"On The Floor" - Endurance Fueling, Weird Workout Trends, and Lack of Results with Danielle Pellicano

Parker Condit: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome to Exploring Health Macro to Micro. I'm your host, parker Condit. In this show, I interview health and wellness experts around topics like sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress management, mental health and much more. So by the end of each episode, you'll have concrete, tangible advice that you can start implementing today to start living a healthier life, either for yourself or for your loved ones. Today, we're actually doing something slightly different, so this is the first episode of a new monthly format called On the Floor, where I actually have a co-host, and the co-host is none other than Danielle Pellicano. So Danielle is a phenomenal trainer and endurance coach and she's an even better friend, so I'm really excited that we have the opportunity to co-host this segment together from now on. If you wanna learn more about Danielle, please check out episode three, where we did a full episode with her as the guest. I'm in the typical conversational interview style format we've been doing up until this point. The On the Floor segment was sort of born out of the idea that I have not been actively working with clients for a few years now, so a lot of my commentary on health and fitness feels a little bit like armchair critiquing, and so you end up losing touch with what's happening in the space if you're not actually on the training floor. But Danielle is on the training floor and she's been recording people's questions. So each episode we will play a question. Danielle and I will go back and forth answering from each of our perspectives for about 10 minutes, and we'll do three questions per episode. So in this first episode we're doing three questions. The first is has to do with pre-during and post-training fueling for an endurance athlete. The second is asking why people are walking backwards on treadmills. And the third is why some people aren't seeing results when they're working out all the time. So all very good questions and very fun questions for Danielle and I to answer. So the On the Floor segment will be released on the last Monday of each month at 6 am, just like all the other episodes. So, without further ado, I hope you enjoy the first episode of our monthly On the Floor segment with my co-host, danielle Pelikano. Danielle, welcome, welcome back. I should say Thank you, and this is sort of like the inaugural. This is the first episode of a new segment that we're doing here which is going to be called On the Floor. I've already sort of gone into the premise of that a little bit in the intro For anyone listening who doesn't know Danielle. We did a full episode just so people could reference it later. That's episode three. That's already out. So if you want to go check that out and learn more about her, feel free to do that. But you also get a great feel for her personality and expertise through this segment as well. Well, this was a big fun. So this episode is the first one we're doing. The plan is to do three questions on the floor from people that you know and interact with at lifetime, where you work part time, and then we're just going to go through and answer it, and in as much detail as we think is appropriate. We're thinking probably 10 minutes per question. So that's the proposed format. We're obviously going to evolve, but that's what we're starting with. So you're going to see us kind of work on the fly here.

Danielle Pellicano: 2:58

Oh, it's so fun.

Parker Condit: 3:00

Do you have anything you want to say before we get started?

Danielle Pellicano: 3:01

No, I'm so excited. This is like where you and I shine. This is Parker and my relationship to a T. We just sit back and we just go at it with different things that people have talked about all week. It's great yeah.

Parker Condit: 3:13

All right, who's this first?

Danielle Pellicano: 3:15

guy. So this is Ted, and Ted is 40 years old, big endurance athlete, big cyclist, road cyclist mainly and I started training him about a year ago and have really changed, in my opinion, kind of his mechanics. I would say so that was a big part of him. I think seeking me out more Was obviously the endurance side was more of a given for him. What we have really been focusing on is strength and conditioning and just bettering his mechanics overall so he would produce more power on the bike and be better at the run.

Parker Condit: 3:48

OK, cool, yeah, and just for context, for people listening, just so you know what the three questions for this episode are going to be. One of them is coming from an endurance athlete talking about nutrition pre, post and pre, during and post exercise. Another question about stuff people are seeing in the gym which is walking backwards on a treadmill. And then the third question is somebody asked if how are you working out all the time and not seeing results? So we're going to show the videos of each of these questions, but just so you know what the questions are, and then we'll kind of dive into each of them individually. We're going to start with that first one from Ted. I'm an endurance athlete. I'm curious what three things to focus on pre, during and post workout from a nutrition perspective. All right, easy enough. So this is much more your world. I have some notes as far as the nerd stuff of exactly how many carbs you should probably be taking in, but this is totally not my wheelhouse. I'll let you kick this one off, and you already gave a pretty good backstory on your working with him, what he's kind of doing and what he wants to focus on.

Danielle Pellicano: 4:50

For sure. So I always say improved athletic performance is how I am approached for nutrition. I'm not a registered dietitian. I have just been in the field for 20 plus years and I know from a race standpoint and a replenishment standpoint how to keep the body functioning at its optimal performance when it pertains to endurance. So that is how I'm answering this question. For Ted, I think a big misnomer is the fueling windows and timing of foods. I think we can get almost two involved with how we answer questions that confuse our listeners and our subjects. For Ted specifically, and for a lot of my endurance athletes in that age range, a two hour window is optimal prior to endurance based sports. So what I mean by that is these guys and gals are coming in and they're easily doing over an hour of what I would call a heavy fitness an hour to two hours to be exact. So that's their output in the gym most days and they're probably in there four to five days a week. So I'm giving you an example of the subject. To simplify, one gram of carbs per kilo of body weight is what your fueling should be two hours prior, and I would say that is the biggest talking point when it comes to fueling that, most people don't fuel the workout. That's about to happen. Most go into it fasted or just don't have the stomach to have anything. So they're coming in and doing their 6 AM workouts and they're just under fueled. That, in my opinion, is just setting up the rest of the day for failure is best way to describe it. So one gram per body weight I'm 145 pounds. That ends up being about what? 65 kilos.

Parker Condit: 6:34

So I want to hop in just so people can sort of slow down. There's 2.2 pounds per kilo, so you're giving your body weight. So if you need to find your weight in kilos, take your body weight, divide it by 2.2. And that's going to be your reference number, because we're going to use this reference quite a bit.

Danielle Pellicano: 6:53

Most of the research around, Because that's standard exactly.

Parker Condit: 6:56

Yeah, most of the research, because the rest of the world does it right, Correct, America's just stupid. So understanding having a general idea of what your body weight is in kilos will be very helpful for probably a lot of shows going forward, but definitely this one Absolutely.

Danielle Pellicano: 7:09

So my magic number is 65. So I multiply everything by 65.

Parker Condit: 7:14

I'm 85. There we go, perfect.

Danielle Pellicano: 7:15

So I know, just and again, these are base lines, but they're pretty accurate. I'm gonna shoot for 65 to 80 grams prior to my workout. I am a huge lover of bananas. A cup of oatmeal, a sweet potato I bake off like six sweet potatoes on a Sunday and I literally eat them cold. It seems extreme, but it's not. They're delicious and they're probably your biggest superfood. That little window lets me go into that workout, feeling totally topped off. The hydration part is well, 20 ounces of water should be what you're topping your fuel source, especially if you're an endurance person, meaning you're about to go run or you're about to go do a biking workout. The hydration is so key I would say. Most people are coming in dehydrated and once you're dehydrated it leads to lower blood volume. You have an elevated heart rate, so a lot of misnomers or people think they're unfit or they're over-training. Yes, that could be a part of it, but a lot of the time they're coming in dehydrated, so their heart rate's already elevated. You're going to be putting out so much more effort with very little return. Dehydration is a massive one and I almost feel like it's terrible as it is. I can hammer that point all day long. Almost everyone comes in dehydrated.

Parker Condit: 8:26

On the hydration point yes, my first two notes that I had hydrate with electrolytes, and then number two was carbs exclamation point. I'm glad we're on the same page of that. Then, on the hydration point, if you feel thirsty, it's too late.

Danielle Pellicano: 8:41

It is.

Parker Condit: 8:42

It's one of those weird things where it's like you have to be very proactive with it. Then have you ever used the P test to get people to titrate how much they're drinking throughout the day?

Danielle Pellicano: 8:52

In our language right now it's the sweat test. The only reason I say it is they're so accessible and I'm realizing that mostly predominantly in my male athletes. They are so under-fueled from a sodium standpoint that it is affecting their training exponentially. It is out of my scope, meaning I outsource that to nutritionists that do sweat tests that get my athletes dialed in, knowing exactly the levels they should be hitting. If you are not making up those differences, you are sabotaging every workout.

Parker Condit: 9:23

Okay, yep, all right. So hydration with sodium electrolytes, for sure, okay, so that's pre-during, so perfect.

Danielle Pellicano: 9:33

During it's 10 ounces of hydration, ideally every 20 minutes. So if you think about it, you're like whoa. So you're trying to get me to drink 32 ounces in an hour? That's not likely and that's a high benchmark. However, if you could even just go into it topped off and you were finishing a bottle an hour, that's the best little like give me, I give to my clients. I'm like if you can finish a bottle an hour, you're doing your part. In your water should always have electrolytes. I prefer you have electrolytes with carbs. Like element is a great sodium, potassium, magnesium drink. That's like the hot topic right now, but it has no calories. That is a great topper in the morning to get your hydration where it needs to be, but during your workout you have to have some carbohydrates. I would say like 5% of what you're drinking should be carbs at the time.

Parker Condit: 10:19

Do you have a threshold for again? We're just speaking purely mostly for an endurance athlete and like not somebody who enjoys running like they're doing a lot Correct.

Danielle Pellicano: 10:28

I totally get it.

Parker Condit: 10:29

So how much do you have a carb threshold, again referencing like grams per kilogram of body weight?

Danielle Pellicano: 10:36

During I focus more on calories, to be fair, because I feel like it's an easier. It's an easier numeric for people to grab. Why I say that is we, because of the endurance bars that we have available for the goose that we take for the honey stingers. Those have become such snacks that my endurance people carry that I give them more of a caloric number of ceiling to hit versus even carbohydrate. So, with that being said, from a caloric standpoint I'm always saying I want you to have at least 100 to 200 calories on you that you're getting in within that hour.

Parker Condit: 11:13

Okay, and that's for like a limited time domain. It's going to be different if you're talking about like a race day, right, correct, okay. So again just talking about sort of a training session in the one to two hour time domain, definitely, and then post.

Danielle Pellicano: 11:28

Post, we hammer protein, protein, protein. It's all. Post nutrition is about recovery. It's how do we recover the body best so that we can give our next workout. 120% Protein 15 to 25 grams has to be ingested within that 30 minute window, and that's where we've come so far with recovery drinks, where you can have them in your backpack, you drop them in your water, you shake it. It's not even a meal, it's literally just something that becomes habitual, and then you eat on top of that within the next hour. 1.5 grams per kilo of body weight is typically what you want within a 30 minute window, so that puts you back at like the 80 grams that would be me being 145 grams For carbs. For carbs Correct.

Parker Condit: 12:11

Okay.

Danielle Pellicano: 12:12

And then for this is a huge one for water, you want 24 ounces for every pound you lost. This is getting a little on the nerdy side, but it's not because this is where, like so many endurance athletes starts to just question their training, when, in fact, they're just always at a deficit or they're always lacking in something, when, if, if you're a huge sweater I'm a huge sweater I can do a workout in an hour and I can go. I could start at 148. I can weigh myself again I'm at 144 pounds. That is a four pound loss in just weight, water weight. In order to even get your body back to where it needs to be, to be recovered for the next workout, you need to be drinking 24 ounces for every one pound that you lost.

Parker Condit: 12:59

And once you start learning that those things are very important to pay attention to, yeah, so the example you gave, your referencing, almost a gallon, so 96 ounces, right, you would?

Danielle Pellicano: 13:08

not say that has to be done in an hour, but that should be what I'm rehydrating with within a day. I mean we're telling people to drink 90 to 100, whether they're sedentary or even active. Right Now, top on an endurance athlete who's in my opinion I'm sorry, but they're working like a little harder than the average Joe in the gym. I mean they're full tilt out of the gate for 60 to 120 minutes. 100 ounces would be a minimum.

Parker Condit: 13:34

Yep, okay. So for the notes that I had here, a lot of the research around this is more specific to protein and this is probably something we're going to get into, I think, in a later episode, but just to touch on it now. A lot of the research now coming out around nutritional timing with protein. People can get so particular about it. For the most part, if you're hitting your protein thresholds in a given day, that's the most important thing, much more than the specific timing windows. But again, those are generally done in GenPop populations. So you're speaking about your expertise in endurance athletes. So that's where you're giving that 30 minute window. But if you're not a high-end endurance athlete and you always hear this thing about the anabolic window after you work out if you're just hitting your protein thresholds in a 24-hour window, for most GenPop people, that's what you need to care about, correct? A lot of people get so hung up on oh, I missed my anabolic window. It's like you're not a bodybuilder, this isn't your job. Stop caring about it. And then, so for endurance athletes, I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this. But protein thresholds throughout a given day again, we're going to reference in terms of grams per kilogram of body weight. 1.2 to 1.4 is generally acceptable on the endurance side, except if you're doing higher volume. You can go all the way up to 1.6. So I think I had some numbers for myself here.

Danielle Pellicano: 15:08

I would say 0.6 to 0.8 is what GenPop are hitting, if they're lucky.

Parker Condit: 15:15

Yeah, so I think the RDA is generally 0.8. And I think that's. I've never recommended that to anyone, ever Again. It's just a minimum, correct, so for endurance. So for me, as 85 kilograms 1.2, I need to be getting 102 grams of protein per day. If we go to the upper thresholds of 1.6, this is for endurance that puts me around 136 grams per day of protein, correct? Just to give people some examples. Okay, yeah, I don't think I had anything else on that Did you?

Danielle Pellicano: 15:47

No, that was perfect, okay, great. I think that's the question. Thanks, Ted. Yeah, yeah, I've never seen that guy walking the gym with a gallon in his hand.

Parker Condit: 15:56

after this episode I bet you I'm going to take a picture.

Danielle Pellicano: 16:00

Yeah, hopefully that was over oh 1,000 percent All right and then all right.

Parker Condit: 16:03

so we're going to jump to the next question, and this one is talking more about. Why are people walking backwards on treadmill?

Danielle Pellicano: 16:09

So again this morning.

Parker Condit: 16:10

It's a great question, hey there. So why are people walking backwards on the?

Danielle Pellicano: 16:15

treadmill.

Parker Condit: 16:16

Short and sweet I lost.

Danielle Pellicano: 16:17

That's Steve, steve's great.

Parker Condit: 16:19

All right, steve. Thanks for the question. I think this probably I actually like I don't know if you do this, but if you see things on social media and you try to like dig into when they started getting popular and trying to figure out like where it came from, have you tried to do that with this one?

Danielle Pellicano: 16:38

If I hear knees over toes one more time, I'm gonna. These are toes guys, this is us, you and me, see, you and me. We just know, hold on. I have to start, okay, because this one I'm just like, I'm very matter of fact, shocker. The walking backwards on the treadmill I am first off. I am learned over time not to totally be a naysayer about something that's awkwardly going on in the gym. There could be a total reason why you might have been given it by your physical therapist. You might have a training goal that really requires it. So I'm not papoing the walking backwards on the treadmill. However, if you don't have a true meaning or understanding why you're doing it, I don't find it necessary. Point one, my next point I think it could be a great warm-up tool to leg day If you want to hop on that treadmill backwards for five minutes at a 6% to 8% incline, being able to walk without holding on, which is usually around the two, two and a half miles an hour, is a good benchmark. It does fire up the quads, it does fire up the hamstrings, it is low bearing on the knees. For that I'm like cool, go for it. I think, walking backwards if so, I'm a big trail runner. I think anything that can improve knee stability and control are great modalities. However, if there isn't an injury that's making me having to do that, I would far rather see people doing sled pushes and pulls in the gym to actually maximize knee health. I'm going to leave that point and let you hop in on what you think of that.

Parker Condit: 18:11

Yeah, I had a few similar points, one of them being it was like the specificity that you brought up. If you have a specific reason to be doing this, it totally makes sense. This is a very common protocol coming out of PT for total knee replacements a lot of knee injuries for people who are dealing with lack of ankle mobility, specifically dorsiflexion. People are watching if you're listening to this, sorry, if you're watching so it's when your foot is being pulled up towards your shin, that's dorsiflexion. When it's pointing away, that's plantar flexion, sort of on the toe, all phasic. If you have lack of certain amount of dorsiflexion, it can be useful for that. If you lack good tools for hip extension, it can be good for that. But again, these are very specific things that are going to be coming from a practitioner, based on a diagnosis or based on a treatment that you need. The volume, I think, of people doing this based versus the amount of probably need, I think, is outweighing right now. There's just way too many people doing this just because it's been seen online, the idea there are some other claims because I had to go on TikTok to actually see what this is happening, what people are saying about this, right, because I'm not on the floor. Which is the point of this. Some of the other claims that I saw knee pain, big one, stability and balance. That one seems unusual for me. It's like you're putting people on an elevated platform. Who lacks stability and balance. I don't understand the safety mechanism there when there's so many other things that you can be doing for stability and balance.

Danielle Pellicano: 19:50

If it pertains to runners specifically, it is extremely stressing on the joint trail running, descending and ascending, it just is. If you lack the ability to be in the element to train in your sport, where you intend on racing, I can understand again where some of these modalities come into play. I do, but I would never prescribe an athlete of mine to walk on the treadmill backwards for more than 10 minutes. You have to go out, go find the hill, go find the stairs. You have to make it more race-like. Sorry, I do think that's an important point to make. I just feel like the gym is. There's a place for the gym and I love the gym, especially given certain climates, but when in fact you could go and be in the actual element of which your sport is intended. That is always going to be the number one.

Parker Condit: 20:38

So the other things I said, I used to use backwards walking and backwards movement in general, a ton in warm-ups. I think it's very helpful for people who lack mobility just because everyone sort of always forward ambulating, forward ambulation so kind of getting them moving backwards just without having to be too specific, just fixes some stuff I usually I would routinely have people do backwards marching and cross-connecting. So if you're walking backwards you're lifting the left knee up, you're trying to connect the right elbow, kind of reaching across the body. That reciprocal motion, anything reciprocal is great in warm-ups Reverse lunges, if people have the capacity to do that in a warm-up, and then backwards skipping as well if people have the ability to skip and go backwards. So it's not like I'm against backwards movement but I would use it very specifically and it would take 90 seconds of a 12 minute warm-up. So it was very specifically programmed for a reason. Just blindly I saw some people suggesting doing it for 20 to 60 minutes, which seems insane. So my main point out of this was the claims that are being presented as to why you should do this. I think if you're working with somebody who knows what they're doing, there are much better ways to use your time and you can just achieve the same things much, much easier. Specifically for knee pain like you know, what's really great for I'm not going to say injury prevention, because that's like a tricky term, but like knee health is having really strong quads, really strong hamstrings and glutes. It is having really strong legs and if you want that you're probably going to have to load them and you know walking backwards is if you're extremely deconditioned and untrained. You're going to get some sort of response out of it, but it's such a low load. That's why, like you mentioned, sled pushes, sled pulls great way to load those things and then just doing regular stuff knee extensions, split squats, whatever you can handle essentially. I think I did have one more note, but did you have anything else you wanted to say on that idea?

Danielle Pellicano: 22:40

I don't really prescribe backwards walking on the treadmill very much.

Parker Condit: 22:45

Shocking, shocking.

Danielle Pellicano: 22:50

I was tempted to just go up to people that are doing it and asking them why, but in a very nice way, because I'm actually quite curious. So I think that will also be a follow up to this.

Parker Condit: 22:58

Yeah, so yeah, if you end up doing that, maybe we'll just end up doing a series of you interviewing people walking backwards on the treadmill. Okay, so if there's any other follow up questions about walking backwards on the treadmill, feel free to let us know and we'll kind of loop this back into another episode. That would be great, all right, third one, last question for this particular show. We'll get going.

Danielle Pellicano: 23:18

How is it that you work out all the time and, for some reason, you're not seeing results?

Parker Condit: 23:23

Great question.

Danielle Pellicano: 23:25

I get this a lot.

Parker Condit: 23:28

I can imagine. I think my first talking point on this is that you know, you and I, we probably hype up exercise so much, and I think we should, because it's like if you could like, if you could bottle something up into a pill to fix, like almost everything, it would be exercise and it would be like the most prescribed pill of all time. Right, it would crush statins, it would crush ozempic, it like the benefits exercise can offer. It's, you know, it's like there's not a panacea for health, but exercise is about as close as you can get Correct. With that being said, you can't only address exercise. There's other things to address and I have a short list, which is nutrition, sleep, daily physical activity. I will define how that's different from exercise stress management and healthy relationships.

Danielle Pellicano: 24:20

Just to be fair, parker and I don't know each other's talking points prior to these episodes, so this just shows even more of our alignment, because our mind is very similar.

Parker Condit: 24:30

Okay. So, just like understanding that there's all these pillars, I think there's going to be certain times in your life where you're more focused on one than the other, but, like, you always have to be at least thinking about all of them. So, like, and most people, they gravitate towards the ones that they like. Right, you know, focusing on and like, if you think of this another way, like focusing on physical health through exercise, is easier to quantify and address for a lot of people than, like, I don't know, emotional health, that's like that's harder for some people. So that's where, like, healthy relationships and stress management comes in. So people gravitate towards the things that they like and they want to do. And you do hear so much about the benefits of exercise. But there are these other factors where it's like your nutrition is going to play a major role. If you're not sleeping enough, that's going to it's really hard to get any sort of benefit across any of these domains if you're not sleeping enough. Daily physical activity, which is essentially walking. Walking is the metric that we're going to use to measure daily physical activity, but it's really anything that's like just ambulation throughout the day, can be washing dishes, it's anything that's not sitting and doing nothing, and it's anything that's not standing and doing nothing. So it's a lot. It's a lot, it can be a lot of your day, but the point I chose trying to make with daily physical activities this that you can work out for an hour three or four days a week and still be sedentary.

Danielle Pellicano: 25:57

Yes, a lot of people are. So that was one of my points. Go ahead.

Parker Condit: 26:02

And that that's why, when I list off the six pillars, I identify a difference between daily physical activity and exercise. Because, foundationally, I always try to get people to build a foundation of daily physical activity and it's like you do that, no matter what, you exercise a few days a week too, but you always have your daily physical activity. Because if you lose the habit of exercise which when life gets hectic, is one of the things to drop off pretty quickly for a lot of people you still have the daily physical activity. So there's sort of like layers to these things, but the point is that there's a lot of, there's a lot of interplay, is a lot of overlap between those particular pillars, and if you're not, if you're only hammering the exercise pillar but everything else is sort of neglected or it can just be one that's really low, you're probably not going to be getting the results that you want. There's a variety of other factors too, but I'll let you hop in at that point.

Danielle Pellicano: 26:58

Oh, thank you. I'm a big fan of takeaways, meaning again, I feel like you almost can numb our audience by just saying all the different things that make up a cohesive wellness package. We'll call it right to the point where it's like okay, but like, what's my takeaway? Where's my magic pill? I like to give small incremental goals. So we talk about some of our sleep. You've always called that my superpower. It's a fact. I don't think I've been able to perform in the way in which I have, personally, like in my own sport, but also professionally like this is this business is long days, early mornings, a lot of energy, the fact that I could sleep, but I prioritize sleep. So the 10, 3, 2, 1 that you guys mentioned in your last podcast was fantastic. So people are like what's that? Shutting down the caffeine 10 hours before you are your projected sleep time, also kind of staying on the same plan as your kids even would be great. You put them to bed the same time every night, or at least you try and hope so. You as an adult also need to be on some type of program like that, where you are like I'm shutting it down at 8.30, 9 o'clock and you stick to that routine as best you can. Then you do the math 10 hours prior to that you try to limit your caffeine window. The three is trying not to eat three hours prior to sleep and if you are going, if you're a late eater, you're a snacker. Your goal is to go to protein as much as you can, try to grab protein. The two was just shutting down your workload, meaning actually responding to emails. Looking at your computer, that's not the same as screen time. It's like literally still being just connected to your work.

Parker Condit: 28:41

Shutting that down two hours prior Really mentally on. You have to.

Danielle Pellicano: 28:44

And then the screen is one hour. If you can get in the habit of truly being in your bed with a book, fantastic. And then with the sleep chamber, I love that it is a sleep chamber, it's got to be super dark and it's got to be. In my proof I think my perfect temp is like 69 degrees and I know that's like that. In it that's just the sleep category and I even I start all my people there. I'm like if you're not even checking the 10, 3, 2, 1 is if you're already people like us that already Don't have issues sleeping, then you could start working on the 10, 3, 2, 1 for a lot of people. I think just prioritizing when is your bedtime and doing all the things to shut down that mind of yours prior to it is Going to be a massive takeaway, because if you lack sleep, you're going into everything under. Your eating habits become poor. They just do. You crave more calories to stay awake, so now you most likely start to overeat. So all those things come into play, do you agree?

Parker Condit: 29:40

Yeah, absolutely perfect.

Danielle Pellicano: 29:41

The other thing I'm starting to realize and this is mostly geared towards women there is a point where you have to have a blood panel drawn often not often, like I'm saying, every six months to a year. You might have a different response on that. Knowing where your hormones are at and where your blood level and all of that is that is so important. Why I say that is I'm not trying to just push hormone replacement on people, but it is such a hot topic amongst my 40 plus clientele that I Can't pinpoint it. It's not like I could see it on you. It's something that has to be tested for, because you will be beating yourself against a wall if you are Deficient in something that you are never going to be able to make up for in the gym or in eating habits and things like that. That is something that's really important, in my opinion.

Parker Condit: 30:29

Yep, I had that as a note as well, hormones being a major factor, it's trickier for women, even pre menopause. If you're on birth control, that's going to provide a lot of variability. Perry. Menopause, menopause, pregnancy all those things are gonna have huge implications. A previously asked Kristen Mallon, episode five, if you want to check that out. She runs a women's specific longevity Like concierge practice and she suggested that all women get a baseline hormone panel at at least 35. She's like earlier would be better, but 35 is gonna get you a good baseline because then you can measure against and actually see if things are changing over the next 10-15 years and you have a good baseline to work off of. And that's very important for a practitioner. There's a whole host of other issues in that space in Sort of a lack of guidance from who's actually quarterbacking that cares at a primaries and OBGYN. Are there enough OBGYN specifically trained in menopause, menopause care? No, there's a whole host of issues around that as well, as I can say one of the other notes that I had A lot of times people will become like habitual exercises and the the training is no longer creating the signal, like the signal to noise ratio is no longer good enough and you kind of just not, I'm gonna say, going through the motions but the stimulus is not enough to create the response that you want, like you're just not training hard enough. I'm not saying this woman is specifically, but that's that ends up being very common. And then also the law of diminishing returns, where you know, in the first two years of Starting an exercise routine the results are awesome, because if you're going from untrained to training You're just gonna get crazy results for the first two years and then it very much tapers off and it's Largely just like maintenance and you have to do a ton of work for really incremental progress from that point on. So it's just something else to Call out that the the progress you see in the first two years of training is not gonna be the same of consistent training beyond that two-year mark, even really sick, even really six month mark to that point.

Danielle Pellicano: 32:35

I do find it. Again back to data and just I know people are like how that there's so many more tests and this and that Data doesn't lie. I do think it's important if you're someone that is routinely, this speaks a lot to a lifetime's model as well, which is fantastic. We offer AM a testing. It's an active metabolic test where you're finding your VO to max and then you're also finding your heart rate zones to really have those dialed in matters. I think Garmin does a great job. We've talked about that in the episode we recorded earlier. I do think you know the numbers get pretty close if you wear it long enough and you're doing enough different stressors to actually Actually give it enough to go base off of but to have a test done. Why I say that is Living in zone two is the big conversation fat burning, fat burning, fat burning. I Don't disagree that zone two is not important. I feel none of us really ever sit in zone two. Everyone's in zone three and that small difference is a big difference because that is where you start to plateau. You plateau on your physiological look, you've a plateau on your aerobic capacity, all of it. Zone four and five is Something I can't almost hammer enough of to my 35 plus crew. I think we all do a lovely job staying in two and three. I think really pushing four and five throughout the week is Really where the group environment and going to the gym is probably your biggest bang for the buck, because it's work that you typically Don't want to do on your own. Those different stressors are going to put a different stress on the body. You're gonna go from just fat burning to now going carb burning, which is important, so your metabolism is just gonna start kicking in differently. You are gonna have a different composition. Meaning, look, if you stick to certain regimens that are like that, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

Parker Condit: 34:19

It's the idea of keeping your highs high and your lows low from an intensity standpoint. I have a great example of this, especially about time. This will come out. I were recording this right at the end of 2023. I set out a goal to run a thousand miles this year. I'm gonna cross that later today. Oh good, so a thousand. Yeah, so a ton of all thanks. So like a ton of volume, right, but it was all slow. Yes, it was all slow. So my VO T max, so a thousand miles, that's so much running volume. I basically didn't strengthen this year because I was just like I had to run every day. My VO T max went from on my garment. So, whatever, there's gonna be a little bit of variation. It went from like 52 at the beginning of 2023. It's now at 53. It didn't change because I never did anything above zone 3. I probably did 10 fast miles all year. I Just didn't run fast because I was always just in that low, slow zone. It was already pretty well conditioned. Yeah, like as my base is concerned, in zone 2. So like if you're just living in that low, that low zone 2, zone 3, and you're never really pushing. But like, could you imagine, like, if you were training me to to optimize actual endurance performance and you and I put in a thousand miles of volume, like my view to match to be over 60?

Danielle Pellicano: 35:36

Yes, but so that's such a loaded response only from this standpoint. So, chris, to the woman who whose question it's from, she's not an endurance athlete. She's like your textbook comes to the gym, mom, awesome, I think she looks great, but it doesn't matter what. I think you know. I mean, she's someone that comes in and busts her ass, but she's busting her ass an hour a day and then is running her kids of doing her normal life correct. That goes back to being what is your where? How are you being active Positively throughout the rest of the day, when? That is where step count comes in. We talk about that all the time. It is I. It's the only metric I look at for my own self throughout the day, isn't it interesting? Like that one and you're like what I? I already run and I already work out and I luckily like how I look and feel the sedentary if I see only six, seven thousand a day. That was Danielle, like on a very chill day. Right and that, to me, is a motivator where I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't hit at least 14,000 steps in a day. For me that is very under volumes. Yeah that, and I know for a fact, plays into me being able to maintain the body weight that I've always kind of saved. Consistent that because my training as well has highs and lows. When I'm at the peak of my coaching, my personal volume it lessens. I don't feel bad saying it's a fact. My clients take priority and I'm working so much that I just eat better and focus more in sleep. That's the tools that you need to be taking away from some of these things. You can't outwork a bad diet. I that little habits that you start putting together all matter. The gym has its place. I say you find what you enjoy and you do that, but then utilize the gym and some of those classes that are being offered. That puts you in a position of discomfort Because that is going to challenge you differently and sometime that's the only nugget you really need to start seeing a shift. Then we have to hammer protein again. If you really want to see a difference in composition and body fat. You have to be hitting 1.3 in my opinion, and that's a lot Like if women do the math and the men. It's a fair amount Like. You're not getting it just by eating like 20 chicken breasts a day You're going to have to introduce protein shakes of some kind. That's a good thing to just. You should speak on that. Just to close this out, how are you getting and hitting that amount of protein?

Parker Condit: 37:55

I don't do protein shakes but I do like I have three large meals and protein is the base of it. I don't really care about carbs and I know that's like a very privileged thing to say, but I just focus on my protein intake and make sure I hit that. You know I'm not like anti carb or anything like that, but I'm just like I've been very lucky to not have like a weird relationship with food. I have other weird relationships with myself, but so I just focus on protein. I kind of however many carbs my body tells me I should, whatever feels full, and then I just kind of backfill fats. But yeah, I'm kind of in like the one point four to one point six range pretty consistently throughout the year. So it's it's, it's pretty, it's pretty high, but it's going to be like a large amount of food, especially for people who are sort of scared of protein or have not eaten a lot of protein consistently. And just to give people like a frame of reference, I eat six eggs every morning and six eggs is only getting you. I say only, but that's like 40 to 45 grams of protein, all right. So that's, that alone is about. It's like it's less than a third, it's about a third of what I need in a given day. So a lot of people are eating like two eggs in the morning. They're like high protein, right, but it's like you know that's seven grams per egg, so it's only 14 grams. If you need 100 in a given day, you're still at a big deficit after, after breakfast. So it's it's always my priority when I'm like structuring a meal. It's like how much protein is in this?

Danielle Pellicano: 39:25

And then not to just branch off into what's probably a whole another podcast, Lifting heavier. It's funny because because we're so inundated in our industry meaning you and I with information that pertains to fitness. I just assume everyone knows some of the stuff sometimes. You know what I mean. I realize it's still what you choose to seek out. I will say the biggest takeaway we could give listeners that are in their 20s and 30s men and women, but you know, lately I'm gearing things more towards women. Sorry, gentlemen, but it's just. I think the science is different. Period, you can get away in your 20s and 30s with lighter weight, higher reps, resistance training it's great, which is a lot of the classes at lifetime that I teach. Right, it's just what it is. You pivot when you are in your post 35, especially in your 40s. I can't encourage women to be lifting more and heavier, Not saying you can't still go to bar class and do the stuff. That's more toning base and that's always been what it is, and I get it. Add that in one day a week, Three times a week, you need to be lifting six to eight rep maxes. You have to, and I actually think that's like a gift and I almost think that is a bigger exercise takeaway than even the cardio, which I can't believe I'm saying. But now I'm in my mid 40s and I see it, though I do. I totally see it If I actually want to change my body composition or I actually want to do what I want to tone. If I don't lift heavy, I personally don't see much of a result.

Parker Condit: 40:54

Yeah, and to kind of speak on that and we're just giving so much time to this last question, but it's an interesting one. So, talking about what? Basically, what you're speaking to is strength and muscle mass. To put on muscle mass, it used to be pretty well established you need to be working in like the eight to 12 rep range. It's come out that that rep range doesn't really matter. What matters is your proximity to failure. So you can be doing, and the lower reps you're doing, the more accurate you have to be. The higher reps you're doing, there's a little bit more leeway. And I'll kind of give an example of that. If you're doing six reps of something and you finish that set and you could have done, you maybe could have done seven, that's a very close proximity to failure. Like, if you tried seven, you maybe failed. You can definitely see failure rates within your sight line. If you could have done 12, you're not even close, right, you would have been 50% to failure. So that's what I mean with proximity to failure. If you do 20 reps and you maybe could have done 24, that's probably also within a proximity to failure. So the rep range matters less, it's just how close to that range of failure you're getting. And the lower reps you're doing, the more accurate you have to be. The higher rep range you're doing, there's a little bit more leeway. The eight to 12 rep range was just so common and accurate, just because people can consistently get to that proximity to failure in that rep range. So it's less about the reps that you're doing, it's how close you're getting to failure. So really we're speaking about intensity. Great, because each set is going to be challenging. So yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

Danielle Pellicano: 42:34

It was a very good answer.

Parker Condit: 42:38

I have nothing else on that.

Danielle Pellicano: 42:39

I don't either. I think that was really good.

Parker Condit: 42:41

Okay, fun questions. Yeah, this is a fun first episode, so we're going to be doing these are going to be coming out. I think I'm already going over this in the intro, but these are going to be coming out the last Monday of every month. However that works out, this first one in January, we'll be doing one every month, so additional questions will be coming in. We're still just going to be doing them with you recording people in lifetime in Minneapolis. I think at some point we'll open it up to wider audiences, but for right now I love just doing it, where you can just go and talk to people and be like, hey, your answer is coming out at the end of January. Yeah, awesome, thanks, daniel.

Danielle Pellicano: 43:23

Thanks, Marker.

Parker Condit: 43:23

Hey everyone. That's all for today's show. I want to thank you so much for stopping by and watching, especially if you've made it all the way to this point. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are going to be released, feel free to subscribe and make sure you hit the bell button as well. To learn more about today's guest, feel free to look in the description. You can also visit the podcast website, which is exploringhealthpodcastcom. That website will also be linked in the description. As always, likes, shares, comments are a huge help to me and to this channel and to the show. So any of that you can do I would really appreciate. And again, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.