You often see a disclaimer on a diet article or commercial that goes something like, “Please see a doctor before starting any exercise program.” What are they supposed to be looking for? We often hear about “health markers.” What are they? Bottomline: How do doctors decide if you’re generally healthy? Here’s what we came up with: Is there some standard list of results that matter the most? How important are HDL, LDL, and triglycerides? Are resting heart rate and blood pressure more or less criti...
Jun 12, 2019•36 min•Ep. 30
This episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus. For a limited time only, they are offering our listeners an entire Month for FREE! Check out the Entrepreneur’s Tool Kit. It’s a great fit for the topic of this episode. Start your free month trial today using our special URL: Thegreatcoursesplus.com/FACTS Episode Notes: Many of you have probably dreamed about being your own boss. Maybe even opening your own gym. We pose that question to a guy who’s done it…and succeeded. Mike shares his first...
Jun 05, 2019•1 hr 1 min
This episode is sponsored by The Great Courses Plus. For a limited time only, they are offering our listeners an entire Month for FREE! Start your free month trial today using our special URL: Thegreatcoursesplus.com/FACTS Episode Notes: Say you don’t have access to the kind of gym you want to lift in, or any gym period…but you have a garage (or something similar)? What’s absolutely essential to making a home gym work for you, and about how much money would you need to spend? Here’s what we came...
May 29, 2019•52 min
It’s a BONUS episode! And there are SPOILERS! Obviously, we wanted talk about the end of Game of Thrones. It’s not that we’re terribly upset about it, but wow there’s a lot of pissed off people on the internet. Beyond that, it got us thinking about our personal stories, about beginnings and endings, and how difficult it might be to tell the true story of someone’s life in a film or TV show. Here’s what we came up with: What did we love and hate most about the way the individual stories played ou...
May 24, 2019•58 min
Seems like we’ve been hearing about the dangers of too much salt for decades because of its effect on blood pressure, but lately we’ve seen recommendations about adding salt to your diet for better performance. Is salt really dangerous? Does it actually help you perform better? Here’s what we came up with: Does salt always affect blood pressure? Why would additional salt improve performance? Are some kinds of salt better or worse for you? Why have always been told to avoid? Do powerlifters need ...
May 22, 2019•28 min
This episode is sponsored by Green Chef. Use our link for $50 off your first order: greenchef.us/facts Episode notes: Nutrition coach Jason Phillips joins us for this episode. Serious strength, aesthetic, and health goals can seem to require very different nutritional strategies, but what are the things they have in common? Here’s what we came up with: How often do strength athletes use their goals as an excuse for bad eating habits? Is it food choice or food quantity that matters most? Do carbs...
May 15, 2019•37 min
Is deadlifting bad for your back? w/Squat University’s Dr. Aaron Horshchig IF you heard this deadlift episode last week under the title “Why do people think squats are bad for your back?” go back and re-download that title and you’ll get the correct episode on squatting. ____ How many times have you heard someone say they don’t want to deadlift because they’re afraid they’ll hurt their back? Too many. Neither of us have had back pain issues caused specifically by deadlifts, so we tried to think ...
May 08, 2019•41 min
Is it an old wives tale that squatting is bad for your knees? Or is there actually data behind it? Here’s what we came up with: Maybe there’s a body type that’s bad for squatting? Is the leg press somehow better? Does it possibly cause tendonitis/tendinopathy? How did this whole thing get started in the first place? Is it bad if your knee get too far over your toes? Our ideas start about 9:58. Eavesdrop on our candid conversation with Aaron starting at 17:27 on continuing to learn and challenge ...
May 01, 2019•39 min
So many people are focusing on building personal brands or becoming “influencers”-- often through social media, YouTube, podcasts, etc. – but has the time already passed? Will it still work if you start today? We asked our good friend Omar Isuf for his perspective -- and advice -- relative to this question. Omar is a successful YouTube content creator from Canada, a partner with Silent Mike and Bart Kwan on Kizen Training, as well has pursuing other business ventures. He's also a keen observer o...
Apr 26, 2019•40 min
We had some fun with this episode by breaking format and having an extended conversation with our good friend, Omar Isuf. Omar is a successful YouTube content creator, a partner with Silent Mike and Bart Kwan on Kizen Training, as well has pursuing other business ventures. He's also a keen observer of media. We talked about a variety of topics, but one central theme was effective storytelling in popular culture: Can’t anybody make a movie that’s not about a superhero anymore? Why do some stories...
Apr 24, 2019•1 hr 5 min
Can people really just “suck it up” and stay disciplined and motivated? This question was prompted by a recent episode of the Joe Rogan experience. Some of our thoughts on this question: If you choose a particular diet or workout because it’s easier for you to stick to, are you making a smart move or showing your lack of discipline? How much of a role does your self-created identity play in maintaining your motivation? Why do some people have all the discipline they need to accomplish whatever t...
Apr 17, 2019•35 min•Ep. 20
Seems like a lot of lifters we know are always complaining about “tendonitis,” so we asked physical therapist (and founder of Squat University) Dr. Aaron Horschig the help us straighten out our understanding of what they’re really talking about – and potentially how to fix it. As a physical therapist, he works with Olympic weightlifters, powerlifters, Cross Fitters, international level soccer players, MLB and NFL athletes. He’s currently working with our friend, powerlifter J. P. Price. Here’s w...
Apr 10, 2019•54 min
For a lot of athletes, physical recovery from injury is only half the battle. How long does it take to learn to trust your body again? Does the mental aspect affect everyone or are some people just immune? How do you keep the mental in line with the physical? Are you prone to pushing too hard, not hard enough, or some of both? How do you deal with setbacks? What approaches do professional athletes take to get their heads back in the game? Dr. Johnson draws on his experience working with athletes...
Apr 03, 2019•34 min
Not all exercises are created equal. That much is certain. But are any of them at best a complete waste of time, and at worst, damaging? Some of our questions were: Does anybody need Jawzercize? Do hip thrusts really do anything for powerlifters? Behind the neck presses? Those have to be bad, right? Or is everything useful in the right context? Dr. Jordan Shallow is a chiropractor and competitive powerlifter. He gives us his take on the utility of a number of exercises, and makes some important ...
Mar 27, 2019•35 min
Dr. Matt Johnson, a Certified Sport Psychology Consultant (and former Notre Dame quarterback), joins us to discuss a fundamental question about performance under pressure. Our thoughts: Are some people just born to be gamers? To perform at a high level in the clutch? Can regular people learn to handle pressure situations better? Is visualization important to improving performance? Do high performers think about everything at once? Or just ONE thing? What role does being in a “flow state” play? D...
Mar 21, 2019•54 min
We’re committed to having a physical therapist join us in the future, but THIS time we’re talking to a chiropractor. Our questions: What’s different about their education? What’s similar about their approaches? What’s different? Which may fit you best? How can you tell if you’re getting scammed? Dr. Jordan Shallow is a chiropractor and competitive powerlifter. He helps us sort through these questions, and he gives his view on which differences matter and which don't. Our ideas start at about 12:...
Mar 13, 2019•40 min
We know that heat and cold shock proteins form in the body in reaction to changes in temperature, but what do they do and should we be trying hard to get them? How much do you need to change your body temperature to get a reaction? What, if anything, are cryo- chambers good for? Is it enough to just get hot or do you need to moving (like doing hot yoga)? When in a training cycle should you use them? Dr. Andy Galpin joins us again as expert for this discussion. Andy is a tenured Professor in the ...
Mar 07, 2019•35 min
We’ve all heard the old tale about cracking your knuckles and arthritis, but what about your neck, back and all the other parts of you that crack and pop? Is there actually a connection to arthritis? Why do chiropractors and other manual practitioners pop or “adjust” your back or neck? What about shoulders, hips, and knees that pop on their own? Is that good or bad? Does any of this relate to overall joint health? Dr. Jordan Shallow is a chiropractor and competitive powerlifter. He helps us sort...
Feb 27, 2019•45 min
We follow up the episode “Can You Teach Speed?” with a deeper dive into muscle fiber types that we touched on in that episode: What’s the difference between fast twitch and slow twitch fibers? Does the mix of fibers tend to affect performance? Aesthetics? Is changing your mix of fiber types possible, and if so, is it even helpful. Dr. Andy Galpin joins us again as expert for this discussion. Andy is a tenured Professor in the Center for Sport Performance at CSU Fullerton, and holds a PhD in Bioe...
Feb 20, 2019•47 min
Our good friend, Jacob Ross returns as our expert to answer this question. Can you teach speed? Specifically, speed for sports? As we talked through the question, we of course came up with even more thoughts: Is it purely genetics? Are there muscle fiber type differences between men and women? Can strength training really impact speed? How important is “First Step?” Does beginning training at an early age make a difference? Quickness vs actual speed. Our ideas about the question start about 13:0...
Feb 14, 2019•48 min
True to the premise of this show, we don’t do any specific prep before we talk about the question at hand. This time, it bit us in the ass a bit. We had seen the new paper on “intermittent dieting” co-authored by previous guests Eric Helms, PhD, Layne Norton, PhD, and our guest for this episode, Andy Galpin, PhD (among others). We’d assumed the title was just a word choice difference that actually referred to “intermittent fasting.” What it’s actually about the dangers of what’s many people call...
Feb 07, 2019•53 min•Ep. 10
Mike’s mom, Maria Farr, is a certified olive oil judge and sensory panelist. With all the recent focus on fats in our diets, we decided to bring her on to help educate us – and you – on a particularly tasty fat. Our questions went something like this: What does “extra virgin” even mean? (It’s not “first pressing.”) Is olive oil better than other oils? What’s up with flavored oils? How can you tell if an oil is good…or bad. Is it better to buy oil locally (if you can)? Our ideas start at about 10...
Jan 31, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Vertical jump has become a test of athleticism, but is it something you can train? Box jumps have come around again in popularity, but are they an important training tool...or just a cool trick? What contributes to being good at either or both? Can you make significant improvement with training? Our good friend, Jacob Ross -- an athletic performance coach and consultant who currently works with Luol Deng of Minnesota Timberwolves – joined us as our expert to answer this question. Our ideas about...
Jan 24, 2019•47 min
You can call it Blood Flow Restriction (BRF), occlusion, or Kaatsu, but the idea is all the same: Keep some extra blood in the muscles of your arm or leg and get a massive pump. But is this superior to working out the regular way? When should you use it, and does it have any effect on rehab/recovery? We ponder these questions and discus our own experience. Then, we bring in Layne Norton, someone with a long history of using this type of training, to help us understand what the actual benefits ar...
Jan 16, 2019•27 min
Can activities in the gym that are built around the requirements of a specific sport actually help athletes get better at that sport? Our good friend, Jacob Ross -- an athletic performance coach and consultant who currently works with Luol Deng of Minnesota Timberwolves – joined us as our expert to answer this question. As always, the question spawns more questions: Do better athletes just do better? What’s the role of injury prevention? Drills vs sport-adapted weight training We kick off the ep...
Jan 10, 2019•47 min
We get started by talking about what’s becoming a pretty uncommon experience for a lot of people: Actually leaving your house to watch a movie. Wrapping up a run of nutrition and diet-related episodes, we talk about a group of substances that are common in a lot of people’s diets at this time of year: Artificial sweeteners (fake sugar). Is fake sugar’s impact on our gut micro-biome a problem? Does fake sugar cause an insulin response similar to sugar. Is there a legitimate cancer risk? How much ...
Jan 03, 2019•27 min•Ep. 5
Our fourth episode takes a look at the final macronutrient: fat. We spend a few minutes discussing the documentary “Transformer” about Janae Marie Kroczaleski…and our small part in it. We also discuss streaming services and how hard it is to get everything we want to watch in one place these days. Then, we jump into fat. We know that fat has the most calories per gram of the three macros, and that people on ketogenic diets eat a lot of it. Beyond that, we have a lot more questions: Why does fat ...
Dec 26, 2018•40 min•Ep. 4
In our third episode, we take a side step from carbs into the glycemic index – the potential impact of differing amounts of carbs in foods. We kick things off with a quick discussion about the inherent strangeness of making friends with people we’ve never met in person. Shifting to this week’s question (and some related issues): Is the index accurate for non-diabetics? Does it really have that much of an impact on weight gain or loss? Is brown rice better than white rice? What impacts how fast t...
Dec 20, 2018•52 min•Ep. 3
Our second episode is a look at a second macronutrient: carbohydrates. After a quick discussion about the fact that we’re probably both HSP (Highly Sensitive People), we talk about some of our goals for the show and ways that you can get involved. We run down some of our basic “knowledge” about carbs, but were left with a few questions: Are some sugars better than others? If all sugars end with “-ose?” Do you sound like a douche if you use the term CHO? Then, we bring in Eric Helms, PhD. to help...
Dec 13, 2018•46 min•Ep. 2
We’re kicking this new show off by asking seemingly basic questions about diet and nutrition. First up, “What is (dietary) protein anyway?" After a quick catch up session, we talk through the “facts” of what we think we know about this question – which, of course raises even more questions like... How much protein do you really need? What’s a complete protein? How many essential amino acids are there? Then, we bring in Eric Helms, PhD. to give us the low down. Eric has a BS in fitness and wellne...
Dec 06, 2018•51 min•Ep. 1
