from it?

[00:21:33] I have to believe athletes like football players, basketball players, because they truly do, uh, participate in their sports on one leg at a time.

[00:21:42] Bret: [00:21:42] So there's a couple of interesting studies, but there's not a lot of research on this topic. I hope that it's time advances that there's more research that emerges.

[00:21:51] But one study, this was very interesting to me, showed that I'm got, it's been a while since I read it, but unilateral training, [00:22:00] like plyometrics led to better like more rapid results, but bilateral plyometrics led to more lasting results. So they didn't, you didn't taper you, you kept those for longer. They examined the effects of  training as well.

[00:22:16] And um, but another study that looked at actual exercises like bilateral and unilateral. Uh, strengthening exercises. And then they also did bilateral and unilateral plyometrics. So the, like the bilateral group did like things like squats and vertical jumps and things like that was the unilateral group did like lunges and step ups and single leg jumps and things like that.

[00:22:41] And they both achieved very similar results across the board, except the unilateral group actually saw better transference to unilateral plyometric actions. But everything else was very similar, or there have been studies, uh, on muscle activation and you get pretty similar [00:23:00] measured, like measures. It depends on the variation, the exercise you use.

[00:23:03] So like one study looked at the Bulgarian split squat versus the regular squat. Of course you're going to get hired glute medius activation when you do single leg, because the glute media has helps that, you know, is it responsible for the knee tracking over the, the foot in a frontal plane? It stabilizes the, you know, the, the femur.

[00:23:22] So you're going to get more glute meat. But as far as the other muscles like quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes. Um, it's, there's two different studies. So you could go by either one. One study showed that both studies showed that the squat gets more quad activation, and then the glute medius gets more in the single leg.

[00:23:45] And then the hamstring activity is more with the Bulgarian split squat. But I've done, so I can tell you what studies show that I have EMG. Yeah. I've tested lots and lots of my clients over the last four years. And what [00:24:00] I will tell you, it depends on the variation. What surprised me is that you can get, um, similar levels.

[00:24:07] Like if I do a reverse lunge and I really lean into that leg, I can get my quad EMG just as high as when I do squats. Um, so this is important to know because one of my, like I always tell when I speak to fitness professionals at conferences and things like that, you shouldn't be passive like overly emotional about things.

[00:24:30] It's all sports science. Um, you want to learn these things because when you train lots of people, when you train athletes, when you train clients, some of them can't tolerate certain exercises as well. So the bigger your arsenal is and the more you know, the more you can be of help to these people. So if you have a client.

[00:24:46] Who, you know, every time they squad, they hurt their back or something like that. You sure you can try and work with their form. But not every single human is built to squat or deadlift or anything. So, [00:25:00] so it's good to know these variations. Now back to your question. Yes. Athletes, athletes. Um, so your, your comment earlier about how sports are played on one grant, you know, one leg.

[00:25:12] Well, there's kind of two camps that strength coaches kind of fall into. One camp says in the weight room, and this was influenced by Charlie Francis who trained Ben Johnson back in the day. The sprinter from Canada. Um, and he kind of said, you know, all this stuff you do on the field is unilateral. You're sprinting, you're doing plows and things like that.

[00:25:37] And so you're getting enough of that stimulus and so in the weight room focused on strength and power, and so you'll be able to better develop those with . Okay. Let's see.

[00:25:45] Bret Contreras: [00:25:45] Let's see. My attitude would be, everything you're doing out on the field is on one leg. So why go into the weight room and try to develop power bilaterally?

[00:25:54] Why not develop power unilaterally?

[00:25:57] Bret: [00:25:57] Well, that's the, that's the other camp. And [00:26:00] so again, the research kind of shows that they're both similar. So you can say, you can have your, one of my favorite quotes is from a fit, you know, the physicist Richard Feynman, I don't know if I'm saying that right, but he, he's a legendary physicist and he, he, he's.

[00:26:16] His quote is, if it doesn't match experiments, it's wrong. You know? And no matter how elegant that theory is, if it doesn't match experiments, it's wrong. So you can have all these elaborate theories, but if they don't, that's why like, you know, training studies and we need more of them in the literature because training studies.

[00:26:33] You know, they prove, or, well, they don't prove, but they, they show evidence for

[00:26:37] Bret Contreras: [00:26:37] one. Validate.

[00:26:38] Bret: [00:26:38] Yeah. Yeah. So you can have these theories, but we need training studies to, you know, to, to show these, these effects. And so there's only been a couple of training studies. We need more. But, um, but anyway, the other camp says what you say, if you're going to be on one leg on the field, then you should try to develop, you know, strength, stability and power and conditioning on one leg [00:27:00] in the weight room.

[00:27:01] And again, I keep just for the, for the life of me, I can never understand how, you know, if I, if I wrote an article about single leg training, and even if I said, do them both, you shouldn't do, you know, exclude, you would get all these comments from people. You know, you'd get certain power lifters, he said, these exercises are stupid.

[00:27:21] You don't ever need to do them. Squats, just squat and dead lift and get out of there. You know? And then you'd get other people saying, you know, the opposite. You get all these arguments and I can't, I never understand why you wouldn't just do both. Both. Right.

[00:27:33] Bret Contreras: [00:27:33] Which is what we're learning anyway. Right? So a lot of people.

[00:27:36] That. Now we're discovering that when you do like high intensity cardiovascular training, it translates better to health. I mean, not to strength. And when, when, when you take people who are basically aerobic type athletes and you start to try and training them to strength training translates better to their aerobic participation.

[00:27:53] So there's this whole idea that it's got to be this way or it's gotta be that way. Polarizing is why we have religion [00:28:00] today. Quite frankly, that's what it is, right? Everybody wants to have their camp

[00:28:06] Bret: [00:28:06] thing. Before we go to break Carl, I told this to Brad Schoenfeld a guest you've had several times on the show like five years ago, cause he was always looking at research and I kind of got him to be more, you know, main stream online.

[00:28:19] Cause I was like a blogger and anyway, and he helped me be a better researcher. So we both benefit each other. But I told him, fitness is religion. It's that people are so emotional about things. It's not, you know, they don't rely to logic and science and you know, the scientific method.

[00:28:35] Bret Contreras: [00:28:35] Well, luckily for me, I don't subscribe to organized religion, so I am willing to take whatever works in the gym.

[00:28:41] There you go. Let's do this. Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll be right back with more. Brett Contrares

[00:28:54] I want to mention something. While Blackstone labs is not a sponsor of the show on [00:29:00] yesterdays. Blueprint power hour. We talked about one of their supplements called Raiser's edge. Raiser's edge has a draft vanilla in it, which is a precursor to Modafinil, which is pro vigil. A lot of airline pilots use it because it's a non stimulating mental acuity enhancer.

[00:29:23] So the folks at Blackstone lab have set up a coupon code. S H R all upper case, and you can save 10% on a bottle of Razor's edge and check it out. I ordered one already. I'm anxious to find out what it's like. It does not have any caffeine in it at all. No stimulants in it at all. Uh, but apparently it gives you, uh, a mental focus, like nothing you've ever had before.

[00:29:47] And adaptable is as really is truly a pro drug. So I don't know how long that product is going to be available. I try it today if you could. Anyway, we're talking with Brett Contrarez right now, uh, about unilateral. Is there anything [00:30:00] else we need to talk about? Utero unilateral leg training. So I want to change the discussion for a moment if we can.

[00:30:05] Bret: [00:30:05] Well, I, the only thing I'd like to do, if you know, if we have the time, just kind of go through and discuss some of the best exercises, because I think that's where a lot of the disconnect is. A lot of people don't know what, what are the best exercise? What have, you know, for advanced lifters, for example.

[00:30:22] Okay, let's do that. Okay. So there is kind of like unilateral exercise that mimic the squatting motion. You might call these. You know, lateral, you know, squatting motions or unilateral knee dominant. Some coaches like to categorize them as knee dominant. Um, these would be quad exercise if you're a bodybuilder.

[00:30:43] So you can do step ups. Now with step ups, you can do them kind of a lower setting where your leg is, you know, thigh is going to be parallel to the ground. You can use a lot more weight that way. But if you can find a way in your gym, and I have a [00:31:00] adjustable, um, like something on my rack power rack that lets me go up as high as possible and I get my leg to where I can barely, you know, maintain, you know, it's like as high as my hip will go without pulling my lumbar spine and deflection.

[00:31:15] And if I put it, if I do high step ups like that, the most weight I can use is like 25 pound dumbbells. It's really, really hard. To do them that high. And I did these in my, when I had my training studio in Scottsdale, I did these. These were a favorite with with the ladies. They loved it. But you know, the guys did too.

[00:31:33] It's a lot harder, so you don't have to have, you know. Hundreds of pounds on your back when your legs up that high. So I like high step ups. I love, um, lunges. Now if you want to focus on the quads, do the lunges, hold the bar on the front squat, you know, the front, the racked position in front, and then step forward because that stepping forward and then pushing backwards.

[00:31:57] That's gonna work more quad. So that's a more quad [00:32:00] dominant lunging movement. But if you want to focus on the hips and the glutes with the lunge. Then you can do reverse lunges where you put the barbell in the the back squat position, but the low bar position works even better because you lean and then step backwards, do a reverse lunge and lean into that.

[00:32:18] That hips sink down into that hip and that works more glute. That's been shown in a study. The more forward lean increases, glute activation in the lunge. Um, now another awesome exercise for the. For the unilateral exercises for the quads is the Bulgarian split squat. This is a favorite of a lot of strength coaches, but it's not as popular, and I barely ever see bodybuilders do this and

[00:32:48] Bret Contreras: [00:32:48] basically takes a lot of balance.

[00:32:49] I've tried it with, you know, with your leg up on a bench behind you. Yup. And, and, and it really does take a lot of balances. You got to start out with body weight first before you put a bar, although maybe the bar [00:33:00] actually may, uh, balance you better. I don't know.

[00:33:02] Bret: [00:33:02] Yeah. Like some, some dumbbells, you know, and then you start with a barbell in it.

[00:33:07] So some people can kind of help. Cause even with me, I'll do a body weight one and I'm like all over the place and I've kind of done these a lot. So, and the thing is, a lot of times you'll be doing them and you're like mid set, you'll kind of like stumble it. You think it's really dangerous in that aspect, but, but anecdotally, it's not like people don't hurt themselves that much with these exercises.

[00:33:27] But anyway, there are a lot of strength coaches have moved to barbell. Uh, you know, they do it in the power rack, and so you unrack you unrack the bar just like you would a squat, and then you put your back foot up on a bench. And do Bulgarian split squats. Some coaches call them rear foot elevated split squats, and these are, um, and then you can tinker with your forum.

[00:33:48] Just like with, you know, squat regular squats and deadlifts. You can do different types of form to focus on different muscles and things like that. You can use a longer stride or a shorter stride. And then a final knee dominant [00:34:00] exercise that, um. It is really good to do is, you know, variations of the pistol squat and the pistols are like true.

[00:34:08] One leg, it's squats because your back foot isn't like, what does the lunge and Bulgarian split squat? You're

[00:34:12] Bret Contreras: [00:34:12] getting some assistance whether you want it magic fingers. You know what I mean?

[00:34:16] Bret: [00:34:16] In fact, one study showed that in a lunch, 75 5% of the, of your body weight is on the front leg and in a Bulgarian split squat, it's like 85% so you're getting assistance there from that rear leg.

[00:34:29] But in a pistol squat, you're not getting any. Now I can't do pistol as well. But one thing that helps is if you hold on to dumbbells and like five to 10 pound dumbbells and you do a front raise while you do it, it's called a counterbalance. And what that does is it shifts the, um, kind of don't want to get too technical here, but it shifts the, the moment or the torque on a little bit onto the hips and a little bit less onto the knees.

[00:34:55] By doing that because you move the center of mass forward and then the moment [00:35:00] arm for the hip increases.

[00:35:02] Bret Contreras: [00:35:02] One of the things that they do with, uh, you know, figure skaters have to do something called a shoot the dock, which is basically that same movement with their foot extended for out while they're skating.

[00:35:11] And they do have the advantage of being able to put their hands underneath their knee, uh, to brace their leg, uh, while they're moving. But one of the things that they do. Is they do, they do it on a bar, holding onto a bar so that they, you know, and you could do this with a Smith machine, set the bar up midway, grab up, grab a hold of it, go down on one leg with your foot straight out and kind of get the feel of it before you try to do it with weights or a free hand.

[00:35:35] Bret: [00:35:35] Yup, sure, sure. And that's a good point. A lot of these, you know, you, you. You don't just walk into the gym and do it, you know, like you ease into them, you progress gradually, and then all of a sudden you're, you know, using lots of weight. But you didn't start off that way. So those are the knee, the knee dominant movements that are best.

[00:35:54] But what about hip dominant movement? This is where, you know, a lot of people know how to work [00:36:00] the quads really well with single leg. But what about the hips and glutes? Well, my favorite three would be the. First of all, the single leg RDL now the single leg Romanian deadlift. My problem is a lot of people use such a light loading with it.

[00:36:16] It doesn't really hit the hamstrings. Well, they use it more for like the movement pattern, teaching the hip hinge and teaching, you know, stability or sensory motor or whatever. I like actually holding onto something with the, with the one hand and then holding onto a heavy dumbbell or heavy kettlebell with the other hand.

[00:36:34] And then doing the one legged, you know, Romanian deadlift motion, but bracing with that other leg cause it helps with balance. It helps you get more loading on that other leg. What's nice about that is you can really get a nice stretch and really load up that leg, but it's not going to produce nearly as much, you know, spinal compression, compressive forces.

[00:36:53] So. That's a good one to know in case you ever have like nagging back issues, but you don't want to lose your deadlift [00:37:00] strength, you know, cause everyone, most lifters I know like probably once or twice a year they have nagging back pain and then you got to train around it. So this single leg already all comes in handy.

[00:37:10] And that in that case, and then. There's the single leg, hip thrust and the single leg back extension, single leg, hip thrust. I like to do it just body weight. And what's nice about this thing like hit the rest is that, you know, sometimes you're on vacation, you don't have a gym to train at, but you want to get a good workout.

[00:37:27] Well, you can just do, you know, like two sets of 20 Bulgarian split squats, which is really hard. And then two sets of 12 to 15 single leg hip thrusts. Your back is on a couch. Or, you know, something, a chair or something. You don't need a bench, but you just put your back up, elevate your back, your foot's on the ground and you do a hip throws motion and that's going to work your glutes really well.

[00:37:49] Bret Contreras: [00:37:49] Now, do you have to move since you're using one foot? Do you have to move the foot. In inward.

[00:37:55] Bret: [00:37:55] Yes. That's a good point. Uh, you move it in, you send her, you send her the foot out in front of you, [00:38:00] and then you just do a bridging motion. And I liked that pause at the top for a split second. And this is a hit or miss exercise.

[00:38:08] You have people either saying they've never felt their glutes burden so bad in their life with this single leg, hip, hip thrust, or they don't.

[00:38:15] Bret Contreras: [00:38:15] Well, you know, you don't, you know what I've learned? It's like the squat. If you don't push through your heels. And if you don't lock out your lower back, you cannot engage your glutes.

[00:38:24] I found this doing hip thrusts myself, uh, doing hip thrust with very, very heavy weight where you start to lose the connection with the muscles. If you go to the lighter weight and you pay attention when you push through your heels and you have to lock out your lower back and you can actually feel your glutes squeeze at the

[00:38:39] Bret: [00:38:39] top.

[00:38:40] It's funny you mentioned that because. I actually visited, um, professor Stu McGill. He's a popular, uh, spinal biomechanics. I visited him in Canada this year. We did some experiments and that's one thing he pointed out to me. He said, bright notice between you went from four Oh five to four 95. You didn't S you didn't [00:39:00] get more glute activation.

[00:39:01] So now we're going to be investigating.

[00:39:04] Bret Contreras: [00:39:04] Well, but you know, but you know what you do get. I found when I do, when I, and I've, I've gone up to four 95 with my hip thrust. I feel it more in my hips and I'm not talking about where the bar is resting. My hips are really pulling the weight up as opposed to my glutes pushing the weight up.

[00:39:19] Bret: [00:39:19] Hmm. Well,  it's going to depend on the lifter, but this is a whole other topic. Well,

[00:39:26] Bret Contreras: [00:39:26] I, I gotta I gotta we have to take a break. We've gone long, but I actually want them to talk about the hip thrust for a second, because I wanted to talk about a lifter who was dead lifting and you got up to start doing heavy hip thrusts, and I didn't follow him after that to find out if he actually had any success.

[00:39:40] We're going to take a quick commercial break. We'll be right back with more. Brett Contrares. He's your personal watchdog. Is anyone awake up at Capitol Hill

[00:39:49] Bret: [00:39:49] sniffing out the corruption

[00:39:51] Bret Contreras: [00:39:51] in our health care policies? You are literally selling the population of this wonderful country to a death sentence.

[00:39:58] Jeez, Carla. [00:40:00] Nor

[00:40:01] Bret: [00:40:01] on the

[00:40:01] Bret Contreras: [00:40:01] super human radio network.

[00:40:07] It's super

[00:40:08] Bret: [00:40:08] cute.

[00:40:13] Bret Contreras: [00:40:13] Welcome back

[00:40:18] at the top of the hour. We will be joined by dr, I'm sorry, professor Peter Ellwood from the UK to talk about recent research that proves what we have always believed in this audience. And that is that exercise. Ms mitigates disease. Right now we're talking with Rick and trash. Brett plug, plug your book again real quick before we, uh, tie this up.

[00:40:36] Bret: [00:40:36] His body weight, strength saving anatomy. You can do a Google search, you'll find it on Amazon and also on human kinetics website.

[00:40:44] Bret Contreras: [00:40:44] Okay. So there was a guy that you posted off, uh, Carl.

[00:40:50] Bret: [00:40:50] One other exercise, and I want to get to this right before we discuss the hip dress, cause I mentioned there were three.

[00:40:56] Good hip, dominant, single leg exercise that I actually want you to try this next time you go [00:41:00] to the gym and train hamstrings. So you know, the regular back extension machine can either be horizontal or 45 degree hyper, right? Well you just, instead of doing two legs at a time, now you've got to kind of position yourself properly.

[00:41:15] Cause it's, it's a little, you know, it takes some stabilizing, but you just do want, do it one leg at a time, but put your arms over your head in a prisoner position. That I've found that that's equal to holding onto to around a 30 pound dumbbell for me to get the same effect. Put your arms overhead in a prison or position, do it one leg at a time, and really squeeze the glute up top.

[00:41:38] You'll feel this huge stretch in the hamstrings. Good glute contraction up top. It's really challenging. So that's a, and that's another one. Yeah,

[00:41:45] Bret Contreras: [00:41:45] it sounds challenging. Now what about the guy who was doing hip thrust to improve his dead lifts? Did he ever succeed?

[00:41:52] Bret: [00:41:52] I don't know what you're talking about, but I will tell you about this.

[00:41:56] All right, so here's why the hip, the us is good [00:42:00] for dead lifting because it's okay if you have perfect position when you dead lift and you use perfect form. Then the better position you're in at the bottom of the motion because you're stronger at the top, right? Because of mechanical advantage, you're stronger at the top.

[00:42:19] So if you're in really good position, when you pull the weight off the floor, once the bar passes your knees, it's easy. But for power lifters, here's why it helps, because all my friends. Probably lifting friends when they, when they, when they're on the platform. So sure, all your training was done with perfect form, but when you're on the platform, especially during your third lift going for a PR, they never stay in perfect position.

[00:42:44] When they pull the weight off the floor, their background's a little bit,

[00:42:48] Bret Contreras: [00:42:48] they start with their ass up a little higher than they should.

[00:42:50] Bret: [00:42:50] Their ass comes up a little higher and there they round over a little more and now when they pass their knees. So that makes it rounding, makes it easier off the [00:43:00] floor.

[00:43:01] But once you pass your knees, now you're not in a good position. It becomes way harder. If you don't have the glute strength to push the hips forward, you won't get it. And I see so many of my friends who get to the top and they're like six inches from lockout. That position should be easy, but they're not in good position.

[00:43:20] Uh, so they, they are, you should see him shaking like hyenas and they can't quite get it. So that's where you need those, that extreme glute strength to push the hips forward. And then you can pull the shoulders back and lock out the weight. So I've had several of my lifting friends start doing hip thrusts and they've noticed things.

[00:43:38] But it's funny because on, here's the argument with hip thrusts with powerlifters, half of them go, it's a stupid X, it's just slips. Don't mind her in the major. It's not going to help. And then you have the guys. Who have actually tried it and not just, you know, not just done it for here and there, sprinkling it in, but actually focused on it like you have Carl.

[00:43:59] You [00:44:00] took the time to build your strength up to 500 pounds. Every one of them will tell you his told every one person who's done it has told me, Brett, I noticed some things when I started doing hip thrusts. When I got stronger hip throws, all of a sudden my deadlift lockout strength was better. My slot started feeling better.

[00:44:18] Yeah. And they all say that. So to me, you know, if you're a. If you're trying to be your best, it doesn't hurt to try it. Try and build up your hip thrust strength. See if it benefits your squatting and deadlifting. Take a couple months to really build your hip thrust strength up. I mean, what's it going to, what is it going to hurt you?

[00:44:33] Having stronger glutes is that, could it possibly backfire?

[00:44:37] Bret Contreras: [00:44:37] If anything, I'll tell you something. So doing hip thrusts at the gym has gotten me a lot of notoriety because no one does hip thrusts. No one. No one, not even the chicks. And I'm over there doing it and me and Elisa, the only ones in the gym to do hip thrusts, and I've got her hip thrusting to 25 now, and she's doing fantastic.

[00:44:55] Her glutes, they've actually come up higher. I mean, it's like you could put a [00:45:00] glass on the back of her button now and it's like, it's like no one does them. And they all, and I even had a friend of mine comment and say. He thought that I was actually doing an exercise, and I know this is stupid, but like for my package, he said, well, what is that?

[00:45:13] I said, no, it makes your hips and your glutes stronger. I said, it's like no one does them. So if you want notoriety in your gym, just start doing heavy hip

[00:45:21] Bret: [00:45:21] thrusts. I agree, and it didn't. Carl, I've been prescribing these for seven years now and I've heard it all. I've seen it all and it's weird. It's this an exercise that elicits a lot of emotion out of people because.

[00:45:34] I don't know why. I guess people don't want to change, so they look at it and go, why is this getting popular? This is stupid. But

[00:45:40] Bret Contreras: [00:45:40] I know why come to the basic common denominator of embarrassment because people. When they're thrusting their hips, it becomes, you know, we live in a, in a sexually repressed environment in the United States.

[00:45:54] People thrusting their hips with weight on it. Girls or guys, they feel weird doing anything like that. I mean, [00:46:00] that's really what it comes down to in my opinion.

[00:46:02] Bret: [00:46:02] I do agree with that, but it's funny because we've gotten, so I think about the Romanian deadlift, we're okay with bending over, you know, like we became desensitized to it and I think in time, I hope that happens with the hip thrust.

[00:46:14] Yeah.

[00:46:15] Bret Contreras: [00:46:15] Anyway, plug the book one more time. One more

[00:46:17] Bret: [00:46:17] time. Uh, body weight strength training, anatomy. I'm available through human kinetics and Amazon. I think it's like 120 of the best body weight exercise. It has, um, illustrations. It's one of those illustrated anatomy books. So it shows all the muscles that are being worked and detailed instructions and, um, a program at the end that you can use to design programs based on your goals.

[00:46:40] Bret Contreras: [00:46:40] Fantastic. Listen, Brad, thanks for being on the show today, brother.

[00:46:43] Bret: [00:46:43] Thanks for having me call. I talk to you soon.

[00:46:45] Bret Contreras: [00:46:45] I stay tuned. When we come back, we'll have professor Peter Elwood on. We're going to talk about how exercise mitigates disease. We'll write back. He's asking the right questions at the right time.

[00:46:56] I don't care what side of this you're standing on that GMO was  [00:47:00] plus the truth matters. Nobody knows what the answer. Is it fair to subject this world to this experiment, which may have undeniable unknown consequences. That would be . Irreversible. You're listening to superhuman radio with Carl Lenore.

[00:47:18] Bret: [00:47:18] You are listening to the superhuman channel.

[00:47:20] Don't hate

[00:47:20] Bret Contreras: [00:47:20] us because we feel good.

[00:48:16] [00:48:00] Okay. Welcome back to supreme-a radio. We do have professor Elwood on the line all the way from the UK. How are you doing, professor Elwood?

[00:48:29] And I appreciate you taking some time to chat with us. We'll keep you for a shorter period of time as possible here. Uh, we want to talk about a recent recent study that you published, uh, that indicates that exercise, uh, may actually mitigate chronic disease and dementia and men. Can we talk about that please?

[00:48:50] How was the study designed. We took a representative sample of men in the community, two and the half. [00:49:00] People in the community. Not just pretty important in this kind of research that we get her into the sample. These are not fallen tears. We identified every month find area who was aged 45 to 59. We approached these men on 90% agreed to come into our study, and we followed them for 35 years on reskilling contact with the survivors.

[00:49:33] This was actually part of another study, right? This was something that, a study that was done, I want to say, I'm trying to find the name of it right now, and I apologize for not having it at my fingertips, but. This was part of the  Philly cohort study. That's fine. Perfectly is a small time and that's where we based this study, but we collected an enormous amount of information from [00:50:00] each man.

[00:50:00] We took blood  did grubs, blood pressure, and a measure took an ECG and measured everything possible. So over the 30 years, we have published about 400 papers, all kinds of issues. Uh, all many diseases. But the thing that has come March, which I think is the most important finding, is the reductions in diabetes.

[00:50:28] Heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and then cognitive decline and dementia. These are the most important findings, uh, in this study, did you look at the type of exercise that these individuals did, or was it just a, a, a questionnaire? Like, do you exercise and if so, how often? No, we, we, everybody come and Tweed made was carefully validated.

[00:50:56] That number, all of questionnaires, a [00:51:00] number of measurements to make sure that we were getting these, some measuring, some of these things. My Texas precise, luckily asked a whole set of questions. Um, then we, uh, applied the criterium, all of the, uh, how to quit exercise, which is widely used in the States, haven't been this country and in Europe.

[00:51:27] And that is how from NAR all walking, or the equivalent on five days every week. Now we were able to translate the detailed questions that we had into that kind of set criteria. Were any of these men doing any type of resistance training, going to the gym or the spa and lifting weights or using resistance machines.

[00:51:56] A few of the men may have some normal [00:52:00] community. I'm the kind of thing that you're talking about has become popular 30 years ago, very, very few people had the facilities to do what you're describing, so I think it was a very realistic estimate. All of the level of exercise. May I say a little bit more to biotechs.

[00:52:25] Sorry. No, please go ahead. Criterion. The criterion. Let's just putting that used in studies in the state send in this country is as I've indicated, how familiar. All the risk walking on five days every week. Now I feel that that is some unrealistic world. Busy people. I'm taking half an hour of every day, five days a week, I think is unacceptable.

[00:52:52] So what I urge my friends and patients to do is to develop on that lifestyle. [00:53:00] I go for a walk every morning before breakfast. I parked my car a mile from the hospital, so I've got to walk up miles to the hospital and in a mild back to my car. I walk to the shops. I don't use the lift. I woke up the stairs.

[00:53:20] I might think if we develop a more active lifestyle, it would be setting much more acceptable than trying to. The average person to take up weight lifting or to go to a gym and go on some kinds of trips. Well, well, but I w I would, I would like to, I would like to submit something to you here in the United States here in the United States.

[00:53:45] It's extremely difficult. Uh, because communities are not designed, uh, for pedestrian traffic. So walking, uh, places is very difficult. And quite frankly, some would argue, well, the half [00:54:00] hour that I'm taking to do this additional activity I could put in on a treadmill. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm a proponent of activity throughout the day.

[00:54:08] And I like to see people to wear things like pedometers so they can turn it into a game or a self experiment to see how active they are. So I do agree with you. That, uh, being active throughout the day has a more benefit than some concentrated half hour in the morning. Uh, but for those who don't have the ability to walk places, uh, because communities and our design that way, uh, they may be relegated to walking on a treadmill, for instance.

[00:54:36] I thought that is very, very reasonable. Uh, I, you know, deprived in the evening. Yeah, of course. Compared to this country, we're in much more walking is much easier here, but I would like to ask people who take up going to the gym, I'm going on a treadmill. I would like to ask him a year later. Two years later.

[00:54:58] Are you still doing [00:55:00] it? There's no, I would encourage them. There's no point doing it just for a few months and then feeling it's a bit Deiter a bit inconvenient, uh, about, uh, each person has to make their point decisions, but they should be encouraged and encouraged again and again, because it's not easy to keep up this level of exercise, but my, it's beneficial.

[00:55:24] What about, uh, the blood work that you did on these individuals? What kind of markers did you look at. We have just about every test that was available over the 30 years, but I don't think that they're really, really helpful. Uh, things like blood pressure are very helpful. And the exercise moderate exercise is associated with a lowering of blood pressure, which is fairly, very beneficial.

[00:55:54] Um, but the detailed tests of cholesterol and C [00:56:00] reactive protein and fibrinogen and so on, we would rather draw answers from the occurrence of diabetes. They cringe of a heart attack. They current have a stroke. The occurrence of cognitive decline rather than by a chemical or hematological measures. Did, did you look at sex steroids?

[00:56:23] These are very, very, uh, uh, forward-leaning, um, ideals right now that, uh, looking at things like testosterone, uh, estrogen, uh, and so on, in both men and women, uh, seems to indicate, uh, maybe if a person has, uh, some better outcomes, uh, against diseases. Did you look at those 30 years ago? We, yes, yes. In our phase one, right at the beginning of the baseline, we did both pissed off.

[00:56:53] Uh, and um, police are dial and courses are all under having a few [00:57:00] publications by my colleagues. Uh, there are not very encouraging, but we have contributed to the general body of evidence. But that's not my area and I really come to the value of that. Okay, here's what I want to do. I want to take a quick commercial break, and when we come back, I want to talk some more about the study.

[00:57:22] Uh, we are right now talking, I'm sorry about that noise there. We have a little, a international buzz going on here. We're talking with professor Peter Elwood, and he is with the Institute of primary care and public health at Cardiff university school of medicine and in the UK. Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more superhuman radio.

[00:57:43] Bret: [00:57:43] He's

[00:57:43] Bret Contreras: [00:57:43] keeping tabs on government health agencies. It's called the environmental protection agency. Carl is the protection. Where is the protection or nothing younger? It's

[00:57:57] Bret: [00:57:57] super human radio.

[00:58:01] [00:58:00] Bret Contreras: [00:58:01] Welcome back to superhuman radio. We're talking with professor Peter Elwood. We're talking about exercise. Has the ability to mitigate disease and dementia.

[00:58:14] Something that we have talked about on the show for many, many years now. More research coming out. And I think that, I don't think anyone would argue with you, uh, uh, about, about this professor Elwood. I think that what ends up happening with these types of discussions, which we've been talking about for well over nine years now on this show, is that doctors will say.

[00:58:35] Patient compliant is not possible. It's hard enough to get people to take pills, nevermind to start to change your lifestyle. What would you say to that? Yes, it's pretty diff for people, but I think it gives an impact to advice. Now we know cut to exercise, but we also look at other [00:59:00] healthy behaviors and we grouped them into a healthy lifestyle.

[00:59:05] And the results that I have a real explaining to you, uh, are really base healthy lifestyle. And that is five factors. It's non-smoking, regular exercise, a low body weight. A healthy diet and a low alcohol intake. We find that the people in Wales who follow that flow healthy behavior, there was five recommendations.

[00:59:32] They have huge reductions in diabetes, 70% fewer cases of diabetes, about 60% fewer heart attacks and fewer strokes, and about 60% reduction in dementia. I think if people work with those figures that have considerable impact.

[00:59:56] Bret: [00:59:56] Furthermore,

[00:59:56] Bret Contreras: [00:59:56] I would also tell people that . [01:00:00] Even people who follow the five healthy behaviors, some of them still get these diseases.

[01:00:06] There's no absolute presenters. Well, but, but I, I would, I, I would submit, I would submit this professor Elwood there, there are some very, very ubiquitous terms in lower body weight and eating healthy. And what I would submit to you is this, that there, um. Dire to like religion today, people are emotionally invested.

[01:00:28] There are vegans out there, there are lacto vegans, there are ancestral diet. There's all these different styles of diet. Many of these diets are mismatched for the human condition, number one. But if you ask someone if they eat healthy, they will unequivocally defend that they do number one. So I say that that is a very, very broad term that encompasses a lot of bad as well as good.

[01:00:51] The second one is when it comes to body weight. The emerging research shows that muscle is important to [01:01:00] staving off chronic disease. Now, muscle is the largest organ in the body. It produces hormones. It increases insulin sensitivity, it takes up glucose. It does so many wonderful things, but if you tell a person, well, you must lose weight.

[01:01:14] All they look at is their relationship between gravity and a scale, and if a person's body fat. Starts to outweigh lean body mass. They could fit into a small dress or a size 29 waist pants and still develop diabetes. Because we are living in a world today where muscle mass is thought to be optional.

[01:01:41] We use BMI, body mass index, which. They bought me weight corrected for height, and that is a very, very powerful, uh, discriminant, but pick pay in diabetes, 70% of diabetes is due to overweight. [01:02:00] Yeah, but, but, but, but, but professor Elwood, according to BMI, I'm obese. I'm a 35 on the BMI scale. I'm six of six foot two and I'm 240 pounds, but I'm only about 11 or 12% body fat.

[01:02:14] So that that's B. I think BMI is kind of like, um, BMI is like getting you into the ballpark, but it doesn't really answer the question because if you have a person, you have two people and both of them are 150 pounds and they're well within their BMI, but one of them is 46% body fat. The one that's 46.6% body fat would end up being prediabetic and speaks to why your your statement a moment ago that.

[01:02:42] Well, there are some people that still do all these lifestyle things and still get disease. Yes. Yes, yes. Let, let me finish that sentence that I started didn't get disease, but they, then they had later age the, uh, uh, [01:03:00] diseases that do occur in people living a healthy lifestyle occur. I'd like, on average, about 12 years later, there's 12 years of healthy life.

[01:03:10] Uh. Over and above people who do not follow a healthy lifestyle, can I say? Yes. There are all kinds of ways that ways that these measurements can be refined, but I don't think it's helpful in the company as a whole. Individuals, yes. Rugby players, football players, when they have a high BMI on, it's because of muscle and that will give them protection.

[01:03:38] And the average man on the street, that is not an excuse for having a hype or a high body weight. That high body weight in the man on the street means he's at very high risk. All these pockets, I'm kind of stroke  no, I agree with you 100% I agree with you. So what do you hope [01:04:00] clinicians take away from your research?

[01:04:03] I think they'd take away a message with much greater. Now, there have been studies like this in the USA, and the results are very trophy similar to ours, but none in medical studies looked at cognitive time or dementia. So I think your position is kind of not up to diabetes, heart attack and stroke. They can add a cognitive impairment.

[01:04:31] And dementia and that's becoming a major problem and a major problem to health authorities and to communities. I think if the subjects and patients were told the exact true results, it would not have impact to the general sort of bland. We should all take more exercise. No, tell people the benefits in terms of the reduction.

[01:04:57] And the delay in disease and [01:05:00] in particular dementia. Yeah, and you're right, and people are developing dementia at younger and younger and younger ages today. So it is scary. You're, you're, you're right on. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I know that you had to take time away from the family to do this interview today.

[01:05:16] So I want to thank you so much and I thank you and applaud your work because we've been talking for nine years on this show about the importance of exercise as part of the longevity prescription. Uh, and, uh, we tend to be a little bit more zealot like on this show and my audience because we engage in a variety of different, more intense exercise regimens than the average population.

[01:05:37] But I say, get a pedometer and make sure that you're active every single day. That's a good starting point. And I, and that, and I think that coincides with your message as well. Well, it does. That's, that is excellent on, it's been a great pleasure talking to you. Have a wa. Have a wonderful day. Professor Elwood.

[01:05:55] Have a wonderful day. Thank you very much indeed. Bye. Bye. Hi. So stay [01:06:00] tuned. We're going to take a quick commercial break. When we come back. I want to talk about the new iPhone app. Uh, I need your help. Uh, so stay tuned. You're listening to super human radio. We shall return. This is one of those things. I think it's going to be 30 years from now and people going to go, Oh damn, this didn't work out right.

[01:06:15] He's serving up and all you can eat buffet

[01:06:18] Bret: [01:06:18] of brain food.

[01:06:19] Bret Contreras: [01:06:19] It's gotten worse for us who are overweight because we're now paying our fair share, but things that we didn't have to before

[01:06:24] Bret: [01:06:24] get it while it's hot.

[01:06:25] Bret Contreras: [01:06:25] The fact that there's only 50% of the population is obese, that means the other 50% is doing something different.

[01:06:30] Your listening to your daily dose of wisdom, superhuman radio with Carl Lenore.

[01:06:38] Bret: [01:06:38] Your radio show.

[01:06:40] Bret Contreras: [01:06:40] It's super human radio.

[01:06:49] Welcome back. So for those of you who are aware, aren't aware. Um, I was too cheap to drop the few thousand dollars [01:07:00] to have a, a multi-platform app done. And we've needed an app for like years now, right? So I have this live channel that can stream, we have the podcast and would, depending on things like iTunes to deliver the show and Stitcher and all these other different types of software products.

[01:07:16] And one of the things that always happens inevitably is I get emails from people every single day now saying, Hey. Can you please upload, show 1331 to iTunes. It's not there and it is there. It's on the RSS feed. I have one RSS feed that all the podcast directories pull from, including iTunes. Um, I update it almost daily.

[01:07:38] I didn't put yesterday show up yet, but I'll be putting it up today with this show. And, uh, there's only one RSSV. There's no reason why iTunes. Regularly randomly excludes shows. I remember there was a period of time when I was doing the show every week with the Del Mussa, uh, that the subversity science Roundup every other week, and this diversity science round would just not be there like three times in a [01:08:00] row.

[01:08:00] I was like, maybe they have something against the Dell over at Apple. I don't understand this. Well, the good news is this. That the app that we've created here, and I say we euphemistically, cause I act like there's a lot of people here, but it's just me and Alisa, uh, the app that we've created here, that's not true.

[01:08:16] Jenny Robarts makes appointments with guests and we do have, uh, uh, who's having a much more active role now, Elliot Turton, who is producing for us now, he's going to actually be more full time here very shortly. But I wrote this app. For one reason because I'm tired of shows just being lost. That happens to Stitcher.

[01:08:37] It happens to iTunes and it's ridiculous. Well, one good thing is that once the shows are posted on my RSS feed, on my server within like nanoseconds, they're in the podcast directory on the app, so you'll never miss a show again. I have it set up where you can manage about 110 shows. From the phone. I feel like 110 ought to be enough to go back and check [01:09:00] through, um, on your, on your phone.

[01:09:02] But I can expand that. I'm sure I can make it larger and make it all 600 shows. We keep about 600 shows up on the server at any given time. Well, the other thing that it does is it allows you to literally stream the show. And I'm want this because I want more people to start tuning in live. We're going to be producing more shows.

[01:09:20] Some exciting ones. I don't want to talk too much about them right now and I want people to be able to tune in live. I want more interaction in the show and that's going to require live tunings. And that's going to mean convenience and convenience would be if you have your iPhone or your Android, you press a button and you listen to the show for 10 or 15 minutes here and there and, and, and you know, just like regular radio.

[01:09:39] And so we have a live stream. There's a a tab for live streaming. There was a problem with the live stream on Android. Some people had it, some people didn't. I modified the script this morning and resubmitted the binary code to Google play. I'm hoping that version 1.1 is up there within the next day or so.

[01:09:57] I'm hoping that everybody who's downloaded the [01:10:00] first Android version gets a notice to say upgrade and please upgrade. Also. When you download, please allow push notifications. We're going to use push notifications for two reasons. Number one, to let you know what show is playing that day. And number two, we're going to put T

[01:10:17] I'm going out in an effort to get more people to download the app. I'm going to enlist my sponsors to do special things that will only be available to people that have the apps and you'll get them through push notifications. They will be ridiculous and stupid offers like this can't be real type offers that will only be available to people who have the iPhone and Android app.

[01:10:40] And we'll have iPad shortly. And I'm working on Kindle right now for those of you who have Kendall,

[01:10:44] Bret: [01:10:44] so.

[01:10:45] Bret Contreras: [01:10:45] Please download my app. I sound like that guy on TV. Please try my software. Please download the app. Get the Android app and Google play. The iPhone app is now up in iTunes. We'll have a banner ad I Su-Preme radio.com that will take you to [01:11:00] the appropriate page.

[01:11:01] Obviously, you go to Google play on your smartphone. You go to the iTunes app store on your iPhone. Uh, or I'm sorry, Android, Google play, and even HTC, someone messaged me on Facebook and said, they have an HCC, and they downloaded the Android app from Google play and it worked perfectly on their phone. So download the app please.

[01:11:24] Number one. Number two, rate the app. Uh, rated based on the show. Okay. Because really it's a very simple app. Uh, you also have a tab there that you'll be able to get a newsletter directly to your iPhone, iPad or Android or HCC. And assume Kendall. Uh, as well as special offers. As I said a moment ago, as well as articles that we're posting and blog posts will all be there.

[01:11:51] And also there is a tab that allows you to email me instantly from your phone so you can be listening to the [01:12:00] show and send me a message. And the reality is that it's already being used. John Bolger. Downloaded the app and sent me a message. Says, nice work, Carl. Congratulations right from his phone. Boom.

[01:12:14] Comes right to a special email address that shows up on my screen. So this we will use during the show. If you're listening to a show and you want to want me to ask a listener, I mean a, a guest, a question, this is how you're going to get the message to me using the, the, uh, uh, send me a message tab on the app.

[01:12:33] By the way, John Bolger, you are officially the first person to use that tool. I'm going to contact you and come up with something special to reward you for that. So thank you very much for doing that. Um, I need to get this app out there so that more people can get the show easier without any glitches, without any, Oh, this show isn't up there or any of this other nonsense.

[01:12:54] That has happened in the past. So please download the Android app at Google. Play the [01:13:00] iPhone app at the the app store on your iPhone, iPad. I'm waiting for Apple to approve and I'm working on Android now. Who knew. It's a very unsophisticated app, which means that it should be pretty simple. I've already made a revision to the Android app because it wasn't streaming.

[01:13:17] Right. That's up there. It's 1.1 so those of you who have the Android look for it and please update the software. If you're having trouble with the stream, it should go away. Now. Uh, we also found the bug this morning on iPhone iOS seven. Uh, when you hit stop for the stream, it doesn't want to stop for some reason, for a while, then it does.

[01:13:37] It's like a delay. So I have to turn to, uh, uh, some of the forums that I'm stealing information from and see if anybody else has had this problem to figure out how to fix it. Uh, but please get the app, tell your friends to get the app turned them onto the show this way. It's an easy way to manage the podcast.

[01:13:54] Um, it's an easy way to stream the show live and stream the channel. The channel is going to become very [01:14:00] popular this year. I'm telling you, we're introducing two new shows beginning of next month and two new shows thereafter, and we're going to be introducing a bunch of new shows to this channel. In 2014, the super human radio network will become a full fledge radio station delivering content that you want.

[01:14:15] And I don't mean just about fitness and health travel investing. We're going to have news. We're going to be doing news every single day, morning and evening. Uh, you can help me realize my dream of reaching a larger audience to get this message out. Well, we just had professor Elwood on and he's telling us, you know, walk a half hour, you know, park a mile away from the, the, the office.

[01:14:37] Those are all good points, but we know even better that when you train heavy and you build muscle, you become Bulletproof against disease. The mainstream doesn't get this. And I don't expect them to get it anytime soon, but we get it and we know it works. So let's get more people who want to be like us into the fold helped me get the app out there.

[01:14:57] Download it yourself, tell your friends, [01:15:00] and please let me know if you find any bugs in it. And I will get on it right away. This morning at 5:00 AM I was uploading the revision 1.1 on the Android app, uh, to the Google play store. So hopefully that'll be out there shortly. I want, I have a dream. I have a dream to take this radio station global to effect the largest number of people.

[01:15:22] And here's the key words, who want to be effected? The largest number of people who want to hear the truth about nutrition, about exercise, about supplementation, about longevity. And everything that goes along with it and you can help me and it all starts with one thing. You love the show, please download the app.

[01:15:42] Okay, super human radio network is the name of the app. Check it out and thank you for listening today. We'll see you tomorrow.

[01:16:35] [01:16:00] throw away those muscle-building rag mags and listen to real health information you

[01:16:40] Bret: [01:16:40] can trust.

[01:16:41] Bret Contreras: [01:16:41] So right now what's trending is like resistance, exercise, CrossFit. So he's like, well, I'm going to write an article that will make all of those people go, what? What? What? There are people out there who are trying to convince themselves that heavy resistance training is not good for you.

[01:16:55] They want to be substantiated by why they don't go into the gym and do any kind of work. In [01:17:00] order for you to get rhabdomyolysis, you have to be an extremely well trained at the who pushes your body beyond the point of no return. And even then you may not get wrapped up. Only on superhuman radio with Carl Lenore, they couldn't get rhabdo up.

[01:17:15] I said, get rhabdo and I'll give you $1 million. This

[01:17:18] Bret: [01:17:18] is the superhuman

[01:17:19] Bret Contreras: [01:17:19] channel evolution just got kicked up a notch.