Latest / The MindSets Podcast / Episode 51 - The Hard Truth About Sleep, Supplements & Performance with Phil Learney

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Episode 51 - The Hard Truth About Sleep, Supplements & Performance with Phil Learney · The MindSets Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello and welcome back to another episode of The Mindsets
• 0:09
  Podcast. I'm your host, Angus Cook, and
• 0:12
  we're here for episode 51. And this is an episode I have
• 0:15
  been deeply looking forward to. I met Phil probably about six
• 0:20
  months ago and was absolutely delighted when he said he'd jump
• 0:22
  on it and do an episode. And we finally got him here.
• 0:25
  So as you guys know, at this point, I don't like to introduce
• 0:28
  my guests just in case I do something but they wouldn't
• 0:31
  appreciate. So, Phil, I'll hand straight
• 0:33
  over to you to introduce yourself.
• 0:35
  Yeah, that's something I don't normally do is introduce myself,
• 0:38
  but just to give a bit of background really.
• 0:41
  So my, my background's coaching, I was a coach for 25 years,
• 0:44
  dealt with largely kind of high net worth, high performers,
• 0:49
  elite athletes, did some bits and pieces in movies and films
• 0:52
  and bits and bits and bobs. But my, my space has always been
• 0:56
  the performance based. I'm a sports scientist by trade
• 1:00
  and I've always been focusing on how do we get the best out of
• 1:04
  human beings. And obviously that's led me to
• 1:07
  two different kind of business paths, one which is in coaching
• 1:11
  and education, the other which is in supplements and and human
• 1:15
  performance supplements are that awesome.
• 1:18
  So we're going to cover some really interesting topics, some
• 1:21
  that I'm particularly fascinated by later on.
• 1:23
  But you've mentioned that you've got a wealth of experience,
• 1:26
  you've got over 25 years of experience in the space, but
• 1:29
  you've also got quite a lot of experience as an athlete
• 1:31
  yourself. So where did sport kind of begin
• 1:35
  for you? I was again, to start right at
• 1:39
  the start, I was AI was a very overworked kid who was into
• 1:44
  sport big style. So I played every, you know,
• 1:47
  when we were at school, any sport that was offered to me, I
• 1:50
  did, you know, I played tennis, I did hockey, I did all of this
• 1:55
  stuff. And, and rugby was probably the
• 1:57
  first one that I, I, that I got into and I played rugby from a
• 2:00
  very, very young age. Obviously fit them all of a prop
• 2:04
  at that time. It was kind of how it, yeah, it
• 2:06
  was kind of how it was, it was, it was determined where you'd
• 2:09
  play. It was always based off your
• 2:10
  stature at that particular time. And then people would meld into
• 2:13
  other, other roles. But for me, I stayed a prop for
• 2:16
  the vast majority of my career. I played National 1 rugby, had a
• 2:21
  had a little run out, a little parade out in the Premier League
• 2:25
  at one point under a pseudonym because they, the team I was at
• 2:27
  the time, I won't mention them, but the team I was at the time,
• 2:30
  I was playing for the twos and they ran out of props.
• 2:33
  So I I was another person for a day because they didn't have
• 2:36
  enough props for the bench, which was an interesting
• 2:39
  experience. And then cricket.
• 2:42
  I also played cricket at a reasonable level.
• 2:44
  I played in a, in a league called the Northern League.
• 2:48
  I played minor counties at, at junior level.
• 2:51
  I kept in my county under nineteens.
• 2:53
  So, so sport was always a big part of my life.
• 2:56
  And, and then after those sports I, I retired from cricket at a
• 3:01
  reasonably young age just to focus more on rugby.
• 3:05
  Then I retired from rugby shortly after that because the,
• 3:07
  the club that we were at there, she ran out of money and went
• 3:10
  bankrupt. And then I moved down a
• 3:12
  division, played a few seasons. Then ultimately work took over
• 3:15
  and it was making that choice between, look, I'm never really
• 3:18
  going to make a full time career out playing rugby and, and, and
• 3:21
  earn the kind of money and revenue that I wanted to earn.
• 3:25
  So I stepped away from it and focused more on work.
• 3:27
  So, you know, that work went into coaching.
• 3:32
  I was personal trainer, I was a, a fitness instructor to start
• 3:35
  with. I'd just finished my degree and,
• 3:38
  and, and that was my space really.
• 3:40
  And then in amongst that I was always looking for things and
• 3:44
  events to take part in. I know you're a big Hyrox fan.
• 3:47
  Hyrox wasn't around when, when, when I was doing it.
• 3:50
  So I had a little dabble in bodybuilding, didn't really
• 3:52
  enjoy it. And then I moved my hand to
• 3:54
  powerlifting and I was a competitive powerlifter for 10
• 3:57
  years, which was which was interesting and enjoyable.
• 4:00
  But now I've now moved on to doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as my
• 4:05
  kind of hobby sport as such. And unfortunately the requisites
• 4:09
  of powerlifting don't really fit with the requisite of BJJ.
• 4:13
  So I'm I'm a very stiff BJJ practitioner who's working on
• 4:17
  his mobility. Well, it's interesting and and
• 4:19
  almost not that surprising when you're coming into a sport that
• 4:22
  needs that much mobility when you come from a background of
• 4:25
  doing things like rugby and cricket, which arguably a kind
• 4:29
  of more I, I like to call them front facing sports because a
• 4:32
  lot of back and forth. Yes, in rugby you have more
• 4:34
  change of direction than you would some say in cricket.
• 4:38
  But I wonder as you grew up, obviously you're playing a quite
• 4:41
  a high level in both of those with the gym quite a key thing
• 4:47
  early on. Or did you find that you were
• 4:48
  naturally good at them and then you kind of learnt the training
• 4:50
  process as you went through those?
• 4:51
  Sports well, I mean they're both very skill oriented.
• 4:54
  Obviously there's a hugely physical aspect to Ruby, but but
• 4:57
  because I was I was big ultimately with being big, you
• 5:01
  are naturally strong and I think that was just something I had
• 5:04
  you know my legs were strong. I was carrying around a lot of
• 5:06
  weight all the time and, and, and, and that kind of fit that
• 5:10
  more. But then I wanted to do
• 5:13
  something about the way that I physically appeared and, and I
• 5:17
  wanted to work more on that performance aspect.
• 5:19
  So I started going to the gym when I was, I was, I guess very
• 5:22
  young in the grand scheme. I was about 14 and I was going
• 5:26
  to secondary school and there was a, there was a local gym.
• 5:29
  And this was in the days when as a 14 year old, if you went to
• 5:32
  the local gym and joined, they weren't bothered.
• 5:34
  So, so I joined the gym at 14. What I would do is I'd finished
• 5:37
  school, I'd go into the town, I'd, I'd, I'd train for an hour.
• 5:41
  And there was a, there was a chap who worked at one of the
• 5:43
  local sport shops where instantly I ended up getting a
• 5:45
  part time job as well, but he worked at a local sport shop and
• 5:48
  he would leave at 5:30 and go back to our village.
• 5:51
  So, so my family knew him and they asked him and said, is it
• 5:55
  possible for Phil to jump in? And I think he'd quite like the
• 5:57
  company. And I ended up actually working
• 6:00
  with him for several years. But it was.
• 6:01
  Yeah. So the gym was a huge part of my
• 6:04
  life at that point. But it was, I went in and I
• 6:07
  figured it out. There was no, there was no one
• 6:09
  ever coached me. I always tell the story of, you
• 6:11
  know, as a, as a trainer and as a coach to me approaching people
• 6:15
  in gyms and correcting them and, and, and asking them what the
• 6:19
  goals are and all these things. It's part and parcel of the
• 6:21
  business. But I never got approached in
• 6:23
  gym by anybody until I was early 30s and I was in New York and I
• 6:28
  was training in the gym in New York.
• 6:29
  And there was one of the, one of the, the instructors came over
• 6:32
  to me and corrected me on one of my movements.
• 6:35
  And that was the first time someone had actually came up to
• 6:37
  me on the gym floor, a trainer or a coach in that facility,
• 6:40
  which was given that my other business is about, you know, the
• 6:44
  business of personal training, the nutritional, the coaching
• 6:47
  aspect. It was, it was quite surprising
• 6:49
  for me, you know, after all that time, I've never once been
• 6:52
  approached. And obviously there's an
• 6:53
  intimidatory factor where you see someone who looks like
• 6:56
  they've been in the gym. But even in the early stages of
• 6:58
  me going to the gym, nobody ever grabbed me and said, Philly, you
• 7:00
  need to do this differently. And there were inductions were
• 7:03
  kind of they showed you around, showed you where the bathroom
• 7:05
  was and told you not to do certain things and that was it.
• 7:08
  I think one of the one of the cool things about training
• 7:11
  though throughout your entire lifetime is that especially as
• 7:14
  Someone Like You mentioned, I've got an interest in high rocks
• 7:17
  now, but I have I feel like I've done almost every sport.
• 7:21
  The only sport I can remember not doing is hockey when I was
• 7:24
  younger. Just was always a little bit too
• 7:26
  tall for bending my back and have.
• 7:28
  A sticks not fit. So I, I don't remember doing
• 7:32
  that, but having done so many different sports, what I
• 7:34
  discovered is so many different ways of training in a gym space.
• 7:37
  And there was a gap between me doing any sort of competitive
• 7:43
  sport, which at the time I thought I was enjoying.
• 7:45
  So I kind of did start doing a bodybuilder split.
• 7:47
  I had no intention of ever getting on stage or anything.
• 7:49
  But again, that's when I started learning entirely different ways
• 7:52
  of training my body, which I would have thought would have
• 7:54
  come naturally from the way that I had been doing squats and all
• 7:57
  of the compound lifts for my sports.
• 7:59
  Actually, all of a sudden, time under tension and all these
• 8:01
  sorts of things. Yeah, I was starting to learn
• 8:03
  and it was really, really interesting.
• 8:04
  But you're right in saying that I didn't have many people come
• 8:07
  up to me, even though there were a lot of bodybuilders in that
• 8:10
  gym and try and help me out because I on the face of it,
• 8:13
  maybe looked like I knew what I was doing in terms of the
• 8:15
  movements, but they didn't know my goal.
• 8:17
  So if I if I had told them that I'm trying to put as much size
• 8:20
  on them, I come over from being like slow down and maybe
• 8:23
  decrease the weight on that and increase the number of reps for
• 8:25
  what you're doing today, changed intensity through the week, all
• 8:28
  of these different things. So I think that's really
• 8:30
  interesting. I wanted to kind of know a bit
• 8:32
  about your journey to how you became so knowledgeable about
• 8:37
  different aspects of sport. And one of the things that we do
• 8:40
  on the Mindset's book Craft before we carry on and we talk
• 8:42
  about the current is we're going to do the show and tell section
• 8:44
  of this. So for those of you that aren't
• 8:47
  aware, maybe new to this episode, show and tell, I ask
• 8:50
  every guest to bring something and I ask them to not tell me
• 8:53
  what it is. And they talk to me a little bit
• 8:56
  about their thing that they're going to show and tell, and then
• 8:58
  we can have some questions and talk about that, which usually
• 9:01
  uses into the rest of the episode.
• 9:02
  So but. What?
• 9:04
  What with you? Well, well, we've got three
• 9:06
  kids. So the show and tell thing is a,
• 9:07
  is a weekly, you know, event in our house in some way, shape or
• 9:12
  form. But there's always the stuff
• 9:14
  that kind of has, has an inherent story behind it.
• 9:16
  And then there's the stuff that's just, you know, something
• 9:18
  you did in the last week or whatever it might be.
• 9:20
  But, but something that comes with me all the time is, is, is
• 9:23
  kind of a water ball because, you know, it's, it's, it's part
• 9:27
  of one of my businesses, it's part of what we do.
• 9:30
  It's part of my lifestyle. It's part of, you know, it goes
• 9:32
  everywhere with me. And, and it sort of tells the
• 9:36
  story of what, what we developed as a brand and what we tried to
• 9:40
  try to do in that performance space.
• 9:42
  So for me, it was, it was, it was something that simple like
• 9:44
  Audible. Well, interestingly, a lot of
• 9:48
  the products that you have do rely on the use of the water
• 9:51
  bottle as well, which we will talk about different supplements
• 9:53
  and different things for different times of the day as
• 9:55
  well. Yeah, but you've gone from, as
• 9:58
  you said, you went from being fitness instructor.
• 10:00
  Yeah, coaching more interested in performance because you have
• 10:04
  was your degree in sports science.
• 10:06
  Yeah, sport exercise science, Yeah.
• 10:07
  So you've, you've got the the knowledge side of things there.
• 10:09
  But you've now gone to a point where you're coaching coaches
• 10:12
  and you've been recognized as the best coach for coaches in
• 10:15
  the UK. What is different about being a
• 10:18
  coach for coaches in comparison to being a coach for clients
• 10:22
  directly? Do you see on a sort of daily
• 10:24
  basis? This the overall coaching aspect
• 10:28
  of it, because obviously you know, you're coaching coaches or
• 10:30
  you're coaching clients. The coaching process is very
• 10:34
  similar. You know, you're utilising the
• 10:37
  same tools with the same skills. It's just the messaging is
• 10:40
  slightly different because obviously what you're trying to
• 10:42
  do is you're trying to relay something that somebody's going
• 10:43
  to directly do versus something someone's going to indirectly
• 10:47
  coach somebody else to do. So the process is very, very
• 10:49
  similar, but it's, it's, it's been able to translate it.
• 10:53
  I think communication's always been a reasonably decent skill
• 10:56
  of mine. I always attribute some of that
• 10:57
  to grow. I grew up in a pub, so I always
• 11:00
  attribute some of that to something that was subliminally
• 11:02
  kind of absorbed from an early age.
• 11:04
  Was watching my dad talk to complete strangers.
• 11:07
  You know, this pub is in the middle of the Lake District.
• 11:08
  So we get strangers come in almost every day and my dad
• 11:12
  would just stand at the bar and if there was only him and them
• 11:14
  in, it's a very awkward silence if you don't converse with him.
• 11:17
  So he would just talk to these people so he'd introduce himself
• 11:19
  He'll, you know, he'd get into some kind of small talk about
• 11:22
  something and then ultimately they get into some conversation
• 11:24
  about, you know, what they would do in there or, you know, the
• 11:27
  beers or something along those lines.
• 11:30
  So it was, it was that communication skill and that
• 11:32
  that served me very well early in my career because my
• 11:35
  acquisition of clients was really easy because I just went
• 11:38
  and talked to people. I went and explained to them who
• 11:40
  I was, what I did, how I could help them and, and had at that
• 11:44
  point a reasonably decent skill set.
• 11:47
  And, and it was just all about, you know, how do we explain to
• 11:51
  people how we're going to help them?
• 11:52
  How do we take them through that process?
• 11:54
  And it all reverberates back into things like business is
• 11:57
  ultimately in business, what are we trying to do?
• 11:58
  We're trying to build relationships with people and
• 12:00
  this is what coaching's about. It's, it's about building a
• 12:03
  relationship and then being able to communicate what you want
• 12:05
  them to do or what you want them to achieve at the end of it.
• 12:08
  And, and that, that process. So I think the, the, the comms
• 12:11
  side of it is massive. And I think that's something
• 12:14
  that I've worked on for years and years and years been able to
• 12:17
  communicate things in different ways.
• 12:19
  A bit like, you know, we're sat on these bar stools and I always
• 12:22
  remember one of the cues for squatting was imagine you
• 12:24
  sitting down onto a big still. But not everybody gets that.
• 12:27
  You know, some people are like, what do you mean?
• 12:29
  I don't really understand that. So then you'd have to have a
• 12:31
  slightly different cue or something, you know, you'd have
• 12:33
  to explain things in a different way.
• 12:35
  And it was being able to physically manipulate people to
• 12:37
  do where movement in a way that maybe their body didn't want to
• 12:40
  do it. And then then it became
• 12:43
  intuitive because you'd be able to look at someone, you'd be
• 12:45
  able to look at that mechanics, whether they were moving,
• 12:47
  whether they were static, and be able to tell them something
• 12:51
  about their body. You know, if we look at posture
• 12:53
  as a basic 1, you know, you can look at someone's posture
• 12:55
  straight away and make a lot of calculated assumptions as to how
• 12:58
  they're probably going to move. And then once you've got that,
• 13:01
  you can then look at their stride.
• 13:02
  You can then look at the way that they move on a pitch.
• 13:05
  One of the things they used to do with a lot of the elite
• 13:07
  athletes was look at past videos of them performing.
• 13:10
  Because what we're ultimately looking for is we're looking for
• 13:12
  a weakness. You know, it's like, you know,
• 13:14
  you're engineering, right? Is that when we look at
• 13:16
  structures and we look at look at engineering, all we're doing
• 13:19
  is we're going right. Where's the weak point exist,
• 13:22
  You know, where, where, where, where's the where, where's the
• 13:24
  load distributed? And essentially we're applying
• 13:27
  the same sort of principles to movement.
• 13:29
  And the more movement there is, the more complicated it becomes.
• 13:32
  So again, I, I touched on the fact that powerlifted, but
• 13:36
  powerlifting, every single thing is in this plane, you know,
• 13:40
  whether you're bench pressing, whether you're squatting,
• 13:41
  whether you're dead lifting, you know, you, your feet are pretty
• 13:43
  much in the same position every time.
• 13:45
  The alignment of your arms is pretty much the same position at
• 13:47
  the time, your shoulders in the same position.
• 13:49
  There's no rotation. You're actually trying not to
• 13:51
  rotate at all. You're trying not to tilt either
• 13:54
  side. So you're creating this rigid
• 13:56
  structure. And then again, I was telling
• 13:58
  the story about BJJ where you're taking this rigid structure and
• 14:01
  now trying to move it. So it's almost like you've taken
• 14:04
  a piece of clear and you've actually set that clear and
• 14:07
  you've spent years trying to set that claim one position.
• 14:09
  And now what you're trying to do is you're trying to mould it
• 14:11
  back down and warm it up and create this mobility so this
• 14:15
  clay can be moved and manipulated.
• 14:17
  And that's that difference between that line between
• 14:19
  mobility, stability, you know, and, and, and, and it's an
• 14:23
  interesting proposition. And obviously throughout my
• 14:26
  career, I dealt with people who just wanted to physically look
• 14:29
  different or needed to look physically different.
• 14:31
  The, the stuff of film was always interesting because
• 14:33
  ultimately you just, you're told you need this person to look
• 14:36
  this way. And ultimately you trade off
• 14:39
  everything else. You don't care about performance
• 14:40
  anymore, which is quite a nice, nice thing.
• 14:43
  Whereas you get an elite athlete who come in and go, I want to
• 14:45
  look really good, but I also want to perform.
• 14:48
  But your performance has always got to be the focus.
• 14:50
  And again, you'll see this in hierarchies that you'll, you'll
• 14:52
  get the people who genetically are at the top of the tree who
• 14:55
  just look amazing and perform amazing.
• 14:57
  And then you've got the people who perform amazing, but maybe
• 15:00
  don't look like they do quite as well.
• 15:02
  And it's always, you know, you see it in boxing, you see it in
• 15:04
  mixed martial arts where some people just look incredible,
• 15:08
  like these sculptures. And you know what your
• 15:10
  stereotype is the, the, you know, the Michelangelo's David
• 15:13
  kind of thing. And, and then you look at these
• 15:16
  other people and you go, oh, they don't look in as good a
• 15:18
  shape, but their, their skill acquisition's incredible.
• 15:20
  Their physicality's incredible. They're strong, they're
• 15:23
  powerful, they're quick, their endurance is phenomenal, but
• 15:25
  they just don't look quite what you'd expect.
• 15:28
  This is where my fascination for sport and sort of bio mechanics
• 15:32
  comes in because like you said, engineering background.
• 15:35
  Most of my engineering background is from a problem
• 15:38
  solving aspect. They have a lot of systems
• 15:39
  engineering. I used to quite a lot design
• 15:41
  engineering, which kind of came off the idea of what is the
• 15:44
  problem, identify weakness and then try and fix it with some
• 15:47
  sort of new theory, see if it works.
• 15:50
  But the thing when it comes to as you're saying that in all
• 15:52
  different sports, you have different athletes that
• 15:56
  statistically might have the exact same statistics and both
• 15:59
  elite performers, but they might look entirely different.
• 16:02
  You look at, if you go back in football times, you look at
• 16:05
  Emile Heskey was once the the biggest transfer wage when he
• 16:11
  was playing at the height of his career.
• 16:12
  And then you take someone that's a little bit more modern if you
• 16:16
  take like Eddie and Hazard, who actually had a similar goal
• 16:19
  scoring season. But if you look at the two
• 16:21
  players, totally different heights, totally different
• 16:22
  builds, totally different weights and they move entirely
• 16:25
  differently. But the kind of the goal is
• 16:27
  still the same. So one thing that I know that
• 16:29
  you have to work with many, many different clients across
• 16:32
  different sports with is reverse engineering from the goal.
• 16:37
  What does that actually look like?
• 16:38
  If someone, an individual, an elite athlete comes to you, how
• 16:43
  do you break that down? And you mentioned the use of
• 16:46
  video and that sort of thing, but do you actually ignore that
• 16:49
  to begin with and then kind of work back towards that?
• 16:52
  It depends on what it's all about, what you know.
• 16:55
  So, so if I don't know anything, I'm making assumptions and, and
• 16:59
  what happens with experiences, those assumptions become more
• 17:02
  and more correct because, you know, this is intuition and,
• 17:06
  and, and what you understand. And again, I think this is true
• 17:09
  in any career, you know, in engineering.
• 17:10
  Is that something that would take you a ton of time to work
• 17:13
  out 20 years into your career? You just go, I know what the
• 17:16
  problem is now. And, and this is, this is kind
• 17:19
  of coaching thing and, and everything is, is reverse
• 17:21
  engineering in essence. And I was actually talking about
• 17:23
  this yesterday to somebody and we were talking about prep for
• 17:27
  bodybuilding shows. And there was always this thing
• 17:30
  and, and and I did this for quite a while.
• 17:32
  I prepped quite a lot of people for bodybuilding.
• 17:34
  And one of the differences that I had was the fact that I
• 17:37
  wouldn't give them this set time period.
• 17:39
  So everybody would come to me and got a 12 weeks prep.
• 17:42
  And it was just this norm across the Internet industry that's.
• 17:45
  Why I always hear noise amount of time?
• 17:47
  Last week, it's always 12 weeks and I'm like, well, it isn't 12
• 17:51
  weeks. It all depends on where you're
• 17:52
  starting from. So I might have somebody who's
• 17:54
  carrying loads more body fat than the next person.
• 17:57
  I might have somebody who's carrying way more muscle tissue
• 17:59
  than the next person. And ultimately, you know, that
• 18:02
  timeline is all about right, where do we need to be to win
• 18:06
  and how long is it going to take us to get there?
• 18:08
  So if you take an athlete, you know, we work with a couple of
• 18:11
  Olympic athletes and we do what are called quadricycles.
• 18:13
  Quadricycle is a four year training plan that you reverse
• 18:15
  engineer. So you start from really, where
• 18:18
  are they going to be? So what we'll do in a gold medal
• 18:21
  or wherever we anticipate they're going to be.
• 18:22
  So what would win a gold medal in four years time?
• 18:25
  And then we go, right, where are you now and how do we fill this
• 18:28
  gap in to ensure that you go from here to here?
• 18:31
  So you create this complex program and it's to do with
• 18:33
  periodisation and things like this.
• 18:35
  And we can talk about periodisation in a little bit
• 18:37
  because again, the relevance to the general population is very,
• 18:39
  very different to an elite athlete.
• 18:41
  So we reverse engineer this plan.
• 18:43
  Now there's going to be hiccups along the way.
• 18:45
  So they might have about a sickness, which means they fall
• 18:48
  behind, but but you're hoping that the person that they're
• 18:51
  competing against doesn't fall behind So constantly as you're
• 18:55
  looking at this timeline, you go, what are the things that we
• 18:58
  could do that they're not doing? And this is, this is a bit like
• 19:02
  looking for weaknesses. And that I remember I dealt with
• 19:04
  an American footballer who was over actually just for a short
• 19:06
  period of time actually, when they started doing NFL at
• 19:08
  Wembley. And it was his coach contacted
• 19:12
  me and said, hello, Phil, whilst he's there.
• 19:14
  He goes, I, I trust you. Can you, can you just look after
• 19:17
  him? I said, yeah.
• 19:18
  I said, I said, what do you want me to do?
• 19:19
  Then he goes figure it out. I was like, OK, so we got him.
• 19:23
  And incredibly weak in various areas.
• 19:26
  So one of the first things I do with athletes is I look for
• 19:28
  weaknesses. And again, I don't know whether
• 19:30
  engineering, this is the process and engineering.
• 19:32
  But if I'm looking at a structure that's already made,
• 19:34
  and I'm anticipating that this might be the case, but if I'm
• 19:38
  looking at a bridge that's already been made, what I'm
• 19:42
  looking for, I'm not looking for strong points because the strong
• 19:44
  points don't bother me. I'm looking for the weak points
• 19:47
  because the weak points, if I bring up the weak point, it
• 19:49
  improves the overall structure. So the strength of the overall
• 19:52
  structure is based on the weakest link.
• 19:54
  And we talk about this in, you know, chains.
• 19:56
  You know, I was talking to the military on Monday and, and we
• 20:00
  talked, we were talking about teamwork.
• 20:02
  And I said, look, what you've got to remember is that
• 20:03
  everybody within a a field of play.
• 20:05
  And we it was a helicopter division and obviously the
• 20:08
  helicopter division have the aircrew.
• 20:10
  Who are the pilots? They're the Top Gun, they're The
• 20:12
  Mavericks and the this that the other.
• 20:13
  So they, they have their flight bombers on and blah, blah, blah.
• 20:16
  So everybody below them feels a little, not quite significant,
• 20:21
  perhaps. So my first emphasis was to talk
• 20:24
  about the people below them with respect to the rankings and, and
• 20:27
  said, look, you're the person that's, you know, puts the
• 20:31
  screws and the bolts on the helicopters.
• 20:33
  And if you don't do your job well, they lose, you know, and
• 20:37
  it's the same with Formula One. Formula One, we've just started
• 20:40
  working with with one of the Formula One teams.
• 20:42
  And what they've done for years is they're focused on the
• 20:44
  drivers. So they'll do everything to get
• 20:46
  the drivers to perform and cognitively perform and sleep
• 20:48
  well and do all this stuff. They've gone well.
• 20:50
  Hold on, what happens if the pit crew aren't performing as well?
• 20:53
  Just. Gonna say yeah.
• 20:54
  What happens if the engine? What happens if the engineers
• 20:57
  are making a mistake? What happens if the guys who are
• 21:00
  looking at the Aerodomics aren't performing quite as well as they
• 21:02
  could cognitively, or they're tired, or whatever it might be?
• 21:05
  Maybe that genius decision that changes the profile of one of
• 21:09
  the wings or whatever it might be on the car that changes our
• 21:13
  entire performance. If you ever watch Braun, did you
• 21:15
  watch Braun? Yeah.
• 21:16
  So Braun, it was a it was a mechanical, it was an engineer
• 21:18
  that you basically said, look, they've given us these rules and
• 21:21
  I can manipulate and I can put this two way vent in the back of
• 21:23
  the car that makes the car infinitely faster than all the
• 21:25
  other ones on the on the track. And the beauty of that being
• 21:28
  that it was the same rule book for everybody, but it was one
• 21:30
  engineer who had. Been interpreted it exactly
• 21:32
  Yeah. And he was sharp right now, what
• 21:34
  if on that day, the night before, he hadn't slept well, he
• 21:38
  didn't ever came up with that idea?
• 21:40
  And this is The thing is, this is, this is how businesses, a
• 21:43
  lot of businesses are looking now.
• 21:44
  And they go and look, we're pushing the envelope with human
• 21:46
  performance. We're going to look at all those
• 21:48
  chain links. So business is a series of chain
• 21:50
  links. You got everybody from right
• 21:51
  down to the person that makes the tea.
• 21:53
  And, and you've got to consider that where are they now?
• 21:57
  Because that might be the person that comes up with this genius
• 21:59
  idea five years down the line that makes a massive difference
• 22:02
  in business. Because again, it's ideas, it's
• 22:04
  concepts, it's thought processes.
• 22:06
  Everybody's got a slightly different.
• 22:07
  So for us and, and again, often a bit of a tangent, but dealing
• 22:11
  with athletes and things like this, it was always about
• 22:13
  problem solving. So if I had an actor or an
• 22:16
  actress and, and I had one brief, which was we need him to
• 22:20
  look like he could kill somebody.
• 22:21
  And this was a guy, you know, fairly, fairly lean, fair,
• 22:25
  fairly sort of slender. And it was like, look, we've
• 22:29
  got, I think again, I think it was 12 weeks.
• 22:31
  Actually, I think it was 12 weeks.
• 22:34
  And I said, right, we've got to make you look like you kill
• 22:37
  somebody because he played an assassin.
• 22:39
  And I said, well, this isn't about making you bigger.
• 22:42
  It's about making key things because we looked at what he was
• 22:45
  going to be wearing because what he wears plays a role.
• 22:47
  And we can tweak what they wear to make them look a little bit
• 22:50
  different. You know, we can tap the waist
• 22:51
  and all sorts of stuff. So look, predominantly, what are
• 22:53
  you going to be wearing in this role?
• 22:54
  Are you taking your shirt off, blah, blah, blah.
• 22:57
  And he was wearing a suit for the majority of this album.
• 22:59
  I said right, so this is about your neck and your shoulders.
• 23:02
  So the solid it's about it goes, we can make your neck and
• 23:04
  shoulders look like a coat hanger.
• 23:08
  You know you're going to look aggressive and you're going to
• 23:10
  look dangerous. I said your legs doesn't really
• 23:12
  matter that much. You know, your arms don't really
• 23:14
  matter that much. And over 12 weeks, we can focus
• 23:17
  on a couple of body parts and not worry too much about the
• 23:20
  rest. Whereas he can't do that with an
• 23:21
  athlete because he create imbalances, you know, so we
• 23:24
  don't want to create an imbalance, but for somebody just
• 23:26
  for some physicality, I'm like at the end of that 12 weeks,
• 23:29
  he's going to get his million, several £1,000,000 for doing
• 23:31
  what he's doing. And, and he's going to look the
• 23:33
  way he wants to look. And now he's this adaptable
• 23:36
  actor and, and it's hugely beneficial.
• 23:38
  And it's a trade off. Like, look, the trade off's
• 23:40
  fine. Go structurally envy.
• 23:41
  You're going to have some problems, but I don't care.
• 23:44
  You don't care. I said at the end of it, we can
• 23:46
  do another 12 weeks and get those structures back, get
• 23:48
  everything back. Yeah.
• 23:49
  And this is the thing about, you know, bodybuilding and figure
• 23:52
  competitions, ultimately the end of it, most people end up with
• 23:55
  more problems than they started with.
• 23:57
  They look fantastic, but they've got big problems, particularly
• 23:59
  around their relationships with food and blah, blah, blah.
• 24:01
  So there's this process of you've got to go in, you know,
• 24:05
  do your show and you've got to get out, you know, and sometimes
• 24:09
  it's worth the trade off. It's like, can we push the human
• 24:12
  envelope? You know, and and I will say
• 24:14
  about things like stimulants and lack of sleep and blah, blah,
• 24:17
  blah. Can we do this once in a mile?
• 24:18
  Yeah, we can, but we can't do it all the time.
• 24:21
  So that nicely brings me into the next part I was going to
• 24:24
  talk about is the key things that are different for different
• 24:27
  competitive athletes. So if you take the example of
• 24:30
  yeah, in in Formula One teams, you've got the drivers who are
• 24:33
  driving not every weekend anymore, but most weekends
• 24:37
  throughout a given time period versus a bodybuilder who's going
• 24:40
  to get on show in 12 weeks time for the one day.
• 24:44
  So how does it come to I? I guess the routines need to be
• 24:48
  different for someone who's going to be competing that
• 24:51
  consistently and they might have different things that they need
• 24:53
  to take into account to make sure that they can recover
• 24:55
  quickly enough to get back out there and back on the field or
• 24:58
  whatever. What are the key things that you
• 25:01
  sort of take away when you're working with those entirely
• 25:04
  different sets of clients? It's, it's understanding when
• 25:08
  and where they they're, they're, how do you explain this?
• 25:11
  Their peaks are, so you're looking at essentially what you
• 25:13
  described there is you've got a single peak versus multiple
• 25:15
  peaks. The problem you've got with the
• 25:17
  multiple P, you can't, you can't and this is always something
• 25:20
  that people either take well or they don't, is you can't perform
• 25:24
  at 100%. You can't if you're an athlete
• 25:27
  that is doing something week and week out.
• 25:29
  You cannot work at 100% if you're doing a one off event
• 25:31
  100% all over. But but the problem you've got
• 25:34
  is that the the body isn't capable of getting back from
• 25:37
  100% in the time scale that you've potentially got.
• 25:40
  So if you're doing high rocks every week, the problem you've
• 25:43
  got is you've got a performance window, then you've got a
• 25:45
  recovery window. The recovery window doesn't
• 25:47
  match the performance window. You're going to get injured.
• 25:50
  So you might be able to do 3 and then you're just going to get
• 25:52
  injured. And this is the challenge that
• 25:53
  we have with, for example, in F1 where we're we're looking at
• 25:56
  what's the time period they've got between races.
• 25:58
  One of the big challenges they've got in between races is
• 26:01
  in between the race they might have a significant amount of
• 26:04
  trouble, which means we've got to climatise them.
• 26:06
  So we've got what we call phase shift.
• 26:08
  We have to phase shift them to put them in the time zone that
• 26:10
  they're going to be racing in. Otherwise they've got jet lag
• 26:13
  and jet lag is hugely detrimental to human
• 26:16
  performance. So we got those factors.
• 26:19
  So when we're looking at these, these singular peaks versus
• 26:21
  multiple peaks. And I remember one of the
• 26:23
  bodybuilders I dealt with and he came to me and he goes, oh, my
• 26:26
  plan is I'm going to do this show, this show week after and
• 26:29
  this show week after this said, I said we can only peak for one.
• 26:33
  I said, so I can't guarantee you'll be at your best of the
• 26:35
  first one, but I can guarantee you'll be the best of the last
• 26:37
  one. If we guarantee you're going to
• 26:39
  be the best for the first one, the problem is we're going to
• 26:41
  struggle to hold on to that condition for the next two.
• 26:45
  I said, So it's entirely up to you what we do, I said.
• 26:47
  But I think we can get you into good enough condition to win the
• 26:50
  first one, win the second one, I'm winning the third one, but
• 26:52
  your peak at the third one. And as it happened, that's what
• 26:55
  we did. We won all three and it was this
• 26:57
  thing of, look, if we can get you here, we've then got to
• 27:00
  sustain it and we've got to maintain it.
• 27:01
  And one of the challenges you have with bodybuilding is it's
• 27:03
  this thing where people build up to it, build people build up to
• 27:06
  it. And then the second they've
• 27:07
  competed, they then switch off. And ultimately bodybuilding is a
• 27:10
  large part is about nutrition. And that first switch off that
• 27:13
  they have is I just want to go and binge on a lot of food.
• 27:16
  And ultimately for him, it was this thing of you can't do that
• 27:20
  because you've only got to wait till the next one.
• 27:22
  You know, we can, we can have a little bit of leeway, but
• 27:25
  ultimately that was just loading up on carbs a little bit more.
• 27:28
  But we can't go off tangent if two or three days because we're
• 27:31
  never going to get back. So it's all about that, you
• 27:33
  know, what's the duration in between?
• 27:35
  Hence why we've seen this massive movement in in sport and
• 27:40
  performance towards recovery because ultimately those peaks
• 27:44
  and how high those peaks can be on a repetitive basis depends on
• 27:48
  what we do in between the peaks and in between the peaks.
• 27:51
  It really isn't about training, it's about how will it recover.
• 27:55
  Yeah, and. With recovery, obviously there's
• 27:57
  the inclusion of things like rest days and understanding how
• 28:00
  to actively recover at times as well.
• 28:03
  But the big thing, and I don't know if I'm, I could be quoting
• 28:07
  you and I say this, but I have heard and you might also tell me
• 28:10
  that I'm wrong, that if sleep wasn't a thing that everyone in
• 28:14
  the world did, it would probably be a banned sort of substance if
• 28:18
  it was considered as a substance that was the.
• 28:20
  Yeah, that was, I think it was Russell Foster that said that.
• 28:23
  Yeah. So I mean, is there actual fact,
• 28:25
  Is there truth to that in terms of?
• 28:27
  Absolute, absolute truth. To us, sleep is sleep is the
• 28:32
  key. And this is what my experience
• 28:34
  throughout the industry and ultimately what brought me to,
• 28:36
  to the Human 24 brand is that throughout my entire career, we,
• 28:40
  we were always looking at what can we do to get the edge on
• 28:44
  somebody, whether that be through nutrition, supplements,
• 28:47
  training, recovery modalities. It could be, you know, I had an
• 28:52
  athlete I worked with who slept in a hypoxic tent.
• 28:54
  So we're, we're adding all these little things up to get them to
• 28:57
  this, to the same point. And then it was this thing of
• 29:01
  we're just missing this massive aspect, which is sleep.
• 29:06
  The majority of people that I dealt with, in fact, not the
• 29:09
  majority, every single person that I dealt with, I can't think
• 29:12
  of anyone who had good sleep and had problems with their sleep.
• 29:17
  And I was like, look, this is this performance parameter that
• 29:19
  if we can nail it isn't just margins, we're moving, we're
• 29:23
  moving significant numbers here. And this is this unfortunate
• 29:27
  mentality that we're having, particularly around business, is
• 29:30
  that people look at volume over quality.
• 29:35
  So they think, look, if I sleep 4 hours, it means I can work
• 29:38
  for, you know, 20 hours instead of looking at if I sleep for 8
• 29:43
  hours, I can perform better for the other 16, you know, and that
• 29:47
  performative, you know, piece is way better than it would at 20.
• 29:52
  And they also then don't get the other challenges that the lack
• 29:56
  of sleep brings, which is a heightened injury risk, mental
• 29:59
  health problems, metabolic health problems, cardiovascular
• 30:02
  risk goes up. So we've got all these health
• 30:04
  factors as well that go out the window.
• 30:07
  So it was this missing elements. So, so, you know, I wanted to
• 30:11
  focus when, you know, when we started even 24, I was like,
• 30:14
  look, this isn't about margins anymore.
• 30:16
  And This is why sports nutrition didn't really excite me very
• 30:19
  much because in sports nutrition, we know what works.
• 30:22
  They've known what works for a long time.
• 30:24
  There's not much innovation. Ultimately, we're trying to move
• 30:26
  performance markers on a physical level, but what you've
• 30:29
  got to remember with sports performance is we can look at
• 30:31
  performance supplements, IEA supplement that you can take,
• 30:34
  there's an ergonicate. It's going to make your
• 30:35
  performance better. But what we've got to remember
• 30:38
  is the large part performance is what you did before it and what
• 30:41
  we did before it are things like, you know, macro nutrients,
• 30:43
  micronutrients, eutropics, adaptogens.
• 30:47
  We've got all of this stuff that we can play with in between
• 30:50
  those performances to enhance recovery, to enhance sleep, to
• 30:54
  enhance cognitive function to, to, to regulate stimulation
• 30:58
  levels. So we can do all this stuff in
• 31:01
  between. So it's like, hold on, this is,
• 31:03
  this is a really exciting space. You know, it's an area that we
• 31:06
  can really focus on, but doesn't just move the needle slightly,
• 31:10
  it moves it significantly. You know, the average,
• 31:12
  statistically they, they reckon the average professional athlete
• 31:15
  gets five to six hours sleep a night.
• 31:18
  Now, that's, that is, if you drop that down by another hour,
• 31:21
  hour and a half, that person's walking around cognitively like
• 31:24
  they're drunk. You know which is a problem,
• 31:28
  right? I can, I can vouch for that.
• 31:29
  I mean, being at university and again, having done some
• 31:31
  different sports at very, very different levels, I remember
• 31:34
  doing an all nighter for some coursework at university and
• 31:38
  around sort of 5-6 in the morning, I feel almost hungover.
• 31:44
  And just before that I've had a really weird spell where
• 31:46
  everything's really funny and it is like you said, it's almost
• 31:49
  like being drunk. It's a very, very strange
• 31:52
  phenomenon. And then when you push past that
• 31:53
  and young and dumb stupid enough to go and you know, think that's
• 31:57
  fine to do before competing and you might get away with it on
• 32:02
  the other occasion when you're depleted like that.
• 32:04
  But consistently, your performance just goes so
• 32:07
  downhill from the standpoint that you're your brain, even
• 32:10
  though you think that you might be okay, it's just not able to
• 32:13
  react as quickly as it. Should in certain circumstances,
• 32:15
  and we're in realms there of delirium psychosis.
• 32:18
  We're in huge realms and like you say, once in a while that's
• 32:23
  okay. The human body is capable of
• 32:24
  that, but people are doing this repeatedly.
• 32:27
  So we talk a lot about social jet lag.
• 32:29
  So social jet lag is, is when somebody takes their normal
• 32:32
  biological rhythm, which is their work and sleep time, and
• 32:35
  they massively disrupt them. And ultimately you end up with
• 32:37
  the same symptomatic problems that somebody's jet lag to have.
• 32:40
  And, and This is why shift work is, you know, shift work's a non
• 32:43
  carcinogen. So shift work is when you're
• 32:46
  moving this rhythm constantly back and forward.
• 32:49
  But people socially have and culturally have done this for
• 32:52
  years on, you know, on a Friday night, they go out, they, they
• 32:55
  stay out late and then they sleep in the next day, then they
• 32:58
  go out late the night after and then sleep in again the next
• 33:00
  day. And then they get to Monday and
• 33:02
  it's this whole Monday morning thing, but they're jet lagged.
• 33:05
  The jet lagged. They haven't flown anywhere.
• 33:07
  But biologically their body clock is out by three, 4-5
• 33:10
  hours. They're waking up in New York,
• 33:13
  you know, and then going to work cognitively, you know, not
• 33:16
  functioning. This is why we see statistics
• 33:18
  around things like car accidents go up on a Monday morning
• 33:20
  because people aren't switched on.
• 33:22
  They're not cognitively performings.
• 33:24
  They don't, they don't function very well and it might take them
• 33:26
  two or three days to re acclimatise and get back to
• 33:29
  where they were before. Now their, their performance on
• 33:32
  Thursday is fantastic, but then on the Friday, what do they do?
• 33:34
  They do all, again, you know, and The thing is the culture's
• 33:37
  changing around performance because, you know, I go into, I,
• 33:40
  I did a talk at the Bank of America to the FX and trade in
• 33:43
  the university. So these are the upward and
• 33:44
  coming traders. And, and I always ask this
• 33:46
  question when I'm talking to a big audience because I'm, I'm,
• 33:49
  I'm just interested. And I always ask how many people
• 33:51
  in the audience drink, you know, drink alcohol on a regular
• 33:54
  basis. And if you go back 10 years, it
• 33:57
  would have been a unanimous hands up.
• 33:59
  Now 75% don't drink in these kind of organisations and the
• 34:05
  more formal these organisations seem to be, the more apparent it
• 34:09
  is they don't touch drink or alcohol or drugs.
• 34:13
  And it's, and it's just a, it's just a standard norm.
• 34:15
  Yeah, you still get into culture.
• 34:16
  So you look at rugby players 10 years ago, rugby players 10
• 34:20
  years ago, all on a weekend, all went out and got drunk.
• 34:22
  Yeah, that's what they did in Big Town.
• 34:24
  And then the professional aspect of the sport came in and they're
• 34:27
  like, well hold on, we can't do this anymore, you know.
• 34:30
  And yes, probably a lot of them still drink because again, they
• 34:33
  were brought up in that culture, but they don't do any level of
• 34:37
  frequency like they used to or the volume they used to.
• 34:40
  I, I definitely myself, I've never been hugely like keen on
• 34:45
  drinking as if anything that I did when I was at university.
• 34:47
  I very much see different forms of alcohol.
• 34:49
  If you take like a cider, for example, as a similar option to
• 34:52
  like a Coke, it's just a different flavour that I choose
• 34:55
  to have, which means that I don't drink very often.
• 34:58
  When I do, if it's a lovely sunny day and I'm on the beach,
• 35:00
  maybe I will. But I do immediately notice the
• 35:03
  impact that two, maybe 3 pints of cider will have, not only on
• 35:07
  my sleep, but on my then ability to perform in my standard gym
• 35:11
  sessions the following day. And it's something that I then
• 35:15
  actively not try and avoid for that reason.
• 35:17
  But that's the reason that I won't just have one when I'm
• 35:20
  around on my own because I know that.
• 35:22
  Oh, as much as it might be a nice favour at the time, the
• 35:25
  lasting impact of that could be a lot worse again once in a
• 35:27
  while and get away with it. And and these are where people
• 35:30
  start to understand statistics, people using wearable text,
• 35:33
  Garmin Zoo, Ros, woops, whatever are are actually seeing this is
• 35:37
  a detrimental thing that happens.
• 35:38
  And you know, alcohol is a is a compound.
• 35:41
  It's a compound that is huge detrimental, has very little in
• 35:45
  the way of benefits. It has a social facilitation
• 35:47
  that ultimately, I will always argue for alcohol in many
• 35:50
  respects, social facilitation, because a lot of society now
• 35:54
  struggles with social facilitation.
• 35:56
  So ultimately, if it can take the edge off that it has
• 35:58
  benefits, but you've got to weigh up the benefits versus the
• 36:01
  the pros versus the cons, right? So, you know, for as if, if, if,
• 36:05
  if I want to have a drink and I want to enjoy drinking, it's a
• 36:08
  hot day or whatever it might be and I just fancy cold, cold
• 36:11
  drinking. If there's an alcohol free
• 36:12
  option, I might take that because I want the flavour, I
• 36:14
  want the taste, I want the occasion.
• 36:16
  And I always say it's a bit like coffee is that coffee being has
• 36:19
  phenomenal benefits to it. But what we also know is that
• 36:22
  the vast majority of benefits that we get from the coffee bean
• 36:25
  we can get without the caffeine. So you can use decaffeinated
• 36:28
  beans and get exactly the same benefit.
• 36:29
  We just take the compound that might be offending your
• 36:33
  Physiology if taken at the wrong time of day.
• 36:37
  So if you want to wake up in the morning and and you know,
• 36:39
  caffeine doesn't favour well with you, remove the offending
• 36:42
  compound. Keep the occasion, keep the, you
• 36:45
  know, there's a beautiful coffee machine sat behind you there.
• 36:48
  And I'm like, look, if if you purchase this beautiful coffee
• 36:51
  main and you want to go through that ritual of grinding the
• 36:53
  beans and doing this and savoring in blah, blah, blah,
• 36:55
  you've then got to understand, do I want the offending compound
• 37:00
  in there? Do I want the caffeine in there?
• 37:01
  Because I can remove that really easily.
• 37:03
  And This is why the alcohol free space is massive.
• 37:05
  People want to go out, they still want the occasion.
• 37:07
  They don't want to go out with their friends.
• 37:08
  They still want to have a gin, but they don't want to have the
• 37:10
  alcohol. So they have an alcohol free
• 37:13
  gin. So they get the occasion, they
• 37:15
  get the flavour, they get the taste, they feel like they
• 37:17
  always used to feel. They just don't get drunk, you
• 37:20
  know? And This is why the space is
• 37:22
  growing and and and ultimately rapidly growing.
• 37:25
  I think there's a massive conflict as well with the
• 37:27
  understanding of these different things because in daily life
• 37:30
  there is the benefit that caffeine gives.
• 37:33
  You mentioned about Monday morning, you almost had this jet
• 37:35
  lag where someone's coming from New York, they're making it to
• 37:37
  work, they feel tired, they'll immediately jump for a cup of
• 37:40
  coffee, if not get it on the way into work or even first thing
• 37:43
  when they get out of bed. But you've got that, which is
• 37:46
  now something to be demonized with the amount of caffeine that
• 37:49
  gets consumed. But also we have the
• 37:52
  understanding that caffeine is one of, as you corrected me just
• 37:56
  before we started recording 5 important supplements, I could
• 37:59
  remember four of them. So you've got caffeine, you've
• 38:01
  got beta alanine, you've got creatine, you've got sodium
• 38:04
  bicarb. And now I've just nitrates,
• 38:08
  nitrates. That's the one which I've
• 38:09
  actually started using myself recently for my own performance.
• 38:12
  So those are five things which are legal, which you can take,
• 38:16
  which are proven to improve your performance.
• 38:19
  But I'm aware that there is also, as with anything further
• 38:23
  science into that. There are timings to these
• 38:25
  things, yeah. So because you work with various
• 38:29
  different clients and athletes with these different
• 38:31
  supplements, what are the main takeaways from those 5
• 38:36
  specifically or other supplements that you
• 38:38
  recommended? Well it all depend.
• 38:40
  Firstly we've got to look at the goals, goals of the athletes.
• 38:43
  So so for example, nitrates and betrana 9 are are very specific
• 38:48
  to to a goal. Creatine crosses the the bridge
• 38:51
  of most goals and most people should be taking creatine in my
• 38:54
  view. It's a nutrient that's hugely
• 38:56
  beneficial to human beings and where they're typically very
• 38:58
  deficient in cognitive output. There's been some massive
• 39:02
  studies with respect to kids and utilising creatine and again,
• 39:06
  cognitive development and we're also in cognitive decline in in
• 39:10
  older individuals. So creatine's a phenomenal
• 39:12
  supplement. Caffeine is phenomenal
• 39:13
  supplement. It's an incredible ergogenic
• 39:15
  aid, does its job very well, but ultimately it's a central
• 39:17
  nervous system stimulant. And the problem we have with
• 39:20
  caffeine is it's misused and abused because it's a stimulant,
• 39:23
  right? You know, so, so somebody taking
• 39:25
  caffeine too close to bed is going to damage their sleep.
• 39:28
  You damage your sleep. Ultimately you, the reliance on
• 39:31
  caffeine goes up. Does that make sense?
• 39:33
  It just becomes this eternal loop because we see this in, in,
• 39:36
  in cultures and remember all the time we're looking at as a brand
• 39:40
  and as a, as a coach, I'm always looking at occasions.
• 39:44
  So if I'm coaching someone, I've got, you know, I've got a, I've
• 39:48
  got a single bloke, he's got no kids, he's got no dependence.
• 39:50
  He hasn't got another half. He lives on his own.
• 39:53
  You know, I can basically get him to eat anything because none
• 39:58
  of it's in conflict with his lifestyle.
• 40:01
  So, so as long as he's committed to that, he, he's going to eat
• 40:04
  what I give him. Now put some kids into mix.
• 40:07
  Now he's got to consider that he's got to spend some time with
• 40:10
  his kids. He's got to have an evening meal
• 40:12
  with his kids. He's now got another
• 40:14
  consideration. So as a coach, I've also got to
• 40:16
  consider that. And what happens in the coaching
• 40:18
  environment is people don't do that.
• 40:19
  Coaches are whatever defined as bad coaches.
• 40:22
  They don't look at people's circumstance, you know, So if
• 40:25
  I've got an athlete, a pro athlete who dominated at the the
• 40:28
  the height of their sport for years and years and years, then
• 40:31
  all of a sudden they've got kids, their occasion and their
• 40:34
  situation has completely changed.
• 40:36
  Which means my process of coaching has to change, doesn't
• 40:39
  have to compromise, has to adapt different things, right?
• 40:43
  People say, oh, you, you're not going to be able to do this
• 40:46
  because now you've got this and you've got that and blah, blah,
• 40:48
  blah, might know, you've just got to change your approach.
• 40:51
  And this is the thing with, you know, utilizing supplements is
• 40:55
  all depends on the approach, all depends on the outcome that
• 40:56
  you're looking for and all depends on really what you're
• 40:58
  trying to achieve at the end of it.
• 41:00
  So caffeine out of those five, so sodium bicarb we'll talk
• 41:04
  about in a second because that's another one.
• 41:05
  But but and sodium bicarbs, the sort of one you don't want to
• 41:09
  get wrong. I was.
• 41:09
  Going to say yes it could be explosive.
• 41:11
  Yeah. It could be detrimental, but,
• 41:13
  but, but ultimately we know it works, but it's getting the
• 41:15
  dosage right. And and when we talk about
• 41:18
  dosage, we talk also talk about timing.
• 41:20
  Dosage and timing kind of sit under the same umbrella is that
• 41:23
  if we get the dosage of timing wrong of a lot of these, they
• 41:25
  don't really do the job very well.
• 41:26
  And caffeine's one of those is that we just don't, we don't
• 41:30
  dose it very well and we don't get the timing right because the
• 41:32
  dosage needs to be very specific to an individual.
• 41:35
  And that dosage could be very specific to their, their life
• 41:38
  stage. It could be very specific to
• 41:39
  their output. If you've got somebody and, and
• 41:41
  I always talk about like the vessel.
• 41:43
  So if you think about the nervous system, so it's the
• 41:45
  central nervous system stimulant.
• 41:47
  So if we think about all the things that stimulate our
• 41:49
  nervous system, that's fill in that bottle.
• 41:51
  So if we think about digital exposure, so digital exposure 20
• 41:55
  years ago barely existed. Right now we've got this massive
• 41:57
  digital exposure which adds to this ball.
• 41:59
  So with digital exposure, then we've got pressure at work, then
• 42:02
  we've got pressure at home and, and again going back on that
• 42:04
  lifestyle thing is that if they don't have a family or kids,
• 42:08
  there is no pressure at home. If they don't have a job, there
• 42:10
  is no pressure job. If they've got no financial
• 42:12
  worries, there is no financial worries.
• 42:14
  So we've got to consider everybody's kid and go right,
• 42:16
  what does this look like? Now if I've got somebody with a
• 42:19
  full bottle, nervous system is jam packed full and I give them
• 42:22
  caffeine, it overflows the bottle.
• 42:25
  If they haven't got care in the world and they take caffeine,
• 42:28
  you feel a nice little buzz in the yam where they're there.
• 42:31
  So, so the effect is very, very different in different people.
• 42:34
  But what we've got now is we've got a society where our nervous
• 42:36
  systems are jump at full. So caffeine now has to be
• 42:40
  considered way more than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
• 42:43
  So we've got to be very strategic about it's use.
• 42:45
  And unfortunately with this, with Society of extremes where,
• 42:49
  you know, I talk to someone about caffeine management and
• 42:51
  they go, I'm quitting caffeine. Well, hold on, caffeine's really
• 42:55
  useful, which you could be clever about when we use it, use
• 42:58
  it and don't abuse it. And this is this is the same
• 43:01
  with with anything. It's it's not a more is better
• 43:03
  scenario. And this is the mentality around
• 43:05
  work we were talking about before.
• 43:06
  People like the longer I'm a work, the better.
• 43:09
  No, actually, statistics sellers, that's incorrect is
• 43:12
  that we're looking at quality of quantity.
• 43:14
  And you know, you'll hear people quote this through, but they
• 43:17
  selectively quote it to things. They're quite happy to
• 43:20
  compromise, but they don't utilise the same sort of
• 43:23
  modality across their entire, you know, lifestyle, I guess.
• 43:28
  But but yeah, it's about timing. And then the sodium bicarb has
• 43:32
  always been a dosage thing. If you get it slightly wrong,
• 43:34
  you mistime it, it, it can create gastrointestinal
• 43:38
  problems. And yeah, it's so sure.
• 43:40
  Yeah, quite literally. Yeah, very, very well used.
• 43:42
  But very effective at what it does.
• 43:45
  So my understanding with things like nitrates, the basement line
• 43:50
  and the sodium bicarb is it facilitates in sort of removing
• 43:53
  this lactic acid or lactate. Is that wrong?
• 43:57
  That's my top level knowledge, no?
• 44:00
  Sodium bicarb's a lactate buffer.
• 44:02
  OK, so it slows the production, in essence slows the production
• 44:05
  or it stops it getting to a 10 point quite as efficiently.
• 44:08
  But lactate, again what we've discovered with lactate, lactate
• 44:11
  isn't the problem, lactate is actually we can utilise it as a
• 44:14
  fuel source. The problem is, is over
• 44:15
  accumulation and not getting rid of it fast enough.
• 44:18
  So again, being a buffer, what it does, it slows down the
• 44:21
  essentially the, the production and the uptake and blah, blah,
• 44:24
  blah. So sodium bicarbacs, the buffer
• 44:27
  betrayalanine and nitrates work largely on things like blood
• 44:30
  flow. So, so they help us with getting
• 44:32
  nutrients where they should be. So again, when we, if you think
• 44:36
  about the niacin, everybody's used B3A flushable B3 and they
• 44:41
  used to use these as supplements all the time because when people
• 44:43
  take supplements, people want to feel something.
• 44:46
  So obviously caffeine, you feel something.
• 44:48
  But niacin used to make people's skin flush.
• 44:51
  There's another compound called vanadyl sulfate they used to use
• 44:53
  years ago. So they just whack it in
• 44:55
  supplements to, to make people go Wham feel tingle and, and
• 44:59
  they think something's happening.
• 45:01
  It doesn't always mean there's something beneficial.
• 45:02
  And ultimately blood flow to the surface of your skin isn't
• 45:04
  really going to help you very much unless you're looking at
• 45:06
  cosmetics. But you know, each one of them
• 45:09
  serves a slightly different purpose.
• 45:10
  So, so there's a buffering elements of some of them, which
• 45:13
  helps us with the fuel systems, then azine, trifest, phospho,
• 45:16
  creatine, and then we've got ones that help us with certain
• 45:19
  metabolic pathways. AM, PKM, Tor.
• 45:22
  And again, these are different pathways for different types of
• 45:24
  athletes. So it's a bit nitrates, for
• 45:26
  example, good example with powerlifters is powerlifters
• 45:30
  taking nitrates before lifting. It's crazy because what it's
• 45:34
  going to do, it's going to engorge the muscle with blood,
• 45:36
  which you don't want to do. Bodybuilders want to do that,
• 45:39
  power lifters don't. So when you take a, you know,
• 45:41
  when we look at these typical pre workouts and most of the pre
• 45:43
  workouts are based around stimulants and nitrates,
• 45:47
  normally arginine or something like that.
• 45:49
  And when you combine them, if, if the bodybuilding workout
• 45:52
  you're doing where you're trying to engorge, you know, blood and
• 45:55
  nutrients into the muscle and, and flood it, that's great
• 45:58
  because we're looking at tissue breakdown in powerlifting.
• 46:00
  You're trying to actually avoid that in strongman, you're trying
• 46:03
  to avoid that in endurance athletes, you're trying to avoid
• 46:06
  that. You know, you don't want to an
• 46:07
  endurance athlete dragging blood and nutrients to it because
• 46:10
  again, they get the pump and then they get problems.
• 46:14
  So it's it's strategic. When and where?
• 46:16
  Where is nitrates? For a power lifter, you'd
• 46:19
  probably take the nitrates either late at night or you take
• 46:21
  the first thing in the morning, not around your performance.
• 46:25
  OK. Well, I've got more questions
• 46:26
  about sleep, but I'm aware that we've had some listener
• 46:28
  questions. So again, if you're new to the
• 46:31
  format or new to this episode, then the Mindsets podcast likes
• 46:35
  to have listener involvement. So before I record with a guest
• 46:39
  or before any of our other episodes, there are
• 46:41
  opportunities through the interim story to pop questions
• 46:43
  in, pop your statements in, and we'll include them in the
• 46:45
  episodes for you guys to listen back to you.
• 46:47
  So the first question comes from Darius and Darius wants to know
• 46:50
  is training in the morning or evening better?
• 46:54
  I often refuse to answer this because unless I'm dealing with
• 46:59
  elite populations, it's more important that you train.
• 47:02
  And the problem that you have is that if you start telling people
• 47:05
  when the best time. And again, I've just been
• 47:06
  talking about time and so I'm kind of contradicting myself
• 47:08
  here, but there are certain things that need to be timed.
• 47:10
  And yes, there is a, a better type of exercise that can be
• 47:13
  done at different times of the day.
• 47:15
  And, and normally the way we look at it is we will look at
• 47:18
  more endurance based stuff in the morning and we look at more
• 47:21
  strength based stuff in the evening.
• 47:23
  So if we're depending on those pathways that we're talking
• 47:25
  about. And again, AM PKAMPK has a half
• 47:28
  life of about 67 hours, M Tor has a half life about 15 hours.
• 47:31
  So again, if you go into endurance training, you do it in
• 47:34
  the morning and then about 7-8 hours later, you then do your
• 47:37
  strength training. And, and that also conforms with
• 47:40
  security biology and that we know that most people strength
• 47:42
  peaks at around about around about 8 to 10 hours into their
• 47:47
  day normally peaks. So, so we can normally play
• 47:50
  around with those windows and and train a different time.
• 47:52
  But what's the best time to train is when you can would be
• 47:57
  the response, you know, because again, there's also the argument
• 48:00
  about training when your body isn't actually any good.
• 48:04
  That makes sense. Which?
• 48:05
  Actually, yeah. The next question is from Tom
• 48:08
  and Tom said should I change my training intensity based on my
• 48:11
  sleep or use caffeine such pre workout to kind of?
• 48:14
  Fill the hole. Should you use, should you
• 48:16
  change the intensity based on sleep?
• 48:17
  Yes. One of the standard questions I
• 48:19
  used to ask as a coach was I'd always ask my clients how their
• 48:22
  day has been. And obviously prior to that, you
• 48:24
  know, how was your night? Did you sleep well?
• 48:26
  Did you, you know, did you sleep well?
• 48:27
  How are you doing? You know, if they had stressed
• 48:29
  to the Max and didn't sleep well, I'd take the training
• 48:31
  volume down. You know, it was just an
• 48:33
  immediate thing. It was obviously there's no real
• 48:35
  science behind it. It was just, I'm not going to
• 48:38
  train you as hard because there's a high likelihood I'll
• 48:39
  break it. Because remember, I'm always
• 48:41
  pushing the envelope with clients.
• 48:42
  I'm pushing them hard. And if I push them really hard
• 48:45
  and then body's not really ready for it, I'm going to damage
• 48:48
  them. If I damage them, they're not
• 48:49
  training for weeks. You know, I'm not getting paid.
• 48:52
  I don't train for weeks detrimental for them,
• 48:55
  detrimental for me. So, so I would never do that.
• 48:57
  So yes, I would always alter it based off sleep.
• 49:00
  I'd be a little bit subjective about using tools like garments
• 49:05
  we observers, because the sleep data isn't great on them.
• 49:09
  It's, it's subjective. Each one of them collects, they
• 49:13
  all use the same PPG. They still use the same
• 49:18
  measuring device. They just interpret the data
• 49:20
  differently. So, so the most accurate data
• 49:23
  that we can get from these devices is actually the HIV.
• 49:27
  So HIV is super, super accurate on them.
• 49:31
  So base things more on HIV than necessary on sleep scores,
• 49:34
  because sleep scores, sometimes it'll tell you, look, your sleep
• 49:37
  score is really low, you shouldn't train and you might
• 49:39
  feel amazing, you know? So just take them with a little
• 49:42
  bit of pinch of salt. So HIV being horrid variability,
• 49:45
  yeah, for those people that maybe their watch doesn't track
• 49:48
  it or they don't have a watch, what is a low HIV indicating
• 49:53
  versus a an optimal or high HIV? Again, a little bit subjective
• 49:58
  because again HIV tends there is a genetic opponent, there's
• 50:01
  there's elements that would mean that somebody has a baseline
• 50:04
  that's slightly lower than every else is, but ultimately looking
• 50:07
  for a higher HIV indicate better recovery.
• 50:10
  And it's looking at your autonomic nervous system, it's
• 50:12
  look at nervous system and it's balance between essentially your
• 50:16
  fight or flight, your sympathetic system and your
• 50:18
  parasympathetic system. So again, a lot of the stuff
• 50:20
  that we look at, so when we're looking at stimulant management,
• 50:22
  someone looking at caffeine management, caffeine management
• 50:25
  is about not stimulating your parasympathetic, your rest and
• 50:28
  digest system when it's not meant to get stimulated.
• 50:31
  And we talked earlier the, you know, before we came on camera
• 50:33
  about food and eating windows. And this is the problem is that
• 50:36
  if you eat in a parasympathetic state, your digestive system
• 50:40
  kicks by open and wakens right back up again.
• 50:42
  And the body's not really designed to do that, you know,
• 50:46
  So, so when when we're in this rest and digest system.
• 50:48
  So again, just to kind of do with that.
• 50:50
  When we start our day, when we wake up, our body turns on our
• 50:53
  sympathetic system. Normally bracketed is a fight or
• 50:55
  flight response, but it isn't really, it's just an awake
• 50:58
  response. The fight or flight is
• 51:00
  referenced to if we get put in a dramatic situation, the body
• 51:03
  will ramp up court at all and various other bits and pieces
• 51:06
  that will put us in a situation where we can either fight or we
• 51:09
  can run away. It's a heightened state of
• 51:10
  arousal. It's hyper arousal.
• 51:13
  So our body can adapt that very, very quickly based off an
• 51:15
  outcome or based off a chemical that we've consumed.
• 51:18
  So if I consume, remember we talked about the full bottle.
• 51:20
  If I consume a bunch of caffeine and that bottle's already full,
• 51:23
  that's what we call hyper arousal.
• 51:25
  If you haven't got a care in the world and you take some
• 51:26
  caffeine, that's just arousal, you know, So we've got to be
• 51:29
  very careful about what step we get into.
• 51:31
  And this is particularly relevant in neurodivergent
• 51:34
  populations because they're, they have a very small vessel in
• 51:37
  essence, their window is very small.
• 51:39
  So, so going back to the question, there's certainly
• 51:45
  you'd need to adapt your training to how you feel and how
• 51:48
  you've recovered. And then what was the second
• 51:49
  part of the question was about stimulant?
• 51:51
  Yeah, about replacing. So rather than necessarily
• 51:54
  changing the intensity because he's out of had sleep said what
• 51:56
  if I just replaced it with caffeine or pre workout?
• 51:59
  Again, the same sort of thing is that is that a pre workout?
• 52:02
  Again, let's just put caffeine under that window because most
• 52:04
  pre workouts are caffeine based on the absolute nitrates or
• 52:07
  whatever it might be. And again, I hopefully answered
• 52:09
  that question before, but caffeine is the half life of
• 52:13
  metabolic half life of caffeine is about 6 to 8 hours, which
• 52:16
  means that we don't really want to be consuming after from the
• 52:20
  moment we wake up, which which in the terms that we talk, we
• 52:22
  talk about time 0. So time 0 allows us to talk to
• 52:26
  multiple people. So if I'm talking to an
• 52:28
  audience, if I said, if I made a broad assumption that everybody
• 52:31
  in the audience just all got up at the same time, that's kind of
• 52:33
  stupid because they're not going to.
• 52:35
  So I just talk about time 0. So time 0 is when you wake up
• 52:38
  and you expose the optic nerve to light, it's time 0.
• 52:40
  Now from now, we've got to can set certain rules around that.
• 52:43
  So we because of the half life caffeine, we know that after the
• 52:47
  first six hours past time 0. So if you have time 0, what's
• 52:50
  your wake up time? It's usually around 5:30.
• 52:53
  Right. So 5:30, so you add six hours
• 52:56
  and that's your cut off window for caffeine, which allows your
• 53:00
  body enough time to metabolise it.
• 53:01
  So therefore it doesn't disrupt one of the key chemicals for
• 53:03
  sleep, which is adenosine. Caffeine's an adenosine receptor
• 53:06
  antagonist. So it stops adenosine reaching
• 53:08
  the brain, which is how it reduces sleep the the feeling of
• 53:12
  sleep pressure. So what we would do is we'd we'd
• 53:16
  have a cut off of six hours post time 0.
• 53:20
  So for one person, it might be if they get up at six, it's six
• 53:23
  hours after that, get up at 5-6 hours after that.
• 53:25
  It's always the same rule you would need.
• 53:27
  So we can apply this to a bunch of people because as long as we
• 53:30
  grasp the concept of time 0. So if, if you're training
• 53:34
  between time zero and six caffeine, yeah, cool.
• 53:38
  I would probably your three to four hours in today is probably
• 53:42
  kind of the peak of caffeine if you're going to have a second
• 53:44
  dose or anything like that. And then after that point,
• 53:47
  there's no more caffeine, there's no more stimulants
• 53:49
  because what your body's doing is your body's at that .8 hours
• 53:52
  into your day, your body's starting to get itself ready for
• 53:55
  sleep. So it's shifting to what we call
• 53:57
  a parasympathetic state. So it's getting ready to calm
• 53:59
  down. And this is how we look at peaks
• 54:01
  with respect to people working. We know when the optimal
• 54:03
  cognitive window is for people to work.
• 54:05
  And there is some sort of variances between people with
• 54:08
  chronotype and various little bits and beats.
• 54:10
  But it's normally, you know, the the the peak of cognitive output
• 54:13
  is normally in those morning hours.
• 54:15
  It's, it's almost hilarious how well these questions are falling
• 54:18
  into each other. Catherine's question was sleep
• 54:21
  hacks for early bedtime. She actually messaged me kind of
• 54:25
  around this topic basically saying she needs to get up early
• 54:28
  for work. It's a new shift pattern that
• 54:29
  she's on. She's not working shifts.
• 54:31
  It's consistent but she really really struggles to go to bed
• 54:35
  early enough to get the amount of sleep required.
• 54:39
  Doom scrolling, standard things, or just struggling to be able to
• 54:42
  force you early. Have you any hacks for trying to
• 54:44
  adjust yourself to be able to get into bed earlier?
• 54:47
  Forget about clocks because when we start clock watching and when
• 54:51
  we start looking at clocks, so we start to determine our sleep
• 54:53
  time by a time of day. It's not a time of day, it's a
• 54:56
  duration time from time 0. So again, kind of sits quite
• 55:00
  nicely to what we're explaining. Sorry, what was the lady's name?
• 55:03
  Catherine. Catherine.
• 55:04
  So if Catherine's time 0 now has moved from 7:00 to five, her
• 55:10
  bedtime has now moved back two hours as well.
• 55:13
  Because what we've got is we've got a 16 hour work window and
• 55:16
  we've that gives us the 8 hours sleep that we need
• 55:18
  physiologically. So if we look at the 16 hour
• 55:21
  window, we take our time 0, we'll be plus 16.
• 55:23
  So now what we've got is we've got whereas before her habit and
• 55:27
  behaviour might sat in that window, she's just moving all
• 55:29
  the habits and behaviours and just going, they're now there.
• 55:32
  So with respect to going to bed early, what's she defining as
• 55:36
  early? She's not going to bed early.
• 55:38
  She's going to bed at the same time.
• 55:39
  If we talk about relative hours, she's going to bed at the exact
• 55:42
  same time. It's just the fact that she will
• 55:43
  look around and go, well, that TV show isn't on.
• 55:46
  That's normally on at 10:00 PM. And instead the TV show that's
• 55:49
  on at 8:00 PM is, is on right now.
• 55:51
  So all these things that she thinks are thrown out the
• 55:54
  window, they're not. So the, the behaviours and the,
• 55:57
  the sleep hygiene's essentially when people refer to sleep
• 56:00
  hygiene, it's a series of habits that you have on the run up to
• 56:03
  bedtime. So that might last an hour and a
• 56:04
  half, you know, so you have an hour and a half of things that
• 56:07
  you do. So one of the first things you
• 56:09
  might do is you might get your device and you might put your
• 56:11
  device down. So you reduce the amount of
• 56:13
  cognitive stimulus. So you put your device down.
• 56:16
  You might put the telly on, you might be very selective as to
• 56:19
  what you put on the telly. So you've now picked something
• 56:21
  on TV that isn't creating this emotional response.
• 56:25
  And you know, this, this stimulus.
• 56:27
  And I always say, look, when we look at what we do at night,
• 56:31
  you've got to think about things that stimulate arousal.
• 56:33
  If it stimulates arousal, you probably want to avoid it.
• 56:37
  If it's something that you can't curate, you probably want to
• 56:40
  avoid it. So emails, I can't control who's
• 56:43
  going to e-mail me. So if I can't control who's
• 56:45
  going to e-mail me and I go and look at my emails, chances are
• 56:49
  this going to create an emotional response that doesn't
• 56:50
  coordinate with my biology for sleep.
• 56:53
  So what do I do? I avoid my emails.
• 56:54
  So for the last hour and a half of my dear, I don't look at my
• 56:57
  emails. For the last hour and a half of
• 56:58
  my dear, I don't do scroll on my device because again, I don't
• 57:02
  get to control what's being put in front of me.
• 57:04
  Somebody else is controlling that.
• 57:05
  And again, depending on what I've looked at previously
• 57:08
  depends on what will come up and what I was looking at earlier on
• 57:10
  in the day isn't going to he's going to stimulate me in a
• 57:12
  different way at night. You were made.
• 57:14
  So I almost want to shut down all the excitable and the, and
• 57:17
  just get some calming stuff. So there's those behaviours.
• 57:21
  So there's all these things. And then in that you've got
• 57:23
  cleaning your teeth, washing your face, you know, whatever
• 57:25
  you might do. And all you're doing is just
• 57:26
  moving that routine. You need to bring them back a
• 57:28
  couple of hours. So sleep hygiene just is put the
• 57:31
  sleep hygiene in an hour and a half before you go to bed or
• 57:34
  plan to go to sleep. So, so when we look at shift
• 57:37
  workers, it's the same thing. Shift work is just look, one of
• 57:40
  the key things we've got to control with shift work is light
• 57:42
  exposure. So we might look at them
• 57:45
  utilising things like what we call biocentric lighting, or
• 57:47
  they might use like a device that emits blue light into their
• 57:51
  optic nerve so we can kid the body when it's daylight.
• 57:54
  So, so I can get someone up at, they get up at, we just did some
• 57:57
  work with the Royal Navy and, and they have a shift pattern.
• 58:00
  They get up at 4:00 in the afternoon and finish at 2:00 in
• 58:02
  the morning. And there's all this, oh, you
• 58:04
  know, this, this kerfuffle around, you know, I said, no,
• 58:07
  you just moved your day. I said, now your working days
• 58:11
  4/2, you know, and, and if we restructure it all, you can
• 58:14
  actually spend just as much time at home.
• 58:17
  So what we'd do is we'd map out blocks.
• 58:19
  So if you think about sleep, sleep is a series of blocks.
• 58:22
  So a sleep cycle is 90 minutes. Human beings need about 5:00 to
• 58:26
  6:00 sleep cycles. So we'll, we have at 55 gives
• 58:28
  you 7 1/2 hours of sleep. Perfect.
• 58:31
  So if I treat your sleep cycles as just blocks, doesn't matter
• 58:35
  where I put the blocks, I've got five blocks I can move around.
• 58:39
  So somebody who's shift working, we're just moving the blocks, so
• 58:42
  we're giving them little windows.
• 58:44
  But in around those windows, I can't just go, there's a 9
• 58:46
  minute block, you need to sleep for 9 minutes there.
• 58:48
  I've got to think about the preparation for sleep beforehand
• 58:51
  and I've got to look at the the coming out of the sleep at the
• 58:53
  other hand. So, so this is where we can
• 58:54
  intelligently use stimulants or we can use things that the
• 58:57
  modalities that help us calm down or some breath work or
• 59:01
  whatever it might be that might stimulate the parasympathetic
• 59:03
  system. But we've also got stuff at the
• 59:04
  other end that can stimulate the sympathetic system.
• 59:06
  That's where stuff we're very good at.
• 59:08
  You know, if you think about the morning when we wake up, most of
• 59:11
  us wake up to an alarm, right? What's an alarm?
• 59:13
  An alarm's an anxiogenic happening.
• 59:16
  It means it's a horrible one, stimulates anxiety levels.
• 59:19
  Now, if you take your phone that you inevitably have your alarm
• 59:22
  on and just change the noise, now it's not as stressful.
• 59:26
  So you've just taken 365 days a year where you're going to get
• 59:29
  up to this thing that goes to get up to something that sounds
• 59:32
  like bird noises. You've just reduced your stress.
• 59:35
  Mine is straight on vibration now.
• 59:37
  I like being working up to vibration because it's so much
• 59:39
  better than hearing something and trying to figure.
• 59:41
  Out what it is, a lot of the devices use haptics, so you get
• 59:43
  a haptic vibration on your on your on your wrist.
• 59:46
  So we're trying to find ways to wake ourselves up that don't
• 59:49
  create stress or an angiogenic state.
• 59:51
  What's the next thing people do inevitably, their alarms on
• 59:54
  their phone, they pick their phone up, temptations there.
• 59:57
  But what they do is they look at the emails, angiogenic.
• 59:59
  It's stress inducing, you know, because you don't look at the
• 1:00:02
  good emails, you look at the bad emails.
• 1:00:03
  You're like, oh, this is pending, this is pending, this
• 1:00:05
  is pending, this is pending. So now what we've done is we've
• 1:00:08
  just increased our stress levels and anxiety levels and we're
• 1:00:11
  only, oh, less than a minute in Toraday.
• 1:00:14
  The next thing we do is we go downstairs and we grab a cup of
• 1:00:16
  coffee, which is an angiogenic compound.
• 1:00:20
  So what we've done for the first, you know, 18 minutes of
• 1:00:23
  our day is we've just ramped our stress up three, threefold.
• 1:00:27
  And one of the funny things is biologically what's your body
• 1:00:30
  doing in the morning for about the first hour, it's increasing
• 1:00:33
  your stress hormones to turn on your sympathetic system.
• 1:00:36
  And what we've done is we've just blown out of the water.
• 1:00:38
  So there's all these things that throughout the day we can look
• 1:00:41
  at balancing out and just making a little bit more palatable
• 1:00:43
  really for the human being. And, and this is essentially
• 1:00:46
  what we looked at. So, so for Katherine, it's just,
• 1:00:49
  it's just take the behaviours and just move them.
• 1:00:52
  Stop looking at the what the the clock and going, you know, I
• 1:00:55
  can't go to bed at eight, 8:00 PM, but you can go to bed 16
• 1:00:59
  hours after you woke up because that's the time you've always
• 1:01:01
  gone to bed to move everything. You're just going to move
• 1:01:03
  everything. And light becomes a big factor
• 1:01:05
  there. So if somebody's getting up
• 1:01:06
  early, we've got to find a way. And This is why the space of
• 1:01:09
  biocentric lighting, as I said before, I was speaking at the
• 1:01:13
  Royal Navy on, on, on Monday. And for example, submarines,
• 1:01:16
  submarines used biocentric lighting throughout their entire
• 1:01:19
  vessels because it alters mental health, physical health,
• 1:01:22
  cognitive health, just because these people don't get daylight.
• 1:01:25
  And what they've done is they've started to put them into things
• 1:01:28
  like attack helicopters and blah, blah, blah, because they
• 1:01:30
  know that if they coordinate a light with somebody's biological
• 1:01:33
  rhythm, they perform infinitely better.
• 1:01:35
  And this is the height of, and a lot of this data is coming from
• 1:01:38
  NASA. So, So what we've got, because
• 1:01:41
  one of the problems you have with astronauts is they don't
• 1:01:43
  see the sun in the same way that we do.
• 1:01:45
  So, so they've been working on that for a long time.
• 1:01:47
  So a lot of this data comes from, again, NASA elite military
• 1:01:51
  performance, blah, blah, blah. But what we're doing is we're
• 1:01:54
  just not applying this to our datas.
• 1:01:56
  And this is the thing, and I was talking to them about it.
• 1:01:57
  I was talking to, you know, 200 and something people, many of
• 1:02:00
  which are just, they're, they're engineers, they're mechanics.
• 1:02:03
  And I'm going to look the, you're applying this technology
• 1:02:05
  to these pinnacles of human performance, but you're just not
• 1:02:09
  doing it to yourself. And it's a really easy solution.
• 1:02:12
  You're to switch out a couple of bulbs in your house to
• 1:02:14
  biocentric bulbs Is, is easy. So wherever you wake up, switch
• 1:02:18
  the bulbs out, put some biocentric bulbs in and just
• 1:02:20
  press on. As far as your body's concerned,
• 1:02:22
  the sun's shining. You know, because technology
• 1:02:25
  kind of screwed this for us because when we invented the
• 1:02:27
  candle and then we invented the, the, the light bulb, all of a
• 1:02:30
  sudden we were like, well, we can get up whenever we want, but
• 1:02:34
  ultimately the body wasn't biologically getting the
• 1:02:36
  stimulus it needed. And so we're.
• 1:02:38
  Having to come back round. Yeah, we're going full circle
• 1:02:40
  and we're like, look, if and the cool thing about shift work is,
• 1:02:42
  is I can, if I can control light with shift workers, I can
• 1:02:45
  essentially kid their body into realising that it's just their
• 1:02:48
  time and it's just night time. You know, all the we do a lot of
• 1:02:52
  work in hospitality and and sleep tourism is now a big
• 1:02:56
  thing. So sleep tourism.
• 1:02:57
  So all these hotels, these high end hotels are all bringing in
• 1:03:00
  pillow menus, they're bringing in mattress menus, they're
• 1:03:03
  bringing in biocentric lighting across the whole facility.
• 1:03:07
  They've got full blackout in all the rooms.
• 1:03:09
  They've got temperature regulation.
• 1:03:11
  So when we look at what we call Zika, but things that regulate
• 1:03:13
  your biological rhythm, temperature is super high on
• 1:03:15
  there, exercise is super high on there.
• 1:03:17
  And light is the top of the list.
• 1:03:19
  You know, So if you regulate light, you regulate temperature,
• 1:03:22
  and you regulate, you know, exercise, we're winning, you
• 1:03:26
  know, keep. It always consistent as well.
• 1:03:29
  Amazing. Well, that concludes the
• 1:03:30
  listener questions section. The next part as we get towards
• 1:03:33
  the end of the episode, I feel like I've drained so much
• 1:03:36
  knowledge from you already and there's so much I would carry
• 1:03:38
  on. But the the next part is the
• 1:03:41
  three pieces of advice section, which I usually ask to guess, to
• 1:03:43
  reflect on their lives and some of the lessons they've learnt,
• 1:03:46
  usually through their performance.
• 1:03:48
  But I'm aware we've spoken a lot today about your knowledge and
• 1:03:51
  the work that you do with athletes as well.
• 1:03:54
  But from your own perspective, looking back, as you know a Co
• 1:03:57
  founder of a very successful business as an athlete yourself,
• 1:04:01
  but having so much of this knowledge, if you could give
• 1:04:03
  three pieces of advice to a younger version of yourself, or
• 1:04:06
  three different versions of yourself, what would those quick
• 1:04:08
  pieces of advice be? It's always a tricky 1 because
• 1:04:12
  again, it depends on what perspective we look at it.
• 1:04:14
  I think a general piece of advice will be be very careful
• 1:04:19
  who you listen to. I'd be a lot more selective as
• 1:04:22
  to who I took advice from and who I who I listen to and, and
• 1:04:26
  take a lot of things. I'm face value with a pinch of
• 1:04:29
  salt. I guess.
• 1:04:31
  I think social media is teaching people a lot about this.
• 1:04:34
  Is that what you perceive on a surface level of somebody isn't
• 1:04:37
  really what you know, what really sits in the background.
• 1:04:40
  So, you know, you look at LinkedIn, Linkedin's full of
• 1:04:42
  successful business people, but in essence, probably 90% of them
• 1:04:46
  are on their arse. You know, and, and I know this
• 1:04:48
  from, you know, my experience with some of these businesses
• 1:04:51
  where the businesses look on the surface like they're super
• 1:04:53
  successful and they're doing great things.
• 1:04:55
  And obviously the, the, you know, the, the owners of the
• 1:04:58
  business and the founders of the business are telling you, you
• 1:05:00
  know, we're doing this and we're amazing, we're doing, but
• 1:05:03
  ultimately they're, they're not doing as well as they perceive.
• 1:05:05
  And I think this human beings in general is most human beings.
• 1:05:08
  They have this facade of, oh, I'm doing really well on a
• 1:05:10
  mental and physical perspective, but actually they're not, you
• 1:05:13
  know, and I think there's an empathy level of it and that
• 1:05:16
  brings back to coaching, I guess.
• 1:05:17
  So I think that would be the first one, would be just be very
• 1:05:20
  selective as to who I listen to and who I took advice from.
• 1:05:22
  I think would be the first 1-3 pieces of advice, wasn't it?
• 1:05:26
  Yeah. It's difficult to to think of
• 1:05:30
  the wrong spot. I will.
• 1:05:31
  Give you credit for that, I think.
• 1:05:32
  I think probably the second one will be, you know, to to back
• 1:05:34
  myself more. I've always struggled with,
• 1:05:38
  again, you know, some people define it's things like imposter
• 1:05:41
  syndrome, but in essence, you know, it it a lack of belief in
• 1:05:45
  my own ability. I think backing yourself is a
• 1:05:49
  big thing and it's very difficult to do.
• 1:05:50
  I think it's very difficult to, you know, really have that
• 1:05:53
  confidence and to be able to back yourself with whatever you
• 1:05:56
  do. And I think as I get older, I do
• 1:05:58
  it more. I really and truly believe in
• 1:06:02
  what I set myself out to do because I think as you get
• 1:06:05
  older, you've made so many mistakes.
• 1:06:06
  You know that I'm doing this and there's less mistakes.
• 1:06:09
  And I think that enables and facilitates your backing
• 1:06:12
  yourself a little bit more. And I guess the third one is
• 1:06:17
  akin. I guess the first one is, is be
• 1:06:21
  very wary about who you surround yourself with, which it's
• 1:06:26
  similar to the first answer, but I think this is more on a social
• 1:06:28
  level is that, you know, there's a lot of what we do in life is
• 1:06:32
  driven by who we surround ourselves with and the cultures
• 1:06:35
  that we drop ourselves into. And this is something that as a
• 1:06:38
  coach and somebody who does what we do with human is we are
• 1:06:41
  constantly dealing with cultures.
• 1:06:45
  And again, I use the term occasions before.
• 1:06:47
  We're dealing with cultures and occasions the vast majority of
• 1:06:50
  the time when it comes to coaching.
• 1:06:51
  So you've got to be very selective about your occasions.
• 1:06:53
  We talked about alcohol before. Is that that I have occasions
• 1:06:58
  that are of the magnitude that I am going to have a drink, but
• 1:07:03
  but they are of a significant magnitude.
• 1:07:05
  You know, it's like my best friend's birthday or, you know,
• 1:07:08
  it's a wedding anniversary or something like that.
• 1:07:10
  And even then, because my wife and me are very, you know,
• 1:07:13
  we're, we think very similar, even with something like our
• 1:07:18
  wedding anniversary, we might just look at each other and go,
• 1:07:20
  do you fancy drink? Nah, not so much.
• 1:07:22
  And and we won't really care for it because it doesn't really
• 1:07:24
  change anything. It doesn't change dynamic with
• 1:07:26
  us. We're not the, the, you know, a
• 1:07:27
  couple that needs to get drunk to have a laugh and have a
• 1:07:30
  giggle. It was, you know, so I think
• 1:07:32
  that's part and parcel of that sort of final question is just
• 1:07:35
  be just be very wary about who you surround yourself with
• 1:07:38
  because again, that your that culture that you put yourself
• 1:07:42
  into really drives where you go as an individual, I think.
• 1:07:45
  Awesome. Very, very good piece of advice
• 1:07:47
  that hopefully the listeners will be able to take some from,
• 1:07:49
  even though it's technically to a younger version of your
• 1:07:50
  health. And the last part of the
• 1:07:53
  forecast is the guest to guest question.
• 1:07:55
  So the previous guest that I had on was Katie.
• 1:07:57
  She cycled around the entire coastline of the UK and raising
• 1:08:01
  money for mental health charities.
• 1:08:03
  Her question is actually a bit rogue, but is if you could have
• 1:08:06
  any superpower. What would it be?
• 1:08:12
  Wow, yeah, it's a bit like, it's a bit like the question that you
• 1:08:16
  would ask. They do the the pageant kind of
• 1:08:20
  the pageant queen question. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:22
  Like, oh, wool peace. And you know, it's like what,
• 1:08:25
  what would you define as, I guess if we go go down the route
• 1:08:28
  of what I would define as superpowers and things like
• 1:08:30
  this, it's kind of flying laser beams from my eyes and things
• 1:08:33
  like this. Interestingly, I asked Katie
• 1:08:36
  what she thought, and she said I obviously, like you said, there
• 1:08:39
  was thinking of flying invisibility.
• 1:08:41
  Yeah. She went for the ability to be
• 1:08:42
  able to breathe underwater because she's fascinated by sea
• 1:08:45
  life, which is one that I think is fair enough, but I hadn't
• 1:08:48
  really considered as, yeah, that is actually a superpower.
• 1:08:51
  It is. Yeah, but I would counter that
• 1:08:53
  one because again, again ocean, the problem is with being able
• 1:08:57
  to breathe underwater is that you've also got to be able to
• 1:08:59
  see underwater. Once you get past a certain
• 1:09:02
  depth, you can't see anything. So I'm like, look, there's loads
• 1:09:04
  to explore, but you can really explore the shallow level
• 1:09:08
  anyways. So it's not like not to throw a
• 1:09:10
  spanner in the not to throw a spanner in the worst Kitty on
• 1:09:12
  that one. But but I'm like, yeah, I like
• 1:09:14
  that, but it would get boring very quickly, I think.
• 1:09:17
  Yeah, fair enough. Whereas I think, I think flying,
• 1:09:20
  I think flying always has to go, go, you know, because there's so
• 1:09:24
  many things you could do with it.
• 1:09:25
  You could travel, right? Yeah.
• 1:09:27
  Fly travel. But again, the ability to fly,
• 1:09:29
  you've got to be able to have the ability to fly pretty damn
• 1:09:32
  quick because I was going to. Say, who's to say there's not a
• 1:09:35
  lot of effort involved in flying?
• 1:09:36
  Yeah. But again, it's that thing of,
• 1:09:38
  look, if I'm going to fly across the Atlantic, I'm like, how
• 1:09:41
  long? How long is it going to take me?
• 1:09:42
  Yeah, true. Because really, that's going to
• 1:09:44
  get boring pretty quickly. It's a bit like, you know, when
• 1:09:46
  you're desperate to pass your driving test and then very
• 1:09:49
  quickly realized driving isn't actually all that much more, You
• 1:09:53
  know, unless you stick a car in a track and start, you know,
• 1:09:56
  it's I think flying probably has the best capacity there.
• 1:10:01
  I think that's, and then there's stuff like, you know, if you, I
• 1:10:04
  guess some visibility and stuff like this are all interesting,
• 1:10:07
  but I think that's just if you've got immense paranoia, I
• 1:10:10
  think. Invisibility.
• 1:10:10
  Invisibility would be horrible. I wouldn't want to know if
• 1:10:13
  someone started talking about me and I.
• 1:10:15
  Yeah, I think it would just create immense paranoia.
• 1:10:17
  I think from a criminal, a criminality perspective, I think
• 1:10:20
  invisibility will be phenomenal. Amazing.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah, I'd be like. But again, flying could also
• 1:10:24
  come into that as well. Laser beams could also come into
• 1:10:26
  that. So so I think you always have to
• 1:10:29
  think with with the superheroes that am IA good superhero.
• 1:10:31
  I'm a bad superhero because I could do some really bad things
• 1:10:35
  with and, and bad things as in, I mean, stealing stuff or, you
• 1:10:40
  know, making yourself incredibly worth wealthy by robbing banks
• 1:10:43
  or flying in through whatever. But yeah, I think anyways.
• 1:10:47
  Flying. Awesome.
• 1:10:48
  Well, good, good answer. And I need to take a question
• 1:10:51
  from you for the next guest. So what would you like to ask
• 1:10:55
  the next guest without any context as to who it's going to
• 1:10:57
  be? Oh, I think there's been loads
• 1:11:03
  of food ones out there. Interestingly so my Co host on
• 1:11:06
  the alternative, the alternate episodes where we talk about
• 1:11:09
  performance, he came on 1st as a guest and his question was
• 1:11:15
  what's better doughnuts or cheesecakes?
• 1:11:16
  But that is really the extent of the food question.
• 1:11:19
  Really I would thought a lot of people would have gone on the
• 1:11:21
  food one because again, it's a nice, nice topical and I've been
• 1:11:24
  on a few podcasts where people it's a standard question they
• 1:11:26
  have like about type toppings on burgers or pizzas or whatever it
• 1:11:30
  might be. Well, feel free to go with that
• 1:11:33
  if that's what you want to run down.
• 1:11:34
  Yeah, I think I might. I think I might go with that.
• 1:11:39
  It will be, I think, the one meal for the rest of your life.
• 1:11:44
  Every single meal. That's what I'm saying.
• 1:11:46
  There's only one meal you can eat.
• 1:11:49
  Can't serve food. OK.
• 1:11:50
  Because then it's like, who wants to eat the same?
• 1:11:52
  Well, who wants to eat the same meal?
• 1:11:54
  Or, but if there's one meal that you would never ever get bored
• 1:11:57
  of, what would it be? I'm going to ask you what yours
• 1:11:59
  would be. I'll have to really think about
• 1:12:02
  that, to be honest. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:12:05
  I'll leave that to the next guest that's going to be on,
• 1:12:07
  then I'll give them a bit of time to think about it.
• 1:12:09
  And it all depends on the consequence of the food as well,
• 1:12:12
  because obviously if it's a really tasty, bad, nasty food,
• 1:12:15
  if I'm going to eat it for the rest of my life, my life's
• 1:12:17
  either going to be shortened because of that.
• 1:12:19
  That's actually, that's the challenge, isn't it?
• 1:12:21
  Isn't it? OK, Like it's got to be healthy,
• 1:12:23
  but it's also got to be tasty as well.
• 1:12:24
  I'll make sure they consider those things.
• 1:12:26
  Yeah, that's a biggie. That's an excellent question.
• 1:12:28
  Thank you very much, Phil, You're welcome.
• 1:12:30
  If there's anything else you'd like to mention, obviously we've
• 1:12:32
  spoken today about human, but if I will put all of the links to
• 1:12:36
  human in the description and also your Instagram tag and bad
• 1:12:40
  with that, but if there's anything else.
• 1:12:42
  Nothing more to add. Amazing.
• 1:12:44
  Thank you for having me. I'm aware, I'm aware that you
• 1:12:46
  have got plenty more people to talk to and give information on.
• 1:12:49
  So I will I'll round up and I want to say massive thank you to
• 1:12:53
  all of you that are listening or watching on the YouTube.
• 1:12:55
  If you haven't already, If you could drop a follow a like a
• 1:12:58
  share or even drop a five star review, it'd be incredible over
• 1:13:02
  on Spotify or wherever you'll listen to this.
• 1:13:04
  That would be amazing. But otherwise, I look forward to
• 1:13:07
  seeing you all in the next episode.