EP. 11: Dr. Peter Nickless
Dr. Peter Nickless, is currently the Dean of Online Education for Northeast College of Health Sciences. He has a master's degree in human nutrition from the University of Bridgeport, a Master of Business Administration from the University of Southern New Hampshire, a master's degree in operations and project management from the University of Southern New Hampshire, and a Ph.D. in biomedical informatics from Rutgers University. Throughout his college career, he won several championships in powerlifting and chased his dream of becoming an Olympic weightlifter. Most recently, he’s self-published his first book. But most recently, he’s been more focused on longevity.
Today, we listen as Peter talks a lot about his experience in sports nutrition and perhaps his understanding of the differences between the ‘bro-science’ verses endurance training. He’s also found that sports nutrition has blended itself into overall men’s health including getting more sleep, limiting stress, and how or when we choose to take supplements. While he was training, he restricted his own supplement use due to his fear of being disqualified from competing. He specifically discusses anabolics, amphetamines, and peptides that are now found in the marketplace without any prescriptions and only marketing claims that haven’t actually been tested. Fortunately, some companies are starting to self-police.
Peter is a colleague of mine and I always enjoy his perspective. He’s extremely experienced and very informed. I like the direction this conversation took as he provided some insight for those in the 30-65-year-old age group, especially men. He shared how we can all optimize our health, recovery, testosterone levels, muscle mass, and how we can age well while still being able to perform.
Show Notes
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0:00:00
Hi everybody, I hope that you're doing well. So today's podcast is very exciting, very interesting. We have a special guest, Dr. Peter Nicholas, and he is a Dean at Northeast College of Health Sciences. It used to be NYCC where I graduated from. I got my doctorate and then my master's in nutrition,
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0:00:25
and I teach clinical pain and inflammation there in the nutrition program. So he's fantastic, he has a wealth of knowledge. He's working on publishing a book, which is very exciting. And he has a great background in sports nutrition, men's health, power lifting, and just overall supplements.
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0:00:44
So I'll let him introduce himself a little bit here.
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0:00:47
You know, I was a Tergel High School athlete growing up and had my heart set on playing college football. And so I did as much as I could, as long as I could, was athletic all through high school, all through college. And then with that in mind, I just grew up with chiropractic as just part of my life. So literally, I saw my family chiropractor more than I saw my family doctor. And I'll be honest, my family doctor really, really liked putting people on prescriptions,
1
0:01:20
so I never really particularly cared for it. Not that prescriptions don't have a place, it's just, you know, these are decisions I also made when I was 16. So I actually did my first interview as a potential student at what is now Northeast College of Health Sciences, but it was at the time New York Chiropractic College. I was 16 years old and my mother was teaching
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0:01:41
the psych course there as an adjunct. I went away to college, but I knew that that's what I wanted and came back, went to school, graduated from there when I was about 23, 24, just about to turn 24. During that time, I had quit football and had switched over to powerlifting.
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0:02:04
And so while I was a student at Northeast, or NYCC at the time, I won an AAU Junior National Championship, and I won an ADFBA Junior World Championship in powerlifting. But I really always wanted to be an Olympic weightlifter. I just, the speed, you watch the Olympics, the speed, the athleticism. So when I graduated from chiropractic school, I targeted where my associateship would be based on where I thought the best
1
0:02:31
gym would be. I think literally, I put it off on hold for about a grand total of a month and then was watching literally the 2000 Olympics on TV. As I'm watching it, I'm like, huh. I literally reached out to a coach down in Queens. I was practicing in Queens and I started working with an Olympic weightlifting coach
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0:02:53
and I did that for about eight years, well, a little more than eight years, up to about 2009. And I managed to be able to compete at the national level, the American Open, national championships, the Arnold Classic, like every year for a while, and then managed to do a little bit of coaching during that time period, which was kind of nice. That's when, you know, during that time period, you know, about 2005, you know, you're sitting there looking at it
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0:03:22
physically, there's just a limit to how long you can do some of these things and training six days a week, competing six times a year, that kind of thing. So I started having some physical breakdowns, especially being as heavy as I was. And so I started doing the traditional post-grad route for a practicing chiropractor of picking up what I could, and what I realized is I felt it was an incomplete education.
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0:03:47
I felt like I was getting a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So I went back to school and I enrolled and got a master's in nutrition, and I had no intention of using it in practice, no intention of doing anything else but try to,
1
0:03:59
like, rather than hire a nutritionist, I said, well, why don't I get a master's in it and learn it? And so that tended to be a real life changer because by the time I graduated, I think I entered the program at about 400 pounds, I think I graduated, it's like 250. Unfortunately, it was around that point where I was like, you know what, maybe the injuries are a little too much.
1
0:04:19
So I had some highlights during that time period. At that point, I was able to hang on to about 85 to almost 90 percent of my max strength, but I was getting old enough it was time to consider moving on. It also happened to be during that time period that somehow I decided I wanted to go climb mountains. And so on one of the trips to go climb Mount Washington, my sister caught wind of this and so she introduced me to her friend who had just read Into Thin Air to try to convince me to stop climbing mountains and it just turns
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0:04:51
out that I married her. So in a way she did convince me to stop climbing mountains because now I was married. But that's why I went from practicing in New York City to teaching at a small college in Maine, which is where she lived. I was teaching in a general education program and I went back to school, got a couple more degrees, but I was teaching general health sciences and I really wanted to teach nutrition
1
0:05:22
and so a job at Northeast opened up and I applied for it and came there and I've been there for, it's my twelfth year, and so I think, you know, athletically, you know, I still maintain coaching, I still maintain training. I will probably do some kind of competition in the next six months. Right now, with my daughter being heavily invested in sports
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0:05:49
a lot of it's training her. So, it's like, so I've been, you know, up until now I've always been a coach on her team. I don't know if I'm gonna coach again in the future but I will always be working with her as far as that's concerned. But, you know, the summers are kind of for me to get back into fighting shape. And so I think I'm
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0:06:10
doing something possibly in August. I'm debating to see if I want to try to do the Olympic Weightlifting State Championships in the old man division in September, if my shoulders hold up, but at the Something So so how is this going how's the podcasting going? It's really fun. I think we almost have two months under our belts
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0:06:30
It's just been something I've been thinking about for 10 years, and I figure why not What you you know you're a better person than I could be like I've I've been since podcasting first came out
1
0:06:41
I wanted to do something and I just don't have the courage to sit there and like, I realize that I'm not gonna have guests, I wouldn't have guests right away. So I have to just talk and I'm not good at that. So, but, you know, cause I was always, in terms of the old weightlifting stories
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0:07:03
and stuff like that, which is a different genre. So there's no, you're an expert at this. You kind of have to talk about it with people. And so the problem is all the weightlifters I know, I don't know that I'd want to put them on.
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0:07:13
A little too-
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0:07:14
him on a little to it.
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0:07:17
Well, it's his second token, you know?
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0:07:18
I mean, look how he started out. Yes. You know? Well, yeah. So it gets a little, but you know, it's one of those things where I, you know, I've only done this once, Robert Silverman.
1
0:07:31
And it was about ketogenic diets, I think. But you know, my next research topic, now that I've finished the one book is actually getting into more the longevity side of aging. Not so much the you know the longevity live longer kind of thing but more just quality years and you know I'm a big fan of doesn't have to be competitive strength training but strength training movements I think too many strength trainers don't do enough exercise too many exercisers don't do enough strength
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0:08:04
training, sleep, all that stuff, sleep, water, stress, all these things that are in relation to your expertise specifically is inflammation. That's kind of the next area I want to dig a little deeper into is the whole concept of aging a little bit more gracefully, I guess.
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0:08:29
Now, what have you noticed from where you were 20, 25 years ago to where you are now with sports nutrition and health? Like, what are you doing different diet-wise, supplement-wise?
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0:08:41
All right, well, that's a really good question.
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0:08:44
The industry has changed dramatically. So, when I was in chiropractic school, I was competing in powerlifting. At that time, most sports nutrition that you had come across came into two categories. You had bodybuilding, bro science, and then you had the hard science sports nutrition, which honestly a lot of it was focused towards endurance athletics. And so you'd get these almost like one size fits all
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0:09:19
approaches to sports nutrition, but they're always taken from the framework of, well, and because they're talking about energy systems, and they're talking about carbohydrate metabolism, things like that, and it's all useful once you start knowing the context,
1
0:09:33
but for, you know, at that point, a hardcore, I wanna lift as heavy a thing as possible one time, and then put it down and go eat in between lifts. It's not the same thing. And so you got into this zone of, okay, if you're gonna be a drug-free athlete,
1
0:09:47
you need protein and you need calories. And that was, it was protein, calories, and as far as micronutrients were concerned, it was take a multivitamin, you're fine. And that was my entire, that was my entire world. And so I'd take nutrition classes,
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0:10:04
and one of the things that would annoy me is I would take these nutrition classes and I took sports nutrition classes and like they'd spend all this time just talking about predominantly endurance athletics. So it was like, I knew really,
1
0:10:14
I knew a heck of a lot about sodium bicarbonate, but like it didn't help me because I'm doing a single lift in competition. You know, powerlifting is squat bench and deadlift. One, three attempts to lift your heaviest weight, and then they add your heaviest squat,
1
0:10:31
your heaviest bench, your heaviest deadlift together. Olympic weightlifting is where I spent the majority of my adult years. Snatch, clean and jerk, three attempts, heaviest snatch plus heaviest clean and jerk equals your total.
1
0:10:42
So you're talking about three less than a second exertions on the platform. So we're not getting into heavy energy systems or aerobic glycolysis or anything like that So that's where you got into this realm where in the late 90s Say early 2000s you got very large super heavyweights, and I was a super heavyweight
1
0:11:01
So in Olympic weightlifting super heavyweight at the time started at about two hundred and thirty two pounds now It's gone up a little bit in terms of where it starts, but there was no cap on what you could weigh So you had a ton of guys at the Olympic level weighing about 400 pounds. And I did most of my competition days at about 400 to about 420 pounds.
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0:11:24
And that was because the quickest way to guarantee you were gonna recover was eat. You know? And from that, sports nutrition starts getting into a weird zone, because there's a great competitive lifter who, you know, he's, the gentleman's relatively known
1
0:11:44
for going up and down weight classes. So he would go up, set a world record at a high weight class, and then drop as much weight as he could to try to duplicate that at a lighter weight class. And so he said, is when I was at my, he did this all in the 90s and early 2000s, back when it was a little different. And he said, when I was, for him, the heavy weight
1
0:12:03
was when I was 300 pounds, I didn't have to pay attention to micronutrients or macronutrient blend and things like that. Because the assumption is if I'm eating enough calories to bulk myself up to 300 pounds, I'm probably getting enough protein.
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0:12:16
I'm probably getting enough, you know, one would argue that he's probably got a couple of micronutrient issues, because I doubt he was eating a very varied diet. But he didn't pay much attention to it. It was when he went leaner that he had to do it.
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0:12:31
Now, interestingly, now you're starting to see athletes who are able to compete at a higher level, but not have to put on as much excess body fat, not have to put on some exercise. So you will still see in the World's Strongest Man competitions people eating 10,000 calories a day and things like that. But for the most part, you're seeing those numbers drop even Michael Phelps that famous 10,000 calories in Beijing He did say when he went back
1
0:12:56
You know when he went to the next Olympics. He was nowhere near that amount of calories He had gotten and he had gotten a dial down to just what he needed and he was still pretty darn successful One of the things I'm seeing now is there's more I like the fact that there's a much more varied research bed It's not just hey eat protein the more the better. But on the other hand, we always had this battle between the bodybuilders telling you to eat like protein almost exclusively and the nutrition advice of anything more than
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0:13:27
0.8 grams per kilo is excessive. Or was it the traditional RDA is 80 grams a day? I said, well, that's just not enough for a 220-pound male athlete. I think the sports nutrition side tends to blend itself into men's health because I think my point of view on it is different now than it was when I was still an active athlete. I'm still active, but my days of chasing the Olympic dream are gone. Now it kind of dives into a little bit about men's health and sleep and recovery and things like that.
1
0:14:05
Because it's not like I still take things from the United States Anti-Doping Agency, World Anti-Doping Agency viewpoint and one of my criticisms on the supplement side as well is, you know, the rush to go from food to supplement, actually supplement before food in many cases, one of the biggest criticisms of the sports nutrition world is that marketing directly to people in the gym or athletes. My entire athletic career, I probably took less than three or four supplements the entire
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0:14:39
time. It was because at the time, anywhere from 2000 to... The end of my serious career was probably about 2009, or as early as 97. But anywhere during that time, there's getting drug tested or the threat of drug tests was always looming and there's just nothing you could trust.
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0:15:01
And so like the whole NSF certified, safe for sports stuff was not really a big factor. So creatine, I take it now, it's great, love it. I never touched it when I was competing. Even protein, I didn't take because I just ate a lot. So I could have done more,
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0:15:21
I could have gotten away with more, but we'd all heard horror stories and we've known, like we had an athlete who had been on our team before I got there who had failed a drug test for something that was in a supplement she had taken and she ended up winning a lawsuit over it, but yeah, it doesn't matter.
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0:15:40
You still lose your medal. You know, it's still, you still lose.
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0:15:43
No.
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0:15:44
And that's the thing is, I mean, I will say, unfortunately, I don't have the statistics directly in front of me, but I, just doing the research for the book, I was pulling up a lot of information on tainted supplements. And it's just, you know, and I know the Department of Defense keeps a website. I don't know if it's changed names. It was nutrition411.org.
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0:16:07
It had a list. They don't have the budget to test everything, but they had a list. You could go through and you could actually search. It'll tell you, this is a supplement we pulled. This is what we found. These are what it had in it.
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0:16:22
When they find it, they'll contact the maker and deal with it But you know how many if they're finding one there's probably ten on the market and what they're finding things are You know Theoretically prescription anabolics even though they're not really prescribed that often Amphetamines so weight loss supplements have a lot of or commonly have I mean I don't want to have a lot of amphetamines in them and have a lot of
1
0:16:46
You know so you'll think things like you'll have a lot of these growth supplements. Some of the supplements that are marketed as testosterone replacement or testosterone boosting supplements will have testosterone derivatives in there. At minimum pro-hormones and then you get into the world of, because this is all what's marketed out there, now you're getting into peptides. And you can buy them on Amazon because they're technically not illegal.
1
0:17:16
The only thing is it'll say things like, for animal use only. Or, you know, they'll say for oral use only, but they're selling it to you in an injectable vial. And, you know, they're not really tested the same way. At least with a prescription anabolic, it's tested, and they know the side effects, they know the risks in that. This you're getting into kind of no man's land, but you're getting the things that are like growth hormone analogs or all sorts of things, and they're available on Amazon any
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0:17:49
day of the week. So that's an area where I get a little – I don't like it because there's this whole market out there, I think, preying on weekend warrior type athletes. And it's funny because through my daughter, I've gotten a chance to get a peek in on what's happening at Colgate University's women's ice hockey team.
1
0:18:14
And they've got a team of professionals working with them. And so they've got trainers, they've got nutrition coaches and things like that. And I've seen higher-end athletes who've got that. They're not the most susceptible to this. It's the 17-year-old who's going to the gym who reads about something on a message board
1
0:18:34
or on Reddit or something, and then they spend five minutes on Amazon and they find it, and you literally can buy a bottle of peptides, needles, and now they're injecting something they have no idea what it is. Right. Or, you know. And that's weird. It's extremely scary. Yeah. Interesting. So from your research, does it
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0:19:07
matter, because I know like my husband's on this fountain of youth because he's gonna turn 40 this year, he's looking at like Tonga Ali and Lion's Mane and all these things and he'll ask me about something and I'll look at it, I'll look at the research. From your research, does it matter if it's like in the US versus outside the US, so it's being tainted?
1
0:19:27
Yes, more so than others just because there's at least some degree of quality control. So a couple years back I did this week-long thing by the Office of Dietary Supplementation. It was kind of like a symposium where they brought in all these nutrition students, nutrition researchers and nutrition faculty, but it was just really a presentation from the Office of Dietary Supplementation, and they were going through their testing process.
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0:19:58
And the reality is, they're not testing. They know that. But it's more if we get a tip off or if we start hearing something too good to be true. So they always talk about the example they were giving was, was it the green coffee weight loss wonder that Dr. Oz was promoting. And in the end, they ended up having to retract everything because there really wasn't anything
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0:20:19
to support that. But they're spending most of that money. What their comment was, their budget is, if the government's budget is a dollar, they're getting like a penny, and then they're putting like an eighth of a penny
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0:20:35
towards this. There's no regulation but enough that they're going after it and they're seeing it in the US, but I guess the US has got a little bit of a market. The US has got a little bit of a market more towards trying to lease it a little bit versus, you know, because you've got to remember, some of these drugs are, some of these things
1
0:20:54
are actually perfectly legal in other countries. So if you're living in Texas, you can drive over the border and go buy something and then be back, you know like to have a pure substance You know, but and I think but I also think that you know we have a rise in American companies that are starting to self police and that's why I say it's like the NSF certified stuff that didn't exist when I was competing and
1
0:21:31
now So we should I just stayed away from most supplements. I took a multivitamin, which theoretically was a risk, but I took a multivitamin, but that was about it. And now, you know, you've got, was it the Clean Athlete product line? You know, they're finally starting to get products
1
0:21:54
that I actually would have wanted to take, because everything they had was based on endurance athletes. So I think there's a lot of good stuff out there and there's a lot of good companies out there and I just, you know, I don't want, you know, like I hate to shill for certain companies but like, and they don't make everything I want, but like, you know, I trust Standard Process
1
0:22:13
because I've been there. And I hate to say it, like, I've been there, I've seen their production process, you know, I didn't see any, I didn't see anybody in a weird mustache, you know, pouring stuff into a vat in the corner. So I didn't, but...
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0:22:27
Know your source and look at the research.
1
0:22:30
Yeah, and if a supplement is, you know, one third of the price of another supplement, sometimes it's labeling, sometimes it's not. You know, so there was always that discrepancy. So now that they're actually diving into it and starting to look at, we need to target protein
1
0:22:45
towards the actual sport, that's awesome to see. The fact that they've actually gone through and, you know, the International Society of Sports Nutrition actually is now saying, hey, you know what, the bodybuilders weren't completely wrong. And one of the things I like is the fact that a lot of the research that we're seeing in
1
0:23:01
the last 10 years is seeing why some of these bodybuilders were adhering to these very, you know, dogmatic approaches to things. There's always a contextual point to it, and unfortunately, the mass sports media in terms of bodybuilding culture magazines, weightlifting magazines, things like that, you get lost. You always hear these high protein points being mentioned in bodybuilding. It's like, hey, I've heard numbers as high as four grams of protein per pound.
1
0:23:35
I've never heard that duplicated by anybody with any kind of research background, but traditionally you always hear about oh, you know two grams a pound sometimes a little bit more and then But then you'll hear like the actual kind of research side of it, which is like well You know really anywhere from about 1.4 grams per kilo 2 grams per kilo at kind of the high end really is in it targeted to sport so you know you know heavy weightlifting would use a little bit higher amount although technically
1
0:24:07
The longer you're in it You don't need as much because you're not putting on as much size as quickly But on the other hand heavy endurance athletics because the potential for a long distance runner an ultra marathoner to start using protein as an energy source They or just the breakdown muscle tissue as they're exercising needs a higher amount of protein as well But it was never getting quite to that level.
1
0:24:27
Then the International Society of Sports Nutrition went through and they're looking at it, and I thought it was a great point that they made, is there are aesthetic benefits to it. So it's not improving your performance. So that's where you get into that whole middle ground of,
1
0:24:40
well, it's not really improving your performance. You're not gonna lift more weight because you're eating more, but there are aesthetic benefits and things like that. And so it starts to contextualize a little bit, why would they be saying such a high amount and
1
0:24:52
it's, you know, the metabolic inefficiency of protein in general, the fact that the more protein they're eating, if they're keeping to a certain caloric level, they're probably replacing other foods that might be more problematic for their physique and things. And just then you throw in the fact that, like, these aren't hard and fast numbers, so your requirements may fluctuate a little bit depending on the needs you're putting on them, so they're making sure they have enough. As somebody who teaches clinical nutrition for pain and inflammation, I'm sure you love the
1
0:25:25
number of influences that are just going to say, it's just calories in and calories out, and it doesn't matter if it's, you know, and so like I've seen, I've seen literal competitive athletes who compete at a high level, who, you know, their pre-workout snack is a Pop-Tart.
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0:25:46
Yes.
1
0:25:48
And you sit there and you say, well, yeah, at your level, it probably improves your performance today because you're able to compete. And as long as you're not eating a box of Pop-Tarts, it's probably not hurting you aesthetically But what's the long-term implication? You know, what what is a lifetime of eating those processed foods gonna do? And hate to say it, but I've seen too many athletes after they retire Balloon up because they maintain these eating habits and then they're not being very physical in 100%
1
0:26:20
Yeah, so I like for me. It's it's that realization that, oh my God, there's a life after sports. I know that in my 20s and 30s, I just didn't care. I was competing at 400 pounds. I clearly didn't care. And then all of a sudden, it's funny because how I got into nutrition in the first place is I did the unthinkable.
1
0:26:47
I hit 30. And I went from being invincible to all of a sudden everything ached all the time I was like well What else can I do maybe you know maybe eating a diet that consists of more than like six or seven things maybe stop eating like a 12 year old might make a difference and
1
0:27:03
It's interesting because I've got different phases of things that I've done in my life, and I've got periods where I Followed a very strict diet and saw amazing results from just having a very strict diet. And then, you know, then I had a daughter and so things loosened up.
1
0:27:23
I was like, it's kind of hard to have a young one and be super strict. And then I've tightened up, you know, then I tightened it up, got strict again. And then, you know, so different phases. But now I really, I kind of like looking at it
1
0:27:37
from a framework of how do we get optimal performance without Sacrificing these long term, you know, you know Because I'm hitting the older generation of lifters so I'm 48 and my brother's still competing in powerlifting he's about 52 and Most of the people we know in this area of age group are the people that we, so we're in their late 40s, early 50s, and they're all starting to take blood pressure medications. And it's like, okay, well, maybe we should look at this.
1
0:28:11
Maybe there's some things we could be doing and changing to not, you know, I don't think it's like, I don't think it's a rite of passage that it's like, hey, you just hit a certain age, you got to take blood pressure medication. So maybe we need to look at those kind of things. So that's how I've changed I what I like is that the industry's gotten a lot more sports specific and a little bit more of an emphasis on you know, what is the dietary approach is gonna fit this sport versus that sport and
1
0:28:37
It's kind of hard because if you look at the history of sports nutrition, I mean was it I forget the Olympics But there's an Olympics where they're drinking champagne During the event to fuel performance and they were having trouble with people completing the event because they were getting drunk. You know, it's, it wasn't that long ago. I mean, like, literally, it was the 60s where Gatorade was invented
1
0:29:03
because they're like, what's going on? These people are, you know, they're just figuring out, oh my God, these, these, we're losing electrolytes. We need to fix, replace it. And, and none of that was transferable to the average sport and so you know I was the tail end of the generation where drinking water during football practice was considered a sign of weakness. So I
1
0:29:26
mean we're talking phase shifts in terms of growth. So for our listeners especially
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0:29:34
the guys who are listening who are in that 30 to 55, 60 age group, what would be your recommendations for just kind of optimizing health, recovery, testosterone, muscle mass, just kind of aging well but being able to perform?
1
0:29:51
All right, I mean, first and foremost, it's gotta start with the diet, right? It's gotta start with the diet. And, you know, the things that, and we all notice after a certain age, the things I could eat when I was in my 20s I can't eat now, right?
1
0:30:06
So you know, like I've never had an issue with certain foods my entire life, and now if I eat too much pizza, my stomach hurts all night. And so I find that there needs to be a focus on, you know, I do think the first thing you need to make sure that you're getting enough protein in. I think that's the starting point for everything. And I think that's males, females, you need to make sure you're getting enough protein in. You really need to know how much protein you need based on what your activity is like and try to target it that way. I'd bump it up maybe about 20% every decade over 30 just because, you know, it becomes an issue.
1
0:30:52
Sarcopenia starts to become a major problem. Carbohydrate choices, everything you put in your mouth has got, for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. So everything you put in your mouth has got some impact. And yes, you will get energy benefits from processed carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates. But it's not going to be the best long term.
1
0:31:16
So that's where I would sit. That's where I get into more of the whole foods approach. There's a lot you can do where you can perform really well with a whole foods based diet. I kind of put the emphasis on protein first, carbohydrates second, but I just don't think low fat is the best way to go for any athlete ever. I prefer your carbohydrate sources be as close to original source as possible, the least refined.
1
0:31:47
Really try to limit sugar. It's one of those things that's really great when you're a little kid on Easter, but it's not so phenomenal if you're trying to recover from injuries so solidify the diet first I wouldn't make any supplementation recommendations Until you've had the diet under control for a few months and like literally my my recommendation is always if you've not paid attention to your
1
0:32:15
Diet before you go when you try to just start over from scratch Just start recording what you're eating Recording what you're eating pay attention to it and then start paring it down, paring it down, paring it down. And then, you know, I always, from a diet standpoint, you know, I always love David Siemens' approach, you know, it's let's take out the refined carbohydrates, let's take out the refined sugars, let's take out the refined oils, let's switch from, you know, your feedlot of raised meat to the free range,
1
0:32:52
real good quality free range and grass fed. And, you know, that's not just marketing. You know, that is, there's, the fatty acid profiles change. And I think that's where I would start. And then from a supplementation standpoint,
1
0:33:10
I know there's that whole concept with vitamins in terms of the whole, you know, calling it expensive urine. And I fully encourage everybody to eat as many different vegetables as possible. All the colors of the rainbow, you know, invite Roy G. Biv to dinner. But I also realize we live in the real world and a lot of people are working very long days, trying to get to the gym, trying to eat something.
1
0:33:33
And the hard part is that's where convenience foods creep in. So I'm a fan of meal prep. I'm a fan of meal prep, pre-planning, because whenever I pre-plan, I eat the way I'm supposed to. Whenever I don't pre-plan, I end up grabbing something on the run. And it's like, was it, you know, if you fail the plan, you plan to And so I'm always a huge fan of that. So as much as I like to think that, you know, I like, you know, something I would have never said in my 20s, but I like a nice big dinner salad with my wife.
1
0:34:13
It's not my favorite thing in the world to eat, but my favorite thing in the world to eat is not so good for me. It never really was. But I, you know, when we do make a salad, it's so much fun. It's better for me to have as many different colors to many different vegetables. I don't personally like tomatoes, but then again, I've hit this point in my life where I realized that not everything I like is what I should be eating, so I'll eat the tomatoes anyway sometimes. But I still think the ounce of protection of multivitamins is still a good
1
0:34:45
idea. Again, good quality source, probably the best you can find. You know, I also, there's a couple micronutrients that as we age, we're gonna need a little more, a little more vitamin D, a little more magnesium, a little more zinc, things like that. Supplementation, really, I think supplementation
1
0:35:03
can't be shotgunned, so it needs to be targeted to a specific benefit. Like, there's really no real benefit for my wife to take creatine. She's not doing any heavy lifting. She's not doing any heavy athletic events.
1
0:35:21
Her working out is for general health and fitness. For me, it helps. It's a huge benefit. I'm one of those super responders. When I take it, unfortunately, my body weight will blow up by about 10 pounds, but I'll lift more.
1
0:35:36
It's one of those things where it's one of those jokes, it's like, well, what are you taking? Creatine. It's dirt cheap and it's probably one of the most studied supplements out there, although again, cheaper's not always better in terms of quality.
2
0:35:51
You like monohydrate or what form do you like?
1
0:35:54
I think monohydrate's fine. I know there are some forms that are more quickly absorbable, but over the course of a 30 day period, it really doesn't matter how quickly you get it into your system because over the course of a 30-day Period it's gonna stay about the same So I don't think going into something extremely involved
1
0:36:11
I've just I've had good luck with monohydrate and so I haven't played around with life Once or twice played around with other sources You know What else? From a supplement standpoint. I I do supplement with protein. And I know it's easy to have enough protein in your diet to meet the requirements through
1
0:36:35
food. It's absolutely doable. It's absolutely possible. But I'm married to a pescetarian. And so, and my daughter doesn't eat a lot of meat. So when I'm sitting there, if I'm sitting there and eating, you know, a big steak or something, they're looking at me like, the hell? So I do, I do eat
1
0:36:59
meat in front of them, but like, it's just nowhere near as much as my body weight would recommend and what I feel I perform best with. So it's not a ton, but like, so I tend to, I actually mix it with Greek yogurt, because I don't really like protein shakes. So I'll get a plain Greek yogurt and put a scoop of protein in there. And maybe a little granola or something,
1
0:37:21
depending on where I'm at. But that's just because, I'm just not a big shake person. And I found I don't digest it as well as a shake, but if I'm eating it, I actually get some. I also actually feel like it's a good breakfast. So, as opposed to, ugh, drink a shake.
1
0:37:39
I don't go much into pre-workouts at my age. Coffee is my favorite pre-workout. I think there's a lot of pre-workout supplements that work, but I also think there's a lot that are questionable. I've used them, I never once used them. Back in the days when I was, you know,
1
0:37:55
cleaning and jerking close to 400 pounds, it never touched my head. It was caffeine, that's it. I'm not going to say that that was the paragon of health because I think I probably took more ibuprofen than any five people should, which again, that's the reason I got into nutrition, I kept getting injured. Fluids, hydration, absolutely essential and probably one of the more overlooked items. Sleep, I personally, if you're not getting enough sleep, you're not going to be able to perform. And you're going to get injured, you're going to recover.
1
0:38:44
I think over the age of 35, your warm-up should probably take at least a third of your workout. So, I'm not saying workout less, I'm saying add a little more time in. Just this summer, last, oh my God, it's almost another year, just last summer, I was just trying to get a quick workout in.
1
0:39:03
I had a Zoom call at early evening, and I'm like, ah, let me just get a quick workout in. I started doing snatches, light, light. I tore up my rotator cuff, 30% tear, just because I went, I take a little extra time, a little extra effort. And luckily it's healed pretty quickly. And, and, but, you know, I'm able, I'm back to full capacity and all that, but, uh, uh, the extra time
1
0:39:33
to recover all those annoying little, um, supportive muscles. Cause what I found is as I've gotten older my prime movers are just as good in some ways and they've been or I can get them back to I can get them back to a high percentage but all those supportive muscles that never really got enough work are the ones that are the if I'm gonna get a failure it's gonna be there and so you know and I will say this is something that I'm learning more recently and I have a gentleman who's in his late 50s
1
0:40:06
who's managed to really maintain a high level of performance and the one thing I'll tell him is he might spend half of his workout time doing all of those little supportive exercises that are no fun whatsoever. So, I mean, the usual supportive recovery methods as well.
6
0:40:35
I mean, you know, it's just so good.
8
0:40:38
Ice is a really good thing.
1
0:40:39
Yeah, for sure. I'm, you know, and it's kind of funny, just from the warm-up perspective, I mean, I'm debating putting an infrared sauna down here in the basement. So, you know, my work office is in the basement, but also I have a whole gym in the basement. So, you know, I've got a platform and all sorts of... it kind of looks a little scary, the amount of weights down there, but I can't lift them all anymore, but I still have
1
0:41:00
them. But, you know, I'm thinking about putting an inference on in there as well, just because it helps me warm up, it's so good.
2
0:41:09
What do you think about... I've seen mixed reviews. Some people are pro ice baths. Some people say it raises your cortisol too much. What are your thoughts on that with athletes or just in general?
3
0:41:21
I can't get into them.
1
0:41:22
I tried them, I couldn't get into them. I am, my worry right now at this age is cortisol control. Yeah. I mean, if you, was it, you know, was it the, you look at the biochemistry of cholesterol degradation to testosterone, you know, higher cortisol, lower testosterone, lower estrogen, and you know, the next way there's
1
0:41:50
a study about phosphatidylserine, right? And the higher dosage is like 600 milligrams of phosphatidylserine, you actually start to see an increase, you'll see a decrease in cortisol, Cortisol increases in free testosterone in adult male athletes, or masters, older male athletes. And I think at this age, cortisol, because we live in too stressful an environment.
1
0:42:11
I don't think I've managed to get through a week in the past year without something being stressful. And it's, you know, it could be an angry student email, it could be, you know, my car broke down, but it also could be the physical stress of working out, not getting enough sleep, everything like that.
1
0:42:32
So I think cortisol control has become extremely important in my life. So, and I do think sometimes ice baths, I've seen enough evidence to make me shy away from them, but I also still like, I still like to use, I like ice massage, but it's more focal, not systemic.
1
0:42:51
And it's really based and targeted on need. Because I know there's research that's supportive and there's research that's negative with things like foam rolling, but I've personally, I find it helps loosen me up. I don't think it has the long-term effect
1
0:43:05
that it's purported to have, but I do think it helps me prepare to be able to train. And I'd like to say that at this point, I like to stay about 70% of where I was
7
0:43:21
at my functional capacity,
1
0:43:23
but I'm not putting in as much work. So when I was lifting at my best, not only did I weigh 400 pounds, I was training five, six days a week. I was, you know, I was not going out. I was focusing 100% of my energy on it.
1
0:43:41
And so, you know, just even the act of having kids, grandkids, you know, coaching hockey, working, going to school, all that stuff, if the fact that I can maintain about 70% of where I was at my best, but still put in probably about 30% of the work. And that doesn't mean I still do something physical every single day,
1
0:44:02
because I think the older you get, I'd rather do more, cut down the overall intensity, but work out a little more frequency for shorter duration. And so I'll do a little something every day.
3
0:44:14
Be functional.
1
0:44:15
Yeah, and that doesn't mean like every Sunday,
6
0:44:17
Yeah.
5
0:44:18
But...
1
0:44:18
Be functional. Yeah. And that doesn't mean like every Sunday, this Sunday, like, uh, tonight I'm doing a, uh, um, you know, because now I'm doing more slow lumbering stuff, like bench pressing, but tonight, my brother's coming over and we'll do a very light bench press workout, but on Sunday, we're gonna go to one of our teammates' houses and we will go as heavy as we possibly can.
1
0:44:40
So, it's, it's just the difference is it's just you can't drive that car with a high RPM 24-7. It's just gonna break down. Perfect, well thank you so much.
4
0:45:00
This was fantastic.
2
0:45:02
Yeah, I appreciate you sharing and taking the time.
3
0:45:04
And I'm sure we'll get more questions,
2
0:45:05
so I'm sure we'll have to have you back on at some point. Sure, absolutely. So we'll let you go. Thanks Peter. Absolutely. Have a great rest of your day. Sure, absolutely. So we'll let you go. Thanks Peter. Absolutely. Have a great rest of your day.
1
0:45:19
You too. Bye.
Transcribed with Cockatoo