Skip to main content

Biohacking Your Body

Lesson 9 from: Achieve Ultimate Human Performance

Ben Greenfield

Biohacking Your Body

Lesson 9 from: Achieve Ultimate Human Performance

Ben Greenfield

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

9. Biohacking Your Body

Lesson Info

Biohacking Your Body

I am ah I'm always a little bit wary of using the word bio hacker because it sounds all big and scary and sci fi but uh everything I'm going to show you guys today is actually really just super easy to implement into your lifestyle and the cool thing is that as science progresses, things become more and more readily available to us as consumers that really only only geeks and nerds and you know, people who spend long, long long periods of time playing world of warcraft would've had access to and now we can all play around with this stuff so whenever I'm looking at bio hacks and whenever I'm showing you guys some of the stuff that I'm about to show you I always kind of approach things from the perspective of questioning whether or not it might actually be healthy for my body s o I'm always a little bit careful when it comes to stuff that produces a lot of electromagnetic frequencies and that we get exposed to anyways from from wifi routers and wireless signals and cell phones and you kn...

ow, some kind of careful with that stuff and try and keep things as natural as possible but what we're going to be doing over the next little bit is I'm just going to demonstrate to you guys some of the stuff that I use and give you a chance to see it in action and I kind of chunk my bio hacks in the specific categories like the category of performance is one category that will show you and then also recovery um fat loss is another category that I like to buy a hacker's well asleep and those are some of the biggies well, we'll get into a little bit of self quantification into a little bit more detail that we didn't get a chance to cover during the how to test your body section but we'll just jump right in and I'll take your guys these questions as we go so what we'll start off with are some of the bio hacks that I like to use for performance so let's talk about first of all my snorkel, my altitude training mask and my power long now you guys are all familiar I'm sure with red blood cells and the fact that they carry oxygen to tissue in our bodies and when we want tio increase the capacity of a red blood cells to carry oxygen or increase the number of red blood cells that we have anything like that, we need to put our lungs under stress or we need to put our body in the presence of reduced oxygen availability so here's a here's a bio hack that I like to use for this so and some of these things at all that'll show you I'll refer to bio hack stacks that's when you stack one thing with another thing so this is an elevation training mask and by the way all put most of this stuff that ben greenfield fitness dot com slash creative live if you want to go check out links there and I have everything categorized into performance and recovery and fat loss and stuff like that. But this is one that I will not put on and remember the studio audience because my saliva is all over inside if it but what it comes with our special valves that you can take in or put out that allow you to adjust to anything from nine thousand up to eighteen thousand feet of resisted aaron take it's not true reduced partial pressure of oxygen in the air that you're breathing but it's simply resisted error. So if I want to make something really hard let's say I have a favorite hike that I go on and I want to just destroy that and have that put his much fitness into my body as possible will put on this mask simply goes on just like this you may not be able to hear in to well through the audio alright to do my best bain include the nation so you actually want to forcefully breathe out and then engaging of deep diaphragmatic breathing as you do this meaning you should feel the sides of your rib cage expands now when I like to combine this with waited back now, when you combine in altitude training mask with a weighted vest and you take something like this on a hike or during a workout it's an awesome way to take something it might be like your normal backyard hike and get way fetter way faster. I know my wife who has her hand up, is probably gonna ask, you know, what kind of looks people give you on the trail? Because I do wear this thing when I'm out on the trail where the grandma's walk their dogs and south but was that what you were going to ask you about your bomb squad? You do have got to be careful going through with this stuff, so I took twenty five pounds out of this way. His best we want. Try this on let's. Let's get uh um uh who's a volunteer, jeff, you don't try it. Okay? All right, here we go. Of course the biggest guy in the audience had to come up traveling weighted vest will get the we'll get the least the least reaction here. Basically, the way to best goes on like this. Um, put your arm through there they go and you can actually secure it pretty well here by coming around the backside, um, looks like it's kind of a pawn in the back there we go, just like that now. I took twenty five pounds out of this, so this is a twenty five pound vest that you're wearing right now. You could put this on for housework, doing less. You just want to lose fat. You could put this on during the day and just wear it around in your body actually burned significantly higher number of calories, but you're also forced to do a lot more work. You're going to find that all your postural muscles start to kind of slouch a little bit. Will you wear it? So you gotta focus on standing up straight, but a weighted vest like this will cost you anywhere from fifty to seventy bucks on amazon. Something like this is about seventy to eighty dollars, and these two put together are really great stat for increasing fitness, is it? I mean, you know, if we completely screwed up your mic right now putting that on you, but I'll take it off and then and then ask you how you feel, move around a lot. I won't make you do any squats or anything like that. I'm going you could see how this would be going up a hill or a trail that would do it particularly. With the mass exactly exactly what you put the mask on and you restrict air flow. You subject yourself to this weight it's it's a pretty cool little hack for fitness so that's one that I really like um and that's just basically hypoxia combined with external weight bearing so another form of hypoxia if you're a swimmer and this is one that I like to combine with cold thermo genesis. So this is really good in the spring, or like the early fall, if you have access to cold water because cold thermo genesis, which I hinted at earlier, is a really, really good way to decrease inflammation to decrease the levels of that hsc aarp to boost your metabolism, to increase your pain, tolerance and increase production of what's called end apathy. Leal nitric oxide synthes or he knows and in offices what's responsible it's like it's it's, one of the active components of viagra, it's responsible for vase, oh dilating muscle or in gorging a muscle with blood. And so when you do cold thermo genesis, you train your body howto have better cardiovascular movement. And so I conduce I poxy training where I'm increasing my red blood cell count or increasing the oxygen carrying capacity of my blood by using a front mounted snorkel like this. Usually when you buy this, this is made by a company called phineas and it's, just a front mounted historical that attach is like this that you wear while you're swimming. Ok, see you just in order, but he can also purchase a restrictive has called a cardio cap that you could put on top of it, so when you put a cardio cap on top of it, it makes it way harder to breathe through the snorkel. Now you're doing hypoxic straining this is a really cool hack for triathletes or for people who are swimmers want to get like bigger lungs, but it works for for anybody, andi, even if you don't know how to swim, you just do your basic dog doggy paddle doing this, combining this with cold thermo genesis they're doing it on its own really, really great way to do hypoxic training through resisted breathing and it's again a simple, cheap, effective performance bio hack so it's called a phineas front mounted snorkel. I'll go through a couple of other the hypoxic bio attacks here they will take a few questions because I'm sure they're starting to pile up anybody seen one of these before? It's a power long so this is something that you can literally keep in the dashboard of your car you can increase or decrease resistance to ex elation by turning the dial and you could increase or decrease resistance to inhalation by turning the dial. But essentially, the way that you use it is you put it in your mouth and again, this is of that breathed on, so I don't have anybody else try it out. But you breathe out for about three seconds, and then you breathe in for about three seconds again engaging in deep diaphragmatic breathing on your feet, all your interpretation and extra torrey muscles work as you breathe in and out of the power long. And this is again a cheap and effective bio hack. I think these air about sixty to seventy bucks that you can basically just keep, like in in your glove compartment at your office, and a workout with this is considered ten breaths of three seconds in duration. Okay, so you do do ten times three seconds in three seconds out, a little bit sexier looking that then, you know, breathing through a small coffee straw and is actually a pretty significant amount of resistance that you feel when you use one of these things. So they do make there's a company called hypoxic. Oh, and they make actual hepa air filters attached to generators I've got one in my garage that will actually suck the oxygen out of the air. And give you reduced oxygen availability in the air that you breathe same as you would on a mountain top. It even came with the tent over the king size bed that jessa will not let me put in our bed because for some reason, gettin jiggy eighteen thousand feet is not something that she likes the idea of onda also it's a huge ugly ten over our bed but basically you can put that mask on and where well you're say running on a treadmill well, you're working and that one's made by hypoxic oh it's more expensive those units are like several thousand dollars or several hundred dollars a month to rent, but that's a way that you would get true like hypoxic breathing and get that that same kind of oxygen carrying enhancing response and red blood cell increase so those are just a few of the performance by perhaps I'll keep going here in just a second, but let's take a quick break for questions on any of that stuff or comments. Yes, I know a lot of people have difficulty understanding difference between diaphragmatic breathing and sucking in your stomach tio quitting sucking in your stomach is not cool it's not a good idea I just had a lady named katie bowman on my podcast you're a really nice book called um I believe the name of the book is alignment matters and she talks about how sucking in our stomach actually just compresses all of our organs and actually creates a really unnatural environment, and we should instead try and just maintain a normal hip alignment will breathing from deep within the belly. So it's okay, if you have a little bit of the belly as you're breathing in and out, one of the best ways to teach yourself how to do deep diaphragmatic breathing is to get those little balloons and allying. You're back on the ground to try and keep your low back pressed against the ground while you're lying on your back on the ground. So you down in this position and you actually practice blowing up a balloon and then letting the air out of it while you're in this position that does a really good job training your respiratory and extra torrey muscles, I have an article also on the internet. I write articles for a site at quick and dirty tips, dot com and there's, an article called how to breathe right way where I give six other exercises similar to that one that were really well, all for teaching and how to engage in deep diaphragmatic breathing. You also know I have this habit of, like sticking my thumb and my pinky out like this if you just put your pinkie. On the hard bone right here in the front, your hips and your thumb underneath your rib cage, and then just think about getting taller and expanding that section of your stomach, then that automatically puts you into a position where you're more likely to engage in that deep diaphragmatic breathing and take a few deep breasts were feeling that area expand and that's a really good way to train yourself to do it as well. So, yeah, any other questions? I have a question sure myself, I'm a little curious about I understand how these tools would be good if you are, you know, a swimmer or runner or doing endurance turns sports and trying to increase lung capacity, but how is something like this help you? If you're looking to do strength, training or speed training, is that all kind of intertwined? These air things that you could combine with strength and speed training in some cases, but for example, speed I mentioned to do that fresh and really focus on it or a muscular turnover, and I'll show you an electro stem device that can be used a little bit to enhance speed. But speed is not necessarily something to do with wearing a weighted vest or resistance training mask, whereas strength would be when we talk about, say, better mental performance. By engaging in deep diaphragmatic breathing using a power long using an elevation training mask maybe going for a swim every now and again in cold water using a front mounted snorkel your brain oxygenation goes up significant which helps to fight brain inflammation and can hope to keep you more productive and aware during the day so oxygenation is not just about physical performance it's about mental performance as well so we're doing these little hacks to improve our cardiovascular status there's a big payoff when it comes to just our productivity throughout the day so I never I thought a lot of these devices were kind of silly frankly up to as early as a year ago for some of these things like the power along the elevation training mask then once I started using them and feeling like I'd grown a third lung now I'm sold like I love this stuff and it's a huge part of my training now um I love taking friends on high it's making them where that the elevation training mask the dirty dirty little trick so here's a couple other cool little things that you can use have you guys ever seen the trick where you want tio shake someone's hand and give them a really for firm handshake? Does everybody know the trick? How to do that like if you have trouble having like a limp handshake, you squeeze your fist behind you you squeeze your fist behind, you contract your fist and then you squeeze that person's hand and gives you a really nice firm handshake and that's because when you contract certain muscles of your body it activates other areas of your body and there's a pair of running grips and they're even some pro athlete to actually run in their races wearing these these air from e three grip dot com and what they are they're special grip that you wear well you're running and this actually corrects running posture by putting you in the correct position while you're holding these handles as you run very very simple hack to teach proper running form and if you get someone to video record you holding these versus having none in your hands while you're running, you'll notice a significant difference. One of my friends who's a protracted introduced me to these and you notice of really really big difference when you use these it's kind of the same concept where if you were going to do like a like a single leg squad and he wanted to really increase your power during a single leg squat you know I can try it like this with my hands open and I get a little bit wobbly but I could kind of get through it but if I make fists and get my body really tight and now do my single like squad, I'm way more strong throughout that squad, as I make those fists and this kind of relates that similar concept, you hold onto these grips and not gripping him so tight that you're increasing your blood pressure anything like that. But they're really cool for runners in yoga poses is tio. So while you fucked your euros, yeah, I'm not sure I don't I don't know that's actually activated specific muscle. I would suspect that you mean in like this balance mod move where they tell you not to point your toe, but to keep it flex like this any any balance that money that might be? I'm not sure it's a great question, so maybe a yogi from our internet audience can pipe in if they know the answer that one another thing that's kind of interesting for decreasing lactic acid production. The vikings used to bite down on leather straps when they go into battle to improve pain tolerance and to decrease lactic acid production and these mouthpieces that they make fitness mouthpieces there's a bunch of different companies that make them this one actually hasn't been opened yet. I couldn't find my one that that had been opened and already molded to my mouth, but you basically drop it in the hot water, it molds to your mouth. It's a fitness mouthpiece that you actually bite down on while you're lifting weights well, you're engaged in strength, power and speed sports where you're running while you doing anything that might actually involve exertion under armour also makes these and they actually worked really, really well when you need t like go to the pain cave into a really hard workout, it gives you something to bite down on. I don't like these if you're like uh a marathoner or say like a triathlete who needs to eat during an event because they get in the way of doing that but for a hard workout fitness mouthpiece actually works really well this one's made by a company called train wicked so those are some of the performance hacks, but one of the other ones that I want to show you guys that I really used quite a bit, especially from injured is on electro stem device so basically an electro sim device and they make these in a wireless format now and that's on my list of things to do is get the wireless version because as you can see like there's a lot of wires that come out of this thing, but what you do is you place these electrodes around a muscle or on a muscle that you want to contract such as your quadriceps okay so ugo above and below the area that you want to target or you can even surround an injured area with the electrodes, and once you hook this up, it actually causes a muscle to contract by acting the same way as your brain would work, so it sends a signal to the muscle to contract it overrides your brain and the muscle fires. Now this particular unit, if I turn this on it, has what's called potentially ation, which had used to get yourself ready for work out to look kind of, like prepped the muscles with the low frequency signal. It has endurance, which targets more of your slow twitch muscle. It has resistance, which is kind of a combination of fast, which slow twitch has a strength and explosive strength setting, which gets very, very hard and heavy, and this will replicate up to a six hundred pound squad once you've attached it to your quads and your hamstrings has active recovery and a massage mode where it'll just do gentle pulses or just allow for a little bit of blood flow into a muscle. But this is a great way to get stronger. And again, this is one that I used to laugh that when I see those made for tv gets six pack abs, you know. How the heck could you sit around? The cow should do that, but once I started using it, you actually get a significant contraction like I could take one of these squares, place one of these squares on each of my ab muscles and actually get a full like, six pack abs style workout. Just by running electro stem, you could get a cheap electricity immunity off of like amazon for around seventy or eighty bucks. This thing is over a thousand dollars and it's because it has preset workout programs in it, so I can hook this up to my muscles and just push it, and it'll take me through twenty five minutes of strength training, safer like my quad. You can also combine this with isometric training, meaning, like I could attach it to my quad in my hamstring and get into a position like this, even leaning against a wall. If I wanted to lead into a wall for an isometric squat and kind of grit, my teeth as it takes me through these muscle contractions, builds up a bunch of lactic acid in the muscle, and then I can stand up out of that squat. In between the m s contractions. This is called an electrical muscle stimulation device. This one's made back up nickel compacts, and again, they do a wireless device. Now this one's called a complex sport elite but these are way different than the back pain devices called tens units those hits nerve endings they're designed to decrease pain like in your low back they don't really cause the muscles to become stronger cause an actual muscle contraction so there's a big difference between a ten's unit and an e m s unit which is electrical muscle stimulation but this is a really cool tool to have around questions have actually two questions involving that the first is there any kind of risk a few placing it in the wrong spot if you don't know exactly where your muscles located I'm glad you asked that question these come with a electrode placement guide that you need to pay close attention to because your body is normally designed to fire muscles in a specific pattern in a specific fiber direction and you can override that with this I could kind of put the electrodes wrong and put part of my v m o in part over here and be pulling my patella this way in this way at the same time and usually you feel a little pain and you know right away if you place that electrode wrong because you're joined us just like ouch stop it that hurts you know move the electrode but most of the electrode pad placement guides that come with these air pretty good so you don't have to be an anathema ce to know where to put him on the other part of the question was, is this the device that you were mentioning? If you would have if you might be bedridden in, or if there's something, if you're in a wheelchair, toe help activate muscles that you can't exactly exactly. There is a very, very expensive arm or expensive version of this that's, more like the six to eight thousand dollars range called an aarp wave that a lot of chiropractic physicians will use to help to rehabilitate their patients. Dave asprey, who has done a creative life before he also did a really good creative lie, that's another one and recommend to check out, um, he has done some work with that aarp way. I don't know if he owns a unit, but, um, I do a chance to try went out with him at one point, and it puts out even a much, much higher frequency than this, and the main thing about it is the type of frequency that it puts out allows you to get to very, very high level of muscle stimulation without skin burns, which is a good thing, you know, one skin birds. So question the bay area doctor justin, justin, mark a yanni, yeah, he has one of on our way of unit, so he is just in health dot com yeah yeah yeah that guy's a chiropractor who has one who knows how to use it and that guy's really good yo if you are in the bay area at finding areas that are injured on your body and getting rid of them using devices like that he ams device so cool god he's he's been on my podcast before yeah good dude so any other questions about the e m s yes late night television get not an electricity in but it's more of a vibrational thing that and does that have any benefit or is it just a nice yes the one that just that's that's just we'll give you some movement of lymph fluid kind of similar like a rebounder okay but you don't really get any of that so mattis sensory input that a rebounder could give you so if I had to choose between one of those that lost vibration device is on a rebounder I do rebounder or a vibration play vibration play can work pretty well for this type of stuff to um again neither a vibration plate or a rebounder is going to burn significant calories or cause a lot of fat loss but they are really cool for that so mato sensory input that I talked about in the balance section they're also really cool for like lymph fluid flow and kind of turning on joints so yeah absolutely yes right. How much do you feel it I mean you feel it quite so if you are doing like if you have a unlike a recovery session you feel like a little tingling in your muscle if you're doing like a strength session you sit there in your muscle has a life of its own like it's full on like contracting like boom boom boom boom problem and you can get it to the point where it actually is it's pretty uncomfortable the same way like squatting you know, three hundred pounds would be uncomfortable like your muscles experience that same amount of burn and lactic acid buildup so it might not be a good idea for any condition. There was somebody online who mentioned parathyroid issue and just wondering if there's anything like that I'm not aware of any contraindications for parathyroid there may be some nerve milo nation or issues such a zimmel s lou gehrig stuff like that where you may want to be careful something like this or do you research first but yeah that'd be one that you'd want to look into if you have anything related to like nerve issue who's great could be anywhere you'd want to be careful. So um let's talk about you know I jumped into cold thermo genesis just briefly let's talk about some other ways that you can use cold thermo genesis I mentioned the cool fat burner vest and for anyone who who may have missed that session not only do I dio cold water immersion when I can, but I also use this vest that you can place over your body and wrap around areas where there tends to be lots of brown at a post tissue, which generates heat from a teepee or generates heat from calories. And this has special gel packs that you freeze, that you basically place into the vest and you can wear this to increase metabolism or tio basically amp up the activity of brown out of post issue or you're working while you're standing around it's also a good strategy to wear one of these for about an hour, the morning after you've over eating it like a party or something in the night before, if you want to burn some extra calories and shut down some clerk based inflammation. But there are other ways to achieve this cold thermo genesis as well. For example, there's this device called the gym boss and let me find it, uh, I thought I headed up here somewhere and I'm not seeing it it's called a gym boss, and you can program it to beep or to vibrate at certain inner ovals, so I'm pretty sure that I do have it up here and that it's buried by something cheerio, um, so it looks like this. Now you can do hot, cold contrast showers that caused a huge release of this and ophelia nitric oxides in face. And you can keep this gym boss in the shower to make sure that you actually get your intervals right. So the way that it goes is its twenty seconds of cold and ten seconds of warm ten times through case that's five minutes. So you put your gym boss in the shower and you do five minutes of twenty seconds cold, ten seconds warm and if I turn this on, I think right now I have it set for right now I have it set for you for twenty seconds on ten seconds off, so you can't really see the screen in this, but the top says twenty so that's the work interval the bottom says tens that's the rest intervals so it'll be performing on the work interval or vibrate for me if I want to wear it on my hip and then it'll be for me or vibrate for me on the rest interval and so you know when to turn from warm to cold. This also works through well for what are called the bad assets, which is a form of high intensity interval training where you do like twenty seconds of push ups than ten seconds of rest, but you do have time to look at your watch. You just set this thing out and it'll take you through the whole four minute protocol so I can set this up for five minutes, twenty on ten off and doing twice a day of a hot, cold contrast shower like that is a potent that law strategy that you can use to lose fat even when you're not exercising or you don't have time to exercise like I can tell you today, I will probably not have time to exercise by the time I finish up today and go back to the hotel and everything. I'll probably go for closer to a ten minute hot, cold contrast shower and just set this thing in the shower and it's on and often on and often all my underwater mp three player that I wear so I can listen to a podcast while I'm doing it and it is called jim boss works really well for that other ways you can get cold thermo genesis. So when you ice tissue, when you when you ice muscle to make it less sore, or when you ice to, say, decrease the temperature to increase brown out of post activation. Unless that area of tissue is compressed, you can actually get a little bit of cellular leakage from the drop in body temperature that occurs it's called lymph fluid backflow it's one of the reasons why some people say icing doesn't work icing works really well though when it's combined with compression which is why I like cold water immersion for example where the pressure from the water is pushing that cold against your body and keeping any lymph fluid back flow from occurring these air pants these air made by a company called one hundred and ten percent compression so they also make shorts they make uh even make compression socks like the kind of boring right now see what those sexy they match perfectly mouth it. Um I'm wearing two different shades of green I think that's a no, no, but, um anyways these air one hundred ten percent compression pants there inside out so we turn these right side out. You put these on, they provide a significant amount of compression which helps to pump blood flow back up to your heart after workouts that you recover faster but they also come with these sleeves which you basically immersed in water the cells inside these sleeves fill with water and then you place the sleeves into or you place the cold packs into the sleeves throughout the legs, so you're combining compression with ice at the same time so not only can you use this as a tool to recover faster, but you can also use it as a fat loss tool all because you're decreasing the core temperature and causing yourself have to burn calories to stay warm so I've had mornings where and justice sees me do these things at home and just laughs I'll put on my pants feel this thing with the cold packs put on my cold fat burner vest and just go work for an hour while I'm basically just covered in ice and I could go sit in a cold bath tub for an hour but I wouldn't be able to get work done and I wouldn't get some of the cool compressive effects that you can get from something like this so there's a really cool way to get cold thermo genesis as well and while I'm talking about compression and I'm going to take another break teo teo answer some more questions I want to show you two other things that are related to compression because helping your body with blood flow can be really, really important when it comes to avoiding things like varicose veins and aging of skeletons are aging of tissue and cellulite, blanking on the word that all women especially hey the's air compression sleeves, they're made back company called skins I'll put them on when I'm traveling on an airplane and I'm keeping my bag so I don't look like a complete tool walking through the airport with these things on if I'm wearing shorts and then I can pull them on when I get onto the plane. So these air made by a company called skins and they're basically just compression sleeves um kind of a cool alternative if you don't want to wear the full sock and then the other one, this is really cool. This is an actual shirt that pulls your body into ideal posture, they make a short sleeve version and a long sleeve version. I won't pull this on right now because it would cover up my my microphone that amusing, but this is made by a company called in tele skin. Now the person who co designed this shirt also wrote one of my favorite books, which is called foundation it's, a book I was recommending earlier to somebody who is dealing with low back pain is one of the best ways that I know of to reduce low back pain is to learn the exercises in this book foundation. It is where I got that that move that I was showing you that dead lift move in the last session it's also got nine other moves on there that if you learn I can just like knock low back pain out of the park within a month but this shirt pulls your body into the correct posture and also provides upper body compression. So for example, if you're flying an airplane you could wear, like just a regular jogging suit like like a hoody and some jogging pants. But underneath you could be wearing this and also your hundred ten percent compression tights, for example, and just have that circulation going back to your heart and the whole time helping your body to pump blood while you're in that seated position they like on an international flight on an airplane for a long period of time. So this is a posture enhancing shirt that also provides compression, so I like compression is a bio hack. I like to combine it with cold that's another thing that all you so let's take another break and answer questions that may have come up in regard to see that posture fitting shirt. Um, what would be the difference between a wearing and of course, if you're saying, get in your blood going too hard as it's like being like a weight belt where you're relying on that to hold you and you're basically coming getting weaker because you're using your muscles? Yeah, you have to walk that fine line because, you know, that's, something I don't like is weight belts in the gym now, for someone who's going to go in and dead lift a lot away. Sometimes you do need that weight belt to protect you if if you're really pushing yourself way over and above what you've gone to before. But if you see somebody walking around doing every single lift that they do in the weight room wearing a weight belt. That's a crutch, it's basically just protecting your low back the whole time and similar to a big built up running shoe. These air minimalist shoes, by the way, I only wear minimal issues or go barefoot. But similar to a big built up shoe, they low back about keeps you back from getting strong. A big built up shoe keeps your foot from getting strong. Now, when we look at something like this, it's considered a training device, so it teaches your body how to get pulled into the correct posture. It's. Not something that you would necessarily where all the time you would, ideally, after wearing it for using it. For a few weeks or a few months kind of learn how to be in the correct position and then only pull it out for example when you know you're going to be unlike a long airplane flight where you just need to kind of hack yourself into the correct position I've done on stage events where I know I'm going to be standing on stage the whole day and I want to maintain good posture and I'll put this on and put a suit coat over it and it'll just keep me and really good posture when I know that by the end of the day I'm just going to be direct, you know, like this if I don't have something kind of helping me out a little bit during the day so it's one of those crutches you know, it's it's similar, you know to like this this type of standing workstation deal the focal mogo that I demonstrated earlier it's like technically standing is the best way to keep your metabolism elevated and to avoid a lot of the medical dangers that come with sitting for long periods of time but let's face it, you get tired when you're standing during the day all the time and sometimes you need a little bit of help, so you know, when I sit on this I can still, um I can still be in a position where I'm getting a lot of the standing benefits like my hip flexors aren't shortened and I'm still kind of on my feet, and I've still got elevated levels of that fat burning ends I'm light pace that goes up when you're standing, but I'm giving myself a little bit of a break, a little bit of a shift, so I would not stay in this all day in the same way that I wouldn't use that shirt all the time. But it's, just one of those one of those tools you can pull out news when you need to, so really long answer your question, but for the oh did you have a question coming? Yeah, your thoughts about using the compression stop for competition because they know they're very popular for recovery. But there isn't doesn't seem to be a lot of studies tio whether it's compression socks for competition to increase sports performance, that's something that a lot of them advertise themselves as being able to do, and there's very little or poor research on the effects of compression socks and performance. However, when you're running or competing and playing football, your muscles are kind of like jiggling around all over the place and there's, tiny little micro tears that can occur that wouldn't have occurred if those muscles had had that compressive force in place to help stabilize them during that event. So that's where they can come in handy in decreasing post workout muscle soreness or increasing the speed at which you recover. The other thing that can help with is like, if I put these on for our plane right home after a day, run a marathon or an iron man or something like that, they vastly improve blood flow in the movement of inflammation, out of areas that you've worked really hard. So you also get, like, reduce risk of a blood clot and things like that. But would you were there during the competition? Do you think it helps tow? Well, then, you know, it's not going to make you any faster, if anything, and just might be a little more comfortable afterwards. That's based on the research to date on the use of compression here, some people swear by him, but yeah, I mean, there really is no doubt that they do anything other than help you recover faster after I don't know. Cindy what? I've kind of experiences like by morning running tights, which are a lot tighter eye generally places where I have problems. Running like especially when it banned I don't feel that nearly as much as if I'm or even something tight can provide support to injured areas or too weak areas for example, brett sutton is a famous traffic on coaches coach a lot of world champions including chrissy wellington, who one iron man world championships a few times and she injured her hamstring is pretty badly for a period of time and he had her wearing like these tight, tight, almost like leather pants for every single run that she did to basically give the hamstrings that extra support you know, like wearing the low back belt so in the case where something is injured or weak, that might be an exception to the rule in the same way that you see some athletes like in the olympics or at races wearing this bright, colorful what's called kony videotape that's what that does is it provides support to an injured area that might need that support but in an un injured area an area that doesn't need the supporters there's no evidence that's going, yeah, make performance better. So how about a question from the internet? I'm actually run to grew posed a question about the ice compression pants and wants to know if you can wear them during an intense aerobic class or a spin class or something like that if that's something you'd suggest or not no, because the ice is going to kind of down regulating her signaling and can actually decrease performance simply the same reason that you did warm up before you do a workout. Now, when we're talking about, like, swimming in cold water, if I go out and I swim and, like combined swimming with cold thermo genesis, like I was talking about that's a case where I'm I'm not fooling myself into thinking that I'm going to go out and do like fast hundred meter repeats, if I'm out swimming and like a fifty eight degree river like I know that that won't be a speed session for me that's going to be a session where I'm just focusing on skill and burning calories, you know, doing cold thermo genesis, but yeah, cold can definitely decrease performance. So is there any advice for people who are maybe intimidated by this this cold idea? So I know a lot of people the thought of taking an ice cold shower or sitting in a bathtub for a minute, it kind of scares them. I mean, is there any way for people to kind of ease into it's? Horrible for me when I first got started, like the cold shower and turning out and getting in when we're just so used to taking? Warm showers and there's, a there's, a book out there that really goes into this in great detail. It's called the paleo manifesto, and he has a whole chapter in there about how cultures and in many cases, have traditionally subjected their children like ice, cold dunks and cold bats and stuff. And these are some of the most fierce warrior populations on the face of the planet. They figured out that that's one way to make a kid tougher to increase pain tolerance and, you know, kind of returns that be uncomfortable idea that I presented when I was talking about becoming like an ancestral athlete presenting your body with these discomforts. But, yes, it can be uncomfortable and ease your way into it. One of the best ways to do it is cold water in the face, like a few times a day, just icy cold water in the face. We have this memet ali in dive reflex. We have the sharp intake of air when we get met with that cold water, and you can induce that with cold water to the face and really get your body used to that in a million dive reflex and then gradually get to the point where you step into the shower and maybe start the shower warm. And then gradually get it kind of colder. The cool thing is that it's only about fifty five degrees is as low as you need to go to get those benefits of doing like that hot, cold contrast so you don't need to go icy cold. I personally go as freaking cold as I can get it, because I feel like it just wakes me up and gives me this huge mental boost for hours, so I like to as cold as I can, but ice cold water on the face is a good way to ease yourself into it. What about some of the breathing gear that we talked about earlier in the segment? Would that be beneficial to people who have, like asthma or anything similar to that? You know what I got to say that I'm not a physician, and I really can't, you know, talk too much about management of disease or something along those lines. I haven't seen aa lot of data on respiratory training for asthma, but what I can tell you that I have observed even in my own children, is when we talk about auto immune triggers, like I talked about in our very first session gluten, dairy things that bug the immune system that's where I've seen really, really big benefits in terms of respiratory function, people who get there there are asthmatic like convictions. Usually it's it's more of like an auto immune issue than it is like a your lungs not being strong enough type of issue.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

10 Human Performance Meals
7 Day Done
creativeLIVE Home Detox
Health vs Performance Slides
Become Superhuman Resource Guide
Body Products and House Cleaners
Enrollment Page
Ultimate Human Performance Exercise.mp4

Ratings and Reviews

Jeff
 

Ben delivered an exceptional three-day seminar at creativeLIVE that I was lucky enough to attend. His expertise in all facets of health & wellness was on full-display -- and his presentation was clearly articulated & engaging He was friendly and responsive to feedback and gave actionable recommendations which are already paying dividends in my life -- especially in the areas of energy, mental clarity & sleep quality I strongly recommend Ben -- he walks the walk & talks the talk -- genuinely cares about helping other people and possesses a real gift to teach & inspire

a Creativelive Student
 

This is one of the best courses I have ever seen! So much value for money and so many amazing bits of information jam packed in. What a brilliant guy! Geeky information presented in a down to earth way. I can not recommend this course enough. I don't think I have ever been bothered to write a review for anything (EVER) but this was SO good I had to share. Well done Ben and thank you Creative Live!

Valentine
 

Ben Greenfield has a lot of information, best course I have taken in regards to Nutrition and Fitness. There is a lot of knowledge and their a great couple and both have a lot of information to offer, I even like the lame jokes that he makes. Very nice and knowledgable couple.

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES