#217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala

Martin Gibala, Ph. D. (@gibalam https://twitter.com/gibalam) is a professor and chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His research on the physiological and health benefits of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) has attracted immense scientific attention and worldwide media coverage. Martin has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed articles, is frequently invited to speak at international scientific meetings, and has received multiple awards for teaching excellence. He is also the co-author of the brand-new book The One-Minute Workout: Science Shows a Way to Get Fit That's Smarter, Faster, Shorter http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0399183663/offsitoftimfe-20. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Martin Gibala! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is also brought to you by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body, and I've also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service http://99designs.com/tim, which is non-spec. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you're happy with or your money back. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run… This podcast is also brought to you by Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/tim for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book http://www.audible.com/pd/Teens/The-Graveyard-Book-Full-Cast-Production-Audiobook/B00LXHQO22/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding http://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-Adventure/Vagabonding-Audiobook/B00GCHWZHG/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim http://audible.com/tim and get started today. Enjoy.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  No, this isn't appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created to make great designs accessible to everyone and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for the 4-Hour Body, I went the contest route. That is one option. This is a great solution if you're looking for fast, affordable design work and the ability to choose from dozens of options, risk-free. Let's say you need something, late-night, quick turnaround. Well, people in other time zones, other countries can also help you solve that problem. Since then, I've worked with 99designs on a separate

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  path or a different option, and that is the one-to-one project service. So, in a number of cases, and I'll give you one example, when I wanted to create the cover for my audiobook, The Tao of Seneca, this was a very important project to me, I decided to use their one-to-one project service. And with this service, you can invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And they allow you to iterate and provide feedback and all this stuff. And I haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind. 99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So

• 1:49Tim Ferriss?

  you can check out The Tao of Seneca design and other work that I, and your fellow listeners for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com/tim. Again, that's 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:07Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. I absolutely love audiobooks and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel. I'm on the road all the time and Audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise. I have two audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. The first is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time and it's the only audiobook I've wanted to listen to twice in a row. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's amazing and you will thank me. There are a few different versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P-O-T-T-S, which had a huge impact on my

• 2:50Tim Ferriss?

  life and formed the basis for a lot of what would later become The Four Hour Work Week. So, go to audible.com/tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com/tim. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So, turn your travel or your commute into something more with a free trial at Audible. Go to audible.com/tim to start now and get your free 30-day trial.

• 3:29Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types across every possible discipline to tease out the details that you can use and apply to your own life. This episode, we have a scientist who is also incredibly good at teaching. Dr. Martin Gabbala, or Martin Gabbala, PhD, is a professor and chair of the Kinesiology Department at Macaster.

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  Not Macaster, that sounds like a fish sandwich. McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His research on the physiological and health benefits of high intensity interval training, or HIIT, has attracted incredible scientific attention and worldwide media coverage. If you recognize the name, there are many reasons you might, because he's published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles. He has been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal. He also appeared seven years ago in The 4-Hour Body, because I followed his research and found it fascinating. He is frequently invited to speak at international scientific meetings and has received multiple awards for teaching excellence, the reasons for which I think will become incredibly clear as you listen to this episode.

• 4:38Tim Ferriss?

  He is the co-author of the brand-new book, The 1-Minute Workout. And that may sound ridiculous, but by the end of this episode, you will not think it's ridiculous. You will think that it is entirely scientifically supported, and we dig into some exact protocols that you can test yourself to take this for a test drive. So, please enjoy my conversation with Marty Gabala. And we do get into the weeds, so if you're having trouble grasping something, bear with us for 30 seconds and we will come out the other side and end up somewhere else that is perhaps more easily digested. But it is a fun conversation. I had a blast, and it is extremely applicable and practical. So, please enjoy.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  Marty, welcome to the show.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Thanks, Tim.

• 5:26Tim Ferriss?

  We were chatting very briefly via Skype video just a few moments ago, and it was really nice to pair a face with the name, because I have wondered, A, who is this guy? And because I've read your name so many times and written your name in The 4-Hour Body, among other places, what does he look like? And then, B, how does he pronounce his last name?

• 5:51Tim Ferriss?

  We have addressed both of those this morning, and I'm very happy about that. Where are you sitting? Just to place some context for people.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Sure, I'm at my desk in my office at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. And again, we were chatting offline. There's been a water main breakout front, so in Fahrenheit, it's about 50 degrees in my office today, which is pretty chilly.

• 6:15Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you know, cold exposure is all the rage these days, although I suppose if you're in in Canada, it gets old pretty quick.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 6:24Tim Ferriss?

  Which department are you part of?

• 6:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm in a department of kinesiology in a faculty of science.

• 6:32Tim Ferriss?

  And could you just explain for people who may not know what falls under the purview of physiology or what what is physiology?

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. Physiology is basically how the body works, so how the systems act in an integrative manner. And so one of the fascinating things about exercise is it stresses the body in unique in different ways. And so it makes it a really, for me, an interesting topic to study. So I this morning before I spoke with you, I teach a fourth year course called the integrative physiology of human performance. And so in that course, we talk about how the body's systems come together to meet the demand of of exercise. So the cardiovascular system, the muscle system. And for me, that's what makes it a really interesting topic.

• 7:22Tim Ferriss?

  In that class, since you brought it up, what do students find most exciting or fascinating as part of that curriculum? And what do they find most counterintuitive or difficult?

• 7:36Speaker 03

  I think a lot of the one of the main things they like is what regulates the performance of elite athletes, or simply put, what makes elite athletes great. And so a lot of students who come into kinesiology, not all of them, but a lot have a background in exercise, they're interested in sport. And so what I try to do in that course is, if you will, trick them a little bit or cajole them into learning a bit more about how the body is regulated. So we talk a little biochemistry, we talk a little physiology, so that they have a really good understanding of how the body works. And we often present that using elite

• 8:18Speaker 03

  athletes as an example, because it's a prism that can often ground them. You know, another thing that I'll try to do in that class is all of the students have to perform a VO2 max test on each other, and they have to feel what it is like to do a VO2 max test. So when we talk about an athlete pushing out 1,000 watts, for example, or 1,500 watts, or holding 400 watts as a pace on a bike, they know what it's like to either come close to that for a couple of seconds. And I think it really helps to put it in context a little bit. But bottom line is they have an appreciation for elite athletes. And then we talk about the underlying physiology.

• 8:59Tim Ferriss?

  So I have a few questions related to that. The first is a definition question, just for people listening, because I think it'll come up a few times. Can you define VO2 max? And then can you, can you tell people if it is malleable, and if so, how malleable or improvable it is?

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Sure. So VO2 max, or maximal oxygen uptake, also known as maximal aerobic capacity, is the highest rate at which the body can take up and use oxygen. And that's typically during heavy exercise. So how we would test it, have an individual do progressively higher workloads, that could be on a bike, that could be on a treadmill. And at some point, your body's going to reach its maximal capacity to use oxygen. That's important if you're an athlete, but it's equally important for health. And so when people talk about cardio fitness, what you're really talking about is your VO2 max. And it reflects the underlying ability of the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, so your heart, your lungs,

• 10:02Speaker 03

  your blood vessels, to deliver oxygen to working muscles, and the ability of the muscles to use that oxygen to produce energy. So literally to burn fats and carbohydrates to produce fuel. So we say it's, if you're going to be an elite endurance athlete, a high VO2 max is necessary, but not sufficient for success, because obviously, there's lots of other factors involved. But the underlying physiology is the same. And so it's also a really important parameter for your health.

• 10:33Tim Ferriss?

  And is it something, is it a fixed metric, the way people might think of height? Or is it something that can be? Improved or meaningfully improved?

• 10:46Speaker 03

  No, it's definitely something that can be meaningfully improved. You know, again, we talk about this in my class. If, if you want to be an elite endurance athlete, you know, we hear the phrase, pick your parents properly. And, and that's true because, you know, in some ways it's, it's a bit like a mortgage. There's a, there's a fixed element and there's a variable element. And so the fixed element is determined by things like the genetic capacity for your heart size, for example. But there's definitely a highly variable element. And we know that because it can respond to training as well as de-training. So, you know, a typical or average person, if they do traditional endurance training for a couple of months, they might be able to boost their VO2 max by 20%.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  But it's a highly individual value or parameter as well. And we know some people, their value doesn't change very much, even though they do highly structured training. Whereas other people, they can change it by up to 100%. You know, people would be familiar with the term hard gainers. There, there's some hard gainers when it comes to VO2 max as well. But fortunately it's a relatively small percentage. And to answer your question, it's highly malleable in most individuals.

• 12:01Tim Ferriss?

  I was chatting with Peter Diamandis not too long ago, a friend of mine. He's the chairman of the X Prize and involved in many different companies. And he is very good friends with Ray Kurzweil. They co-founded Singularity University together, which is, I think it is still hosted at the NASA Ames Center in Mountain View, California. And I remember he mentioned to me at one point that at least two things, but two that, that really jumped out of the data that correlated to longevity or maximal lifespan were flossing and high VO2 max. And he said, I'll be the first person to admit that I think flossing might be correlation and not causation.

• 12:44Tim Ferriss?

  It could be that people who are anal retentive enough and disciplined enough to floss on a daily basis, also are disciplined enough to do other things on a daily basis to contribute. On the VO2 max point, do you, if you had to speculate, or maybe you don't have to speculate, do you think that that is causative or correlative with the high VO2 max and extended lifespan?

• 13:09Speaker 03

  I think it's causative for sure, and there's a lot of data out there, I think, that would support that. Obviously, it's tough to do a proper randomized clinical trial to look at something.

• 13:20Tim Ferriss?

  To death with humans, yeah. Hard to get the IRB approval for that.

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Well, what we know, if you look at, for example, mortality risk of risk of dying from all causes, if individuals, there's a concept called a MET or a metabolic equivalent, which I'm sure you're familiar with, some of your listeners may be familiar with that, but it's essentially a unit of measurement for VO2 max. In individuals who have a higher, a one MET higher value, that translates into about a 13% lower risk of dying from all causes. Obviously, that's correlational data, but it's based on fairly strong epidemiological evidence. You might also be familiar, just a couple of weeks ago, there was a paper

• 14:05Speaker 03

  in JAMA, which was calling for VO2 max or fitness, cardiorespiratory fitness, to be a vital sign. So it's something that we should measure in the doctor's office, just like we measure weight and height and things like blood sugar. The problem, of course, is that it's, it takes some time to properly measure VO2 max accurately, and obviously, that's not feasible in a lot of physicians' offices. But there are now some very good online calculators that can give individuals a sense of what their value is.

• 14:36Tim Ferriss?

  How do they approximate that online? I'm very curious. I've never taken one of these myself. I have had the great joy of having the garden hose stuck in my mouth and my nose clipped while I run on a treadmill. I have done that before, but I can see why a lot of doctors' offices would not be super keen to have that as, as part of their 11 minutes with their patient. How do they, how do they try to infer VO2 max from, from online inputs?

• 15:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've just seen this recently and actually, you know, put my own data in to see how well or how accurate I thought it was and it was reasonable. It asked things like your age, your sex, your things like that, some activities on or your type of activity that you habitually do. And it does ask for a measure of resting heart rate. And so based, I assume, on some parameters that relate to your habitual fitness level and also your resting heart rate. Those are probably two of the main drivers. Obviously, I don't know everything that goes into the algorithm, but that's typically what it's based on. And I think probably these online calculators, the greatest benefit, even if there's an

• 15:50Speaker 03

  absolute error in the number, you would hope that it's a fairly reproducible number. So if you do some training and your resting heart rate is lower, presumably the value that would predict for your VO2 max would be higher. But that's what it's based on. But as you say, having a VO2 max test measured directly is the gold standard, but there's also some reasonable ways to estimate it based on running speed over a set distance or heart rate response to submaximal exercise. So I think it's fairly easy and, you know, maybe we can leave folks with some tips on the online aspect of this interview with ways that they can get a sense of their fitness on their own.

• 16:28Tim Ferriss?

  For sure. And you said something I want to underscore for folks because it's so important. Many of these tools, one could argue even most of these tools are not, they're not 100% accurate in an absolute sense, but as long as they're consistently inaccurate, you can trend properly, right? Which is also why it's so important if people are trying to gauge body fat, which is notoriously error-prone for a host of different reasons, that they're using the same tool and if they're using a practitioner or some type of clinician, they're using the same practitioner or clinician so that at the very least, they're comparing apples to apples so they can trend properly.

• 17:12Tim Ferriss?

  And look at how an intervention like the training that we'll be talking about, I'm sure, affects the numbers that they're putting in.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Agreed, that's an excellent point. You know, if you're looking at something like bioelectrical impedance, for example, to measure body fat percentage, there's some concerns around the absolute validity of that test, but I think when you use the same test repeatedly over time, it gives you a good sense, as you say, to know whether you're trending positive or trending negative, and that's the important thing.

• 17:42Tim Ferriss?

  When did you do your first studies or begin researching sprints or interval training? And what catalyzed that?

• 17:52Speaker 03

  It would be around 2003, 2004, and believe it or not, it stemmed in large part from that course that we mentioned at the outset of the interview. So I've taught this course, integrative physiology of human performance, for quite a while now. I think this is the 16th or 17th version of it. And it does go back to that idea of students were interested in the training programs of elite athletes. And they were often surprised by the fact that elite endurance athletes, through the course of history, surprisingly used interval training, either because they were quite time limited, or because they really wanted

• 18:31Speaker 03

  to push their overall training volumes, or often it related to the notion of time efficiency. One of the classic examples would be Roger Bannister, when he was training for the assault on the four-minute mile. He was a very busy medical student who had about a half an hour at lunch to train, and he would repeat short intervals around the track at a very high tempo. So that led to my initial interest in the topic, and then that led to some very simple, early designs around some studies around either how low can you go? So, you know, a theme through my research has been time efficiency of exercise, and definitely

• 19:13Speaker 03

  this idea of how low can you go, both in terms of boosting performance, if you're an athlete, but increasingly in terms of boosting health, if you're an average individual or someone with metabolic syndrome, or type 2 diabetes, for example.

• 19:26Tim Ferriss?

  You've had a number of influences and I'd love to just place these on a timeline as well because it's such a fascinating set of research that you have and how it has evolved over time. Could you talk a little bit about Richard Metcalf and Tabata?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Yes, of course. And a point I would make is that, you know, we don't know what we don't know. And so when I first got into this field, obviously, we're very interested in the topic. But over time, I've definitely developed an appreciation both for the scientific history of interval training, which goes back to at least the late 1950s and probably before that, and the athletic history, which certainly dates to the turn of the century. But we were influenced, of course, by some of the work that Tabata had done. You know, he's a classic paper from the mid 1990s that led to Tabata-style training. And there were, of course, we're not working in a vacuum. We've been influenced by other researchers

• 20:25Speaker 03

  as well. You mentioned Richard Metcalf, and there's some other researchers working with him in the UK who have had this similar type question. And that's this idea of how low can you go? And so Richard and some others had done a scientific study where they were looking at just two bursts of interval training lasting only 15 to 20 seconds and showing that if subjects did that a couple of times a week for six weeks, they could boost their VO2 max. And so that was influential in terms of our research. And it led the design of what we call the quote unquote one-minute protocol or the one-minute workout, which of course is a teaser headline. It's not really a minute start to finish when you build in recovery and a short warm-up and cooldown. But it's all variations on this

• 21:10Speaker 03

  theme that short, hard bursts of exercise can be extremely effective and extremely time efficient in order to boost performance and boost health.

• 21:20Tim Ferriss?

  And we're going to talk plenty about that. I want to come back to Tabata for a second and ask you a question or a few questions that were sent to me by a friend of mine who's an MD, very accomplished athlete and a huge fan of interval training. His first question, and maybe before we actually get to this question, could you? Define for people what the Tabata Protocol is.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the classic Tabata Protocol is eight repeats of a cycle that involves 20 seconds of effort and 10 seconds of rest. So you repeat that eight times and so start to finish the workout is four minutes in duration. The original classic study that was described was done on a bicycle. So bicycle exercise at an intensity of around 170% of VO2 max. And people might say, well, if VO2 max is max, how can you go at 170% of that? But it goes to the workload setting that you would have on the bike. So you might have a workload, for example, of 300 watts and that's sufficient to elicit your VO2 max,

• 22:33Speaker 03

  but you could work at above that value or 170% of that value for very short periods of time. But that's the classic Tabata Protocol. And as I say, it was described on a bike, although over time, it's probably more well-known to most of your listeners for more calisthenic type style training, burpees, mountain climbers, air squats, things like that, although the original protocol was described for a bicycle.

• 22:59Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. And the first question from this friend of mine is, is Tabata especially magical or have the data been overinterpreted? And keep in mind, this is someone who is part of the choir, so to speak, not necessarily for Tabata, but it's been so widely discussed and so widely, I would imagine, maybe misinterpreted. But is the Tabata Protocol particularly magical or have the data been overinterpreted in any way?

• 23:30Speaker 03

  I don't think it's particularly magical. I think Tabata is an example, and obviously a well-known example, of the concept that we're talking about. And that's this idea that short, hard bursts of exercise can be extremely effective. And so the original Tabata Protocol, the main outcome measure was maximal aerobic capacity or VO2 max. And so Tabata showed that short, hard intervals on the bike, as we've described. could be effective for boosting VO2 max. They didn't perform muscle lapses, for example, there wasn't a lot of underlying physiological measurements performed, and I think that's one of the additions to the scientific literature of our work,

• 24:10Speaker 03

  as well as other researchers, that they've looked more mechanistically at at what's happening. So, for example, we've been very interested in short, hard bursts of exercise, improving muscle health and boosting things like mitochondrial content in your in your muscles. I think there has been some overstatement in the fact that Tabata is viewed with almost these magical properties. When it comes to Tabata-style training that I think most people think of, and that's body weight style intervals, there's surprisingly less scientific evidence that speaks directly to that. There's really only a handful of studies that have looked at Tabata-style body weights and the effect on strength and maximal aerobic capacity.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  That being said, those studies have shown that it's a very efficient way to train, and so I I think of it as a very good middle ground. You know, the benefit in aerobic capacity that you'll see might not be as great as if you do large amounts of other traditional endurance-style training, and obviously, the improvements that you have in strength and hypertrophy are not going to be like heavy resistance exercise. But again, from a time efficiency aspect, body weight style intervals are there's they're provide a lot of bang for your buck.

• 25:25Tim Ferriss?

  And I think that also perhaps what contributes to the smaller data set when it relates to the body weight training is that it's it's would strike me as harder to measure in some respects, right? If you're if you're using wattage, you can go from 100% to 170% with a lot more precision. If you want to manage that and really look at how the inputs affect the outputs, or or or how different degrees of, say, super maximal effort affects the outcomes, but it would strike me as a lot more difficult when you're doing calisthenic type exercise in a research setting at least.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  You make a really good point. People ask us all the time, why is most of our research done on the bike and how does it translate to other types of activity? And the main reason is, as you say, we can quantify things like work and power very accurately. And so that enhances the scientific rigor of the study in terms of our ability to control the stimulus. And then we're obviously often looking at very specific physiological markers that require us to perform invasive measurements. Whereas if you're just doing a set of burpees, for example, it's a little bit more challenging to precisely control the stimulus. And so that sometimes can go to the impact of the study, if you will. And there I'm talking the scientific impact because I have to worry about things like

• 26:49Speaker 03

  where I publish my papers and journal impact factors and things like that. But ironically, you know, a lot of the public doesn't care about an impact factor. They just want to know if I do this type of training, will that benefit me? So there's sometimes an inherent tension there between the scientific impact of a work and really the translatability of a work and answering questions that people actually want to know about.

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, and the, let's talk about the scientific a little bit more because it's, I think it's easy for people who have had no experience in academia or research to talk about people in their ivory towers and doing all this theoretical, this, that and the other thing. It doesn't translate without recognizing the importance of properly executed scientific method if you want your data to be persuasive and defensible, right? Which you really need first and foremost before you can prescribe some type of variant to be applied in the real world with some degree of confidence. So, but the, that's not the question I'm going to ask or related to the question.

• 27:57Tim Ferriss?

  What I wanted to ask you is, in your own research as it relates to interval training, what was the first study that? Surprised you in some way because of your forming hypotheses beforehand, right? You have a lot of experience with physiologies and exposure to interval training. Was there a particular study that that sticks out for you as surprising even to you?

• 28:24Speaker 03

  Yes, our first study actually was one of our most impactful and I was I was influenced by a number of scientific papers, of course, but one of the most interesting for me was this group in Europe had taken two groups of subjects and they applied the same training stimulus to both groups and the training stimulus involved 14 consecutive days of hard workouts. One group did them every day consecutively for two weeks and one group did them every couple of days over a period of six weeks. So the the training stimulus is the same and really all that was different was obviously

• 29:07Speaker 03

  one group was getting recovery days. At the end of the study period, the physiological adaptations between the groups were virtually identical, so measuring specific changes in their muscles or how much an enzyme level went up. But the performance was only better in the group that got recovery days and I'm sure your audience is listening going, well, duh, that sort of makes sense, but it hammered home for me this idea that recovery was important. And so our first question was, well, what if we had people only do two weeks of interval training or the period of measurement is only over two weeks, but we give them those recovery days?

• 29:48Speaker 03

  And so that led to our initial study where we had people do six sessions of interval training over 14 days. And what we measured in that study, the two major outcomes was was endurance performance. So basically, time to fatigue on an exercise bike. How long can you ride a bike until you're exhausted? And the amazing thing was that subjects endurance capacity Increased by a hundred percent on average. So basically, you could double endurance capacity with six sessions of interval exercise. And we're talking this short, hard sprint type exercise. So the type of intervals that people were doing only required them to do two to three minutes

• 30:31Speaker 03

  of very heavy exercise every couple of days. And we backed that up with some physiological markers. We took biopsies from the subject's legs and we measured an important enzyme that relates to how well the body uses oxygen to burn fuels to produce energy. And we saw that that enzyme increased by about thirty-five percent, if I recall.

• 30:53Tim Ferriss?

  What was that enzyme?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  It's an enzyme called citrate synthase. It's arguably the most commonly measured enzyme in exercise physiology. It's a marker of the Krebs cycle or the TCA cycle. And it correlates quite well with the overall amount of mitochondria that a subject has in their legs. So again, people have a pretty good sense of cardio health and what that means, the ability of your heart to pump blood and deliver oxygen. Citrate synthase or mitochondrial content is a pretty good marker of muscle health, how well your body can utilize the oxygen that gets delivered to produce energy. It's also important for things like predicting your risk for diabetes. If you have a higher citrate synthase content in your muscles, your risk for developing

• 31:40Speaker 03

  type two diabetes tends to be lower. But the short answer is that when people did these six sessions of intervals over two weeks, they doubled their endurance capacity and they markedly increased the amount of this enzyme in their muscle. And that's where I really sat back and went, wow, maybe we're on to something here. And as a cautious scientist, the first thing to do is to tell your grad students, make all those measurements again. Show me that the data are reproducible. Because when we first published that study, there, I don't want to say there was opposition, but there was skepticism to be sure. And certainly, we were happy as more research studies were conducted, both in our own lab and around the world, verifying some of these initial findings.

• 32:22Tim Ferriss?

  Quick question on methodology, because I've always been very curious about this. I've been a test subject in a number of different experiments that were not designed by the amateur professional dilettante, which I know is a contradiction in terms, Tim Ferriss, but actual legitimate scientists at places like Stanford. I was part of a body cooling experiment, or the intervention was body cooling using a vacuum and a glove, of all things, looking at heat exhaustion and marching in saunas. It was a disaster in terms of just subjective experience. It was pretty miserable.

• 33:02Tim Ferriss?

  But I've been a participant in a number of different labs, and I'd love to know in your lab, what is the right way to identify when someone on a bike has ridden to exhaustion? How do you define that? Because of course, if you have rats, a lot easier, right? And this is not something I've personally done, but I know they'll do swim tests. And to exhaustion means the rat basically doesn't necessarily drown, because it probably doesn't die, or it might, but they put them in a bucket and let them swim until they can't swim anymore. Not as easy to get approvals to do that with, say, college students or other human subjects.

• 33:44Tim Ferriss?

  So how do you define and determine when someone has ridden to exhaustion?

• 33:48Speaker 03

  So we would measure or define fatigue as a point at which subjects are unable to maintain the power output.

• 33:57Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 33:58Speaker 03

  So if we're going to have you ride at 200 watts, you could ride at 200 watts for a certain period of time, and then literally you get to the point where you're unable to turn the pedals. And so what typically happens is you'll see cadence fall. So if someone's maintaining 90 revolutions per minute, obviously the force per revolution or the load per revolution will seem a little bit lighter than if they're only riding at 50 RPM. So we use bikes that are electrically braked cyclicometers so that we know regardless of how How fast a subject is turning the pedals, the workload is the same at 200 watts. And so as people approach fatigue or exhaustion, they literally can't turn the pedals.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  And for us, it's usually defined as their RPMs falling below 40, because that's where the manufacturers will guarantee the workload setting on the bike. But what you find is they tend to hit exhaustion pretty quickly. So it's not very hard to figure out when they have to literally stop. And sometimes we'll use time to exhaustion tests, but as a colleague, Mark Hargraves, will say, there's no Olympic events in time to exhaustion. Typically, typically we do.

• 35:10Tim Ferriss?

  That'd be a riveting spectator sport, though.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so most athletic events are you need to cover a set distance as fast as possible. And that's why certainly more recently, but often in our studies, we'll use time trials as well. Where subjects will have to complete a set amount of work. And we'll say, think of this as a 10 kilometer bicycle race. And as they go through, they're able to see a lapsed distance or work done. So they can work towards a goal. And again, it more closely simulates normal athletic competition.

• 35:44Tim Ferriss?

  See, you mentioned citrate synthase, which if that's,

• 35:50Tim Ferriss?

  I remember having a biopsy done in South Africa at Tim Noakes' facility. Who has some really interesting thoughts on central governors and so on. But I remember coming in to look at the results. And I'm effectively below the Homer Simpson sedentary line in my citrate synthase in my, in my, I think it was the vastus lateralis, or maybe it was medialis that I took it from in the quadricep.

• 36:17Tim Ferriss?

  But could you talk to, which is obviously something I should, I should address. But could you please describe what mitochondria are and why they're important? And then how, say, citrate synthase relates to mitochondria, if at all?

• 36:32Speaker 03

  Sure, so mitochondria are often termed the powerhouse of the cell. They're the specialized organelles or a component of a cell where fuel is converted into energy using oxygen. So obviously, the internal processes there are quite complex. But essentially, mitochondria suck in fuels like glucose and fats and use oxygen to combust, to burn those fuels in order to produce cellular energy in the form of ATP. If people might be, you know, they may have taken a biology course or read a textbook, and you often see mitochondria presented

• 37:13Speaker 03

  as these bean-shaped organelles in a two-dimensional image on the page. And certainly, what we know now are they're much more like complex networks that run throughout, in this case, the muscle cell. So they're very impressive structures. And so when you have mitochondrial biogenesis or an increase in mitochondria, it's a bit like an expansion of this intracellular network. So, you know, if you imagine a garden hose, it would be a bit like the garden hose growing more tentacles and this network expanding throughout the muscle cell. Mitochondria contain many different enzymes

• 37:55Speaker 03

  that are involved in this process called oxidative phosphorylation, which is that just another name for that process of producing cellular energy. And so a common enzyme that's relatively convenient to measure, because if you're going to try and assess mitochondria, you need some different markers. And some of these markers are better than others. But citrate synthase is a specific enzyme located inside the mitochondrial compartment or network. And that enzyme is involved in oxidative phosphorylation. And so the measurement of the content of that enzyme provides a pretty good index or marker of the overall mitochondrial network capacity.

• 38:40Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. So when you are tracking, say, improvement.

• 38:45Tim Ferriss?

  Mitochondrial improvement per se through high intensity interval training. Is citrate synthase the primary marker that you're tracking? Or are there other markers?

• 38:58Tim Ferriss?

  Or for that matter, graphic representations of density of mitochondria or something else that you're looking at closely?

• 39:06Speaker 03

  We almost always measure citrate synthase because again, it's a fairly robust and commonly accepted marker of mitochondrial content. Ideally though, we'll include other measurements as well, either performed in my laboratory or through collaborations with some other scientists, both at McMaster and elsewhere. So typically we'll measure a suite of enzymes, so not just citrate synthase, we'll measure a couple of other ones as well. Sometimes we'll measure what's known as mitochondrial respiration. So this is just another way to demonstrate how much oxygen the mitochondria is using. And you can see, for example, an increase in mitochondrial respiration rate after training.

• 39:46Speaker 03

  And sometimes we'll measure molecular compounds that are signals that mitochondrial biogenesis is taking place or in the process of taking place. So some of our studies, for example, are acute exercise studies. We'll have someone do a single bout of exercise and then we'll take biopsies in recovery and we'll say, okay, is the mitochondrial bio synthesis pathways, are these activated? And we'll measure certain proteins that are representative of that. Other times we'll do training studies and that's where we would commonly measure citrate synthase and some of these other markers to show that these enzymes had in fact either the maximal activity or the content had increased owing to the training protocol.

• 40:30Tim Ferriss?

  So to jump to protocol, or I guess, go out to sort of 30,000 foot view a little bit, I remember doing some reading in prep for this conversation and finding a, I guess, an assertion, I haven't looked at the data behind it, but that even interval walking in many respects could be considered more, I guess, effective than say steady state walking for catalyzing health improvements. Why is that? Why, why does, why does this type of oscillation in effort?

• 41:13Tim Ferriss?

  Have profound effects and why does it apply to something at a, say, low level of input or output, rather, like walking all the way up to sprinting? What does interval training do to the body?

• 41:28Speaker 03

  It's a great question. We can get into some of the details there and it's certainly something that keeps me interested as a scientist, you know, trying to figure out the mechanisms at play here. Your question also raises another point that's important, I think, to note, and that's that interval training is almost infinitely variable. And so people have this idea in their head of what interval training looks like, but for some individuals, interval training is just, if your only exercise is walking around a block, picking up the pace for a couple of light posts and then backing off. And that's gentle interval training is just interval walking, as you alluded to. And I would often give that example for more deconditioned individuals. That's what interval training looks like for them.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  But there is certainly scientific evidence to suggest that that type of training, so just veering up the pace a little bit, is going to be more beneficial than continuous steady state walking. Just to cite one quick example, there's a study out of Denmark that was looking at individuals with type 2 diabetes and they divided them into one of two groups. One that did steady state walking that elicited about 66% of their maximum heart rate and the other group did interval walking that the overall average intensity was the same, 66%, but they would just pick up the pace a little bit, maybe go to 70% and then maybe back off a little bit. And after several months of training, what they found was that the interval walkers,

• 42:53Speaker 03

  even though the total amount of exercise done was the same, their fitness was improved to a greater extent, they had lost more body fat and their body composition was superior and their average blood sugar had decreased by a greater amount, even though the total amount of exercise that was done was the same. And so, sorry, I was just going to say that goes to the question of why.

• 43:17Tim Ferriss?

  So the, and the lowered fasting glucose being reflective of the greater ability to utilize glucose by, say, mitochondria or muscle in general, is that the?

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Yes, also a greater ability to store it as well. So a question is always, well, if you lower your blood glucose, where does that glucose go? Part of it is probably an enhanced ability to store the glucose inside skeletal muscle, for example, as stored glycogen. We know that training, exercise training, almost of any sort increases the muscle's ability to take up glucose, so glucose transport capacity increases. And that also is a function of exercise intensity. So when we've done some of our interval training studies in people with type 2 diabetes, we see that there can be marked increases in glucose transport capacity

• 44:15Speaker 03

  and the amount of glucose transporters that these subjects have in their muscles following a period of training.

• 44:21Tim Ferriss?

  See, you've done many different, I'm sure personally, variations of interval training. You've studied, you've designed studies and imposed said regimens on many different subjects. If you had, for instance, a, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a profile and this is out of pure self-interest. So let's just say you had a former competitive athlete with more than a few injuries, but nothing hugely debilitating. Maybe sprained ACL in the past, some issues with plantar fasciitis, etc.

• 45:03Tim Ferriss?

  So not generally going to be looking for any type of sprinting on, say, flat ground, where I'm gonna, might risk tearing a hamstring at the end range or something like that, which has happened before. Who's willing to put in some time, but not too much, if it makes sense. I'm not looking for the absolute bare minimum that will elicit a change. I'm looking for the sort of minimal effective dose that I might experiment with, which would produce, hopefully, a profound change of some type or improvement over my baseline, which is pretty shitty, to be quite frank. I'm not an endurance athlete by any stretch of the imagination and my VO2 max is quite poor.

• 45:44Tim Ferriss?

  What might, what might a protocol look like for me to start with?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  I'd probably probe that individual or ask you for example.

• 45:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you can ask me.

• 45:56Speaker 03

  More in terms of, you know, so what are the goals here? You know, are the goals boosting cardiorespiratory fitness for health? Is it more from a performance element? So I guess what is the goal of the exercise training program? Is it, you know, is it general maintenance of, of health and fitness in a very busy life? And trying to fit that in as best you can?

• 46:18Tim Ferriss?

  For me, it would be in a generalized sense, improving endurance and VO2 max, not for any particular sporting event, but for general application to say, I might go to high, I went to high altitude in Colorado last year for five or six days. And it was, I would say 10 to 12 hours of very high intensity hiking per day, often at a very steep incline. So for generalized cardiorespiratory and muscular endurance, A,

• 46:58Tim Ferriss?

  and these are not in order of priority. And then B, for ostensible of life extension purposes. That's it. I've always been more of a power athlete or strength athlete than an endurance athlete. And it would be, it would be, fun may not be the right word, but it would be worthwhile, I think, for me to establish a baseline and then attempt to improve the markers that matter and watch that over time.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  I would say then if, if you could give me three 25 minute blocks of time a week. So let's say we're going to design this to be a 25 minute session of training that you do three times a week. We'll have a very short warm up and a very short cooldown. So let's assume we have 20 minutes to work with where you're actually putting out some effort.

• 47:49Tim Ferriss?

  And could you, not to interrupt, I apologize, but I'd love to hear what you'd recommend for a warm up and cooldown also.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  The the warm up and cooldowns would be quite short, so let's describe the protocol here. What I'd have you do, come in and do two minutes on the bike at a low workload setting to warm up. I'm saying the bike, because you know, you alluded to maybe some some joint or connective tissue issues there with the hamstring, or you know, many people have aging knees. I put myself in that category, so all of my interval training, or almost all of it, is on a bike. But the warm up would be brief, and it would be perhaps 75 watts, so a low workload setting. And then we'd get right into the the hard work. And now, you know, from the outset, let me say,

• 48:37Speaker 03

  we would always recommend that someone see their physician before they begin or change an exercise routine. So let's get that out of the way. But in our studies, even in individuals with type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, we typically keep the warm ups and the cooldowns quite short, because otherwise it detracts from the time efficiency. So in almost all of our studies, the standard warm up is two minutes, and a standard cooldown is three minutes. And that's typically just very light cycling, unloaded cycling, or maybe at a very low workload setting, as I say, around 50 watts or so.

• 49:13Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna ask a nitty gritty question, and I apologize. What type of bikes do you use for these studies in terms of make and model?

• 49:20Speaker 03

  We use a variety of bikes. At home in my basement, I have a life cycle, a 95C life cycle that I use. Inside of our research laboratory, we have a couple of different bikes. We have Lode Excalibur Sports, which are one of the Cadillac versions on the market.

• 49:39Tim Ferriss?

  What was that first name, with the first word in?

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Lode, L-O-D-E. It's a company out of Germany, and so they're a they would be a gold standard ergometer that a lot of exercise physiology labs would have. We've also used RacerMate bikes in the lab, and we've also recently purchased a couple of Kettler bikes, which are certainly cheaper than than Lode's, but they're electrically braked ergometers, so they're quite accurate in terms of holding the power output that's set. So we use a couple of different bikes, but those would be the ones.

• 50:18Tim Ferriss?

  Sorry to interrupt. So we've we've gone through the the two minute warm up with, say, potentially 75 watts.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Right, and then I would have you do a series of intervals, hard intervals that last between three and five minutes. So let's say if you have 20 minutes, I would have you do um three, to start, to pick one, we'll do three five-minute efforts with a little bit of recovery in between. So I'd have to check my math there, but uh, you know, so that would basically be 15 minutes of hard riding within that 20-minute period. And so I would structure initially the intervals to last between three and five minutes. And so this, you know, we would adjust the workload setting appropriately, so that, let's say you're doing three-minute repeats, you don't want to go

• 51:08Speaker 03

  much more at the end of those three minutes, but if I give you a period of recovery, you're able to repeat the three minutes a couple of times, or if it was a five-minute interval, it would be the same thing. So these would, we would set the workload, so the intervals are challenging, and you're almost ready to give up, where you're getting towards the end of the three- or five-minute interval, but then we give you a little bit of break, and you do it again. And why I say the three-to-five-minute intervals is, if you look at the, the literature, and there's been a number of uh, review articles and meta-analyses that have been conducted, and just through practical experience with coaches and athletes, many would recommend that that

• 51:47Speaker 03

  repeated intervals of three to five minutes in duration is going to provide the most effective stimulus uh, for boosting VO2 max. So that's, I think, where I'd start, but we would vary it up as well. Another common protocol is what we call the 10 by 1. So one minute of hard exercise with one minute of recovery, and you repeat that 10 times. So there's no magical or best formula, but I'd probably start with those three to five minutes, because based on the literature, that would be my best guess for boosting your VO2 max.

• 52:22Tim Ferriss?

  And during the interval, and of course, you would calibrate this as you're working with the subject, but what type of?

• 52:34Tim Ferriss?

  Wattage, how would you determine the setting to start with?

• 52:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, so again, if it was you, ideally how we do this in the lab, for example, if we had the opportunity to do it in advance, we would have you come into the lab and perform a VO2 max test. So typically in our lab, we use ramp VO2 max tests. So we have a very standard protocol of we increase the workload setting one watt every two seconds. And so basically, what it feels like is you're climbing up a hill that gets steeper and steeper and steeper. Starts out pretty easy and then it, you know, the workload catches up on you over time. And why we like the ramp test is again, at some point, you're going to hit exhaustion or fatigue.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  And I could say, ah, Tim, your peak power output was 388 watts or 452 watts. And then we would begin by taking percentages of that peak power output.

• 53:32Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. That peak power output becomes your 100%.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so we know from experience, there's always a little bit of trial and error. But if you're, you know, a relatively fit individual, you might be able to do repeats at 90 or 95% of that peak power output and hold that for a couple of minutes. Whereas some other individuals, especially those who are very deconditioned, if I put them at 60% of peak power output, they would struggle to last for one minute. So that's where knowing a little bit about the typical training background of the individual comes into play. But there's always a little bit of trial and error there. The other way that we could do it, if we didn't have access to that VO2 max test in advance, is say, okay,

• 54:17Speaker 03

  we want you on these 10 by one intervals, ideally to get to 85 or 90% of your maximal heart rate during every interval. And then we could adjust the workload setting in a corresponding manner. So we can either do it very objectively based on wattage, or we can do it more subjectively based on heart rate responses, or even ratings of perceived exertion.

• 54:40Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. No, that makes sense. And the 10 by 1, that is 10 pairs of 1 minute hard, 1 minute easy effectively. So you have 10 sets per se of single minute hard interspersed with, so it's a total of 20 minutes?

• 54:58Speaker 03

  Correct. And, you know, again, we've, we've used that protocol extensively in our, in our research. We didn't design it. Others, and again, this is where I, as I learn more about the scientific literature, this was a very common protocol used in Germany in the mid 80s on individuals in cardiac rehabilitation settings. So that's a protocol that I think has wide applicability. We've used it on individuals with type 2 diabetes. My colleagues and other individuals have applied it to individuals with cardiovascular disease in a cardiac rehabilitation setting. And we've used it on very fit young men. And again, that's where we scale the

• 55:40Speaker 03

  percentage of PPO. But in all of those individuals, it's been effective to boost their health outcomes and boost their maximal aerobic capacity as well.

• 55:50Tim Ferriss?

  PPO, not to be confused with HMO and PPO and healthcare in the US, that's the peak power output?

• 55:56Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 55:56Tim Ferriss?

  Okay. Can the, how, how would you determine which of, say, just for the sake of illustration, the 3 to 5 minute intervals times 3 versus the 10 by 1, which subject to apply one of these protocols to?

• 56:18Speaker 03

  Probably the deconditioned individuals. We would start with shorter, more frequent repeats. And that's, you know, one of the reasons I think the 3 to 5 minutes is so effective for boosting VO2 max is it's challenging to maintain a relatively high workload for a period of time of, you know, 3 to 5 minutes or so. That's, that's very challenging. And the way that, you know, even the energy systems in the body are utilized to produce energy to sustain that is, is different. And so I think the more deconditioned the individual, the more effective protocols or the more tolerable programs for those individuals involve more frequent repeats that last a shorter period of time. And then, of course, the progression

• 57:03Speaker 03

  is either increasing the workload, In and keeping the protocol the same, or if you play this out, what you basically do is increase the work interval, decrease the recovery interval, until at some point, that individual might be able to sustain 20 minutes of continuous exercise at that pace.

• 57:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I suppose it depends, of course, as with many things, on your goals. In the case of the goals that I laid out before we chatted about the protocol, for the three to five minute intervals, am I, is it pure rest in between those intervals, or is it easier cycling, and why?

• 57:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, good question. Ideally, we want the recovery to be active.

• 57:52Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that?

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Oh, well, one of the reasons is, especially when you do very hard exercise and then you completely stop, the risk of things like fainting is increased. And that's because you can have a fall in blood pressure when you stop after doing very hard exercise. And one of the reasons for that is you have all of this vasodilation or opening of the vessels, especially in the legs, and you have a pooling of blood in the lower extremities. And so one of the reasons that people can faint after doing a very vigorous bout of exercise when they stop, is they have this pooling in the lower extremities. They don't have the venous return, or pushing the blood back to the heart. And of course, the blood flow to the

• 58:36Speaker 03

  brain then transiently decreases, and so you faint. So one is a very practical reason, and that's we want to minimize the risk of fainting, especially in some of these older or deconditioned individuals. And of course, the risk of fainting is higher the more intense the previous exercise. So that's a very practical consideration. Also, you want to just keep the blood flowing a little bit, you know, flush out some of these metabolites that you've produced during the previous hard bouts. And so that's a consideration as well. So all things being equal, active recovery at a very low workload setting is preferred. But let's face it, sometimes these intervals are very, very demanding and people would rather

• 59:20Speaker 03

  just stop and wait. If you've ever done a Wing Gate test, you don't want to do much exercise in the subsequent few periods of recovery. You just want to stop and maybe sit on the ground. So this is where there's that trade-off between the preceding intensity and what the recovery might look like.

• 59:34Tim Ferriss?

  And with the active recovery in this case, so we're doing three sets per se of three to five-minute intervals, let's just say five minutes. If the warm-up was at 75 watts, what would the wattage be on the active recovery?

• 59:50Speaker 03

  We would keep the active recovery quite low as well, so maybe even going back to 75 or maybe 100 watts. And it goes to then, you don't want to work too hard frankly in the recovery periods because that's going to take away from your ability to put out the hard efforts when you're really going for it. And so surprisingly, your heart rate, your oxygen uptake, your metabolism stays up very high during these recovery periods, even though the actual workload setting can be quite low. But I think this sawtooth pattern of going hard and then taking a break, and what I mean by taking a break is keeping

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  the recovery periods active but the workload setting quite low, that's important because that allows you to sort of refuel a little bit, recharge, and be able to go hard in the subsequent interval.

• 1:00:42Tim Ferriss?

  And how do you decide on optimal, I'll just call it rest period, even though we're talking active recovery, how do you decide on optimal rest period? And the reason I ask is, for instance, in strength training, if you're looking for hypertrophy versus maximal strength, the rest periods can vary dramatically. You might have powerlifters who take five to 10 minutes between sets because they want to, among other things, completely regenerate creatine phosphate and so on. How do you determine the optimal rest period in between these intervals?

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  It's a really good question. Part of it is definitely the metabolic considerations that you alluded to there, and so are subjects able to restore their phosphocreatin reserves within their muscle? Generally speaking, you can replace about 50% of your phosphocreatin within a minute or so, and if you give four minutes of recovery, you can have near-complete restoration of phosphocreatin. That of course depends on a couple of factors. So, part of the consideration then is how much we want to allow the individuals to refuel, but the considerations that go into it, and this is where it comes back to that first question that I asked you, is what's an individual's goals? What time do they have available for

• 1:02:04Speaker 03

  the workout? Because you can allow ample periods of recovery, but especially if you're talking about this notion of time-efficient exercise, recovery periods can't be too long. So sometimes there's practical considerations that we will take into play there. The other is the fundamental question, and we honestly don't have the answer to it, and that's, is it the absolute power that drives the adaptation, or is it the relative stress? So to put that in another way, I could have people do intervals in a glycogen-depleted state, or with full carbohydrate restoration. If they're glycogen-depleted, their power outputs are going to be lower,

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  and they're going to feel a lot crappier, but the adaptations may, in some respects, be a little bit better. And so, to put that in the context of recovery, if we don't allow "full recovery," the subsequent power output in the other intervals is probably going to be lower, but the relative stress on the individual is going to be higher. And so I think it comes back to this idea of variety. Variability is a good thing, because we're just hitting the body in so many different ways. And so for most individuals, there is no single best program, and varying up the intervals is a good strategy.

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  There obviously if we're talking about an elite athlete and we have a very specific coach who knows this very specific athlete very well. Uh, the program is going to be very tailored and, and very precisely um figured out. Uh, but more generally speaking for an individual even like yourself, I think bearing it up is a good approach.

• 1:03:52Tim Ferriss?

  How frequently would you do the, the three times, five minutes effort workout? How, how often, meaning how many times per week, for instance?

• 1:04:04Tim Ferriss?

  Or how many rest days in between?

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. So if, and this is where again, it goes to the goals of the, the individual. But I would say, uh, these intervals can be challenging, clearly mentally demanding and, and fatiguing. So if you're an individual that can tolerate three sessions a week of this type of training.

• 1:04:23Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's right. Three times a week is what you said.

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Uh, but, uh, you know, if, if some other individuals can't, uh, can't tolerate that. So that's a consideration as well. Uh, what I will say is in the vast majority of our studies, we use a protocol of three times per week in our interval training, uh, for, you know, two, six or 12 weeks, however long where the study is going to be.

• 1:04:43Tim Ferriss?

  And how does what we just spoke about differ from the, the, the namesake of the book? Which is the, uh, I guess it's the, the, the one minute framing. So, so what, uh, what does that refer to?

• 1:05:00Speaker 03

  So the, the one minute, uh, workout, which is the, the title of the book. Again, it's, it's more of a teaser headline, but it specifically refers to, uh, a protocol that we devised where the work involved is three 20 second efforts. So the um total amount of hard work during a workout, if you will, is only one minute. And that one minute is broken up into three intervals that last 20 seconds in duration. Now those intervals are truly all out exercise. So the workload setting on a bike is, is very, very high. And the, the pace I would use to describe it is sprint from danger pace or the pace you. Would cyclat to to save your child from an oncoming car.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  This is very demanding exercise. But what we've demonstrated is is that type of exercise can be extremely effective. So there's there's this clearly an intensity duration trade off. The more intense you're willing and able to work, the smaller the volume of exercise you can get away with and and still reap benefits. And it's not necessarily a linear relationship. It's almost an exponential relationship. So we're talking about very short, very, very hard efforts. It's a surprisingly small dose that you need in order to trigger a lot of these adaptations.

• 1:06:20Tim Ferriss?

  And what type of rest intervals do you have between these 20 second efforts?

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  So are because we were, you know, we had done a number of these studies with, I mentioned Wingate exercise before, these 30 second all out efforts. And then we would give people a couple of couple of minutes of recovery and they'd repeat that four or five times. And we were sensitive to the criticism, the legitimate criticism that, well, when you do these Wingate training protocols, they require about a 25 or 30 minute time commitment. And so, yeah, it's only two or three minutes of exercise, but it's a half hour of time commitment. So it's really not that time efficient, especially when we place it up against the public health guidelines, you know, the lower end of which is 75 minutes of vigorous exercise. So we wanted to come up with protocols that were unquestionably time efficient.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  And so the standard one minute workout, if you will, involves that two minute warm up and three minute cooldown. So that's five minutes of warm up and cooldown. And then the hard work is a 20 second effort, two minutes of recovery, the second 20 second effort, another two minutes of recovery and the third and final 20 second sprint. So you basically have a five minute work period, which involves that one minute of hard exercise. So bottom line, the protocol, including warm up and cooldown, is 10 minutes start to finish. But within that 10 minutes, you're doing one minute of very vigorous exercise.

• 1:07:48Tim Ferriss?

  And in subjects who are deconditioned, or let's just say on relatively untrained, these are not people who engage in any type of regular.

• 1:08:01Tim Ferriss?

  Let's just say leg dominant or certainly leg inclusive workouts, right? These are not people who are going for steep hikes three times a week or doing any type of cycling or high rep squat workouts, anything like that. What type of improvements, if you were to take a huge sample of say a thousand people, what type of improvements would you be looking for or expect on average and in what markers?

• 1:08:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, so and first point to make is that most of these studies are relatively small. And so that idea of the large study with a thousand people, those are really some of the studies that need to be done in interval training research. Maybe we can get into that later. But in our studies, to give you one specific example, we've compared that one minute protocol. So this involves one minute of exercise within a 10 minute time commitment and people do that three times per week. So the sprint group, if you will, is doing three minutes of intense exercise within a 30 minute time commitment each week.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  We've compared that protocol to a group who does traditional cardio or the type of continuous steady state training that's reflected in the public health guidelines. So the other group that we compared them to was doing 50, five zero minutes of continuous exercise three times per week. So one group doing 150 minutes of traditional moderate intensity cardio, the other group doing a 30 minute interval workout, but within that 30 minutes, it was only three minutes of very intense exercise. And in our most recent study, which was 12 weeks in duration, the key outcome measures were VO2 max, as we've talked about.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  We measured citrate synthase, so a marker of muscle health by taking biopsies. And we also measured what we call their glycemic control or an index of their insulin sensitivity. Basically, how well the body utilizes blood sugar using a test called an intravenous glucose tolerance test, where you literally infuse a bolus of sugar into people's veins and you watch how that sugar is handled over a period of time. It's a relatively robust marker of insulin sensitivity. And what we found after 12 weeks is despite the huge difference in time commitment, all of the markers improved by the same extent on average in the two groups.

• 1:10:37Speaker 03

  So the improvement that we saw in VO2 max was 19% on average over 12 weeks, and that was the same in the two groups. We saw about a 30% increase in that marker of their mitochondrial content. Again, quite similar in the two groups. If anything, it was a little bit higher in the interval training group and the same for insulin sensitivity. The improvement that we saw statistically was the same, but it tended to be a little bit higher in the interval training group. So a real striking example, I think, of the potency of interval exercise, especially these short, all-out intervals, to elicit changes that we more

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  traditionally associate with public health guidelines type research. That's not to say at all that we're criticizing the public health guidelines. It's just a striking illustration of the fact that you can elicit a lot of these traditional cardio responses and muscle metabolic responses and health responses using these short, very hard bursts of exercise.

• 1:11:42Tim Ferriss?

  And how do you, how would you suggest people begin a program like this, let's just say, and maybe the answer is what we already talked about, whether it's the three to five minute intervals. And what were the, can you just remind me the, what would you suggest as a starting rest interval? Because we talked about the benefits of potentially replenishing phosphocreatine, but then also the potential

• 1:12:05Tim Ferriss?

  Improvement, the magnitude of change, if you're operating from a deficit per se. So where would you suggest I start? For instance, if I'm doing these three, five-minute efforts, how much rest would I take in between with the easy pedaling?

• 1:12:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, then, so if we're going to the 20 minutes that we were talking about there, you know, if you built in five-minute intervals with two minutes of easy pedaling, or I guess would be two and a half minutes of easy pedaling, that would add up to your 20 minutes. So five minutes, two and a half minutes recovery, another five minutes, two and a half minutes recovery, and the third and final five-minute effort. If we were doing three-minute repeats, you know, you could do a series of five by four. So three-minute effort, one minute of recovery, and repeat that five times, and that would add up to your 20 minutes. So again, I think someone like yourself, I would lean maybe towards the shorter recovery, because you're already in relatively decent shape, of course.

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  And so ideally, you want to do as much high-intensity work as you can within that 20-minute timeframe. Now, if we were to move you to the one-minute workout, of course, you're going all out. So the efforts would be extremely demanding, and the peak power outputs that someone like you could elicit are obviously going to be much higher than someone who's not in as good a shape, or certainly someone who's more deconditioned. So there's a couple of ways to answer your general question. The first is, what will generally tell people is, just get out of your comfort zone. And so if you're new to intervals, maybe starting with the gentle interval walking approach, or utilizing that strategy of going hard for a couple of minutes,

• 1:13:46Speaker 03

  and then backing off for a couple of minutes, that's a beginner interval workout. And, you know, in the book, we lay out some examples. We have 12 different workouts that we lay out, all based on science. So people would know that the basics of these workouts are grounded in good science, but we present them as providing individuals with some ideas, and different varieties of interval training protocols that they might use, depending if they're just starting out, depending if they're a more highly-trained individual, again, providing some of the science behind that, and some ideas for how to structure it.

• 1:14:24Tim Ferriss?

  What are...

• 1:14:27Tim Ferriss?

  Outside of the, certainly, starting with the first study, you've been innovating in this space and experienced some blowback or criticism, or not even criticism, maybe skepticism.

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  No, we've been criticized.

• 1:14:45Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you've been criticized, but you certainly get criticism, but skepticism. What are, outside of what you've written in this book, what are things that you believe that other people might think are crazy? Is there anything else that comes to mind where you disagree with conventional thinking or conclusions as they stand right now? Doesn't have to be limited to physiology, but certainly could be in physiology.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

  No, fair, well, you know, I almost hesitate to say this a little bit because I'm sure I might get some blowback even on this, but you know, in some ways, I see a move to demonize traditional cardio, if you will, or you will read things like, "Traditional, modern intensity exercise is ineffective," or "It has no place," and you know, I would, I disagree with that. Clearly, I'm a very, I'm big on interval training, I'm a proponent of it, I think it can be widely applied, and I think it can be extremely beneficial for a lot of individuals. And so I think it's underutilized, and it's very effective. But that's not to say that there's no place for traditional steady-state exercise, and

• 1:16:00Speaker 03

  certainly, it's erroneous to suggest that that type of training is completely irrelevant, or won't provide you with any benefit. So I guess that would be one example where I might take exception to some advice, common advice that I will often, often hear.

• 1:16:18Tim Ferriss?

  A few other questions. Related, maybe, maybe in a related, actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump into the calisthenic component. So, I've, I've read that you've said before, if you had to choose one exercise, you would choose the burpee. So, I'm, I'm a big fan of burpees. I've done a lot of burpees in my life from wrestling and jujitsu and so on. Pukies are a nice variation of that as well, with the pull-up bar above you. But, I, I wanted to, A, do you still feel that way about burpees? And then, B, I've read that you, in resistance training, and the

• 1:17:01Tim Ferriss?

  resistance, resistance training that you do, you train to failure, but you'll do cycles, so you have three sets to failure each exercise. So, be curious to know. So, A, do you still feel that way about the burpees? And then, B, why three sets to failure as opposed to one or two?

• 1:17:17Speaker 03

  I do feel that way about the burpee. And, you know, let's frame the question here. And the question that I received was, what is the single best exercise? Which really means, you know, if you were only restricted to one exercise, what would you do and why? And, obviously, even the, it's, it's hard to fathom the question. But I, I would pick the burpee, because, number one, it requires no specialized equipment. It's a bodyweight style movement, so you can do them anywhere. Number two, it's going to build both strength and cardiorespiratory fitness. So, if you do burpee sets, obviously, you're gonna have some push-up motion in there, you're gonna have some leg strength development. But if

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  you're doing burpee sets, and it goes to the second part of your question, I guess, why would you do three sets? Because I think applying burpees in an interval manner and doing a couple of sets of them, allow you to keep the heart rate up, which is gonna provide the cardiovascular training. So, the, I would stick with the burpees. It's, can be done anywhere. And if you do burpee sets, it provides both a cardiorespiratory boost, as well as a, as a strength. Uh boost, you know, if I can just say, I think I also said at the time when I was asked the question, I don't really see anyone ever sticking with a burpee workout over time because let's face it, burpees suck, burpees are really hard to do.

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  But if I can give a shout out to this individual contacted me, his name is Josh Spodek. He lives in Manhattan, he's PhD in astrophysics, he's got an MBA. And he contacted me to say, you know, I read that piece in New York Times and I sort of took it up as a challenge. And I'd been doing burpees every day for five years. And, you know, it's basically become his go to exercise. And so clearly some individuals could keep it as their, as their sort of go to exercise. So good on you, Josh. I certainly couldn't keep that up, even though I said it would be my go to exercise.

• 1:19:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, burpees, I wouldn't put them, I wouldn't give them a very high ranking in the physical recreation category for sure.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  If I could just make a comment to Tim, and it go, you know, I just said burpees suck, they hurt. This is something around interval training where there's definitely very visceral reactions around the potential translatability. And so my colleagues who are in the exercise and health psychology area, who talk about things like mood, affect, motivation, long-term adherence. There's a real visceral debate going on right now around the potential long-term translatability of interval training. Clearly, I'm someone who is in the camp of, yes, I think this is very much a viable public health strategy.

• 1:20:09Speaker 03

  Certain types of interval training are highly suited for, for many different individuals. And again, it goes back to this idea that people think interval training only means extreme style training. But there's a large segment, or there's certainly an opinion out there that this is not a viable public health strategy at all. I happen to disagree with that because I think the more menu options we can give people, the more exercise choices, the better. But this idea that, you know, intervals can be an uncomfortable way to train and that might turn people off exercise, that's certainly a sentiment in some quarters.

• 1:20:49Tim Ferriss?

  How do you, if we were looking at, I mean, at least as I think about it, the three legs of the stool for a sustainable beneficial exercise program, if you have, at the top of the, if you have at the top, if we're trying to look at a hierarchy adherence, like, will the subject actually perform this routine over time? And then you have effectiveness, does it produce the results desired in any shape or form? And then efficiency, as we've talked about a number of times, time efficiency. How do you increase the longer term adherence to interval training? Is it just a matter of starting off very moderate and then conditioning

• 1:21:34Tim Ferriss?

  people over time, both psychologically and physically, to the sometimes uncomfortable stimulus? Is, are there other aspects to program design that you would encourage people to think about?

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  So, there's a chapter in the book, we talk about this, the psychology of interval training, and I interviewed a couple of experts who provide some tips, even things like, for example, you know, starting out early in the day, avoiding comparisons, rewarding yourself, giving yourself a little treat after, you know, celebrating success. Don't beat yourself up. You know, I think some people can get down on exercise if they don't have a big block of time, or they're, for example, unable to sustain a moderate intensity jog for 45 minutes or so, they start to beat themselves up. I think with intervals, you can do a

• 1:22:23Speaker 03

  short interval and experience a sensation of success. Hey, hey, I did that. And, you know, going back to the cardiac patients, almost any of these individuals, as they go through their life, life is an interval exercise for these individuals, because just moving around can be quite challenging. And so even just to get around and go through activities of daily living, they have to perform it in an interval manner. So I think my answer is, there's certain types of interval training that are suited for certain types of individuals. And we also know that, again, I'm not a health psychologist, but when I talk to my colleagues who are experts in this,

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  Going back to this idea of menu choices, the more options we can give people, the better. And I think interval training offers, as we've been talking about, almost an infinite variety of ways to structure the workouts where, you know, there's only so many ways to jump on a treadmill and jog at a moderate pace for 45 minutes or an hour.

• 1:23:30Tim Ferriss?

  You can watch a lot of different shows on Netflix while you're doing it, though.

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  The other thing is that intervals, I think, provide a way to structure exercise into your life rather than having to fit your life around exercise. And so people talk about stealth interval workouts. You know, as corny as it sounds, taking the stairs. Lots of us live in apartment buildings or work in office towers. That's a stealth interval workout, just doing a couple of stair flights throughout the day. There's this concept of exercise snacking. And we're learning that, for example, it might be better to do three 10-minute bouts of exercise through the day rather than a single structured 30-minute bout of continuous exercise, at least when it comes to things like your blood sugar control. So I think

• 1:24:15Speaker 03

  intervals are well-suited for this concept of exercise snacking as well.

• 1:24:22Tim Ferriss?

  Marty, couple of non-physiology questions, although they could end up producing answers that have something to do with it. What books have you gifted the most to other people?

• 1:24:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you know, this question, I'm going to sound like a scientist here, but one of the books that I've given out a lot is called The Craft of Scientific Writing. It's certainly something that I'm working on, but you know, when I've gifted books, it's often been either to a colleague or definitely new up-and-coming people in the discipline of science. And the way you write scientifically is obviously different from other writing. And if you want to write... Scientifically, but in a compelling way for individuals to try and translate the science into the lay public, for example. That's really what I try to do with the One Minute Workout, is boil the science down, write it in a compelling and accessible manner.

• 1:25:22Speaker 03

  And certainly, I had tremendous assistance from a colleague, Christopher Shulgin, who's just a tremendous writer. And we know we are on the right spot, where I was happy from the scientific message, and Chris was happy with the writing, or at least the readability or the accessibility of the writing style. And that's a real challenge, of course. It's an art as much as it is a science. And so, a book like The Craft of Scientific Writing helps provide some tips there, because, you know, if you're a scientist coming up, you're constantly writing. You're writing grants, you're writing papers, and you want to convince people of the point that you're making. You don't want to bore them, and you want to do it in a compelling manner.

• 1:26:02Tim Ferriss?

  What are some of your, or any, science writers or science books that come to mind as good examples to you? Atul Gawande comes to mind for me, Checklist Manifesto and others certainly. Do any particular writers or books come to mind that have a scientific accuracy to them but that are compelling?

• 1:26:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, obviously, I have a ton of respect for someone like Gretchen Reynolds at the New York Times. She's obviously a big proponent of internal training. She's been a supporter of our work, but, you know, her book, The First Twenty Minutes, I think, provided a really good example, or it set a bar for us in terms of trying to structure the One Minute Workout, where you're trying to boil the science down, present it in a compelling manner. There's a Canadian named Alex Hutchinson, who writes for our national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. He has a book, which comes first, Cardio or Weights. Same thing, where he's, I think there's a gift there in terms of boiling these scientific,

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  complex science, down into compelling narratives that people can read and understand. So that's, you know, that's initially two names that come to mind, at least in terms of people that are taking science, taking scientific studies, and trying to boil it down into accessible messages that people can use in their everyday lives.

• 1:27:30Tim Ferriss?

  So, speaking of everyday life, this one is not always the easiest question, but we're gonna probably wrap up on this, which is if you could put a message, a short message on a gigantic billboard, and of course metaphorically, you're just getting a message out to millions of people, anything non-commercial, what would you put on that billboard?

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  And I don't want to fail miserably on this last test, because part of me is like, "Oh, my God, what would I have that's so compelling to say that I'm gonna put it out there on a billboard?" But, you know, we were talking earlier, a little bit offline, just as a scientist getting out of your comfort zone a little bit, as a scientist, you tend to be so cautious, right?

• 1:28:11Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:28:11Speaker 03

  Almost everything you say, our studies end with, "Well, we need more research on this," or you write a grant and you're afraid to get out of your comfort zone. And certainly, as I've gone through the process of writing this book, by collaborating with Chris Shogan on this book, it was really a matter of, "You know what? We do have something to say here, and there might be an... You know, there's an audience out there that needs this, because I would often get questions around, "Where can I go for more information? Where can I learn more about interval training for health?" And I really couldn't point to a specific website or book that was out there. And so, in some ways, we tried to fill that void with the book and boiling it down. And so, I guess, going to the billboard question,

• 1:28:56Speaker 03

  it would really be a matter of telling people, like, you know, not to steal something from Nike, but just get out there and do it. Or, you know what? If you don't have a 40-minute, five-minute block of time to work out, that's okay. You know, build intervals, or build exercise, build movement into your life, because we really, really need that. And, you know, you look at the profound influences that that could have in terms of boosting health, lowering healthcare costs. When I talk to my students, it's about, "Where could all of that money that we're otherwise spending on drugs and pills go? Well, we could use that investments in other places to better support people."

• 1:29:40Speaker 03

  Because you know, I it's almost like I'm stealing other people's lines here. But this notion of exercise is medicine, it's absolutely true. Exercise is the best medicine, has so few side effects associated with it. But the benefit that we can get from it is tremendous. And I think some people are afraid of exercise. Or you know, obviously, the number one cited barrier for why people don't exercise is lack of time or perceived lack of time. And people have it in their heads that if I don't have this big block of time to exercise, it's not worth it, or they blow it off. And so if there's a message, it's really no. Time efficiency, we read, we understand is important.

• 1:30:25Speaker 03

  But even if you have a 10 minute period of time in the day, get out there, move. Intervals provide an extremely effective way to build time efficient exercise into your day. And of course, the benefits of that are profound. Don't think of it as you need to exercise to lose weight and that's what confers health. As we've been talking about, there's a direct line there between exercise, boosting your cardiorespiratory fitness, lowering your risk of dying, lowering your risk of developing many of these chronic conditions.

• 1:30:58Tim Ferriss?

  I had an idea also that you could use, and I will, I will not charge my typical royalty for this. It's a one minute disappointing in the bedroom, plenty, plenty in the gym. And then you have your URL. Marty, where can people learn more about you? Find you, the book, say hello on social media, or whatever you would like to mention.

• 1:31:22Speaker 03

  Sure, I'm on Twitter, Gabala M, at Gabala M. The book will be published by Penguin Random House. It will be out on February 7th. You can preorder now from all of the usual booksellers.

• 1:31:38Tim Ferriss?

  Fantastic. Any parting words otherwise that you'd like to request or otherwise? I think you probably hit it in that last answer, but anything else that you'd like to say or request to the audience?

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  No, I guess if I had to come up with something for that billboard, then maybe it's "Life is an interval workout."

• 1:31:56Tim Ferriss?

  Ooh, I like that.

• 1:31:57Speaker 03

  The way to go. Maybe that's the name of the next book. No, obviously, I'm big on exercise. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk to you a little bit about that, but you know, exercise is fantastic. And if we could just get more people moving, the enormous impact and benefit that would have on public health.

• 1:32:18Tim Ferriss?

  Agreed. And personal health, which is what it starts with, in a sense. Marty, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it. And to everybody listening, you can find show notes, links to everything we discussed, as per usual, at fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. You can find links, resources from every episode, including this one. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest

• 1:33:03Tim Ferriss?

  things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I have used for many

• 1:33:47Tim Ferriss?

  Many years, I absolutely love audiobooks and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel. I'm on the road all the time and Audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise. I have two audiobooks to recommend right off the bat. The first is perhaps my favorite audiobook of all time and it's the only audiobook I've wanted to listen to twice in a row. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It's amazing and you will thank me. There are a few different versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P-O-T-T-S, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what would later become The 4-Hour Work Week.

• 1:34:32Tim Ferriss?

  So, go to audible.com/tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines, and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com/tim. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So turn your travel or your commute into something more with a free trial at Audible. Go to audible.com/tim to start now and get your free 30-day trial. This episode is brought to you by 99designs. I've used 99designs for years for all sorts of graphic design needs. Whether you need a logo, website, book cover, or anything else, 99designs was created

• 1:35:14Tim Ferriss?

  to make great designs accessible to everyone and to make the process of getting designs much, much easier. So when I first started out, for instance, testing prototype covers and getting prototype covers for The 4-Hour Body, I went the contest drop. That is one option. This is a great solution if you're looking for fast, affordable design work and the ability to choose from dozens of options, risk-free. Let's say you need something late-night, quick turnaround. Well, people in other time zones, other countries can also help you solve that problem. Since then, I've worked with 99designs on a separate path or a different option, and that is the one-to-one project service. So, in a number of cases, and I'll give you one example, when I wanted to create

• 1:35:57Tim Ferriss?

  The cover for my audiobook, The Tao of Seneca. This was a very important project to me. I decided to use their one-to-one project service. And with this service, you can invite a specific designer to your project, agree on a price, and then work together until you're satisfied. And they allow you to iterate and provide feedback and all of this stuff. And I haven't shared it yet, but we also got some incredibly good, really some of the best illustrations I've ever seen from using this one-to-one project service with a handful of different designers and illustrators. It blew my mind. 99designs makes this all very easy and efficient. So you can check out the Tao of Seneca design and other work that I, and your fellow listeners for that matter, have done on 99designs at 99designs.com/tim. Again, that's 99designs.com/tim.