Podcast Transcription: How to Become Unstoppable In 2024 Series: Part 2: Mastering Your Training: The Exercise Blueprint For A Fitter, Stronger & Pain-Free Body

Ted Ryce: What's up, my friend? Welcome back to the "New Year, New You" series. Yes, I know we did one of those, but I'm really excited about this one. And this episode today is going to be episode two. We're going to be talking about the exercise blueprint for longevity and peak performance.

And if you haven't listened to the past two episodes, we started with episode zero, which was setting the stage for how I got into the health and fitness industry and why I'm so passionate about it. So, if you're curious about my personal story or whether this is just a way to make an income or something greater, go listen to that episode.

And I think you'll see that I'm very much a missionary and not a mercenary when it comes to this. I'm a true believer with this, but listen to the episode and you can make up your own mind. And then episode one was about mindset. And I don't know about you, but when people used to talk about mindset, I was just like, ah, just tell me what to do. Just tell me the tactics.

But at this point in time, I'm realizing for myself, but also for the clients who I work with, because if you're just tuning in for the first time, I've been working with clients for 24 years now, coaching them to lose fat, getting better health, optimizing their long-term health more specifically, and how a client looks at their challenges and what they need to do to get to the next level of health or get leaner or whatever their goal might be, success starts and stops with our mindset. So go listen to that one. Now today we're going to dive into exercise.

And I want to make something very clear: I am not an influencer in the sense that I create content online. This podcast is an example of it. We've got a newsletter. I post every day on Twitter and what I want you to know is I work with clients and have been for 24 years, way before there was content marketing. Well, I guess there's always been content marketing, right? In the form of books, but way before there was social media. And so, what I'm going to share with you in this episode is what I do for myself, as well as what I have my clients do.

So, let's dive in. And the very first thing that I want you to know is that when it comes to exercise, we're really talking about the most powerful tool we have to combat chronic diseases, maintain independence, and stay mobile as we age. It's not just about six-pack abs or lifting heavy weights or doing funky stuff, you know, all the crazy stuff that you see on TikTok or Instagram. Hopefully, you know, it's been too much time on there, but we're not talking about that.

We're talking about preventing preventable diseases. We're talking about you being able to do what you love to do now in the next 10, 20, 30, or more years. And I put exercise first and I want to say one more thing here.

For the average person that I talk to on social media, there's this big focus on nutrition. Like nutrition is the holy grail of health, and it's not. Exercise is. There is a saying that you can't outtrain a bad diet. And I want to tell you, that's not entirely true because it really depends on what you mean by a bad diet. If you're talking about eating 10,000 calories a day or something ridiculous, not 10,000, but you know, thousands and thousands, let's say a few thousand calories, one to 2,000 calories over what your basal metabolic rate might be, yeah, it's going to be really hard to do that much exercise every single day.

However, what ends up happening when you focus on exercise is that you won't be as hungry often. It's a great regulator of appetite. Not always, sometimes it stimulates appetite in some people. And I also see people make better choices with their food when they exercise more. Again, not everybody, but it's very common. People start feeling better emotionally and making better decisions with nutrition.

So, you may still be not on board with the idea that exercise is more powerful than nutrition. And that's cool. I'm not here to let's say, talk you into, I don't need you. I don't need to be right. Okay. I believe what I believe and I believe it based on the best evidence, but I do want to say this, even if you disagree with me, think about this: you can address what a lot of people might say is a bad diet, you can address it with exercise. Even if the person, let's say, someone's eating really badly, really poorly, if you take that person and start training them regularly, guess what?

Even if they don't lose any weight, their blood sugars are going to get better, their blood sugar levels, in other words, markers of metabolic health are going to improve. But check this out. If you take someone who's, let's say, has a great diet. Think of the most perfect diet you can think of. They will lose muscle and get more unhealthy every single year if they don't exercise. So, if they just ate the perfect diet and walked, and let's say they walked 5,000 steps or less, like the average American, did no other exercise.

They're going to get worse and worse and worse and worse every single year because you can't eat a perfect diet into fitness. You need to exercise. You can't just eat protein and grow muscle. You must exercise. Okay. I hope that's clear. And again, not trying to convince you because not, not going to even try.

If you believe that nutrition is more powerful, but I'll tell you this, all the top researchers that I've had on the show that I've spoken to, they all think the same thing. And everybody who's not into the science of health, or casually, if they're just casually into the science of health, not reading actual research studies, those are the people who believe that nutrition is more powerful. And on that note, I need to take a sip of my protein shake here.

So, if exercise is so powerful, then what type of exercises should we be doing? And so today I'm going to talk about the five types that I do for myself, that I have my clients do, and I really believe this is the way forward for the majority of people. It's not going to be all-inclusive in terms of all the different goals but we're going to be talking about mobility exercises. And I don't mean static stretching here, mobility exercises.

We're going to be talking about strength training. We're going to be talking about walking. We're going to be talking about zone two cardio and high-intensity interval training. Because I believe those are the foundations. Now we're not going to talk about power. When it comes to performance, we can talk about power training. We can really go into the weeds with this. And I don't want to do that.

I want to stay focused on what I believe for most people you should focus on. And the first thing you should focus on is mobility exercises. Now, this is a little bit of an umbrella term and it's hard to define, but think about what you might do if you've ever been in physical therapy, like I have. For example, I had a herniated disc in my low back in 2016.

What did I do? Did I go in deadlift? No, I couldn't do that. I could barely walk. In fact, I couldn't walk. I was crawling for weeks. I think two weeks. What were the exercises that I started doing? Those were mobility exercises or core stability exercises, mobility and stability exercises, right? And if...and I remember when I hurt my ankle, what would I do?

What did I do in physical therapy? I would stand on these balance boards. I would do also specific exercises like reverse calf raises for my tibialis anterior muscle, the front of your calf. I would do these other exercises with bands. In other words, they weren't bodybuilding exercises they were, but they were working muscles in a resistance training type of way.

And what I want to tell you is if you're, let's say, if you're having some mobility issues, like you can't get your arms over your head, but you're still, let's say you're lifting, let's say you're doing your cardio, but you're having some issues turning your neck where you can't get your arms over your head or you can't touch your toes, but you used to be able to, those are some issues that mobility and stability exercises can help with.

Now it's a little bit hard to get into this because what we're talking about here is very visual, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to share a mobility routine on my newsletter. So, if you haven't signed up for that, go to legendarylifepodcast.com, sign up for my newsletter.

You go to legendarylife.com, you'll see where it says to join the newsletter. Click that link. And, I'm going to be sharing my mobility routine, like a sample mobility routine for you there, because that'll be easier than trying to describe it on a podcast, but just understand these are exercises that are really important. And I believe that these are the foundation. In fact, I want to say one more thing before I move on here is that I put less emphasis on getting my steps in per day, although I do, we will talk about that and I do focus on steps, but I put more of a priority on mobility exercises.

I do mobility exercises every single day. And the benefit is if you're in an office or you work from home like me, and you don't have time to go for a walk or you're in an office and you have meetings, but you have, let's say five minutes, you can get up and, in your office, do some mobility exercises or stability exercises or balance exercises and get right back to it. And I think it's going to be much better than even doing some walking.

So, because walking, you got to get some steps in. You got to get the. You got to get the volume in of steps.

So, let's move to the second segment, which is strength training. I really think we should all have some mobility, stability, and balance exercises in our exercise toolbox as things that we do throughout the day. This is what I do. This is how I live my life. And this is what I teach my clients to do as well. I create mobility routines for them. Five-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute mobility routines.

And again, this is something you can do every single day, it's going to help you. Now, I will say one more thing, you can do yoga or Tai Chi or something like that, too. That works fine. But just make sure that this is something that you can do every day. And it maintains your joint range of motion balance and will help you in the gym. So now let's talk about strength training.

After that mobility exercise, strength training is really the foundation. The biggest issue that people are having as they get older is they're losing their independence. They're falling and they're breaking their hip. If you have aging parents, that's something you may have seen, or maybe it's something that you're worried about. I mean, in the case of my dad, he couldn't even stand on his own in the last few months of his life. He had to be in a wheelchair.

And the key here is that if you do strength training, it helps you maintain muscle mass and also helps you maintain strength. Both are important. I'm not going to get into the differences of sarcopenia and dynapenia. Sarcopenia, I'll mention it briefly, sarcopenia is the age-related loss of muscle. Dynapenia is the age-related loss of strength over time.

So, just understand: muscle mass is good, but you also need it to be strong. And when I say "strength training," that may bring up... I don't have no idea what it brings up for you. Someone in the gym lifting big weights, doing deadlifts and bench presses. Maybe you think about gymnastics, the gymnast doing an iron cross. I don't know what you think about, but I'll tell you this.

We're not talking about what tools we're not talking about. Oh, you have to use kettlebells, barbells, dumbbells, bands, strength training or resistance training. If you prefer to call it that.

We're talking about keeping your muscles strong and keeping them trained. And so, while mobility is something that you can do every day for a few minutes every day or spread out through the day, strength training, we're talking about whether you do it at home. A lot of my clients have home gyms or whether you're on the road and doing a lot, a lot of my clients travel frequently. They have travel workouts or whether you're going to the gym.

We're talking about going two to four times a week, let's say, spending somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes all the way up to 90 minutes, and doing specific exercises for different body parts, for your chest, your back, your arms, your quadriceps, your hamstrings.

Or if you want to get funkier, your posterior chain, right? Or you're pushing your horizontal pushing and pulling muscles, your vertical pushing and pulling muscles. So, or your hip hinge muscles or your squat muscles. So, we're talking about, um, not just affecting the muscle, but we're talking about increasing bone density as well.

And if you've heard of the Gabrielle Lyon, who I'm looking forward to getting on the show soon, she says that muscle is the organ of longevity. And I think it's such a great way to think about that. What I tell my clients is like, muscle is that it's, it's like building your net worth. The more muscle you have the more you can weather an economic downturn or a bad decision.

Sorry, I'm laughing. I'm thinking of like, I don't know, bad financial decision. Because the unsexy truth, here's an unsexy advantage of having muscle. One of the issues with cancer and cancer, death being caused by cancer, is that it's is the muscle wasting involved. So, people get so weak, they lose muscle and they end up dying as a result muscle can help you maintain or make you more resilient to succumbing to cancer or to something like COVID.

It's insurance, it's an investment, it's your net worth. It's really important to maintain and it's so foundational. And again, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes to 90 minutes, two to four times per week, hitting the major muscle groups. So, your legs, your pushing muscles, your pulling muscles. And if you have time, that's when you throw in the arms, that's when you throw in the calves.

And that's when you throw in the core or the abdominal training, but really focus on the, what you might call the Pareto principle of, of strength training, if you have limited time. Focus on full-body routines. If you only have two or three days in the gym.

So, working every muscle group, every single time you show up and focus on getting stronger. So, what we're talking about, progressive overload. There will be a time where you can't do progressive overload, but in general, for most people, most of the time, what you want to focus on is increasing the reps, the weight, or the number of sets that you're doing.

Now adding in more sets, that takes more time, but you should always be focused on no matter how much time you're spending in the gym. And this is what so many people overlook is that even if you're doing one set, if you're constantly improving that one set, doing more reps, adding more weight when it's appropriate, then focusing on adding more reps with the heavier weight, then again, adding weight and you keep doing that, you're going to get great results, even if you're only doing one set per muscle group. You're going to get great results. How do I know? I've done that with my clients.

Now you're not going to get the best results ever. You're not going to reach your genetic peak doing that. At least I don't think so, but you're not going to reach the limits of your genetic potential doing that, but you will get great results. You will build muscle; your body will change.

And the best thing I can tell you to do here is to track your workouts. That's how you know if you're making progress. How many, how many exercises are you doing? How many sets did you do? How many reps for each set? What weight did you use? How is it different from the last workout? Are you stronger than a month ago?

If you track your workouts, you can answer those questions. And I track not every workout, but over 90% of my workouts I track in the app. And that's what I have my clients do as well. So, let's move on to walking.

If you said, hey, what should I do to get in shape? Should I lift weights? Let's say I have two hours a week. Should I do walking or strength training? Do strength training.

But let's say, you know what? We all walk every day anyway, just most of us have different step counts. What I want to tell you is what the research says now is shooting for 7,000 steps daily. So, if you're already dialed in with your weightlifting and you're, you're doing a little mobility here and there, having a wearable like an Apple watch or a whoop.

Or in my case, I use the or ring love my or ring. Don't have any affiliation with them. They should pay me though. I think, uh, for as much as I mentioned them on social media and also on this podcast, but it tracks my activity levels. I track my steps. I look at my weekly, monthly, my daily weekly, monthly, and even yearly average.

And walking, it's just one of those things is easy to do and it's easy to track. And what I try to do is I try to make it so that.

For example, today I walked to go get coffee and I got a few thousand steps in doing that. I try to make my life and live in a place and do things where I'm just walking. So, I don't have to take walks. I'll be honest, I don't love like, hey, let's go for a walk. I'm not that guy. But what I do is I make sure that I set up my life in a way where I'm just naturally walking more. And let me tell you, walking can be a game changer.

If you're in really poor fitness, walking is going to get you in better shape, cardiovascularly. If you're already doing your aerobic training, it's still worth walking because it can help with recovery. And certainly, it helps you with weight management and mental wellbeing. One of my go-to things, if I'm not feeling good, if I'm feeling anxious, if I'm feeling a little bit weird about my life, which happens more than maybe I let on. I go for a walk and I feel better. And you don't have to push the pace here.

Although if you do push the pace, you'll probably get better benefits, but just get them in. And personally, I don't focus on my speed walking or anything like that. I save that for cardio, but I just keep it in my mind. I not even keep it in my mind. I check my Oura Ring app and I check my step count every single day.

It's worth looking at your data, especially if you're already wearing a wearable, make sure you're checking your data and getting into the step data and shooting for those 7,000 steps. There are some, let's say, like if you're a cyclist and you cycle for two hours each session several times a week and your step counts low, probably don't have to worry about your steps. But if you're like most of my clients who are really office athletes focusing on your steps and trying to increase your step count.

Even if you can't get to the 7,000, but increasing it from say 3,000 and 4,000, or if you're at 4,000, increasing it to five, or if you're at five, increasing it to six, it's going to make a big difference in how you feel and, um, and your health. So next is talking about zone two cardio and you know, you've probably heard about Peter Atiya. Andrew Huberman, if you follow those guys, everyone's talking about zone two cardio.

And what I would tell you is I've been into zone two, the way I learned about zone two cardio was actually from someone different, someone who you've never heard about, uh, unless you've, unless you're in the MMA/mixed martial MMA world or Jiu-Jitsu world. His name's Joel Jameson. He's actually been on this show a few times.

And what happened to me was I used to believe that high-intensity interval training was the way to train because jiu-jitsu is very high intensity, grappling, very high intensity MMA training that I used to do very high intensity. So, what's the point in doing something slow, like a jog, or a bike ride? When the thing that you're trying to get better at doing was this high-intensity exercise, high-intensity combat sport, in my case.

And what ended up happening is I hit a wall with my performance in Jiu-Jitsu. And to know what happened, I thought I got old, but I was only in my early 30s. And then what I realized is that you need to do some zone two if you want to perform at your best. We'll talk about this in a second when I go into high-intensity interval training, because my thoughts about this have changed a little bit.

But let's just focus on this zone two. When we're talking about zone two cardio, what happens is that arteries bring blood away from your heart and veins bring the, bring the blood back from your extremities to your heart.

And when that happens during zone two, which is on the lower side intensity of cardio, so a pace, think of a pace of cardio where yeah, you're pushing yourself, but you could like, I could be doing zone two cardio right now and you wouldn't know. You could, let's say you would barely know that I would be doing cardio based on my voice, based on, you know, I'm not like, oh my gosh, you know, when you're, when you're really running hard or pushing yourself hard, like what happens in jujitsu, for example.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about going at a pace where you can maintain a conversation. Now really it has to do with your max heart rate and heart rate percentages, and I don't want to get into that too much here. But I can say the best way to figure out your max heart rate is to do a max heart rate test, and then you can plug that number in, or VO2 max test, which you will get your max heart rate, and then you can plug the numbers in for zone two cardio, the percentages in figure that out. And now, you know, uh, the range, but I'll be honest with you. I haven't done that in a long time.

What I do now is I just push myself at a pace where I know it's not like a casual stroll, let's say if I'm on a treadmill, but it is at a pace that I'm pushing beyond that and I can still maintain a conversation.

So, zone two cardio, what does zone two do? Lowers your resting heart rate, raises your VO2 max and makes you feel great is what happens for all the talk that I, all the emphasis that I give strength training, I'm really more of a cardio guy these days because of the Jiu-Jitsu, because getting my black belt is that, I'm a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Not going to go into the story, but let's say I've been a brown belt for a long time because of injuries and being out of shape for it. But now like I'm on the road to black belt.

And so, cardio is, I don't have an issue with strength in jujitsu, but I have an issue with cardio. So that's my major focus. I'm really more of a cardio guy cardio guy for longevity as well. I want to get my VO2 max tested, haven't done that yet, but want to get it tested. And because of all the research that talks about, or that connects zone two cardio and our, sorry, our VO2 max and longevity.

And then last segment that I want to talk about here is high-intensity interval training. And I said earlier that my mind has kind of changed on this a little bit. And what I specifically mean is this. If you have the time to do everything, make sure you're doing both zone two cardio and high-intensity interval training, but let's say, let's say you're getting your 7,000 steps, let's say you're doing your mobility training throughout the day. Let's say you're doing two days of strength training at least.

Let's say you're doing, um, let's say you're walking your 7,000 steps or around that. And let's say you only have two days of cardio to do. So, it was already quite a bit of exercise for the average American, at least average executive or entrepreneur, the type of people that I work with.

And what I would say is if you only have two days to do that, better to spend it doing high-intensity interval training. Now, if you have the time, do the zone two and the high-intensity interval training, but let's say you only have two days, focus on the high-intensity interval training. And this came about with a conversation I had with an exercise physiologist on the show. His name's Brady Homer. And he made a powerful argument for it, for what I'm stating here.

The key though is that high-intensity interval training comes at a cost. Now you get better benefits in terms of, uh, you know, VO2 max, you burn a lot of calories and it comes at less of an investment of time. So that's great. But a couple of things, it's really intense. You have to push yourself hard.

I mean, it sucks. You're at somewhere of the 85%, 90% or more of your heart rate max. So, think about your heart's pounding so hard. It's pounding as hard as it can almost. That's what we're talking about. That happens for me in jujitsu training. So that's what we're talking about. It comes at a cost and the intensity, so it's unpleasant to do.

The other thing is that if you do have injuries like I do, you got to be careful when you're doing it. So, I'll talk about some protocols in a second, but I really want you to understand that, yes, high-intensity interval training, really powerful for your VO2 max for and you can get it done in less time.

And you need to be careful with it because if you're not injured, you don't want to have an injury because the most important component of fitness that I haven't talked about is being consistent and injuries, you have to stop. It's one of the worst things that happens if you've ever been injured while you were in top shape you know exactly what I'm talking about. It sucks. So be careful.

And the way that you can be careful is make sure that you take it easy when you first start doing high intensity interval training routines. I'm going to share a few in a moment, like I said. And also make sure that the method you use is easier on the joints. For example, when I do high intensity interval training now, I'll do walking on the treadmill at an incline.

So, walking on the treadmill at a high incline, like 15 degrees, if I can get my heart rate high enough or all use a bike. So, in other words, low impact. Now, if you're more resilient, you know that you don't get injured easily and you don't have any injuries or you've been properly rehabilitated and you haven't had an injury for a long time, then do what you want. You can even run, which is probably one of the higher impact ways of doing high intensity interval training, but just be careful.

So, let's talk about a few different high intensity interval training protocols. Uh, there's the four by four, which involves you warm up followed by four-minute intervals. So, you warm up for, let's say five or 10 minutes. And let's say that you're on the exercise bike, then you do a four-minute interval. And in this four-minute interval, you're pushing yourself as hard as you can.

And then you have a three-minute rest where it's active rest. So, you're still going to be, uh, you're still going to be peddling on the bike, especially because those exercise bikes, they turn off and you got to restart them, but you're going to go at a slow pace for three minutes, very slow pace. We're talking, if you're on the exercise bike, just slow enough so that it doesn't turn off and then you're going to repeat the four-minute interval another three times.

So, for a total of four four-minute intervals that's why it's called the four by four. There's also the four by eight where you do eight-minute interval with three minutes rest and there's also one that is 30 seconds on, 15 seconds off, repeated 13 times. I know it's getting complicated, but this is one of the research-backed ones that I actually give to my clients. So, 13 seconds on, 15 seconds off, repeat that 13 times, take three minutes rest, then do that series another two times.

So that's a bit longer, but those are some examples. Now, what are the benefits of interval training? Well, I've done a whole episode on this, but it's talking about, we're talking about an improved VO2 max.

The thing that's really a measure of endurance that calculates the maximum volume of oxygen your body can use. But again, the reason we're talking about VO2 max is because it's connected with longevity. And not only that, it's going to help you with your, the more intense exercise is, is going to help you with your blood sugar levels, with your cholesterol levels, with...

If you have fatty liver, it's going to help with that. So again, the benefit is that interval routines lead to greater gains of VO2 max compared with other forms of training like zone two. Zone two is great. And I think you should do it. I do it if you've got the time, but if you're tight on time, try one of the intervals that I talked about.

And if you want a deeper dive, go to episode 498 where I get into everything you need to know about high intensity interval training.

So that is it for today. I want to get back to this idea about reframing fitness beyond just having six pack abs. People are so confused about what fitness is, who's in shape, who isn't, is it just low body fat?

I mean, I can show you people who would drug problems who live on the street with, who are ripped. It's not, fitness goes beyond just having low body fat, okay? There's other things involved here. Body fat is important, but it's just one metric. And when it comes to the most powerful method, we have for improving our health, what are we talking about? We're talking about exercise. We're talking about improving our health span. In other words, how many years of our life do we spend being healthy?

And we must learn to use all the methods that I talked about today. So, the mobility, stability, and balance exercises, the strength training using progressive overload, making sure we're walking and tracking our steps. Zone two cardio and high intensity interval training so that we can be in our best shape and also perform our best because this goes way beyond even preventing disease.

We're talking about feeling better in the moment. Let me tell you, probably high intensity interval training is the most powerful one of all. It shifts your mood right away. You're going to come out of that session feeling much different provided you've done it right. And you know, I just want to thank you for tuning in today.

And just know that no matter where you are, no matter what's going on with your life, as long as you're not in a, even if you are in a wheelchair, but as long as you can move at least your arms, hopefully your legs too, you can get in better shape, even if you're dealing with arthritis or some other type of injury, you can get in better shape. You can use what I shared today.

It just needs, you just need the right maybe person to help you with that with that strategy. So, whether that's someone like me, as long as you're not too bad off or whether that's consulting with a physical therapist, please exercise is the most powerful method you have for preventing disease, maintaining your independence and living the life you truly want to live.

That's it for today. Hope you enjoyed it and tune in next time for episode three, where we are going to talk about the power of nutrition.

Have a great one and speak to you then.