Brian MacKenzie On Slaying The Sacred Cows Of Endurance

According to Brian MacKenzie, most endurance & ultra-endurance athletes are doing it all wrong. The controversial founder of CrossFit Endurance stopped by the garage to illuminate me further on his perspective — one that slays the sacred aerobic cow in favor of championing focused high intensity anaerobic work coupled with technique and functional body strength. Truth or Fiction? Somewhere in between? Thanks for listening and enjoy. Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout. Yeah, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing out there? I'm feeling pretty good. I banked a really good week of training this week, and it's been a while since I've been really intent and focused on my training.

• 1:25Rich Roll?

  As I've said before on the podcast, I pretty much took last year off from serious training. And that doesn't mean that I got completely out of shape. I was still very active and running and biking and swimming and doing all that kind of stuff that I love to do. But it was in a very unfocused sort of way. I wasn't working with my coach, and things would intervene or stuff got busy, and I kind of let it go a little bit. And now I'm kind of back on a plan, on a structured protocol with my coach, Chris Howth, AIMP Coaching. If you want to learn more about him, he's the best. And I'm starting to see some early season results, just in my data of coming back, and it feels good. And it just feels good to be a counter.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  To be tracking my workouts and have Chris looking over my shoulder, paying attention to what's going on. And there's just something about that accountability that really kind of holds my hand to the fire and keeps me going. And I'm, I'm now kind of over the hump of being, you know, really kind of out of touch with real training, where I'm finding a groove again, and where it's fun again, and I feel good in my body. And it, it just makes such a big difference, man. My sleep is better. I'm more focused and intent, intent upon eating the right foods. Everything kind of comes into Snap Focus when I'm working a program. So that's been great. It's been a couple of days since we've brought you

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  an episode. So we got to get back. I did three the other week, and that was like, a lot of work. So I hope that you're enjoying them because there's a lot more to this than just recording it and saying, you know, washing your hands of it. It actually takes quite a bit of time to post-produce it, get it up on the blog, spread it across social networks and the like. So it doesn't happen without quite a bit of effort on my part. And we're running a little pirate ship over here. So it's pretty much just me doing everything. So it would be great that if you are enjoying it, if you're enjoying the show, and you're

• 3:31Rich Roll?

  going to buy something on Amazon, do us a huge favor and go to richroll.com. And if you click on the podcast menu item on the upper right on the homepage, or on the blog page, there is an Amazon banner ad. And if you're going to buy something on Amazon, just click that banner ad first. It'll take you to Amazon, buy whatever you're going to buy. It won't cost you a penny extra, and it'll help us out by throwing a tiny little percentage into our little can over here and helps cover some of the expenses. Today on the podcast, we have the very controversial Brian MacKenzie coming on the show. You might know him on Twitter as at I am unscared. And

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  Guy, he, uh, he's an interesting guy. Uh, I first became, it was the first time I had ever met him. I first became aware of him, uh, when Tim Ferriss released the trailer video for his book, The Four Hour Body. Uh, and Brian is the guy that you see running, who's covered in tattoos and his knuckles, uh, spell out the word unscared across his 10 fingers. Uh, and this is a guy who comes from kind of a punk rock background, uh, skateboarder and now has, uh, really been making waves in the fitness world. Uh, he is and, and has participated in some endurance events. He did Ironman Canada and he's run

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  the Western States, uh, 100 and the Angeles Crest 100. So he's done ultras and his whole thing is called CrossFit Endurance, where he's taking principles of CrossFit and applying them to endurance training. And he's really kind of flipped the equation on what, uh, kind of standard operating procedure is for most endurance athletes, uh, and myself included, which is kind of a, uh, periodized training schedule that involves a lot of aerobic zone training and, um, and a ramping up of volume over time interspersed with some higher intensity efforts, but really kind of aerobic zone focused. Uh, he's coming at this equation

• 5:48Rich Roll?

  from a completely different angle. Uh, in other words, lots of super high intensity, uh, efforts on the track or on the bike, coupled with, uh, functional body exercises in the weight room. Everything from core workouts to kettle balls to deadlifts and things like that. So obviously we have, uh, very different experiences and perspectives on endurance training and we decided to get together and hash it out. And actually what happened was Brian's been getting a lot of press and like I said, he's a little bit of a lightning rod for controversy. There's a lot of people online that, that are kind of haters of what he's doing.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  And he's got quite the loyal following as well. So, you know, that's a recipe for, for news and blogs. And he got some interesting coverage in Outside Magazine in January. There was a whole profile on his approach and the journalist kind of adopted his program and in preparing for a marathon. And I read that article on the way back from Hawaii. And I thought that this is interesting. This is something completely different from the way that I approach my training. And, you know, I've never done it his way before. So I can't speak to whether, you know, I can't speak to its validity because, you know, I'm always trying to just share from my experience. So it would be unfair of me to dismiss it

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  out of hand, although I must admit that I was dubious of his approach. And so I brought it up on a couple of podcasts when I had Ben Greenfield on and when I had Vinnie Torterich on, I asked them both what they thought of Brian MacKenzie and his methods. And if you want to hear what they had to say, you can go back and listen to those episodes. But somebody online on Twitter kind of, you know, leaked to Brian, hey, these, these guys are talking about you on this podcast. So he got wind of it. And it was sort of, I think it was presented to him as if there was some kind of hating going on, which was never the case. If anything, I was more curious, dubious, yes, but, but curious more than

• 7:56Rich Roll?

  anything. And, and Brian kind of tweeted, well, you know, if they're, if they're hating on me, then, you know, they don't fully understand where I'm coming from or something like that. So I tweeted him, I said, Hey, man, no hate. More curious than anything. I've always been a volume guy. And we went back and forth a couple of times. And I said, you know, I'd love to have you on the podcast. Tell me where you're coming from. Let's have a chat about it. And we'll see where that goes. He was kind enough to agree to that and stopped in the garage today with his significant other and his buddy. They were there in the middle of a surf trip and spent a couple hours at our house. And it was great. And I have to admit, I was a little scared and

• 8:38Rich Roll?

  intimidated to meet this guy. You know, he's covered in tattoos, this punk rock thing, and his very kind of aggressive, CrossFit, you know, perspective. And I was like, wow, what's this guy gonna be like? Like, is he gonna, you know, I was afraid of him. But he actually is really cool, sweet guy, really nice people. And I really enjoyed our conversation. And what I like about it most is that we can disagree and we can still have a mature, adult-like conversation and explore these ideas. And for me, that's a huge part of what this podcast is about. You know, forgive me if you've heard me talk about this before because I keep talking about it. But what interests me is having on people that have

• 9:23Rich Roll?

  different points of view from my own. And of course, I'm going to have people on that I share the same ideology or perspective on nutrition, training, whatever. But I think that it would be, I would be remiss in not having interesting people on that have different kinds, different perspectives on, on some of these things and exploring that with them with an open mind and in a mature way where they feel comfortable expressing their opinions and we can have a healthy dialogue and debate without it turning into, you know, some kind of crazy, you know, argument or something like that. And I think that we accomplished that today. So excited for you to check this out, this interview out,

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  and let me know what you think. Go to richroll.com to the podcast section. You'll see this podcast hosted there. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

• 10:26Rich Roll?

  So without further ado, Brian MacKenzie. Did you see that thing in the news about the asteroid that was cruising over Russia?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I watched that the day or the day after the Russian guys were posting it on YouTube. Somebody, I saw Joe Rogan post it because, you know, obviously, everybody sends everything to Joe related to stuff like that. And so I clicked on it and it is amazing. These Russian cars have all these cameras on them. And just watching that thing just tear across the sky and just dish.

• 10:58Rich Roll?

  Just explode and it like a thousand people were hurt or something like that? I mean, how does, that's unbelievable. And it was supposedly like super tiny too, on the asteroid scale of size.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  It's a trip, man, for sure.

• 11:12Rich Roll?

  So, you know, we think we're masters of the universe and in control of our destiny, but.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Mother Nature will fix all of that.

• 11:20Rich Roll?

  Tiny little thing like that, man, and everything changes. All right, so we're rolling.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Right on.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  How are you doing?

• 11:26Speaker 01

  I'm good. How are you?

• 11:27Rich Roll?

  Thanks for stopping by the garage to do the podcast.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  The garage, the compound, man. This place is amazing.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  Oh, thanks for making the trip. So you guys are in the middle of a surf trip up the coast.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  We were supposed to be, but that kind of changed and there's no surf. So now we're just in the middle of.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  You're podcasting instead.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  I'm podcasting instead.

• 11:48Rich Roll?

  Sorry to be the default.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  No, it's all good. It would have happened regardless.

• 11:54Rich Roll?

  Right. No, it's good. It's good to have you here and it's interesting because your name has come up on my show a couple of times with a couple of guests over the last couple of weeks because I have, you know, these trainers on and we talk about it, you know, different kinds of techniques of training and, you know, I come from a very specific kind of volume oriented program and, you know, I've seen your name in the news and I read the thing in Outside Magazine. Actually, when I was coming back from Hawaii, I read that on the plane. And so I've been, I made a point to ask, like I had Ben Greenfield on, I don't know if you know him, trainer, and another local guy here is a buddy of mine, Vinnie Torter. So what do you think of this, Brian? You know, what do you think about what Brian has to say and, you know, getting sort of their feedback on that?

• 12:38Rich Roll?

  And so then it leaks out onto Twitter and

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:41Rich Roll?

  And it gets translated into, you know, I'm smack talking you or something.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I don't think it was you. I think that they actually, they got Ben on that one, but it was the fact that it was on the show. And I actually, I went and I listened to it and, you know, it's stuff I've heard on his end before. And, you know, but I actually enjoyed the show a lot. And it was the first time I had heard of your show. I'd actually heard of your book, which is, I've actually gotten through some of it.

• 13:12Rich Roll?

  Without vomiting or?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  No, no, just because the fact is, is I'm actually still finishing that one right there.

• 13:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, he's talking about the talent code.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Four other books on my plate. She actually, Erin gets a little peeved with the way I read. Cause I have like five or six projects going at once with reading.

• 13:28Rich Roll?

  Sound like my wife.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we actually have very similar story, man. Very, very similar.

• 13:33Rich Roll?

  Yes, I want to get into your, I want to get into your story, but let's wrap this thing up first. So, so yeah, so you, so I assume you meant the Ben Greenfield episode?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Where I'd heard that, you know, there's just all the faults with, with what we do and the program we do. And, you know, that seems to be the, the, the same thing is said for anybody who really has never stepped foot in that arena.

• 14:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  With what we do. And, you know, I'm a guy who has practically, other than being a vegan, which I actually have a lot of respect for. Because that is about as hardcore as it gets with the nutrition side of things. On the other end of that is the ultra stuff, which gets about as hardcore as it gets. And so I have a, I have a unique respect for that stuff. But I, you know, anybody who's really done any real smack talking or, you know, kind of negative connotation to what we do is usually people who've never even been through it or don't understand it. And, you know, from my perspective, it was, I was a high volume guy as well.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  And I was out doing the Ironman, fell into the ultra scene and I just loved running long and just finding out exactly who I was that day. And that's exactly how long it would take to, you know, run a 50K. And then it became 50 miles. And then there was a couple hundred milers. And then there was me running through the desert with other dudes and, you know, guys like Dean Karnazis, who are still close friends and people who I actually communicate with about training and nutrition all the time. And these guys are actually on the, are, you know, your type of end of volume of training as well. But we still are very commonplace and respect what everybody does.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to, well, first of all, I always try to share. I try to, to limit my, my sharing or my perspective or my opinions to things that come from my experience. So if I say, you know, I believe in this, you know, I try to root that in something that I've actually done that I can speak to. And in terms of criticizing other things, I have to look at myself and say, well, do I really know about that? Or have I tried that? And in the case of what, you know, we'll get into the, we'll roll up our sleeves and get all geeked out on this stuff in a minute. But, but, you know, I've never done your program. So I think it's easy to like, you know, throw a rock at a glass house and say, well, you know, you don't, you don't know what you're talking about. Or you don't know from whence you come.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I guess you've gotten personal results and results with some of the athletes that you work with. And I think it's important, um, you know, no matter what team you're on or what philosophy that you prescribe to, to take a step back and look at things objectively and, and have an open mind. And maybe you might learn something because if you don't, you're, you're never going to learn anything. You'll just be stuck on your trajectory.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  I, uh, I could not agree more with that, um, you know, and it, it's interesting to me that, you know, a lot of these things that, uh, cause there's four, I don't know if you've seen the forums or not. You probably haven't because you probably don't spend time with that stuff.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  I try not to.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. It's, uh, I stopped doing it a while ago because people are like, dude, you see what they're saying about you on slow twitch and.

• 16:49Rich Roll?

  Well, slow twitch is notoriously brutal.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and it's just, the, the internet, I, I am of, of the mindset that the internet has created two things. It's created a portal for us to learn and create a higher education platform. I think better than what actually exists within the higher education platform right now. That's of my opinion. It doesn't necessarily make me right, but it also has created this thing called peacocking. That I've deemed peacocking and it is mostly a male thing because male peacocks are the big, you know, feathery ones where you can get on a keyboard and talk as much smack as you can possibly dish out without actually ever having to get up and on the stage and actually have to talk with somebody or engage with somebody in any way, shape or form.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  And I've seen a lot of that and I've learned to deal with a lot of that and in no way have I ever on a stage not been able to, not necessarily defend, but have a civil conversation with somebody about what it is we do to where that person walks away and says, you know what, maybe it isn't what I thought it was or what, what he's doing or maybe there is something to that. And when I explain the way that it's usually done, people usually catch on to it and I think the biggest mistake of what people think about what our program is, is it's kind of like the CrossFit main site where people think, they look at that and they go, wow, you're either going to kill yourself or that's just not enough training for somebody

• 18:17Speaker 01

  who's going to be a CrossFit Games athlete and that's what we deal with now because the CrossFit Games have literally become like this phenomenon and, you know, we've got these athletes that are getting paid now to be professional exercisers and, you know, people look at that and they look at our site and it's like, well, how do you ever think you're going to create an elite level athlete with a program like that? And it's like, well, first off, this is a stepping stone to something and any elite level athlete at any level that I've ever worked with or ever talked to has a coach and is dealing with somebody who is actually putting together their program for them. And I've actually dealt with most, a lot of elite athletes in that manner. I mean, that's

• 19:00Speaker 01

  how I've dealt with every elite athlete. So it's just, you know, when I hear things like I've heard from Ben Greenfield and what's, what's funny is that he talks about a, a program that he's created that is oddly similar to what it is we do, where he's lifting three days a week and practicing in zone three and, you know, most of the stamina work that we're actually doing is that zone three stuff, but if we were to take a look at the Actual science behind everything. We'd start to understand that actually aerobic capacity starts to begin at about 30 seconds of hard, hard, all out work. And you can't, there's nothing you can do about that. And, you know, repeated 30 second efforts become highly, highly aerobic efforts. So what we think we actually understand about energy systems, we really don't understand

• 19:44Speaker 01

  about energy systems. In fact, we could take all out six second, all out sprints as hard as you could go. And after several repeated efforts, they become aerobic. And you, even after a recovery period, because the body just can't sustain that aerobic capacity, which starts to lend more validity to what it is we've been doing. But we haven't been doing it because some study said that. It was the experience and what we were seeing with the athletes and all this that led us to where we're at. So at any rate.

• 20:13Rich Roll?

  Okay. Well, yeah. All right. And just to, just to kind of back it up for, um, hold on, I'm turning my phone off. It was buzzing. Um, for the listener who might be, you know, uninitiated into your philosophy and what you do. Um, Brian comes from this perspective, and please correct me if I'm wrong.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  No problem.

• 20:34Rich Roll?

  That's sort of born out of the CrossFit movement and with a sort of a background in performing in certain endurance events from ultra runs to Ironman. Um, started experimenting with high intensity work with, uh, you know, lots of sort of body movement. What do you call that? Like well, CrossFit exercise, really kettleball work, squats.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  We like to call it functional movement.

• 20:58Rich Roll?

  Functional movement. Okay. That was the term I was looking for. Um, so sort of dispensing with this, uh, long held philosophy of incremental volume and building, building aerobic capacity through lots of miles and a periodized training schedule, which is something that I subscribe to.

• 21:19Rich Roll?

  He's sort of throwing that out the window and saying, no, uh, here's a whole different way to do it. Like people are training too, too many miles. There's a lot of junk miles in there. Let's work on strength and high intensity, speed work and get you there in a fraction of the time. Is that accurate or fair enough?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Sort of. I wouldn't say I'm tossing it all out the window. What I, the, I actually came to, I came to what I understood actually before CrossFit with the high intensity stuff. And that was, I was actually mentored by a guy by the name of Dr. Romanoff, who created the Pose Method. Maybe you've heard of it. And he introduced me, prior to me even finding CrossFit, to, he was coaching me for a 200 mile attempt at a 200 mile run I was gonna do. And so he was coaching me for this. At any rate, the coaching, when it started, had nowhere near the volume of training in it that I was used to. And so, in the first

• 22:21Speaker 01

  week, I was like, "Hey, what's going on here? Why am I doing 400s and some thousands? And am I, why am I running a 10K at a speed close to what it is my PR is?" And he's like, "Am I coaching you or are you coaching me?" And it became that type of relationship where it was like, "You're just gonna shut up and listen." And, you know, so I followed direction, you know, and within the first weeks of following this whole thing, we, I saw results that I'd never seen before. You know, on a half marathon, I just crushed it compared, I mean, by like six minutes compared. And this was by myself, running versus being in a race setting. And that's not holding water, I understand, within the endurance world. But the fact was, is that by, by the next time I did an ultra marathon, I got about 60 miles

• 23:06Speaker 01

  on that 200 attempt. I had rolled my ankle like a few weeks before. At any rate, my ankle didn't hold up, but the 6, but the 100K that I did in that 200 mile attempt was faster by like an hour of my fastest 100 kilometer time that I had ever had. And so, I was like, "What's going on here?" You know?

• 23:26Rich Roll?

  So that made you question?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  I was questioning a lot of stuff, like, "What am I doing?" And, you know, oddly enough, he also had me squatting every week. He also had me doing cleans every week. He had me doing box jumps every week. I was, you know, I was doing a lot of similar stuff. And my, my gym that I had just opened was oddly looking exactly like a CrossFit gym. And I had just heard about CrossFit back then, and it was about 2005. And, you know, I'd internet dabbled and went one foot in, one foot out, and did what most people do with, and they find CrossFit if they're gonna play around with it. And most people, you know, a lot of people come to the CrossFit world via the kettlebell movement or whatever. And, you know, that's how I saw, found it.

• 24:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  So I continued to play and we started playing harder with the strength and conditioning stuff because we were getting better results with the running and it wasn't just me, it was the athletes I was working with, it was the athletes Romanoff was working with, you know, I, he was coaching high level Olympic caliber athletes, you know, in triathlon, all this stuff, you know, and we, the moment we decided to toss CrossFit into the strength and conditioning program was when everything made another radical change and it was just the conditioning level went up to a whole nother thing and, you know, I remember thinking about how fit and how, everything I was and the fact that I could go run, you know, I'd

• 24:52Speaker 01

  run 100 miles and this stuff and I was like, you know, I was lifting weights and all and, you know, when I actually did this workout called Fran for the first time, Greg Glassman has an analogy that he used to talk about when, when triathletes would come into his gym and they would think they were super fit and they would do Fran or something of that and they would quickly drop the weight or stop doing the exercise, the moment they started turning blue and it was almost like there was no oxygen left in the room for them to, you know, get in and I remember having that exact experience, thinking I was gonna throw up and my lips had turned blue and my hands were on my knees and I was like in the second round of doing this hellacious little workout that only involved

• 25:34Speaker 01

  thrusters and pull-ups and I remember wanting to say that it was the weight that I was doing, but the weight of the thruster is actually not that heavy, it's the fact that I was trying to go fast and I couldn't, my, my, my, my O2 output could not keep up with the ability of how hard I was going and I was just blown away at this whole phenomenon and, you know, it just changed all, everything we were doing and it allowed us to get to another level and, you know, I was already seeing results with lower mileage in what we were doing, you know, and it had eventually got me to a fairly low amount of volume, in fact about, about, I was probably at about half the amount of running that I was doing

• 26:19Speaker 01

  leading into most ultra races by the time we had figured out what we figured out.

• 26:24Rich Roll?

  Right. So I guess the question, you know, for me comes in when I try to make the connection between, you know, deadlifts or, you know, doing lots of pull-ups or some of these functional strength exercises and performance in a specific endurance discipline. Yeah. And I understand like, um, you know, core training, which I think is extremely important and, you know, a lot of people talk about it, but I still think it's overlooked. And I, and even I, you know, I believe in it and I know what it, I know what it feels like when my core is strong and it, and my whole running form changes, my swim stroke becomes way more efficient, you know, I feel better on the bike, like everything works

• 27:09Rich Roll?

  way better. There is no question about it because I also know what it's like to be doing a lot of volume and overlooking my core and, and it's not the same thing. Yeah. And I'm more likely to get injured and there's a whole variety of reasons why, you know, I believe in that in a big way. Um, but I start to, I start to lose you a little bit when you start talking about doing the huge weight and all of that. Yeah. Cause I'm seeing where, you know, there's a gap between that and, you know, doing a 50 mile run or doing, you know, an Ironman. Yeah. Because in my, in my book, like it's so funny because I'm on the complete opposite end of the spectrum from you. Yeah. And there's a line in my book. Zone two, bro. I know. Zone two. And, and there's a line in my book where I say, learn how to go slow to go fast.

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And the reason for that is, I think that, and I think you'll agree with me on this, which is most amateur athletes, you know, weekend warrior, 10K, half marathon, even marathon and a lot of Ironman or triathlon guys get out there and because they don't have access to a good coach or somebody who knows what they're talking about to sort of mentor them or create a training program for them, they do what I did my whole life prior to meeting my coach, which is, okay, I've got two hours and I'm just going to go, you know, I'm going to go out and run or I'm going to ride my bike and I'm just going to go hard and try to get out of it when I'm going to get out of it and I'll regroup tomorrow. And, and ultimately what that means is that the athlete is spending

• 28:38Rich Roll?

  all of their time in the gray zone. Where they're not improving aerobic capacity, but they're not going hard enough to get the kind of results that you're talking about with these super intense efforts. So they're in that middle and spending all that time in that gray zone is what creates that plateau. So for me, I'm always saying, you've got to get over your ego.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  And if you can have the discipline, it's a different kind, like it takes an incredible amount of discipline to do the intensity you're talking about.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:04Rich Roll?

  It also takes a lot of discipline to check your ego at the door and go slow when you're out running at the beach and some, you know, some, somebody runs by you that you think you're faster than or what, you know, you know what I mean? To not be competitive and go, no, you know what? I'm going to keep my heart rate under 138 on this run, no matter what. And if that means I've, I've got to walk when I get to that hill because I'm trying to build those, uh, you know, metabolic pathways and increase the mitochondrial density and improve the efficiency. Because in an Ironman, speed is not the limiter. I mean, you know, if you're, you know, unless you're a pro, a lot of these guys are walking in the marathon. And it's like, if they could run eight minute miles, the entire marathon, then they would

• 29:48Rich Roll?

  rock the socks off their PR. But they start out at, you know, seven minute miles and then they go to

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Nine.

• 29:56Rich Roll?

  Nines and then they're at 12 and then they're walking, right? So it's like, I go, well, what's the point in speed work? Like when you're, you're going 11 minute miles, work on your aerobic efficiency and try to run eights the whole way.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, I, I agree with that a whole lot. Um, and, and here's something that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to attack it the same way you are.

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, that's just the perspective. I mean, that's where I'm coming from. So,

• 30:25Speaker 01

  I, I found that exact same thing. I had that exact same experience. But, uh, you know, Romanoff, who I mentioned earlier, um, the, my career, my, what I did, I, I got successful at because I actually was able to take a look at a guy like you running and go, hey, here's, here's, here's the problems. Here's what's going on. Whether you were the best runner in the world, or whether you were some Joe running by on, you know, on the highway out here. And I could just go, hey, here's where you're going wrong. We can fix this up a little bit with a few cues, a few different drills, et cetera. Um, what, what I would do typically with an athlete is in what we do.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Pretty much as a group, but what we do see is we see this gray area even within CrossFit, even within our gyms, we see where people just become and they just want to go and they just want to get their fast, hard ass workout on.

• 31:23Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  That's not CrossFit. CrossFit is actually a much broader concept than that. But what we do, even with the endurance training, is actually much broader than just going out and running short, hard efforts. It's actually, and you know, Aaron talks about this all the time with me, is like, you know, the difference between most Cross, and we talk about it at a seminar that we put on, is CrossFit athletes, when they decide to come over to the endurance side sometimes and want to go do an endurance event, have to learn what pacing means. And endurance athletes, in our perspective, have to learn what intensity is. And what I found was the, was being able to not only go out and handle a longer run, pacing it and understanding where your ability is.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  So if you, I've got somebody who's going to go do a marathon, and let's just say their average pace at the end of this thing is 10 minute miles, but they started out at eight minute miles and ended up at 12 minute miles, right? My, from my perspective, that person needs to first be looked at as, how are you running? What are the mechanical flaws you're doing right now? How do I correct that? And the best way that I have found to correct that is through strength and conditioning and functional training, because most people do not move functionally. And unfortunately, even me, as an endurance athlete, found this out the hard ass way.

• 32:46Rich Roll?

  I agree with that completely.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  I could not squat correctly. I could not deadlift correctly. I could not do a lot of things correctly because I was so smoked and just out there running and doing everything I was doing, which is in a shortened range of motion. Okay? And I'm not talking about the ability just to drop down into a squat like some, you know, like I, I'm at a sushi restaurant or I'm at a, you know, a Japanese restaurant. I'm talking about a supported squat, knowing your range of motion of your hips, understanding what real flexibility is, that working range of motion, being able to support yourself in a way that you're not going to break down. And that, this brings me right into that whole core concept of

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Well, I wholeheartedly, and in fact, we all believe in core training to a large degree, but the thing with functional training and this whole CrossFit thing is I've never found anything that challenges the core more than what CrossFit has delivered. And that being, which is, you know, in this early Glassman stuff, you know, where he would talk about, I mean, most of their workouts were named after girls. And the reason they were named after girls is because girls were like hurricanes. They were after hurricanes because a hurricane works core to extremity. Mm-hmm. Meaning, so we're right in the inside, it's nice and quiet and easy. And then all of a sudden outside, the extremity works around that core. So we've got this solid, stable

• 34:14Speaker 01

  thing. And quite honestly, I don't think there's anything really more that would challenge anybody's core than an overhead squat at 315 pounds or whatever the weight that is for anybody. Mm-hmm. And where it gets kind of shifty is where people start to go, well, I'm an ultra endurance athlete. Why the, why the hell would I want to go pick up 500 pounds off the floor? What's that going to do for me? Mm-hmm. Well, you're probably not going to start at picking up 500 pounds off the floor, and that's probably going to take a long time. But if we're actually working to build you as an ultra athlete, that may only reach 350 or 380 because of the fact that we're actually doing some sports specific work, a lot, a lot of quality work. But that quality

• 34:56Speaker 01

  work really starts with that skill training. And, you know, Erin's going through a lot of that stuff after being like a, you know, she's a two-time Olympic gold medalist in Rome. Right. Just tell us who Erin is. Eric Farley, my girl, my partner. Who's sitting right behind you right now. My girlfriend, who's sitting right behind me. Wave for the radio. And then we've got Craig Patterson, Patty over here to the right. I brought my little entourage. And then Izzy on the floor. But Erin was a rower. And, you know, she did this for like, basically the last nine years of her life. And she's now transitioning over to wanting to do other sports. And so she's learning this whole side of what it is we do. And the amount of skill training.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  It actually takes to learn to run correctly or to learn to ride a bike correctly or to learn to swim correctly. You know, the United States were fortunate with the swimming if we come from a swimming background because what is a swim, what, what, what does swimming start with? I mean, we go into a program and it's usually skills and drills for the first quarter of it before we even start a set. Right. Then we get into it. And so you've got some coach keeping an eye on you, telling you what to do. And it's a highly technical sport. In fact, back 10 years ago, you could go look at any major college with the best teams and you'd see all these names you couldn't even pronounce because they're from other countries because they're sending their kids to school here and then they go back and swim for their own countries in the Olympics.

• 36:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Because we've, we've had arguably the top swimmer and we look at it from a skill perspective. What is swimming also? I mean, who, who in any program goes out and swims 1500 meters or 2000 meters straight? It, I mean, when was the last time you showed up to a masters or even a, a, a at Stanford? Did you guys ever go swim 1500, 2000 straight? It was usually

• 36:44Rich Roll?

  No, I mean, it was interval workouts and I want to talk about that a little bit. I mean, to, as a preface, I would say that I think you're absolutely spot on when it comes to being technique focused. And I think because a lot of people that listen to this podcast are, are triathletes and they're time crunched, right? And so they want to get their workout on and they go to the pool. And I was at the pool this morning and I was talking to a dude who's someone next to me who's having trouble with his stroke. And all I could say to him was like, listen, man, just forget about fitness. Like you need to spend the next three months working on your technique. If I'm here, I will help you. Yeah. But just don't worry about it because swimming is about efficiency and you're trying to muscle your way through the water. You're, and you're

• 37:27Rich Roll?

  never going to get there. And if you're doing a triathlon, you're going to get out of the water and your heart rate's going to be 170 where you could go faster and get out of the water with a 140 heart rate and set yourself up for a good race and a good bike.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Exact same page. And, and, and that is the biggest missing link to what it is 90% of the people. Don't understand about what we do and the concept of it. And so I've changed the, we've, I've had the website, you know, which is a general public website, you know, CrossFit Endurance, but yeah, we've had the website a little bit redone as of lately to where it says, you should be doing 20 to 45 minutes of skill and drill work before this workout even starts. That means if you're going to go run 400 meter repeats, you should have ingrained what it is you're supposed to be doing in this new pattern. And, you know, this book right over here that you're reading will kind of go right down that path I'm on right now where, you know, you aren't necessarily born with talent. It's actually something

• 38:24Speaker 01

  that you will literally build if you continually work at it like that.

• 38:29Rich Roll?

  Well, it's the Malcolm Gladwell outlier's 10,000 hours thing. But I don't know how you feel about the 10,000 hours.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Well, you tell me.

• 38:36Rich Roll?

  You're on the Tim Ferriss 80/20 rule, the four hour.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Not necessarily, not necessarily, not necessarily. I mean,

• 38:43Rich Roll?

  I think you're saying you're the focus on, you shift the focus.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  If I've got, if I've got somebody doing, you know, some skill work for 45 minutes before they start a 400 meter workout that, you know, could inevitably, if they're an elite level athlete, go up upwards of 10 400s on 105, right? But they're doing 45 minutes. I mean, you have just, there's 700 steps in a 400 meter run.

• 39:06Rich Roll?

  I think the problem comes in, everybody understands that you swim technique because it's not natural, right? Unless you've learned as a young child, it's not a rote thing. And then when, and a lot of triathletes who try to learn swimming properly, older in, older, you know, when they get later in life, it's, it's difficult. It's really challenging. It's like learning a golf swing, you know, you can work on perfecting it forever and ever. It's not a natural thing. But I think that people think that running and cycling, you just go out and do it. There's no technique to it at all. And there's nothing to be considered when it comes to form and all of that. So I think that that couldn't be more wrong. Like, I think the same attention to your swim stroke has to be paid to your, to your

• 39:49Rich Roll?

  running stride and your position on the bike and how you, your pedal stroke and all of these things.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  We do not disagree.

• 39:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  We do not disagree.

• 39:56Rich Roll?

  Do you know Jessie Stensland?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Yes, I know.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she's cool. I mean, she, this is her thing, right? Doing, you know, proper technique and form and all the kind of strength exercises that you're talking about. Because particularly for, you know, if you're a marathon runner or you're a triathlete and you're doing sports specific training all the time, you're getting really fit in certain muscle groups, but there are all sorts of overlooked muscle groups that create imbalances.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  I know of her and I don't know her personally, but I know of her, but yeah, she's, we're on the same page.

• 40:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  You know, but the fact is, is what I've seen is, once we've been in your world, my world, in that long, long arena, it is a very, very, very difficult thing to let go of and doing that and figuring.

• 40:40Rich Roll?

  I don't know that I want to let go of it.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  And I'm not telling you, but here's the thing, here's the thing, here's the thing. I'm, I'm not here to tell you, you should.

• 40:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I know. Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  I'm saying, yeah, but if an athlete comes to me and says, hey, I want to PR this. I want to do this race. And I'll give you an example of an athlete I'm working with right now. This guy, he was working with a buddy of mine who has this other kind of view of, of coaching. And he's an ultra guy. He's done like 11 Wasats front 100s, which is no joke. And he, he's a, he's a hiker. He barely, he'll, he'll finish at the cutoff, but he gets it done, you know, and he likes to go out and throw 20 pounds on his back and go out and hike it. And, you know, then he likes to lift some weights and throw it around. And my, the kid who came to me, you know, had said, hey, I, you know, I'm kind of tired of the results I'm kind of getting

• 41:32Speaker 01

  right now. I'm wondering if you could take, you know, help me out. And I said, let's do this. And so I started teeing him up and I said, I, I make a lot of the athletes actually send over to me what it is they feel they should be doing for the week. And it was the same thing where it's usually the same thing where it's like, he's got a bunch of long runs or longer slow runs. And then he's got these big heavy weight sessions directly like before it, that he's got to go run. And he's got all these things kind of miss, mix, mix and matched in the wrong way. And, you know, I, we, we cut down all of the volume and I start making him run 400s. hundreds that what he's capable of running four hundreds or or two hundreds or six hundreds or whatever it is that he's running and and he's usually doing speed work either hillwork

• 42:13Speaker 01

  and some sort of speed work or a longer effort speed work and shorter effort speed work and then he's either doing one longer run which is in the vicinity of him either racing in something which can be up to 50k or 30k or he's doing something at a tempo where he's out there holding an effort and what he's built up to is that about 30k mark where I'll have him go out for 30k hard and it's not easy it's I would

• 42:42Rich Roll?

  but you have to build you have to build up to that 30k tempo so that he could because the important thing is being able to maintain your technique for that period of time

• 42:49Speaker 01

  absolutely

• 42:50Rich Roll?

  your technique falls apart

• 42:52Speaker 01

  and so but this is what we built up from from about a 10k right so we started a 10k here's what the kid can handle here's how hard he can go we slowly progress as he makes the progressions his trainings change in a way that allows him to not only recover faster but he doesn't break down as easy which is another reason for the strength and conditioning with what we're doing especially within the ultra world is because it's not about your aerobic conditioning whether you and I like that or not our aerobic conditioning is actually just fine and it won't go anywhere for three or four months literally it wouldn't what will deteriorate is your higher end or your what your tissue is going to start to break down and you're going to start to feel the pain and

• 43:34Speaker 01

  you know what I'm talking about and anybody who's ever you know decided to venture outside that marathon knows what that pain is you know knows that deep dark pain that enters and it's like whoa and then you know the moment you're not thinking about it it disappears and you're like how am I out here doing this right that's your tissue breaking down that is not an aerobic conditioning problem and the stronger that tissue is the better it holds up and you have two ways of dealing with that you can go out and run zone two for very long periods of time and get lost and enjoy yourself and and progress which we all know happens or zone three whatever you want to call it I don't care you can go zone one if you want to because that pounding that

• 44:16Speaker 01

  eccentric loading that occurs is going to start to break you down but the longer you're out there the more recovery you're actually going to need The shorter you're out there, the less recovery you need. But the more intense, the longer recovery you're going to need. But once we start to develop that strength, once we start to develop that skill, once we start to develop that longer end range, the recovery ability becomes like, it's almost like bulletproof.

• 44:50Rich Roll?

  The recovery cycle for super high intensity like you're talking about can be much longer than the recovery. Like if you're progressing on a periodized, traditional periodized schedule on a volume program, and you're stepping that volume up very gradually, and you have those rest days and those rest weeks built in, or whatever, over time, then there really isn't the breakdown that you're getting. Like, I know, and I know this from training for Ultraman, that I got to the point where, you know, I'm riding at least 100, 120 miles on a Saturday, and then Sunday, I'd run a marathon at least.

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  I'd run between 20 or 30 miles, and it became, and my zone two pace went from, you know, eight minute miles to seven minute miles at the same heart rate. And I would, and Monday, I'm fine. You know, that, it wasn't at first, but as I progressed through that, and this is a huge time commitment, right? Like this, and this didn't happen in one year. This is like, this is on year, year four, three of doing this. So, you know, I was willing to double down and put the time in to get there.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:57Rich Roll?

  But you can, you know, it wasn't breaking me down, or I was getting into an overtraining thing, or I had to take a bunch of time off to recover. And, and also, I would do that tempo work, too. Not as, not as intense as you're talking about, but...

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Well, if, let's just say, Rich Roll would just say, "Hey, screw it, I'm gonna, I wanna start, I wanna test this thing out you're talking about."

• 46:19Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna go bury you in the first week. The objective is not to put you-

• 46:27Rich Roll?

  Oh, it would destroy me.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, it wouldn't. Because if it's done right-

• 46:31Rich Roll?

  But if I'd- no, I mean, if I did just step into the middle of one of your sessions? Because I don't do- I don't really do-

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Here's what would happen. You'd talk about eccentric loading of CrossFit movements on the program-

• 46:41Rich Roll?

  You'd put me in the hospital.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  No, I wouldn't put you in the hospital. That's not- no, and I don't do that. And she's seen that and anybody who knows me who's ever worked with an athlete, you know, unless they bring an ego to me, you know, I'll quickly fix somebody and make them do something they don't wanna do. But I will also take somebody and I'm- dude, it's a delicate cycle. It's a delicate thing and it's, I'm not here to bury you. I'm here to make you a better athlete. That's all I'm here to do.

• 47:06Rich Roll?

  And that takes time. I think you must have this where people, especially because of the press that you've gotten, people coming to you saying, you know, I wanna come off the couch and qualify for Boston and the marathon or something like that.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  I don't know if you really picked up on the Outside Magazine article. The dude came to me. He hadn't run a marathon in like five years. Wanted to PR a marathon like in a three-month time period that he had never even done, was hillier than he thought and was raining. And he wanted to PR a marathon. And that's Outside Magazine. They want controversy, right?

• 47:40Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  They want this whole thing. And here's the guy who writes the article, does the training and actually says, "I've never been fitter in my life. I PR'd the marathon. Didn't PR it as much as I wanted." But hey, you know, the guy gave me three months, hadn't done anything in five years. And I- we built him up and he went and did it and he crushed this thing. Okay? And then he says, "I don't know if I wanna keep doing it because I'm just too- so much work." And I'm like, "Well, yeah, bro. That's what this is all is." I mean, you're more than welcome to go out and run long-

• 48:11Rich Roll?

  Different kinds of work.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's different kinds of work. And, uh, you know, he still didn't follow all direction. He still didn't wanna go do the skill work that I had shown him, made him go through. You know, and this is one of the things that we've run into with, you know, a lot of the people who, you know, just don't like the program. They don't wanna spend the time to understanding, "What is the reality of the way I move?" My- me as a coach, I'm somebody who looks at- I think- I look at coaching as this- Somebody's observing the way you move and telling and giving you corrections on how you should be moving. What I think the miss, the problem with most coaching at this point is, is that people think coaching is programming for somebody. And nobody's looking at anybody.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  They're just giving them a number and or giving them a workout.

• 49:00Rich Roll?

  I mean, just giving you your workout.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Giving you a workout and going and doing it. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's the engineer, you know, and the engineering is not the hard part, the real hard part here. The hard part is actually fixing what is the problem. And I don't actually fix that. I actually tell people what's wrong and they're going to have to make that picture. They're going to have to correct that whole thing, whether.

• 49:21Rich Roll?

  When you say what's wrong, are you talking about technique?

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Technique and anything. So.

• 49:26Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, you have to be on site to be able to observe that.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And any athlete who works with me from afar, they, they're sending us, they're sending me video. They're sending us all that stuff and I'm looking at it. And that's a poor way of dealing with it. But that's the way, that's unfortunately what it's come to with a lot of this stuff and the growth of it, you know? And that's where the gross misinterpretation of a lot of what CrossFit does is, is a lot of people think, or CrossFit endurance is what they think, is that it's all about a bunch of people going out and just blowing their minds out and some workout and doing a bunch.

• 49:56Rich Roll?

  In fairness, it's easy to come to that conclusion because that's a lot of the, you know, a lot of the press kind of makes it's, it's, it's sexy. It sounds sexy to do that.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  It sells, dude.

• 50:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, there's a reason, you know, I don't know when it started, but you know, it seems to have come out of nowhere. And now it's this huge business all of a sudden. So there's a lot of marketing.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Patty, how long you been involved? How long you been in CrossFit? Ten. Ten years. Yeah. He was, he was around when basically they were doing like one seminar, maybe a month. I don't even. There was one affiliate. One affiliate and they would have like five Navy SEALs there and a bunch of other people and they just beat them up for like three days straight.

• 50:38Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Sort of.

• 50:39Rich Roll?

  Right. So when Ben Greenfield was on the show and Vinnie Tortor said essentially the same thing. I said, what do you think of this? What do you think about what Brian is espousing? And their concern was that they were fearful that, well, it's sort of being advertised or promoted as a way out of this LSD long, slow distance that's causing a lot of people to have these persistent running injuries. And it's a new program that's much, a fraction of the time, it's not easy, but could more likely, you know, can fit into a busy guy's work schedule or whatever, and avoid a lot of those injuries.

• 51:22Rich Roll?

  And the response from both Ben and Vinnie was, well, I'd be concerned about other kinds of injuries at this kind of intensity and overtraining issues. So, I mean, what is your reaction to that?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Simple. Running is the most dangerous sport in the world. And what way, shape or form is something else that, I mean, if we look at the sheer number of running injuries a year, we're looking at about 80%. I think it's at 79 right now. Where they're, we, each, 79% of all runners in the United States alone, which is over 45 million, okay? 79% of that are experiencing an injury of some sort every year. So we've got a sport that literally neither, anybody who's really ever challenged what it is I'm saying, has never brought any other option out other than saying, well, they just need to slow down and go a little easier versus, no, no, no.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  I'm not even saying go out and, you know, we're not saying even just go out and run hard. I'm saying, let's look at the way you move. Let's fix what's going on with you. Let's fix your mechanics and let me expose that weakness. And let's change this, make it stronger, make it better. And by the way, you have no business running further than 100 meters because you run like shit after 100 meters. So what we're gonna do is

• 52:39Rich Roll?

  I'm down with that.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Is we're gonna go 50 meters and we're gonna go a little harder and you're gonna run it right. And then you're gonna recover and we're gonna, the next week, maybe we'll come in and we'll do 75 to 100. Then maybe the next week, we're gonna do 200s. And then maybe the next week, we're gonna do 400. If you're making that progression, if you're, if you're making that leap. But you have no business going out and running a 5K slow because you look like you're wogging. Okay. And fit fat exists within not only the triathlon world or the ultra world, but even, you know, this whole, you know, 10K or whatever you're talking about. And I mean, these people are going out and they're not doing themselves any favors by just running slow and easy.

• 53:20Rich Roll?

  Right. I completely agree with that. But I would add that it's not even their fault because there isn't enough education about this. And if they go to their, if they get, you know, an injury, their knee hurts or whatever, and they go to their orthoped, they're gonna, that guy's gonna look at them and, you know, put a sliver in his shoe and, and his or her shoe and say, you're good. And then, and it goes to this whole, the way our entire system is set up, which is to treat these symptoms and not get at the underlying cause.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Which is also why I exist, you know, why I have a job is because, and why I've, why it's grown and in the way it has, is because I actually look at your feet and I know that you use your feet and I know there's no way you'd ever put something in your, you know, I mean, I can just look at the way somebody moves and go, hey, I know what's wrong with that. I know what we could do to fix it. And it ain't a Band-Aid and it ain't taking a pill and it ain't that. It's you actually taking personal responsibility and saying, no, I need to change that. I need to work at this. And it's not gonna be going out and running 5 to 10K slow like shit. That's going to look like you doing some 100 meter repeats correctly and looking good. And by the way, it's probably gonna hurt a little because we're gonna, we're gonna crank up the

• 54:31Speaker 01

  intensity, which you'll find out in that book.

• 54:33Rich Roll?

  But at the same time, looking at, not just looking at somebody's form and saying, you need to lean forward a little bit more, but going, all right, the reason your form is poor and you're looking the way that you look is because this muscle group is underdeveloped and we need to work on that and get your posture better or whatever. And then

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Bingo.

• 54:53Rich Roll?

  Dial it all in until you have all of those things in balance. Because if you're running all the time, that, you know, that's not necessarily a balanced athlete because you have, like I said before, you have underdeveloped muscles and overdeveloped muscles. So. Yeah, I'm in agreement with that aspect of what you're doing completely.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  And I, but I'm, I mean, I don't necessarily disagree with anybody or even you with how you want to train. Dude, I know that you can get up the mountain with what you're doing. As long as, as long as you're not violating a lot of these principles, like these movement, these things that we're talking about.

• 55:26Rich Roll?

  And I, don't get me wrong, I probably, if you were to look at my form, you'd probably find a hundred things wrong with the way I run. I'm sure of that. Cause my coach lives in the Bay area.

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe five, but I'll tell you what, I probably could help you out further than, more than you, more than you thought. And it's not, and I'm not just going to say, hey, Rich, guess what? The only way, you know, you've got to follow this, this, that. I'm going to say, hey, here's what you need to do to fix this. And by the way, the fastest way to that

• 55:54Speaker 01

  is actually going to be slowing you, like taking away a lot of that volume, cutting the distance, making you run a little faster, because at our highest neural outputs, we actually start to develop that skill better. It is not at our lower neural, it is not at that lower intensity where we develop that high skill. It is at the higher level that when we put that stuff out.

• 56:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  And that doesn't mean that you cannot go out and run some long distance, because don't get, they're, dude, our athletes go out and are doing long distance races. So they're still doing long distance. But how are, how are you planning your race season? Are you just, I mean, we've had people who have decided to just follow CrossFit and go attempt a hundred mile run. And it's like, I'm, dude, I'm looking at them shaking my head going, are you out of your mind? Like, that's just a recipe for disaster.

• 56:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  You know, and, and this, a lot of this comes directed right back to me, because I'm the guy who created this. And that is not what this is about. This is about actually moving correctly, running right, riding right, swimming right. Then developing a strength and conditioning program that's centered around your weaknesses, that will develop your weaknesses, that'll make those weaknesses strong, which is everything CrossFit is about, by the way.

• 57:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  It all's CrossFit is, is exposing the weakness of what it is you do. Like, sure, you might be able to squat, but how are you with a bar on your shirt, you know? Up front is your squ- is your front squat, do we see anything different going on with that front squat than we do with your back squat? You know, do we start to see some of these movement flaws that are occurring? Because I can correlate most, most movement flaws I can correlate with your running will show up. What I'm gonna have you do with a squat, a deadlift, a power clean, or anything else, they're just, they're gonna be exposed right there. But the easiest way for me to fix it, because we aren't those Olympic weightlifters, we're not those powerlifters, we're, we're endurance athletes, is I'm gonna fix it with that because it's a

• 57:58Speaker 01

  new thing, it's intense, and it's helping me develop what it is I need to correct with your, what you're doing outside, what you really love to do.

• 58:06Rich Roll?

  Right, interesting. I would think that, that it would work, it would, it would work ideally with athletes that come to you that already have a huge endurance base from the past of what they're doing. Yeah, you know, because you know that, that endurance, that, that endurance base carries with you. I mean, it's, it's there. I mean, you may get out of shape, and you, but you can tap back into it. And I know that, that, you know, part of the reason why I was able to be relatively successful at Ultraman is because I, you know, was a competitive swimmer forever. And, and that's, even though I took 15 years off and did nothing, like, it's still there, right? So I could tap back into that. I know. It's, it is the strength that goes away, and I'm 46 right now, so.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  It's not necessarily the strength. I think it's the fitness, man. I really think it's the fitness, that skill, your understanding of how to swim, never went anywhere. It's like riding a bike.

• 58:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know, that comes, that, that never goes away.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  That's not really going there because it's been developed. That's been-

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  It's completely rote.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that base is not real hard to get. That's not really, that's not the hard part. What's hard to get, and what's hard to develop, and even you've even said it, it's taken three, four years, something like that, to develop the ability to run these seven-minute miles in a marathon, or in a double marathon, out at Ultraman, and be able to sustain it. Dude, that's hard, hard, long work. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying, I'm not saying I'm going to take and chop that in half. What I'm saying is I've actually got something that's gonna help you develop the ability to get there a little cleaner. Like, hey, if you ran like, you know, Shit, I'm going to clean that up and we're going to progress you along these lines of what we understand. We're going to make you stronger along the way too. And I'm not going to turn

• 59:48Speaker 01

  you into, my, my goal is not to turn you into a powerlifter. It's not to turn you into a bodybuilder. It's just to make you a better athlete at what you want to do.

• 59:55Rich Roll?

  My fear comes in because as a swimmer, so in high school and in college, I mean, we're talking about, this is the late eighties, early, you know, I graduated from high school in eighty five and college in eighty nine. And at that period of time, and it's been a long time since I've been a swimmer. So I'm sure it's changed a lot, but it was very volume based. And that's what, how I was raised as an athlete. And I also realized that I was not the most talented swimmer. Plenty of other swimmers more talented than I, but I was willing to kind of put in more work and that work meant more volume. And I swam, I swam butterflies, I swam two hundred butterflies.

• 1:00:36Rich Roll?

  So I would just do like, you know, I do like 10 times 400 butterfly, you know, like ridiculous sets in high school. And then, you know, when we're in college, peak training times, we're going upwards of 20,000 meters long course a day over Christmas training, incredible amounts of volume. But I, but I, I know that when I was doing a very volume oriented program, that I would perform better. And because I was not, I'm not a fast twitch guy, you know, the 200 butterfly is hardly, and it's a minute and 47 seconds. It's not like, it's on the longer side of swimming events, but it's like compared to even the shortest triathlon, it's apples and oranges.

• 1:01:18Rich Roll?

  But my strength, I could never get out fast. I just never had the innate speed, no matter how much time I spent in the weight room. But I could, that third 50 and that fourth 50, I would come home strong, right? And that was like the way that I would win races against other guys that probably because they weren't doing the kind of volume that I was doing, or weren't as fit quote unquote, in that regard. But then as I went to college, we did a lot more kind of high intensity stuff, less volume. And, you know, I didn't do as well. There are other reasons for that. Talk about in my book, but I got distracted a little bit.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  I did. Hey, I did too.

• 1:01:56Rich Roll?

  But that's my fear. My fear is like, I rely on the volume because I know it works.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  That's you know.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  Trusted and it's true. And I'm scared to let that go and try something different. And my coach, Chris Houth, you know, he's open minded too. And his, the way that he coaches me has evolved. And now it went from, you know, the first two years, it's like, or the first year and a half, he's like, I'm never letting you get out of zone two, dude, because you like, you're coming off the couch. I don't want you hurt. You got a lot of work to do. And it was all about like, putting the cap on me. And now it's like, okay, you know, now you're, you're out of that world and we're in a new world. And so we are doing more and more high intensity stuff. And also doing strength stuff before endurance, like his partner Craig Upton, who, who, who coaches a lot of pro cyclists says, you know,

• 1:02:46Rich Roll?

  traditionally, the idea would be do your base work. And then as you get later in the season, start doing the strength stuff, right? But he's saying, do the strength stuff early and build your base when you're tired after doing the strength stuff. So we're experimenting with a couple of other things and it makes me nervous because I, I know it works. And like, I don't want to try something new.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Um, so to go back to that swimming thing in the volume. For the last, I'm in my second year right now is consulting with the San Jose State Women's Swim Team. Last year, they went and won a WAC title, which was like a first. This year, they are the first time without ever having an injury on the team. And they are, I'm not going to say they're going to win the title again, but they are now for the very first time in school history, ranked within the top 25 schools for swimming. And this is following. Basically a program on how we do it and the coach, the head coach, who's actually a good friend of mine and actually just got

• 1:03:49Rich Roll?

  Who is the coach there now?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Seems Sage Hopkins. He actually just got unscared tattooed on his rib cage, which some of the girl, that's what I have on my knuckles. I kind of started

• 1:03:58Rich Roll?

  And by the way, we should probably point out, if you've never heard of Brian, or you're not sure who he is, you might have seen him in the trailer for Tim Ferriss's four hour body book. He's the guy with the unscared knuckle tattoos.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  And yeah, the runner with the

• 1:04:12Rich Roll?

  The runner, exactly.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  At any rate, Sage just got unscared tattooed on him. And last year, a few of his girls, actually I think a handful or so, actually ended up getting it tattooed on him. You know, and it's this, this whole thing of, you know, deciding to make a leap, you know, to a different type of training. And Sage did that a couple of years ago. And it wasn't because of me, but it was because we had had, he had seen what we were doing, understood what we were doing, understood to a degree. And he's working with the team. They're still swimming every day, but the fact is, is the program isn't what it used to be. And he has to warn girls who he's recruiting, if they decide to come to that school, this is going to be a lot different than you understand.

• 1:04:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  It's going to require more work out of you than you've ever put in.

• 1:04:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  And it's because it's a different type of work. And it's not, and it's not necessarily that it's more, but it's, it's going to be intense. And there's girls who can't make it and don't make it.

• 1:05:09Rich Roll?

  The analogy would be kind of what Dara Torres did. I mean, she's my age and I knew her growing up in swimming. And, you know, the fact that she's been able to do what she's done is because she's worked with coaches and has been willing to experiment with completely different training techniques. And yes, she's a sprinter, she was a 50 free, so it's not an endurance event.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:05:31Rich Roll?

  But, you know, when she came back to Stanford and was working with Richard Quick, they were doing all sorts of crazy stuff, you know, that was very core and strength oriented. She wasn't swimming that much. And for a swimmer, that's anathema. I mean, you gotta live in the pool.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Rich Roll?

  And it's, it's kind of crazy, if you think about it. It's like, you swim the 50 freestyle, you're in the water for 19 seconds.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's it. So why are you swimming four hours a day?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:55Rich Roll?

  You know, I mean, I understand, you know, technique, strength, and like, just that shift, that, that, that sort of

• 1:06:02Rich Roll?

  Center of gravity, moving away from the pool and into the weight room or doing these other kind of strength oriented exercises. I think it's interesting.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Craig has a question.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  I think you can work hard. You like to work hard. You mean to have something to work hard at. You can get ahead of everybody else with your hard work.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Just work hard at something different.

• 1:06:21Rich Roll?

  I know. What if I hate the gym though? Look at, we look out the window, got these trails out there and I just want to be on the trail. See, that's the thing too. I like that long run. And when I, and I get a certain, um, you know, there's a certain, you know, outside the physical, kind of the mental and the spiritual. I mean, you know how it is. You do these hundred mile, you get lost on these trails all day and, and there's a purging and a cleansing that comes along with that that you can't replace.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  My back, my back is a, uh, was my experience at Western States was what I came to. It's a, it's a big totem that starts from my bottom of my neck and goes down to my ass, you know, and it's a, it's a totem. It's what I experienced out at Western States. And it was like this whole vision and this whole thing. And it's what I've experienced anytime I've gone out and gone over probably about 50 miles where it's just, you finally you get right into that place where you're just like, here we are again.

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  It's like being on DMT or mushrooms or so you have these weird experiences that you're not going to get in any other sport.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  I've seen as much, I mean, cause I've experimented with all the same shit. You probably have, you know, and I, uh, you know, I mean, I've been clean for 15 years, dude. I mean, I've been straight edge for a very long time and, uh, I have experienced in ultra marathoning exactly what I've experienced on any hallucinogenic. And it's been a very, that, that's been, that was my trip, dude. That was my trip.

• 1:07:37Rich Roll?

  What do you think that, cause I get this question all the time, uh, shifting gears a little bit. What do you think that, that attraction to ultras is for the sort of recovering addict alcoholic mentality?

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  It's exactly that. I think it's that. It's not necessarily the hallucinate, but it's that, hey, I'm getting to know myself even deeper right now. And what am I, it's cause ultra really doesn't, I mean, it's. It ultimately, it ultimately doesn't, okay, if you're trying to win the race, it might come down to the conditioning, but it most, for most of us, at a point, it's about what's going on in my head.

• 1:08:13Rich Roll?

  Completely becomes mental at a certain point.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  It's a complete mental check and what person did I bring with me today and how can I get over this and how can I beat this? And, you know, that was every time, you know, I think some of my best ultra experiences were actually when I actually had to pace other guys, like when I, I paced Dean Karnas about 90 miles through Badwater one year. And, you know, we were, I think 75 miles in, you know, almost to the end and he's just, he just looks at me and I mean, we had gone through some hellacious shit. I mean, we yanked toenails off, we, you know, he was having meltdown after meltdown and it was epic Dean stuff, but nobody really knows this stuff.

• 1:08:51Rich Roll?

  Right. And for people that don't know or aren't familiar with the world of ultras, I mean, the true character comes out at, you know, two in the morning or, or, you know, whatever. And people act in, you know, they, the, because you're so, you're beyond depleted and exhausted and, and you become, the athlete becomes very, very irritable and difficult to manage. And so as a crew member, it's your job to kind of reel them in and keep them in check.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that was basically what it happened. I mean, he just looked at me and he was like, what, what the fuck are you still doing out here? Why are you still out here? And I'm like, bro, we gotta get you through this, dude. We gotta get you through this experience. And lo and behold, that's my experience of, I just spent like a day, you know, a full day, a full night, seeing a sunrise out at Mount Whitney and, you know, I just did this epic with you and, you know, got to experience with, you know, and I got to do that with a lot of people, dude. And, um, you know, I, I think those were some of my best experiences, but you know, I'll tell you the truth, what, uh, Angeles Crest was probably the best ultra experience I ever had was when, you know, I finally, we had put it together and I had finished

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  the race and I did fairly well at the race and I had not expected it to go the way it went. I expected to stop at about 50 or 60 miles and have called it because we didn't do enough volume, because we didn't do enough stuff.

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  That was not what happened. You know, my head was there and I was willing to go and it was, you know, it was, it was a blast and I saw things that I didn't think I'd see, you know?

• 1:10:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:10:22Rich Roll?

  And do you think, I mean, do people say to you, oh, you've just, you've transferred your, your addictive personality onto this, you're just, you're, you've moved it away from drugs and alcohol? And now it's, now this is the new addiction?

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  Um, I think-

• 1:10:36Rich Roll?

  I'm just interested because I, because I get that question all the time. So-

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  I, I think maybe my, my parents might have said that a while ago, especially with the ultra marathoning. But at this point in my career, um, you know, I'm not, my, I, I really wish I had the time to spend working out like I used to. Um, there, there was a transition that had to occur about four or five years ago where it was like, do I make, do I still try and be this athlete that I really want to be? That, you know, uh, or do I pursue a career at actually coaching and, and progressing this business? And it was, you know, it was the coaching and it was the business. And that's where I, you know, I really had to make that decision. So, you know, it's, I still work out. I still do my stuff.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  I'll get on my bike and I can go for, you know, two or three hours and I'm, it's, I haven't been two or three hours and I don't know how long, you know, but I can go do it and I can put out a fair amount of wattage and it's no big deal. Right? Um, and I have fun doing it. Um, and I can get on my bike and I can go hard or I can get in the weight room and, you know, I'm usually working out once a day, doing something, blowing it off. Um, I haven't heard the whole, you know, you're just switching addictions in a very long time in my, in my camp. Um, but-

• 1:11:50Rich Roll?

  Well, because you're not going out for an eight hour bike ride.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, true. But dude, I have buddies-

• 1:11:55Rich Roll?

  It's a more balanced, less addiction oriented approach.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  You know, both being addicts or both, you know, whatever, you know, it's, uh- The guys who brought me into the triathlon and ultra world were not alcoholics. They don't, they've never really drank, they never really participated, they were always athlete types. And I mean, the first guy to ever get me to do a triathlon, the guy has done probably, I don't know, thirty Ironmans. You know, and I'm like, dude, that's what he does, you know, and I mean, you, you understand. This is what, it becomes your identity.

• 1:12:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  You know, and this is what you want to do. It's like yoga people become yoga people. And now you're seeing CrossFit people become CrossFit people.

• 1:12:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  And people are gonna hate on it because it's new and what it does and, you know, we got these freaky athletes and, you know. Dude, I, I think the general understanding of what CrossFit actually is, people don't know what it is. It is something that, that can basically change, it identifies weakness and what it is you do and it just exploits it. And, and that's what we like to do is because it makes you change and get better at something. Versus, hey, this is just a high intensity thing. That's not what it is. One day you're gonna come in and run a 5K, the next day you might be doing, you know, deadlifts and push press, you know. Or, you know, and then the next day you might be on the air rowing, you know, 500 meter repeats with, you know, lunges in between.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  You know, it just, it can change, but you know, for, for the most part, any serious athlete, we're looking at your deficiencies and we're programming like that. We're programming around your weaknesses, we're identifying what those weaknesses are. Whether that be long distance, short distance, in between, whatever. You know, because if I've got an athlete who can run 400, you know, here's a story. I had a typical soccer mom, Newport Beach, or, you know, you can probably have them out here in Malibu too. But, you know, they, they like to go run, do spin class, you know, the whole shebang. You know, each day is set where, you know, and this, this gal Patsy was, she's a, she's a great friend of mine. But she was teaching spin class three days a week, she was running seven miles.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Another three days a week, and then just one day a week she was coming to the gym to train with me. She could run a 345 marathon. She wanted to run a 330 marathon at New York that year. And I'm like, and she's like, I need you to coach me. And I said, I don't know that you're ready for me to coach you. And she goes, what do you mean? And I said, you can't teach spinning anymore and you can't run seven miles every other day. What do you mean? I can't do that. And I'm like, if you want me to coach you, these are the parameters by which we're gonna follow. And she said, fine. Sent her out on the track to go run 400 meter repeats, like one of the first workouts we did. She calls me after two, literally laying on the ground, kicking and screaming. And I had her going out at maybe a minute faster on her pace per mile on her 400s

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  versus what she holds for a marathon. Okay. And she was literally crying, screaming in pain, agony. And I'm like, all right, we need to revamp this whole, rethink this whole thing.

• 1:14:54Rich Roll?

  Right. And I think that that goes to, you know, if you're going out and doing one thing all the time, you develop a certain level of aerobic efficiency.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  You have no gear.

• 1:15:02Rich Roll?

  With respect to that, but you try to go one gear higher and you completely fall apart.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Fall apart.

• 1:15:06Rich Roll?

  And, and you can't just go out and run every, every workout needs to have a purpose, whether that is a super high intensity workout to build strength or power, or whether that's an aerobic workout to develop your, you know, aerobic capacity and your running, run form efficiency, or whatever it is, there should be a reason.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Rich Roll?

  You know, we're all busy.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:28Rich Roll?

  You know, this isn't, we're not getting paid to go train, you know, we have lives. I got four kids, you know, you're running a business. It's like, if you have a specific performance goal that you're trying to achieve, then why would you just go out and go, well, I'm just going to go run seven miles every, it doesn't make any sense for anybody.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  But this, so here's where the great dilemma comes in, and this is the great dilemma. And this is what we're seeing within CrossFit right now. People go and look at what Chris McCormick does, and they read it, and they go, I'm going to go do a 400 mile bike week. I'm going to go do a 500 mile bike week, and that's going to be awesome. And I'm going to be elite, or I'm going to be great at what I'm doing because I can go do a 400 mile bike week.

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  He's been doing 400 mile bike week since he was like 13 years old.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, but where did Chris McCormick start?

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  Here's like, where did Chris start? Like, and this is just an analogy. Chris was a sprint triathlon champion. Then he progressed up to Olympic. Then he went to half Ironman. And now he's went and did now he's an Ironman guy, right?

• 1:16:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  You don't ever see somebody who goes and like is Ironman champ and, and or Ultraman and say, I'm going down to sprint distance.

• 1:16:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, there's no way.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  I'm going to mop.

• 1:16:46Rich Roll?

  And now more than ever. I mean, the guys are so insanely fast.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but even but back to this whole thing of like, here's my, here's Joe Schmo reading the magazine or your weekend warrior guy. And I'm going to go do what Chris McCormick does because he does it. And I want to be like him. But dude, you don't understand how long that takes to develop.

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  You got to train where you're at and not where you want to be.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Reality check.

• 1:17:10Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Look, and we have that, you know, we have elite level guys in CrossFit right now who are doing and women who are doing things that are mind boggling. And they have pretty high volume, but they can handle and they've developed that. Okay, for the most part. But then we've got regular Joe Schmo's in the gym who show up at, you know, who want to do two and three a day workouts of CrossFit. And it's like, yo, you cannot handle that.

• 1:17:37Rich Roll?

  Well, you have to, I think you have to pick your program.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Rich Roll?

  You know, I, you can't go on the, the sort of cafeteria plan. You know what I mean? Like, I think you're either going to do it your way, or you're going to do it my way. But if you try to do a little bit of my way and throw some of yours in there, then you're going to get hurt. You're going to get overtrained. You're, you know, you're going to cause problems.

• 1:18:05Rich Roll?

  But that being said, you know, I think for me, like, I'm listening to this going, all right, what am I going to take away for my own program? And, you know, I'm thinking, well, I'm, you know, I trust my coach. I know it works for me. I'm going to continue to do kind of what I do. And I enjoy, I actually enjoy that. But I do need to put much more focus on, you know, fundamental strength, because I overlook that way too much. There's no question about that. And when you're saying that, I'm like, I need to do that. I need to do that. I need to do that.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  It's body weight core training has no, I mean,

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Doesn't even compare on a scale to throwing weight on your back or over your head and what you have to stabilize in order to understand what the core actually does. And, and through that, I can make an athlete, a better athlete than just doing some sort of body weight core training, which is a lot of what the stuff what we see in the endurance is like, it's, it's almost like, I look at it and it drives me nuts because I'm a strength and conditioning guy. And it's like, dude, you, it, it, don't be so afraid of the barbell. Don't be so afraid of the dumb. It doesn't mean you need to lift 500 pounds today. And in fact, it might start at 15 pounds today, but.

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  Well, I think part of the barrier too, is particularly for runners and triathletes, they're, they're trying to be lean, you know, and a lot of guys will come into triathlon and like me, you know, they're overweight. They're trying to get, they're trying to trim down. They're trying to get thinner. They're trying to get that light chassis, the power to weight ratio on the bike and all that kind of thing. And they're afraid, and I consider myself, I include myself in this group. If I go into the weight room and start doing this stuff, I'm going to put on all this shoulder mass and all this kind of stuff that is going to, you know, I'm going to put on like eight pounds that I don't want.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Uh oh, but what if that eight pounds makes you faster?

• 1:19:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that's the unknown, you know?

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Actually, that's not.

• 1:20:03Rich Roll?

  I won't know that until after those eight pounds.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  You don't know that, but here, but that's the same story I've gotten from every endurance athlete I've really ever worked with. And Patsy included the one I was talking about, who inevitably we sent to New York. And in the last two months of training, she literally was running four times a week. But the four times she ran that week, she was doing a Tabata protocol, which is a 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off on a treadmill at her 5K pace on a 12% grade, which is a gnarly, gnarly little workout.

• 1:20:33Rich Roll?

  I hope you put a bucket next to that treadmill.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  She, she had developed to this, but those are the only four runs she was doing. And she was CrossFit-ing and she went and ran a 332. And the only reason she didn't run a 329 was because some dope fell down in front of the, the finish line and she decided to pick him up and carry him across the line, you know, and she called me crying, not believing what would happen or how it would go down, you know, and, and not understanding how it just happened. And it was, and it wasn't just about the Tabata protocol or, or her running short distance. It was about the fact that we worked on her skill. We made her stronger. She had always had that aerobic base. She's going out and running, you know, three times a week, seven miles and doing spin class for an hour.

• 1:21:17Rich Roll?

  Right, but that's different from doing the 20 mile run on Sunday and the tempo runs during the week or whatever. So her base was, she probably fell into that camp of somebody who's gray zoning it all the time and was at a certain plateau, right?

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:21:31Rich Roll?

  So, and that's a big difference from somebody like, let's say, you know, Ryan Hall comes to you, you know, or somebody who's an elite, you know, and, and who has been training and winning races and fastest American marathoner of all time, right? You know, has been running a certain way and you're going to say what to a guy like that?

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  He heel strikes on one side, which is a burden to him, whether he likes that or not. He also has four inches of vertical travel. Okay. You know what the, you know what the Kenyans have or the African runners have that are running right next to him that are beating him? Four centimeters.

• 1:22:06Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  What, you think that four inches of vertical travel every time he goes, every time he takes a step is going to have a, an effect down road at 26.2 miles? It will have a big one.

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  So what is your, I mean, what would you do with that?

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  He, I.

• 1:22:24Rich Roll?

  So you're saying he has, he has run, he has run form inefficiencies that could be worked on?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  But compare him to you and I at 26.2 miles.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, don't even, it's not even worth talking about.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  No, but me as a coach, I can look at that and go, brother, here's what we need to clean up. We know what we need to do. By the way, here's the best way I know at doing that. You're going to need to learn how to deadlift and you're going to need to learn how to back squat a little bit.

• 1:22:48Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and he's going to go, forget it.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. But that's why his leg flares out and why he has no stability, you know, he, he's, he's got a valgus knee or whatever's going on because his hips don't work and they don't stabilize him correctly. And he's picked up all these, you know, which we can correct and we can still make him faster and we can still do all of this stuff. But because he's so afraid of the weights or this unconventional thing that's occurred, you know?

• 1:23:12Rich Roll?

  But if you've observed that, then, then you're probably not the only one who's seen this.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you what. You watch any football?

• 1:23:19Rich Roll?

  And I don't even know one where, by the way, like I don't even know one, I'm not, I don't, I wouldn't even consider myself able to pick up on that.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Here's the problem, I don't think there are actually people around him that are telling him this stuff. And, and here's an example is you've got a guy, RG3, this football player who has just torn an ACL. And the guy had a non-impact, he's arguably one of the greatest quarterbacks that's ever going to exist, and he has a non-impact ACL tear. There's a picture of him in his Subway commercial jumping. And when he jumps, his knees dive in and he becomes very valgus. This is, this guy-

• 1:23:53Rich Roll?

  What does valgus mean?

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Valgus means the knees, so my knee's coming in like this.

• 1:23:58Rich Roll?

  Bending in.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  It's valgus, outside is varus. So he doesn't stabilize his hips with, he doesn't stabilize his knees with his hips, more or less. And it doesn't matter, but the point is, is that we know he's in a compromised position. We know that's a poor position to jump from. But RG3 has actually become so good and efficient at that, that he can actually jump his verticals 49 and a half inches, I believe, in that poor shitty position. That same poor shitty position, when he took the snap, his knee dropped valgus, which means we are in a compromised knee position. So that, that ACL runs over the top here like this. And when you come in like that, that unwinds and it can tear. Okay? He comes back, that knee dives in because it's his go-to no position, and it

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  snaps. And he blows his knee out. And how many people do you think are around him going, hey, bro, we gotta change your position? No. They're, hey, let's inject him real quick, let's get him into surgery, we'll get him back. It doesn't matter. We're, you know, no. There's, these, these guys are surrounding, I'm not, you know, Ryan Hall's probably not paid as much as RG3, but he's, he's got his own life and he dictates his own thing. And how many people are around a lot of these elite level athletes? Because it's not, their conditioning, that's the limiting factor here. That's not what's the limiting factor. It's the movement, it's the skill of that movement. It's the greatest violinist, or it's, you know, which you're gonna find out in this book over here, you're gonna read about it, is it's, it's this talent and this, this

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  ability to continually develop, develop that skill of what it is you're doing, and work on it to no end. And that's the missing point with a lot of what we do.

• 1:25:36Rich Roll?

  Right. And where do you come down on, on recovery?

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 1:25:43Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, I've read, I mean, I've read that you're sort of anti-periodization. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you're, it doesn't mean you're against recovery. I mean, I would imagine you're, you know, all about recovery when done properly. So I just wanted to give you a chance to kind of explain where you're coming from on that.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  I'm definitely an anti-periodization guy, but I'm not like, hey, it doesn't work. Sure, it does at about 30%. The last I checked, at 30% on the elite level of periodization. In fact, we did a little write-up on this where we looked at Olympic track, we looked at sprinters that out of all the sprinters that go to the Olympics in four years, literally 30% might have a season PR or even a race PR, you know, which is very, very, very small number compared to everybody following some sort of periodized program. But with that said, what we do is we like to take a look at exactly what the athlete's capable that day. So what is Rich capable of putting out today?

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  And we know he can get back tomorrow and do what it is we need him to do. And as that grows, it goes, hey, we look at a day, we look at a week, we look at a month, what type of volume or what type of energy can this human being handle with training? And when we know we're reaching that upper limit, we know when to recover them.

• 1:27:04Rich Roll?

  But isn't periodization just sort of a more structural definition of that? I mean, at its core, it really just means, you know, train and release.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  I think most people, I think most people actually aren't even following what periodization really was intended for. Because if you're a good coach, you're actually monitoring what's going on with that athlete almost daily.

• 1:27:22Rich Roll?

  Well, periodization can take place on the macro level and on the micro level. So, yeah, it could be, you know, what are you eating right now is part of, like, are you eating to recover or are you eating to, you know, check out?

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I look for signs for the athlete not being ready for the next day. We use things like resting heart rate or, you know, heart rate variability. I look at what's happening in performance, but that, and that's the biggest key is we, because if I'm training somebody, if I'm actually coaching somebody, I have specific numbers and things I want to see that athlete hit. And the athlete will send me the program and I'll look at the program and they'll tell me what they're doing daily and what's happening. And hey, by the way, I just shit the bed on this workout. And I look at that and look back and what was happening and what'd you eat that day and what's going on. Okay, guess tomorrow, we're just gonna, we're gonna kill that. We're not gonna do tomorrow. You're gonna take it off. That basically removes

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  out the plan that I had had planned for three months down the road for the race because now we've got to go back, you know, and that's why.

• 1:28:27Rich Roll?

  Like, oh, I took this person here thinking they'd be okay at this point, but they're obviously, this is too much for them or they're getting worn down. We gotta figure out a new plan. Just being flexible.

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  I just went out for a 10 mile run, which is the first time I've gone out, or hey, maybe you're doing 20, you know. I've just went out on that 20 mile run and now my, I've got a calf strainer, I've got something going on. Oh, okay. What did you notice you were doing when you were out there? Why did the calf light up? What's going on? You know, you're either pushing off, you're either landing wrong, something's going on. I need to know what that is. And now we're gonna have to stop something and correct it and move and go from there.

• 1:29:05Rich Roll?

  Right. And I would imagine you get a lot of reluctant athletes because they're, wow, I'm finally starting to get fit. I don't want to interrupt, but it's like if they get injured, they're, you know, then they're on the couch.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Yep. It's, it's not necessarily on the couch. It's, we need to correct this. So you're gonna need to do this instead. Or you're gonna need to, you're gonna need to do something else. Or we're going to, you're gonna have to take some time off, or we're gonna have to fix that movement. What's going on and why at 10 miles or why at 20 miles, you're starting to run funny. You know, that's not making sense. So we need to fix that.

• 1:29:42Rich Roll?

  Right. You still have your athletes use heart rate monitors when they're running, right?

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:29:46Rich Roll?

  No?

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:29:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, come on, man.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  Toss that one out.

• 1:29:50Rich Roll?

  Why? I mean, that's, it's, it's a great, you know, marker of fatigue.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  To a degree, to a degree.

• 1:29:58Rich Roll?

  Well, it's in, there's a lot of variables at play into that, of course.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  There's too many, there's too many. And if you start really going down the road of heart rate, you start to understand the heart rate variability, the change in heart rate, the, the best thing I can say with heart rate is looking at resting heart rate in the morning of an athlete and what happened from the night before. Looking at your heart rate when you're doing a run or doing something has become this.

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  Hey, bro. We gotta slow down. I'm gonna blow up.

• 1:30:23Rich Roll?

  For the audience, he's staring at his wrist.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Dude, coach, we have to slow down. I'm gonna blow up. My heart rate's at 166. I'm gonna blow if I go to 167 or 168. And I'll look at the athlete and go, if you were gonna fucking blow, you wouldn't be talking to me right now. It becomes a synonymous thing of I am grading my intensity off of my heart rate. And it's a poor thing, especially if you take a look at like, let's just take a look at race car drivers. What can they hold their heart rate at in a four hour, five hour race? Roughly 80% of their max heart rate. Even some of them have been seen to go 110%. Yet they're sitting in a car driving around a track. Granted, there's a different type of stress in there.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  But what if that type of stress enters the athlete? Or I'm a little bit different that day. It's where we're correlating something versus, hey, here's a number. Here's what I know you can hit your 10K on. Here's what I know your PR is. I know the intensity I need to see with that so that we're actually making some progress with you, which is probably in the maybe 85 to 97% range of that number. Which actually isn't, it's actually not very hard to hit that type of stuff. But it teaches the athlete pacing through not looking at the heart rate and where they're getting attached to that whole thing. And that's what I found with all of our athletes that were you. And dude, I used a heart rate monitor for five years.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  No workout done without it. Okay?

• 1:31:57Rich Roll?

  I think that you're right in that athletes become too attached to it. And it becomes a crutch in the same way using fins and paddles are at the pool for a lot of master swimmers and triathletes. You can definitely lean on it way too much. But where I think I differ from you, well, Here's an analogy. When I was a swimmer, you know, just as it becomes so rote and you're just swimming so much, we would do, you know, let's say we were doing, you know, I'm 19 years old and we're doing 100 freestyle repeats on the 115 or whatever.

• 1:32:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:33Rich Roll?

  Like, I could tell you when I touched the wall without looking at the clock, what my time was every time. And I could tell you what my heart rate was.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  And we didn't have watches. We didn't have any, you know, like, but I just knew my body so well because you're doing it so much.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:47Rich Roll?

  Right? And then when I kind of picked this ultra endurance career up, I needed a heart rate monitor to tap back into that, to go, all right, this is what 145 beats a minute feels like right now at this level of fitness. And, and I know, because I go on and I do formal lactate testing, I know where those thresholds are, and I know the intensity level that I need to be at to train my body to burn fat and become more efficient. He's laughing at me right now.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  I'm not laughing at you. I'm not, dude.

• 1:33:19Rich Roll?

  And I know what intensity I need to be at so that I'm not in the gray zone and I'm working on my speed and my strength when I'm doing the more intense efforts.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  Yes, it's awesome.

• 1:33:29Rich Roll?

  And so, so I, and I still use a heart rate monitor every, and I also know that it's not that accurate. If I didn't sleep right the night before, if I've got a lot of stress in my life, if

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  Julie's upset with you.

• 1:33:40Rich Roll?

  There's a lot of, yeah, believe me, that can definitely throw my heart rate monitor off. There are a lot, it's not a perfect science by any stretch of the imagination, but I use it as just a tool that I can go, all right, well, this is kind of it. And also when I'm on my bike and I look at my watts, which are a much more reliable predictor than heart rate.

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  Whoa, you just threw out a very big word there.

• 1:34:04Rich Roll?

  But I know kind of where my heart rate should be in correlation to whatever watts I'm holding. And when suddenly there's a separation there, like, well, my heart rate's way too high for these watts, or my heart, I can't get my heart rate up, then those are things that play into how I adjust my program. Because you know what, I'm really tired right now. These, there's a, there's a, they call it, what is it, decoupling, I think.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  If you're gonna race with heart rate, if you're gonna, if that's gonna be your MO.

• 1:34:35Rich Roll?

  I don't, no, racing is different.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Okay, but then I know the most accurate, the most accurate thing on the planet, beat any science, it is science, for understanding all of that, and it's performance. And when the performance isn't met, something's wrong with the training, or with the athlete, for that matter. And when we really correlate what it is we're doing with something like, when I said, you know, used a big word, I didn't mean that, like you used, I mean, that's a big word, like, you know, the cycling world is pretty aware of how to train. That's watts. Because watts don't lie. Watts is actual work.

• 1:35:21Rich Roll?

  But also, the bicycle is a machine in which you can extract all sorts of data points that aren't, that aren't possible in other disciplines.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  I can extract that data from you running, if I really want to.

• 1:35:33Rich Roll?

  Well, you can't, you can't extract, you can't extract the force with which my foot is pushing off on the track, or...

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, if Usain Bolt and I were to run 100 meters, the force output, the watts that he would be generating would be much greater than me. Would they not? Would they not?

• 1:35:55Rich Roll?

  All right, here's your PhD.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  No, yeah, right? And, and it would not only be because he outweighs me, but because he not only outweighs, maybe he outweighs me, I know he's probably 205, 210, but he, you know, which he outweighs me, you know, me being 195 pounds, but because I'm slower than him. And it doesn't matter, but the time it took from the start to the finish, that is a correlate. That is a measurement. And that can be measured. And that is what people are missing, is what the measurement is. I know what an athlete's...

• 1:36:27Rich Roll?

  So I don't know, but how does that play into being an argument against using a power meter and a heart rate monitor? Like, I'm not, I'm, I'm missing something.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  If I, if, so if I've got a three-minute watt test I do, which is something I standard I do with a lot of athletes on the bike, I know what that wattage, like, if I've got, if I'm gonna have somebody doing some three-minute... Efforts and three minute spin between or two minutes spin, whatever. I know the rest that they can handle. I also know that the, the, the percentage, I also know basically what the percentage is, or I can find out what that percentage is that they could hold for however many I need to do. Still gaining that ability of understanding the performance indicator versus, hey, I just want you to go and hit your heart. I don't want your heart rate to go this high, but I need you to match these wattage. I, I need you to

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  match the wattage with that specific heart rate, but yet you can't do that. And yet, if I can get an athlete who can actually perform like that and show me they can form like that, then we can progress that way because it's all based on performance versus taking something and just saying, hey, identify, I'm identifying an exertion level or identifying what this feels like. And today, coach, I could only get two of these at this wattage before I felt like I was tanking. That's it? What's going on?

• 1:37:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that's, that's fine. I understand that, but it's using these, these, these tools to set parameters for a workout. And as we, I think we both agreed, a workout needs a purpose. So the purpose of this workout is you, you want to be at this intensity for this amount of time or what have you, or do these reps. And you can use the power meter and the heart rate monitor to help establish that. If the athlete then goes and attempts that and can't meet that or whatever, then that's just information that you can take to then adjust whatever they're doing, right?

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Are things better, more complex or simple?

• 1:38:14Rich Roll?

  Well, I don't know. I mean, I love the, I like to geek out on the data. I mean, maybe that's not, you know, maybe it becomes too much for someone or as a coach to like be looking at SRM files all the time.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  I know this is that if I'm looking at, whether it's somebody's wattage on a bike or times on a track or times on a run, that if I'm looking at the basic performance level of that versus looking at heart rate versus looking at, you know, lactate levels, which I've owned, I own a lactate machine. I own a VO2 max machine. I've spent more money on all this shit, just as much as anybody else, and it all meant nothing.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  Because when it all came down to me understanding what performance was hap- what was happening with performance, if I just paid attention to the performance of what was going on, if I could get the athlete in a certain window in, in these workouts, knowing what they can handle each week, based on each day.

• 1:39:11Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  Then I'm right in that zone. And when something starts to fail, something's going on. I've got to readjust the programming. And, and if it inevitably isn't the programming, maybe it's the nutrition. What are we doing with nutrition? Which, that's the other huge thing with what we deal with, you know? And it's about, it's not about eating all this crap that most of these athletes are eating.

• 1:39:29Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  And it's not that I'm going to go on a, you know, tangent about what, how we eat. But, I mean, you're somebody who is, dude, you are on the extreme of everything, but you are dialed on what you do, right?

• 1:39:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  You know, and most of these people don't underst- they think just shoving down goo and, you know, and, and sucking down all these drinks and doing all this crap is okay. And it's like, well, dude, no, that's not, you know?

• 1:39:51Rich Roll?

  Right. There's a lot of confusion about that. And it's, it's hard because you see all, you, the goos are everywhere in the ga- you know, people think they should be drinking Gatorade all day and, you know, and there aren't a lot of healthy alternatives either. Um, and people don't really know what to do. I mean, they're well-intentioned, but I think there's just a lot of misinformation about that kind of stuff.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well-intentioned and, you know, just not taking enough responsibility to really understand that stuff. And, and I think people do need to be more, they need to take more responsibility in for what they're doing and, and why-

• 1:40:24Rich Roll?

  So what do you tell the athletes when they, when you tell them to get off the goos? What are you telling them to have in, in lieu of that?

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  Well, they, first, they've got to clean up the diet. They've, they've got to be eating, one, more vegetables. I, I'm not a big fruit guy. Um, I just don't like high glycemic carbs at all. Um, I'm, I'm a low carb guy to a large degree, but that, that means eating the highest quality vegetable that you can. I mean, you can consider me a meat-eating vegan.

• 1:40:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  I'm just.

• 1:40:52Rich Roll?

  I've had a couple of those on the show. We, we beat the, uh, the low carb drum, uh, last week.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:57Rich Roll?

  Need to go down that.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  And, and whatever. And, you know, I'm not going to sit there and, you know, you can eat any way you want, but I'll tell you right now that when you're bonking, it's not because you're eating, uh, it's not because your body, your, your body's burning fat at that point. Your body's too, too, your body's too used to burning glycogen.

• 1:41:15Rich Roll?

  That's, that we agree on.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if you are sucking down goo, guess what? That's the only thing you are burning. You're not burning fat at that point.

• 1:41:24Rich Roll?

  Right. That's the thing I think that people get confused on because even if you are in your fat burning, energy utilization system because of the energy level that you're putting out, the level of intensity is, is well within your aerobic capacity. So you're meant to be metabolizing fat for fuel. If you're eating gels, that's gonna, that's gonna be the thing that your body's gonna use first. I mean, you're gonna, it's gonna hijack that pathway, right? And your body's gonna burn the glycogen.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:41:51Rich Roll?

  Which is why. And then you're gonna have the insulin spike and then it's gonna pull that sugar out. And then you're gonna have, you're gonna have issues. Not to mention the GI problems that happen when you're, you know, somebody say.

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Anybody who's done an Ironman has seen it where the dude is, or the, or the woman sitting on the side of the aid station puking up whatever, you know, seven different types of gels and stuff they decided to suck down.

• 1:42:12Rich Roll?

  And you hear it all the time. Like, oh, I was doing great. And then, uh, you know, then I had a GI problems. And it's like, well, you've, you've had 12 gels in the last, you know, four hours.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:24Rich Roll?

  And I mean, if you were sitting on the couch, my buddy Vinnie says, you sit on the couch all day and, and eat a gel every half hour, you're gonna vomit, you know, in a couple of hours.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  It's, it's cra- it's crazy. You know, I mean, we taught, I, I push a diet that is gonna get the athlete to burn, to utilize fat. I want the athlete to, and we can get that through nutrition alone. If, if.

• 1:42:45Rich Roll?

  But training, I see, I, that's where I think we differ because I think training has a lot to do with that as well.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  But then if we were to go take a look at any Ironman, how come half the field is overweight? Right? I mean, you're looking at people who are out there training.

• 1:43:01Rich Roll?

  For sure. Yeah.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Okay. But they're, but they're, that's the thing. It's true. You cannot outperform a poor diet. You cannot, it's going to catch you and it's gonna, it's gonna be. As obvious as anything. I mean, we were just, Aaron and I were driving back through the canyon in Orange County and there were just all these cyclists, but there were, I mean, there were a ton of just overweight cyclists. And sure, they're out there getting it, but how long have they been out there doing that? And how long they've been overweight? And I see the same people doing the same thing going, I used to see it in spin classes. The same overweight people going into spin classes at the gym I worked at, who were overweight for three years.

• 1:43:37Rich Roll?

  I think what happens is, is the post, it's, it's sort of the workout justifies the big meal or the poor eating habits. Like, well, I'm doing my ride so I can eat whatever I want.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  Or I should be sucking down a Gatorade.

• 1:43:50Rich Roll?

  And the caloric, you know, the caloric intake far outweighs the caloric burn and, and

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  But I could take, yeah, but then again, we could take a higher, same caloric density, 5,000 calories of different types of food. And yet, one person's going to gain weight and we have a person's going to lose, you know, because they're going to, their body's going to be signaling to burn fat. I think this thing's more about hormones. It does have something to do with calories, but it doesn't have as much as we think. I think it's about hormones. I think it's about keeping those hormones in check. And I think it's, it's you getting the body to trigger and be able to burn fat more efficiently, not only through nutrition, but, but through the training. And when you can teach the body to do that, that's when you become more efficient as an athlete, especially an ultra athlete. I mean, look at a guy who finished, who won Western States this last year, you know, a low carb guy. Doesn't mean that we need to go all start going low carb, but the fact

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  is, is hey, here's a guy who's showing you at the ultra distance, you can be low carb. It was why we developed the product that we did, was because we were so tired of that there was nothing really out there that really could help people in our situation, like who ate the way we did and who were training the way we did. And there was no other healthier op, you know, alternative. So we created, you know, three fuel, which is the product that we, you know, do, which you can't use, but

• 1:45:08Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a whey, it's got whey in it, right?

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got whey protein, but it's, you know, it's a grass fed, it's the highest quality grass fed whey protein. It's got baby coconut milk in it, which is a medium chain fat, which is an immediately usable fuel, which most people are not aware of.

• 1:45:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I actually just wrote, I just wrote an article on my blog about coconut oil, because there's such a big debate about that right now. And I evaluated both sides of it. Yeah, there is, it's, it's the lauric acid that is, becomes a very available. It is a saturated fat, but it becomes very bioavailable for you to burn as fuel. So it's a good energy source when you're in that fat burning zone.

• 1:45:49Speaker 01

  And we've got a resistant starch in there, which actually doesn't start turning on the glucose meter for two to three hours, but once it does, that whole engine is just running and it never stops. So you're, I mean, I've, we've had people go out five, six hours on it and just be just fine pushing the limit.

• 1:46:06Rich Roll?

  So is this something you put in your bottle, like on the bike or when you're exercising? Or it's a post-workout thing?

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  It's a during workout?

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a, it's either a pre or, or post. Like for somebody who was like lifting weight or cross training or doing something like that would be a pre. Um, you know, you could take it anywhere from two hours to two minutes before you worked out. Um, or if you're an endurance athlete, it'd be something you'd be using along the way and you just won't run out of energy. But if you decide to suck down a gel, you just change the whole structure of the way everything is going.

• 1:46:36Rich Roll?

  Right. You can't do, you can't do both.

• 1:46:37Speaker 01

  Nope. Yeah.

• 1:46:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Right. All right, man. So we've been, let's see, we're at an hour 37 here. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I think, you know, I always want to have some takeaways for the people out there, like things that, you know, maybe they're not going to call you up and hire you to be their, be their coach.

• 1:46:55Speaker 01

  And they don't need to.

• 1:46:56Rich Roll?

  But what are the things, what are the most common mistakes that people are making without even knowing it and, and things that they could change in their training or in their, maybe in their nutrition, um, that could have a huge impact on what they're doing.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  I, I think training wise, it's, it's the ability to understand that pain is a penalty for violating the principles of nature. And I'm not talking about can, you know, going out and running an ultra and getting into pain that way. I'm talking about like you've got some sort of injury thing coming on. This is an indication something's wrong and you're doing something wrong. And, and moving correctly is actually my goal. Like that's what I'm like, that's why I'm a coach and that's why I'm good at what I do because I can see how people sit, walk, do, run, ride, all that, and we can correct that and we can fix that. And it's all about posture. It really is. But. It's finding somebody who can actually do that and getting a coach to look at you

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  or getting somebody to look at you and do that is huge.

• 1:47:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I agree with that. And I talk about that in my book a little bit, but I think that if you, you know, you have some little injury and then you take time off and you let it heal and then you just start doing what you were doing before, hoping it won't happen again. I mean, that's not a solution.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  That is no solution at all. That is why it's something you should be, we have so much, we have so many resources that we put out on our website and you don't need to go follow the training, but we put out stuff for skill, skill ability, you know, skill training, all that stuff. I mean, my book, Power Speed Endurance, it's pretty much a skill-based training book. I mean, that's the, you know, it's called Power Speed Endurance, a skill-based training approach. Okay. So it's probably four or five chapters, basically on skill. And then it talks about programming and a little bit about fueling. We don't get too deep in the nutrition because I'm going to do that with some other stuff. But, you know, treating anything, any movement, anything you do as a skill will change the athlete

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  paradigm for you for the rest of your life.

• 1:48:59Rich Roll?

  By anything, you literally mean anything?

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally mean anything.

• 1:49:03Rich Roll?

  Like sitting at your desk, at your computer?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, you probably shouldn't be sitting. In fact, we were talking about this yesterday, Aaron and I were coaching, we're working with some people and, you know, sitting needs to be looked at as a privilege, not a right. Your ass is not, does not have the same skin structure that your hands and your feet have. Therefore, it's not something you should be really in contact with the ground with.

• 1:49:23Rich Roll?

  It is weird that we've evolved, evolved as these creatures that spend most of our time sitting down.

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  Because if we were to go to like Asia and places like that, it's not as prevalent. But, you know, the fact is, is if we were to look at sitting as a privilege and not a right, that would change a lot of stuff. In fact, we like to stand, our desk at home is stand up. You know, my buddy Kelly Starrett talks about is kind of on a mission to change that stuff. And, you know, he is, he runs a mobility wad, which is another great resource. And, you know, you can learn about a lot of this stuff and mobilizing and understanding what stretching really is. And he's arguably the biggest, strongest, most flexible human being I have ever seen in my life.

• 1:50:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  And he puts most yogis to shame, like they, just the positions he can get into because, you know, he understands the stuff and he's worked his whole life at it. With that said, You know, getting stronger is key. Being strong doesn't mean you need to look like a bodybuilder either. There are guys who have back squatted a thousand pounds at under 200 pounds. You know, the strength is not necessarily bulky, okay? But getting strong is key for a lot of people. And getting strong is going to help you get into better positions as well. In fact, it's weird that when you get stronger, you sit more upright, you stand more upright, you do things more upright. It's, you know. So I think those are some key things. I think

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  nutritionally, cleaning up your diet. If you're gonna, if you're a meat eater, if you're gonna eat meat, trying to get the highest quality meat possible, grass fed, you know, treated well, you know, animals that are treated well, that aren't coming from some, you know, messed up slaughterhouse. But the key is eating, I think for me, is eating high quality vegetables. Really, the most potent, high quality vegetables you can get your hands on, and eating a shit ton of fat.

• 1:51:15Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  Lots and lots of fat.

• 1:51:18Rich Roll?

  The whole fat thing here.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:20Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, we can disagree on that part. But the other stuff I agree with you on.

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, with the way you eat, it really wouldn't be, it probably wouldn't work so well.

• 1:51:30Rich Roll?

  No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  Because if you raise, it's just, it's the way the diet works, you know, the thing. But with the way we eat, you know, it's like, dude, that's my fuel. And I lean out and, you know, I can sit somewhere between four and six percent body fat at any given time and still go out and compete and not bonk. And it's like, how did you just do that?

• 1:51:49Rich Roll?

  But I think that there's a difference. You know, we'll go, we can go around this merry go round. And I do this all the time on the podcast. But, you know, I got, I switched my diet not for performance reasons, but because I didn't want to have a heart attack. It's always been about like, long term health. And

• 1:52:08Rich Roll?

  You know, we are in a healthcare crisis and you know, there are people walking around that are ticking time bombs for heart attacks and they don't even know it. You know, 935,000 people, Americans a year suffer heart attacks, 600,000 of which are fatal. And just last night, actually, I was at a benefit for a foundation called the Heart View Global Foundation. And it was started by this friend of mine, Jonathan Schwartz, who founded this, who created this foundation to honor his buddy, like his high school buddy, who died of a heart attack. And what happened was Jonathan, who'd always been a runner, like a marathoner and stuff like that, thought, you know, my buddy died of a heart attack really young.

• 1:52:52Rich Roll?

  I should probably go get checked out. Like, I'm thin, I'm active, I feel fine, you know, but just for peace of mind for me and my wife and whatever. So he goes to the doctor and he has like a special scan, CT cardiac scan. And the doctor says, you are, you have almost 100% blockage in this one key artery. Like, we need to deal with you immediately. And had you not come in, you know, you were very likely going to have a fatal heart attack very soon. So, the point being that a lot of guys that think they're fit, or there's no, you know, a lot of these heart attacks happen without any symptomology whatsoever. You think you're fine and it happens. And so that's always kind of been my kind of marching order.

• 1:53:34Rich Roll?

  And you know, this, at this benefit last night, all these cardiac surgeons, cardiologists who were getting up and speaking from Cedar Sinai and great hospitals. And, you know, the mantra was, you've got to get the saturated fat out of your diet. And I know you're coming from a different place on this, but I've heard way too many cardiac specialists talk about the ills of saturated fat when it comes to heart disease. And that is a completely separate discussion from athletic performance, completely. And I get that, or weight loss for that matter. But that's the thing I can't, I just keep coming back to.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  But see, I think most of that stuff is misinformation. And, and I don't, in fact, I've never seen a study or anything that's shown high cholesterol has caused any heart attacks. In fact, it's the lower cholesterol people who are the ones who are having the heart attacks. Although the arteries might be closed, but the fact is, is it's the type of cholesterol. And unfortunately, that cholesterol... The density of that cholesterol is what the problem is. And when that cholesterol level is dense and plaque-like, when it packs in there, that's the stuff that's dangerous. We find that insulin levels are usually a product of that. That we're seeing higher levels of insulin, that we're seeing people who are eating higher

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  carb diets, that they're crushing carbs, any type of carb, especially high glycemic carbs. And so there's a direct relationship with not only eating the fat. In fact, the worst combination of food out there is carb and fat, something that's sugary and has fat in it. Okay? So that hormonally changes the body in the worst type of way versus somebody who's eating low carb or eating carbs that are complex with higher fat and protein. We don't see any of that stuff. In fact, show me, if somebody shows me that there's actually high cholesterol people

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  who are the ones who are having the heart attacks, I'll read the information, but I haven't seen it. In fact, people keep sending me stuff of people with low cholesterol who are the ones who are having the heart attacks. And they're the ones that go on the medication and all this other crap, that they buy into this stuff that these doctors are talking about. And it's totally wrong. It's totally different from everything we're hearing in mainstream, which if mainstream is talking about it, it's usually time to change what it is you're doing. At least that's been my experience.

• 1:56:11Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, I'm going to dig into some of the research. Whoops, I didn't mean to have that. That's supposed to not be there. Hold on. Sorry about that.

• 1:56:21Rich Roll?

  We had a little relic from another episode on there, the outro. All right, man. Well, that is a lightning rod, you know.

• 1:56:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:56:31Rich Roll?

  Position to take for sure. And if there are people out there that want to leave a comment on the website, my website, underneath where this podcast will be hosted, feel free to point us in the right direction in terms of research, and I'm going to poke around that as well. But I think I just, I can't get around to say that.

• 1:56:55Rich Roll?

  I understand that sugar and processed foods are gigantic culprits in this war of heart disease that we're in. There's no question about that. I don't dispute that at all. But I think to say that, that everything you've ever heard about dietary saturated fat is completely wrong. And all these cardiologists that have been cutting open hearts and doing this research forever, who are saying this are also wrong.

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  I don't know that it's all

• 1:57:23Rich Roll?

  And neither of us are cardiologists or research scientists either.

• 1:57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I don't know that it's all wrong, but I will say that there's a lot of stuff that may not be right. And nobody's solved anything yet, other than the fact that the blood work I tend to see, and what I, what I've seen not only with myself, but with other people who are eating the exact same way and doing the exact same thing, it's telling an entirely different story.

• 1:57:50Rich Roll?

  But are they getting CT cardiac scans? Because I think sometimes the, you know, the blood work, the cholesterol and the blood pressure doesn't tell the whole story. And in the case of this, my friend Jonathan, I mean, his, I believe his numbers weren't bad. So it wasn't until he got the scan. And that's his whole foundation is set up to try to get more of these scans and make them more available to people, because it was really the only indicator that can show you whether you have a blockage. I mean, taking a picture of your heart and seeing that, you know, artery like having a, like an angiogram.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  I think like stuff like Gary Taubes is written, is probably the closest we've seen with a lot of this stuff. And where we see these relate, you know, this, a lot of the stuff I'm talking about. But if we, what would be great is to actually be able to do these CT scans and show, well, hell, let's see what's going on with this person. Let's see what's going on with this person.

• 1:58:48Rich Roll?

  That would be good. I don't know if that research exists, but if it doesn't, it should.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Let's get, you know, I know a few docs, I'm sure you might know a few docs.

• 1:58:57Rich Roll?

  I do. You know, I mean, I know, you know, the one study that I always point to is Dr. Esselstyn's study, where he was able to reverse heart disease on a, on a, a low fat, plant-based diet. But the reversals actually only took place when it was low fat, like when he started having the oils and the nuts and all that kind of stuff in there, he wasn't seeing the same results. So that tells me that there is some connection there. But You know, that's a protocol where you're allowed to have, you know, some whole wheat and fruit and things like that, that are kind of verboten from the, the program that you're coming from.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:35Rich Roll?

  So, you know, but neither of us went to Harvard Medical School, so.

• 1:59:40Speaker 01

  No, we didn't.

• 1:59:42Rich Roll?

  The debate will go on.

• 1:59:44Speaker 01

  I am opinionated for me, as you are for you.

• 1:59:47Rich Roll?

  That's true. All right, man.

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  All right, dude.

• 1:59:49Rich Roll?

  Well, that was cool.

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  I feel good.

• 1:59:52Rich Roll?

  Feel all right?

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  I feel great.

• 1:59:53Rich Roll?

  Anything else you want to say?

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  No, I'm glad we could do this.

• 1:59:56Rich Roll?

  We did it, man. We did.

• 1:59:57Speaker 01

  Totally did.

• 1:59:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  And there was no war.

• 1:59:59Rich Roll?

  No, there's no, no, there's never a war with me, man.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  There's no.

• 2:00:03Rich Roll?

  You know, that's the thing. You have people on with different points of view. If you don't do that, then what are you doing?

• 2:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:07Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? You just have the guy on who agrees with you and then you get the audience of people that agree with you and then nobody grows. You build your team, but, you know, expand your horizons, entertain new things. Check out the other side. All right, cool.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

  Call for it.

• 2:00:25Rich Roll?

  All right, man. So, uh, so if you want to learn more about Brian and what he's doing, you can go to crossfittendurance.com. That's, is that the main website?

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the main website.

• 2:00:34Rich Roll?

  You have Brian McKenzie too, which is a Tumblr and you throw stuff up on there.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just throw some Tumblr stuff. I just throw some brief stuff up on that. I'm more into the, I'm more just posting information via Twitter, which is the, uh, at I am unscared or, um, Facebook.

• 2:00:49Rich Roll?

  Right. I am unscared on Twitter.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:51Rich Roll?

  Is it the same on, what's it on Facebook?

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  It's, uh, it's Brian McKenzie. It's fan page. I think it's Facebook anaerobic, facebook.com/anaerobic.

• 2:01:00Rich Roll?

  All right. And the book is.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Power Speed Endurance.

• 2:01:05Rich Roll?

  You can find that on Amazon. If you're going to get it on Amazon, it would be huge if you could first go to richroll.com and click on the Amazon banner on my blog page. Uh, it won't cost you anything extra, but it'll throw a couple pennies in our jar and, and, uh, pay for some of the expenses of the podcast, but check out his book.

• 2:01:25Speaker 01

  Keep the podcast going.

• 2:01:26Rich Roll?

  That's right, man. You know it, dude.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  Click that link, people.

• 2:01:29Rich Roll?

  There you go. What else? Anything else? Have you got anything coming up? You got, you're on, you're on tour, right? Where are you, where are you showing up where people, uh, might want to come and check you out?

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  Aaron and I are going to Columbia where I'm going to do a seminar down there. Um, but I'm coming back out. Uh, we'll be back in NorCal and bouncing around. I just, I'm bouncing around with different projects. Got a new show coming out.

• 2:01:50Rich Roll?

  What's that, man? We didn't even talk about that.

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  Um, it starts, I believe we start filming next week and uh, my buddy and I, Kelly Starrett, will be doing a thirty, forty-five minute live show where we're just gonna go at it and talk about movement and stuff we see with the athletes we've seen, or even stuff like, you know, RG3, you know, and like, hey, look, look, look what's going on here. Something that nobody's ever really seen, um, where we're just sitting there talking about movement and what we see and letting the world see things the way we see it.

• 2:02:20Rich Roll?

  And is that, um, like a pilot project that you're doing? Or is that set up somewhere?

• 2:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll be a pilot. Yeah, well, we've got it being produced by, uh, by another company, but, um, it's, the pilot will be shot next week, I believe, or the, uh, in a week and a half. Week and a half, yeah.

• 2:02:34Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Dude, we didn't even talk about like the skateboarding and like the punk rock and all that kinda stuff, man. That's the stuff I usually wanna like to get into the background.

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  Next time.

• 2:02:44Rich Roll?

  We'll have to have you back.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:45Rich Roll?

  All right, you come back?

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:02:47Rich Roll?

  All right, maybe I'll come to you next time.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll have you up anytime.

• 2:02:50Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  Anytime.

• 2:02:51Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Thanks for coming by.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:53Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants.