Exercise for Longevity: An Interview with Thomas DeLauer & Simon Shawcross

What follows is a transcript for the podcast: Maximize Your Workout: How to Get More Benefits with Less Time

Sub-section topics within the interview include the following:

1. The Difference Between High Intensity Interval Training and High Intensity Resistance Training
2. Health Benefits of Resistance Training
3. Benefits of Resistance Training on Blood Sugar
4. Is Testosterone Important in Muscle Protein Synthesis?
5. Do You Need a Coach to Train Safely?
6. How to Make Exercise Effortless When Adopting to a New Routine
7. Workout 15-20 Minutes, 1-3 Times a Week
8. Improving your Mitochondrial Health
9. Benefits of Ketogenic Diets, and Intermittent Fasting as a More Approachable Version 
10. Motivation and Habits to Get You Started
11. Exercise and Nutrition are Inseparable
12. Do you Need Equipment When You Exercise at Home?
13. Why is it Important to Age Gracefully?

The Difference Between High Intensity Interval Training and High Intensity Resistance Training

Heather Sandison, ND: Welcome to collective insights. I'm your host today, Dr. Heather Sandison and I am joined by Simon and Thomas today. They are both experts in their fields of high intensity training. And so we're going to dig into the details today of what the differences in their approaches are and what kind of exercise might be best for you. So welcome Thomas.

Thomas DeLauer: Thanks for having me.

Heather Sandison, ND: Yeah. Simon, thanks for joining us.

Simon Shawcross: It's a pleasure to be here.

Heather Sandison, ND: So I started the conversation with you guys, there's two things going on here. HIT, hit training and HIIT, also hiit training. So Simon, what's the difference?

Simon Shawcross: So you have High Intensity Interval Training and High Intensity Resistance Training. So if the interval training, more often than not, it will be done on a piece of cardio equipment or maybe even running outdoors on a track. Whereas with high intensity resistance training, you're working very hard against usually an external load. So it'd be typically thought of as resistance training with weights. Now some of the physical outcomes are very, very similar, if not the same between the two approaches.

Heather Sandison, ND: So Thomas, what have you used in your practice, you work a lot with executives and you do a lot of coaching around this. What's your favorite modality here?

Thomas DeLauer:  Yeah, I'm really a fan of... It depends. If there's someone that's really trying to eliminate a lot of concussion and they're not trying to bless their joints a whole lot, then it's a whole different ball game. But if someone is a completely healthy individual with healthy joints, I'm a fan of a mix of the two because I think they have their practical application. When you start mixing them together in a given workout, I feel you run into some issues. But when you mix them separately, where some days you're doing more of a high intensity resistance type workout versus a high intensity interval training another day, it allows you to really get that optimum result from each given category. And I think Simon will probably continue to explain that you are kind of getting the same end result in a lot of ways, but you're coming to it from two different avenues. Resistance training, anaerobic world, which is probably going to have a larger metabolic effect. Versus a high intensity interval training, cardio effect which might be a little bit more short term but be more oxygen related, be more aerobic related. So we'll dive into that a little bit more, but I like to do a little bit of both to be completely honest.

Heather Sandison, ND: Is that the same for you Simon?

Simon Shawcross: Primarily I do the resistance training. And I dabble, I dip in and out of integrating some high intensity interval training with that as well. So I enjoy occasionally going through periods when I might prep for a five K run and then I'll definitely be using intervals in preparation to do that. Also mountain bike as well. So are you some interval type stuff for mountain biking too? So it depends. If my goal is currently just on health, it'll be resistance training. If I'm looking to achieve a specific goal or improve at something specifically, usually that will be a run or a bike type ride, then I will bring in the interval training as well.

Health Benefits of Resistance Training

Heather Sandison, ND: So I'd like to go into this because in my mind as a clinician, I think cardio is so important for long term health. But what you said was if you're doing it just for health, you're going to do more of the resistance training. So can you help me square that circle?

Simon Shawcross: So it really depends with resistance training on how you're applying it. So to get the maximum benefit from a health perspective, if out of resistance training, you need to be going to a point or very close to a point, that it's described in [inaudible] muscle failure or muscular failure. Which simply means that if you imagine you're holding some weights in your hands and you're lifting them up and down, you get to a point where during that upward movement, as you're lifting those dumbbells, you cannot continue to move the weight. Just can't, despite your focus, your will, your desire to keep it moving up, it won't go up anymore. And that seems to be a huge trigger for the physiology as a whole. And I like to think of the muscles as a window to your entire physiology. And if you can trip that switch, a whole cascade of positive hormonal effects is going to take place, including enhancing the cardiovascular system, releasing things such as myokines, which have a huge impact. So we now know that muscle is a secretary organ, it's not just a dumb collection of muscle tissue that can contract and relax.

It's something that is a secretory organ that has an impact on other organs in the body as well. So resistance training, if you're working to that point of muscle failure or very close, it might be one rep shy of muscle failure. But research isn't really clear on that, it might even be two reps shy. But for safety sake, if you want to know you've done everything you can do, it's about going to that point of muscle failure. Now the challenge in doing that, especially if you see the way some people lift weights is that they can mistake an intrinsic fatiguing of the target muscle with an external focus of just lifting a load.

Hoicking a load as hard and as fast as they can. Well, if you want to get the health benefits out of resistance training over the long-term chronically, you need to do it safely. So that means reducing speed, eliminating momentum and focusing on the quality of the contractions rather than, "I'm lifting a hundred kilograms or 200 pounds." Or having these [inaudible] which are fine if you're in a sport which requires that, such as Olympic lifting or powerlifting. But from a health perspective, it's about fatiguing that target muscular safely through bio-mechanically correct exercises.

Thomas DeLauer:  And then can I add something in there too? On the health side, this is just some stuff that I read recently, which is just intriguing. The longer that a muscle is under load, we're starting to see that there is more activation of one more protein density, what's called a GLUT4 transporter. So when you look at it from an overall health perspective, someone that's getting older, someone that might be suffering from some kind of metabolic condition or a metabolic disorder. If you can increase GLUT4 transporter, what that ultimately means is at least it demonstrated that carbohydrates, sugar, glucose that's floating through your bloodstream can get into the cell more effectively. A more dense GLUT4 transporter is going to bring in more glucose into the cell, meaning it's not floating around in the bloodstream, it's not causing these other issues. That's a huge, huge piece. So now we're starting to see the evidence of resistance training in general, but then taking it one step further and saying that, when a muscle is under load, you increase the density of that GLUT4 transporter. So that is huge when it comes down to just overall health and longevity

Benefits of Resistance Training on Blood Sugar

Heather Sandison, ND: In terms of reducing the risk of diabetes or high blood sugar and even if it's not diabetes, all of the cascade of events in the cells and biochemically that are damaging to cellular health even if it's not diagnosed diabetes.

Thomas DeLauer: Definitely I think, yeah. I'm very careful not to talk about any kind of disease state but I think we can just generally round it to glucose intolerance as a whole, is a problem. If you're glucose intolerant, whether you are insulin resistant or not, you can run into a world of hurt. And I think we're seeing that time and time again, whether it's related to your hypertension, whether it's related to diabetes, you could go on and on.

Is Testosterone Important in Muscle Protein Synthesis?

Heather Sandison, ND: Yeah. Right. And then can you speak to testosterone? So muscle building. So if we're talking about muscle fatiguing and certainly building muscle, having more muscle in the system. What happens to testosterone?

Thomas DeLauer: Simon, I'll let you lead on this because you probably know more on the exercise related piece directly and I can speak to what happens post exercise in terms of nutrition.

Simon Shawcross: Sure. So when you perform a high intensity resistance training workout, during the workout and for a few hours afterwards, you will elevate your levels of testosterone. And that goes back towards baseline fairly quickly after that, there might be some chronic elevation over a period of time. But when you're talking about increasing testosterone through exercise and you compare it to somebody who's taking testosterone, via the needle, it's much, much lower effect. So you're not putting huge amounts of testosterone into the system just by exercising. And you'll get a three hour period of elevation amended or move toward baseline again after that.

Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, and that's exactly along the lines of what I would say too. And Simon, I'll be curious to hear your insight on this too. I am slowly, I shouldn't say slowly, quickly becoming a believer that it's less about the testosterone and more about that switch over into the proper impro [inaudible] activation p70S6k, the downstream pathways of protein synthesis. So it's interesting when you look at some of these studies you see even women that have low levels of testosterone can arguably have higher degrees of muscle protein synthesis occurring after a workout. How do you explain that? It's like, okay, there's very little testosterone. They still have by and large about the same increase in testosterone per capita if you want to call it that as men do. But they end up having sometimes more muscle protein synthesis. How do you explain that?

Well, that can go down a different rabbit hole of different epigenetic things, but I don't believe that testosterone is the end all be all. But then again, you look at the other piece of the equation is, the more muscle mass that somebody has, the more androgen receptors they have. So then potentially more testosterone that's actually able to bind and actually energies that are actually able to bind them to their job. But it's like that switch that gets flipped and comes back to that hormetic response. Like doing hard things, lifting weights that are difficult to lift and putting your muscle under load triggering this very black and white switch. It's either on or it's off and testosterone is almost a satellite response to that, if that makes sense.

Simon Shawcross: I think you touched on it earlier, Thomas. The increasing glycogen storage in turning on the glycogen receptors in the muscle tissue is super important. That release of the myokines is super important. Has so many beneficial effects on metabolic processes, hypertrophy, fighting off sarcopenia. And then you go on to things as people age, like senescence where you have these cells that can cause damage to the other cells around them. There was a research paper from 2017 that showed there're these women have these elevated levels of senescent cells in their thigh musculature. And after they've been on a resistance training program that the levels of cellular senescence had dropped within that five musculature. So you see very practical, real world changes. And I think the exciting thing about resistance training or high intensity interval training is what it does to the muscles and how much of an impact it has on the entire physiology. It's just this huge cascading effect. It's waking up the system as it were and many of us unfortunately in the Western world today live in a place where we are not tapping into that, not turning that on, and without using it, it goes. It slowly goes. We actually have tools that can bring it back for people and can effectively reverse mitochondrial aging to a degree as well.

Heather Sandison, ND: That's amazing. I always tell patients exercise is the best deal in medicine. There's really nothing else that you can do where you're going to get the return that you will with exercise. In my mind I'm always thinking, "Okay, if you exercise more, you're going to get more testosterone production." And that's going to help a lot of people feel healthier, more stable mood wise, have more energy, a little more like, "Get up and go" in the mornings. But you're saying it's not that simple. It's not just testosterone. It's not just insulin and blood sugar. There's all kinds of biochemical cascades that are turned on when you get to this certain degree of exercise. 

Do You Need a Coach to Train Safely?

Heather Sandison, ND: So the next place I want to go because I'm sold, like, "alright, we want in." So how do we do it safely? Is it necessary if we're going to take on one of these routines, like one of you guys might author or suggest for a client, is that easy to do without a coach or do we definitely need a coach? How risky is it in terms of getting hurt?

Simon Shawcross: Thomas, do you want to go first?

Thomas DeLauer: Sure. My experience is, there's always going to be a learning curve depending on where you are, who you are. No matter what you're trying to take on, it's something new. There's always going to be a learning curve. I think we're seeing, now during these times when a lot of us are in isolation, that there are ways to learn without say, hands-on coaching as much. Seeing a lot of things happen via Zoom and everything. I think we're going to evolve and we're going to adapt. That being said and when you're looking at a special patient population or anything like that, of course it's better to be hands on. But I think it's a matter of, what is someone after? Are they looking to, going back to what Simon had said, are you training for something specifically?

If you're training for something specifically, by all means, if you don't have a coach you're leaving a lot on the table. Even Simon probably has coaches. I have coaches. It's just the way of the world. If you're just trying to get in the door and get started with this kind of thing, I still think having a coach, having someone that can help you out is a huge, huge advantage. That being said, I don't think it literally needs to be someone that is there with you holding your hand all the time. Unless you're trying to achieve something that might be dangerous or might be new or might put you at risk.

Simon Shawcross: My answer would totally back that up. And I'd say yes and no is for sure the answer to what you're saying. Ideally, yes, you have somebody to show you but it's always better to have that hands on one-to-one tuition from somebody who could do it. But if that, for whatever reason, is not possible for you right now for goodness sake, don't let that get in the way. Good information, solid information, helping you to start that process because you're better off starting it than not. It's super interesting talking about the Zoom thing, it's like, I've seen it and I know it for myself. You can be in a room training by yourself and you can have one person come into that room not saying a thing. And that adds motivation to people to work well and work right and demonstrate how hard they're training and how safely and effectively they are training. And that's without saying a word. And so even just from that psychological perspective, it makes a difference. But then having somebody who knows, joint angles, potential range of movements, what to do if you've got an issue with your rotator cuff in your left shoulder. What to do if, if, if, if vendors a multitude of reasons why it's very beneficial to have a trainer or a coach.

How to Make Exercise Effortless When Adopting to a New Routine

Heather Sandison, ND: Yeah. So the next thing that keeps people from engaging in exercise is always the excuse, I'll call it of time. "I don't have enough time. If I do that then I'm going to have to take a shower after that. I'm going to have to bring clothes with me. I'm going to have to..." It feels like a burden almost to get this into your routine. Do you have any tips for people to make it more seamless, more effortless, more frictionless when you're trying to adopt a routine? Like what you guys would put together? Go ahead Thomas.

Thomas DeLauer: First and foremost, it doesn't need to be long. I think Simon will definitely echo this knowing him. It doesn't need to be a long workout. It doesn't. It's about a stimulus. It's about, if you back up and you think it's not about trauma anymore, it's not about how can you just obliterate your body and obliterate muscles. I used to read muscle building magazines where it was ultimately telling me to go into a gym and just destroy my biceps until I couldn't lift my arms anymore. That would take hours. That would take time. You don't need to be doing that. It's more about the frequency. It's more about the consistency and keeping that constant load on the muscle. And by a constant load, I don't just mean during the workout, I mean constant in terms of the grand scheme of things and in your big scale too. If you back up and you look at your life with a zoom lens and you back it out and you look, "Okay over the course of a month, how many times have I touched this muscle in terms of putting it under load?"

That's what's ultimately going to matter. So you might have a day where you are in the gym for 15 or 20 minutes literally, and you might have another day where you can spend a little bit more time. You work within the confines of what you've got. There are many, many times, many times I lost count how many times I've gone to the gym and I've just done a 15 minute power pump. I go in there and I just touch my full body, put it under load and it's done. And you know, guess what? I didn't waste away. I didn't lose my gains, I didn't lose progress, I didn't lose health. So it's more about just getting in there, keeping it consistent and keeping that muscle under load. So you can flip that very black and white switch. Whether it's 10 minutes under load or an hour under load, you're still flipping that switch. You can't flip it harder. It's like you flip a light switch, you can't lift to the light switch up to the point more to make the lights brighter and brighter. You're going to reach the limit at some point.

Heather Sandison, ND: Okay.

Simon Shawcross: Yeah. And I'll add to that and say, make it as convenient as yourself as possible. So if you have a good facility, close by, use that. Find ways to just make it easy for yourself, do it at home. If that's the only option. Have a trainer who's going to work with you over Zoom. If that's going to work best for you or while you're in the office behind your desk, if that's going to work best for you, integrate that. And then you can build up other ways of doing it in over time. And I'd say from a high intensity resistance training perspective, you only need to train for 15 to 20 minutes once, twice or three times a week. And I just expand on that twice a week is probably optimal for the vast majority of people doing this if you're doing a full body workout. You're probably going to get 80 to 90% of the benefits by doing once a week.

So it's not an exponential doubling of the benefit if you go to twice a week. And some people with certainty DNA, and certain way their physiology is, may get more again from doing three times a week, but they'd be at one end of the spectrum. So it's not a whole lot of time that you need to invest into this type of exercise in the first place. It can fit busy, professional family, person's life conveniently. And I think that's a really key thing, because if we talk about athletes and we look at athletes, they have all the time in the world to train, they have loads of time to recover. So long as it's not peak end of the season. They have loads of recovery strategies and tools and nutritionists and people helping them, tools that not everybody has.

So I don't think it's useful for the majority of people to look, to emulate a professional athlete in their training. And to attempt to do so when you've got three kids running around, you've got a high stress job, you've got relationships you need to maintain, you've got sleep patterns you need to look after and everything else going on. I think it's better to focus on doing what is possible to do and is shown in the research is going to have the maximum amount of benefit or the optimum amount of benefit for the least amount of time you can put in. And make that at least your starting point.

Workout 15-20 Minutes, 1-3 Times a Week

Heather Sandison, ND: So you just blew my mind. Are you saying that in 20 minutes, maybe twice a week you can still get beneficial return?

Simon Shawcross: That's absolutely. That's what the research very clearly shows. If you build a routine on multi-joint or compound exercises, which would be like a squat, a chest press or a pushup, a chin up or a pull down. Big exercises but target a lot of the musculature in one go and you work those to muscular failure you're using correct range of motion through those exercises. You're using a sensible tempo or velocity of movement so you're not moving too fast and you're keeping that tension. As Thomas mentioned earlier on the muscle tissue all the way through the set until that point of fatigue or very close to fatigue. One individual set only needs to last between 60 and 90 seconds, then you flip that switch. And if you do that for a minimum of four exercises to cover the whole body, and I'd say up to about 10 exercises that's going to be done in 15, 20, if you're hanging around a bit between exercises, 25 minutes tops,

Heather Sandison, ND: That's amazing. And that works for the majority of people. Who doesn't have 20 minutes twice a week?

Simon Shawcross: Absolutely. Can fit your life. I've been a personal trainer for 20 years and the sheer number of people who are unable to stick to a fitness lifestyle routine program previously then discovered this kind of exercise. Which just like, "Wow, this works. This can fit." And what you start to notice after a while, they come for six months and they start to go, "I want to do more now." Because you've woken up the physiology and it's like now they're looking for more space in their life to bring more in and. At that point I tend to encourage people, "Well, you don't really need to lift more than that. Maybe you're one of those people who can get more out of three times a week full body. But maybe go and find yourself another physical activity to enjoy. Do you want to ride a bike? Do you want to play tennis? Bring something else into the picture. Do you want to run a five K? Find something else to put that. Now use it. You've built the motorcar up. You're now on your way to creating a Ferrari. Now you want to burn it around the block a few times as well."

Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, without a doubt. I think a big thing that needs to be looked at is most people when they are going to the gym six, seven days per week and they're grinding it, they're looking at it from trying to outwork their diet. And that's the thing that we have to remember here is that, everything that Simon is saying is entirely 100% true. The literature shows that one to three times per week... And you're there. And does that mean that you can't do more? No, you can do more as long as your recovery is in line.

And go down that rabbit hole too. But most people are looking at their workouts through a different lens. They're looking at it through combating the extra calories they're taking in. And it goes down so many different directions. Just the big overall perspective that people tend to have in terms of calories in versus calories out being the only way. And so if you look at, "Okay, well I consumed too much yesterday, that means I need to go and I need to work out. And I need to punish myself and I need to..." You could in a lot of senses be messing yourself up, setting yourself back. In reality is yes, you have to have a two part equation. If you're willing to work out one to two times per week for 20 minutes. Also understand that, that's going to be having that metabolic effect that's going to allow you to build muscle, allow your overall metabolism to increase, but you're not moving as much.

So make sure that your calories are still in line. Make sure that your food is still in line because it's not going to necessarily be about the calories. I will tell you from my own experience and from lots of different clients. When you do a workout, you don't actually burn all that many calories. You really don't. And Simon I'm sure you know this. Resistance training, we'd like to believe that our Apple iWatch is correct. But generally, if we're going into a resistance training setup and we're going to do squats, we're going to do maybe some other compounders and pull ups and dead lifts, whatever we want to do. It's actually not that many calories you're burning. You're not really doing yourself that much service in terms of combating the calories. What you're doing is you're changing your physiology and changing your metabolism that later on down the line will allow you to accommodate those calories. So it's just important that that's really clear so that you don't say, "Okay, I'm going to work out two times per week. This is great." Or "I'm going to cut my workouts back, but I'm going to eat more." It's not quite the same. You'll get there, but it's not that way in the beginning.

Improving your Mitochondrial Health

Heather Sandison, ND: So I do want to go down that rabbit hole of how do we get the most out of our exercise program by optimizing diet. So keto diets, vegan diets, there's so many different diets out there. From your perspective, what makes the most sense with a HIT training program?

Thomas DeLauer: That's a very good question. And it's definitely has multiple answers because first of all, different physiology for different people, and this can get very, very technical very quickly if you want it to. But different physiology, some people are more type one muscle fibers, they are going to respond better to beta oxidation, they're going to respond better to a higher fat, lower carbohydrate diet. Then you have people that are largely type two muscle fibers. People that are very, very, very anaerobic. They still respond well to low carbohydrate, high fat diets, but they might notice a little bit more tweaking that they have to do to get themselves there. But I think at the end of the day, the big piece that we want to focus on is mitochondrial health, mitochondrial density, mitochondrial health. When you look at the disease states that the world is in, like all kinds of different disease states, it almost invariably circles back to mitochondrial dysfunction, poor aging, poor health, everything circles back to mitochondrial dysfunction. It purely does. And we have to remember that mitochondria is the energy powerhouse of the cell. Yes, but it's also doing a lot more. Our mitochondria, just to give a basic backstory on it, that is where we create adenosine triphosphate.

That's where we create energy, the energy currency within ourselves. Now our mitochondria is so unique that it has its own DNA. Its own DNA inside our bodies which have our own set of DNA. So our mitochondria, these little factories inside of our cells, they have quite literally a mind and a body of their own. That's how important they are. So when you have a dysfunctional mitochondria because your body is going through metabolic distress or metabolic disorder, you have this cascade of just different metabolic issues that come to mind or come to be. So exercising in itself is going to improve mitochondrial health. And I think I look at it... The cool thing about exercise in general and physiology nutrition is, you've got so many awesome experts that have different ways that they look at this.

And my role is to look at it from a biochemical nutrition perspective to support what happens on the exercise side. So the exercise by itself is improving mitochondrial density, which means it improves the amount of oxygen that can get through the mitochondria. It improves the amount of free fatty acids that can get into the mitochondria and get broken down into Acetyl Coenzyme egg, utilized for energy. So then how do you support that? Well, the nice thing with a higher fat, lower carbohydrate ketogenic diet is, it improves just by its very natural, that mitochondrial density. So it'll allows fats essentially to get into that mitochondria faster and combine with oxygen to create fuel.

This is great for not only your exercise performance, but think about it in general. Just regular life, walking around. If you have an energy factory in your body that is more efficient and is creating more output with less overall employees, if you want to call it that, less overall load overhead. That makes the most sense. It's just less demand on the body. And the ketogenic diet via two avenues does that. It's changing the macro-nutrients that are coming in. So yes. That plays a role. But also just like Simon was talking about how we're finding out the musculoskeletal system, that our muscle is actually an organ. We're actually seeing that ketones, which are created when you eat a higher fat, lower carbohydrate diet act as a signaling device and trigger the body to change. They trigger the mitochondria to change.

My point in saying all of this, is not to force or encourage people to do a ketogenic diet, but just to understand that it's all about a certain level of taxation and a certain level of stress on the body. Okay? Everything Simon's talked about is about putting the muscle under load. While we can also put the metabolism under appropriate load by stressing it, by depriving it of carbohydrates for just a little bit of time to the point where the body becomes very efficient at utilizing other fuel sources. This makes you a very efficient human being that can survive whether you have carbohydrates or whether you're dumped, and that's what we're after. We're not trying to be dogmatic and saying carbs are bad.

We're trying to make sure that people can be metabolically efficient. And before in the [inaudible 00:29:58], everything that also applies with the ketogenic diet still applies with intermittent fasting and people don't necessarily want to go that route. And I think for longevity sake, that's a much easier pill for people to swallow because it's easier to say skip breakfast and go a period of time without eating than it is to get someone that is unfamiliar with the ketogenic diet to start eating eggs or start eating higher fat foods that have been quite honestly demonized for so long.

Benefits of Ketogenic Diets, and Intermittent Fasting as a More Approachable Version 

Heather Sandison, ND: So question there and Simon jump in here. But my understanding is that if you're going to do intermittent fasting, it's really best to combine that with a ketogenic diet. And then if you're still using sugar for fuel, that skipping a meal maybe is not as beneficial. Just because you get on that swing of high sugar and then low sugar and then your liver kicks in and creates more sugar and now you're back in a high sugar state. So maybe you guys can clarify that. Is it all or nothing that you're in ketosis and doing intermittent fasting or in glycolysis and eating small frequent meals, or is there some beneficial diet that combines facets of both of that? Those things.

Simon Shawcross: Thomas, do you want to carry on with that one first?

Thomas DeLauer: Yeah, sure. It's kind of a yes and no answer. Yes, combining the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting makes it infinitely easier and infinitely more effective. It really does. What I try to do is explain it in a way where... I understand just being on the front lines with everything keto related is that it's very difficult at first for someone to accept that it's okay to eat these higher fat foods in the absence of carbohydrates. So it's a lot easier to get someone on board with the benefits with intermittent fasting. And the reason that that is the case is because the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting affect the body in extremely, extremely similar ways. With ketosis, for all intents and purposes, all you're doing is mimicking fasting to the body. You're telling the body, because you're deprived of glucose carbohydrates, that it's in a quote unquote starvation mode.

However, I don't even like using that term because it's really has a terrible connotation. You're not starving, but the body goes to the same metabolic reaction and hormonal and overall response with ketosis as it does intermittent fasting. In fact, when you are intermittent fasting, you are generally creating ketones, because you have been just by essence of not eating food, you've been deprived of carbohydrates. When you do combine them, keto and intermittent fasting, yes you avoid the blood sugar swings so it makes your fasting easier. And it makes you capable of doing longer-term fasts and it allows you to get the benefits faster. There are certain situations for maybe maximal muscle hypertrophy if you're really trying to build muscle and things like that. Yeah, you could add some carbs into the mix at strategic times. But that again, that gets down a little bit more of a complicated ratable. The short answer is if you want the best result from both a cellular standpoint and a body cosmetic standpoint, combining intermittent and fasting keto is definitely going to be a stronger rep.

Heather Sandison, ND: And Simon, what do you tell your clients about diet?

Simon Shawcross: So I think the perspective I come from of a very outset is making sure you're eating whole foods, stuff that you cook yourself or somebody else has cooked from scratch for you if you have to buy meals out. So it's really simple stuff. I put an emphasis on things like protein. First and foremost, making sure you're getting an adequate amount of protein. Not really worrying about fat at all, when you're eating eggs and you are making sure you're getting the omegas as well at an appropriate level. And then in terms of carbohydrate, from my perspective that comes down to the sensitivity of the individual to carbohydrates and maybe how metabolically deranged they are in the first place. And Thomas touched on that training as well. So if you're prepping for a 25 K run, then you might want to strategically use carbohydrates at certain times, especially pre-race, to optimize the body's ability to perform under those constraints.

And if you're looking to glycogen super compensate for the reason of stepping on a bodybuilding stage and looking your absolute peak musculature as best you can, then doing these glycogen depleting workouts back to back. And then taking in carbohydrate to swell the muscles with the water that's coming along with that glycogen is a useful strategy in those circumstances. But for people who are looking to reduce weight and aren't metabolically deranged, reduce your carbohydrates, make sure you're getting adequate protein. Don't really worry about the fat so long as we're not talking about refined fats that added in cooking oil and so on nowadays. And so if you can pick it or hunt it, eat it. But if you have to process it beyond that, then I start questioning, "What is it's value in human nutrition?" And you can make arguments for it. But I think you have to start questioning at that point, or how useful is this as a calorie to me.

Benefits of Exercise to Your Mental Health

Heather Sandison, ND: And Simon, you had mentioned people getting motivated to be consistent. Now we've talked about getting enough energy and getting enough nutrition. What about the mindset? And I think that there's a mindset that it takes to get in and be consistent. And then there's the benefits of exercise to your mental health. Can you speak to that?

Simon Shawcross: So, yeah. It's a bit of a catch 22 in that respect because when you haven't started exercising, you haven't got those benefits yet, so it makes starting feel more challenging. But you got to jump off the precipice with faith to start off with and do it and understand that there are mental health benefits to resistance training. And more research has been done into the mental health benefits of cardio training. But in recent years, there's now starting to become, people are looking at researchers and starting to look at, "Well, what does resistance training do for a person's mental health?"

And so it's now known that it improves cognitive functioning, sleep quality, reduces levels of anxiety, reduces depression, even in people who are clinically depressive. So these are things that you can benefit just from going back through that process. And by the way, one of the pieces of research showed that whether the person was lifting weights two times a week or five times a week, the mental health benefits was exactly the same. So even from that mental perspective, there wasn't an increase by upping the frequency of exercise. The same level of improvement had occurred if you're in the gym twice a week, as five times a week, which again comes down to efficiency.

And I do love looking at things from an efficiency perspective nowadays, because time is one of those things that we can be quite poor off if we're not aware of what's important to us. And so making things efficient and really easily doable for people at the outset is really important. So what I would say is these huge mental health benefits that you can get from exercise in terms of how do you make yourself do that to start off with. Say you've never exercised, you're uncomfortable in your body, you feel embarrassed to walk into a gym. Everybody has these questions about themselves and how they feel about the way they look. You could look at the most aesthetically beautiful person you can imagine, and they might be riddled with insecurities too. So understand that it probably isn't as bad as you think. And if you're going to start doing something for your betterment, it's a very selfish thing. You're doing it for you to improve yourself, your life and your self esteem as well.

So it is important and see it as something important to do for yourself. Another thing I'd suggest very strongly is to avoid comparing yourself to others. It's great if you can look at somebody purely as an inspiration and get very inspired, but if you aspire to be too much like them, like they ran a race in a certain time, or their biceps look a certain way, it just might not be on the cards for you to end up like that. You're going to frustrate yourself. So pick somebody because they inspire you, but not because you think you can be that or turn out like that. Start off with realistic goals and take your time every week that you've accumulated some form of exercise. Although I'm saying, resistance training twice a week, I do also think it's usually valuable to be mobile every day.

So to walk, to be active, to be out and about if you have physical hobbies, engaging in those. But at the very least, a 20 to 30 minute walk, ideally twice, but once is to be mobile, even if you just start that. But If you front load resistance training quite early in that it will... Like we talked about earlier, wake up a physiology so you will want to exercise more. Your cells will be telling you they need more, they want to engage, so you now have a body that can do that. And that can happen pretty rapidly within a period of four or five, six, seven weeks.

Motivation and Habits to Get You Started

Heather Sandison, ND: So both of you have mentioned things that make me think it's really valuable to have a coach, even this motivation to get started. If there's somebody who can hold you accountable, or Thomas, like you were talking about different muscle fibers might mean that you individually would benefit from a different type of diet. So having someone who's an expert or someone to play these ideas through with, can be really, really valuable. For you Thomas, what does a typical engagement look like with a client? Are you seeing them every week, multiple times a week? What are the options for someone if they wanted to get into this with you?

Thomas DeLauer: For me, my coaching process is pretty limited. To be completely honest, I do not work with a whole lot of people. So a lot of what I do now is work with professionals, work with executives, I work with US special forces. So I try to go from the top down in terms of some of those categories, and try to make as big of an impact as I can. So in terms of where my coaching has gone, it's a little bit different in terms of how I work with individuals. So to answer that question, it's very, very involved because people that are coming to me for coaching, I'm taking on maybe three to four a year at this point.

Heather Sandison, ND: Alright. Well, let's go there. So say I'm a special forces person and I am getting the best from Thomas. What does it look like?

Thomas DeLauer: So the special forces category is a little bit different because that's so... Let's make it, because those guys are [Crosstalk]

Heather Sandison, ND: That's fine. I can be a software executive.

Thomas DeLauer: Let's just say you are coming to me because you're like, "Okay, I want full immersion and I want to..." So generally with that, that is something where I would have you come out once a quarter and actually work with me in person. And then it's going to be something to the effect of three to five times per week, I want various forms of online check-In. Then there's another layer of that, which is also the retained portion of it, where it's like, "Okay. Yes, you're going to have questions that are coming in." So for me it's like full immersion. Just throw them in, make sure that they're living that style. They're actually just fully immersed in it. If I'm going to give my time and attention to somebody in a small group like that, then it needs to be fully immersed.

So I'm available with, "Okay, they go into a grocery store and they need to make a decision on this food or this food." I don't do a whole lot in the way of the exercise programming because that's really just... Although I'm decent diet, that's just not my strong suit, and I'm a big fan of staying where I know I am really solid, which is in the nutrition category. So for me, it's the clients that I'm working with are people that are metabolically drained. Just like Simon had said, they're having metabolic issues or they're former athletes. I've worked with a lot of professional athletes, NFL players, NHL players that have just retired. Those are the kinds of people that will typically come to me.

They're elite performers, but they have damaged their metabolisms from things that Simon was talking about, just beating the heck out of your body. So how do you recover that? We could again, so full of rattles. You are going to trip in my yard [inaudible 00:43:01]. If you beat the heck out of your body and you train too much, you will cause metabolic damage too. So a lot of what I do is, "Okay, well, these people that are so focused on wanting to push it hard, wanting to go all the way." It's like I have to reel them in and I have to reframe their entire life.

So then, that leads them to these big psychological piece. And for me, when you look at the decisions that people make with diet, or even with their training to some degree, what's happening psychologically? What's happening to make them want to make these decisions? It could be something as simple as, someone was a pro athlete and they were used to burning 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 calories in training. And now all of a sudden they're not, and they're wondering why their weight is going up when they're living a more retired centered lifestyle. Well, that's 20, 30 years of habits that you have to break.

Which quite frankly, I hate to rain on anyone's parade, you're not going to fully break those habits. That's ingrained. But you can make yourself aware, be mindful of it so you can make decisions. So a lot of what I end up doing ends up being a lot of the mindset and the mindfulness piece of it. And then from there, there's the tactical approaches that you make with nutrition based on. If Bob comes to me and he says, "Okay, my metabolism is damaged. I played hockey for 30 years. What do I do?" "Okay, well, first let's address this issue. But now let's go ahead and let's practice some intermittent fasting, let's practice the ketogenic diet, but let's look at your history and get some foods in there."

And then we can go down the other side of the anti-inflammatory approach. Like what kind of foods are triggering inflammation for people as measured by C-reactive protein, different interleukins. A lot of times I'm not a medical doctor, so full disclaimer. But if people are willing to share their blood work or they're willing to get blood work and they're willing to share it with me, it does help for me to look at that. Because I like to see what kind of responses do you have, what is happening inside your body. So the long and short of it, it's in depth. And I wish I had time to do it more because truly is fun. It really is.

Exercise and Nutrition are Inseparable 

Heather Sandison, ND: That is a lot of fun to be able to look at the changes in numerical values. You get an HS CRP that's up over six or eight or something, and then to watch people integrate a diet and lifestyle program and see it come down and come into those normal ranges. It's very satisfying, both for us, as people who support people in that process and then for the clients and patients as well. So Simon, I'm curious what it would look like an ideal client that comes to you. How is it different or similar to what Thomas offers?

Simon Shawcross: Again, I'm not working with very many clients to much like Thomas mentioned. A lot of my work is through HITuni now and the resources we put out through that. But if a client came to me primarily they coming for the exercise, side of the equation, so like Thomas said, my focus is on nutrition. My focus is very much on the exercise part of that equation. So if somebody comes to me in their first session, we're going to find out what is their exercise history like? Have they attempted to keep an exercise program going in their life? Has there been a stumbling block for that? Look to find out what that stumbling block has been.

And then we'll start to look at, making sure that they've got full range of motion through their joints, many people don't. So it's adapting the exercises from the very first session to make sure that it matches with their current ability, with the goal of stimulating improvements, in things like full range of motion and posture over time. So at a very initial session, I would only run through three or four exercises with them. And I tend to refer to those as dress rehearsals rather than workouts themselves. They will feel like a workout to the client, going through them, but compared to somebody who's been doing it for 10 to 12 weeks.

That actual intensity level or effort level is going to be lower because they're just not able to tap in to their neuromuscular system in the way that somebody who has developed some skill can. So I would have them on a moderate load for an exercise, and I pick, like we started off, if we're using machines, I pick a pull down, a chest press, and a leg press and probably a lumber movement as well. Something to bring the hips and low back in specifically with a moderate load. They're going to perform that movement for probably around 90 seconds, maybe even two minutes, which is a little bit longer than I usually have somebody doing for.

Again, they're dress rehearsals. I'm looking for somebody to feel out the movement, start to acquire the skill of being able to produce a controlled movements against the load. And for some people who haven't done this before, it can take three, four or five sessions to get the nervous system to fire up the right rate, to bring in the right motor unit, so you can actually produce a smooth movement. But it's about keeping it safe for them that very first session whilst giving them enough of a taste of it. They go, "Okay, this is what that intensity part of the equation is." Because I've had so many people who've come to me.

They've read a book on high intensity training, or they've seen some videos and they say, "I've been doing it for a year, but I just wanted to come and check out if I'm doing it right." And at the end of that first session, they say, "I don't think I was quite there with the intensity." You know people when they're training themselves, it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about people doing it for themselves. Perception of effort or rating of perceived exertion, is something that can be a little bit off for a lot of people, even people who've got a lot of exercise background. And so you can think you're working really hard and there's signals that your brain is picking up, but it's telling you that you're working really hard.

But actually you're not working as hard as you think you are. And so it's getting people to get past that stage and saying, "Look, there's this extra 30% that you can tap into and I'm going to hold your hand to get you there. We're going to do it safely, and your physiology when we wake it up to do this, is very capable of doing this. It's your birthright to be able to do this. And you just haven't accessed it for a long period of time and I'm going to help you access it. And that would be the starting point for how we dive into high intensity resistance training.

Heather Sandison, ND: So after hearing you say that, what comes up for me is this fear that if I come see you Simon in the morning for my 20 minutes, and you push me that hard, am I going to be able to lift my computer or my child, or cut my vegetables that night? Or am I going to be so burnt out from how hard you pushed?

Simon Shawcross: Absolutely. Some people feel a little bit shaky for five minutes after the workout, that immediate impact of the workout itself. But then rapidly, they start to get backwards. They could do anything they could before and over time, of course they're building up strength. So they're actually lifting those sacks of food, those bags of food from the supermarket, whatever becomes... This is how people usually tell me, they first notice they say, "I realized I was carrying six bags in from the car, whereas I was getting home for [Inaudible] and I only used to take two. I just realized it wasn't an effort. I wasn't fast about doing it." So it's about building people's functional ability to interact in life with all the physical tasks we do in a way that is really normal. That's what should be normal, and isn't for a lot of people.

But it takes a little bit of time to get you in there. But no, I would say any decent high-intensity resistance trainer is going to be able to look at the client, observe how they're producing movement, what kind of load they're using during that movement and not push them too hard. Again, I go back to that dress rehearsal metaphor. I've had ex-rugby players come in and say, "I want to beat down." Well, okay. Sure. And then I have people who've come in at 90 years old and you adjust what's appropriate for the individual, so the effort that's required for that individual. Because I'm not looking to take somebody to muscular failure necessarily in a first, second or third workout, because what they're going to experience is still going to be a higher level of effort than anything else they do in the rest of their life. And if that's five reps away from momentary failure for them, it's still enough of a stimulus from the outset at the very beginning. So no. You wouldn't be dysfunctional for the rest of your day. I'll make sure of that.

Heather Sandison, ND: All right. I'm still sold then. So if someone were to come, if I were to refer a patient to HITuni, what would they experience on your website? What's the value they could get there?

Simon Shawcross: So we have two categories of courses. We have three courses, but targeted at personal trainers or people who want to become personal trainers. So if you're completely new to the field and you're into exercise you take one of our courses, but it's going to build everything from the ground level up from anatomy and physiology through to the protocol, how to apply all the science behind this type of exercise. And then there's courses for the general public. So we have a course on combining high intensity resistance training with running. So one the people who's one of our trainers who filmed this course just completed a 25K off-road trail race based on doing one high intensity resistance training workout a week, and two runs per week. None of the runs were longer than nine. Nine miles was by far the longest run he did in training, and he finished 3rd for his age category.

So that's about his process of combining resistance training with approaches to cardiovascular exercise. We have a course on bodybuilding, using high intensity training for those who are looking to absolutely push their musculature in a static way to its peak. And we have a course on biomechanics and integrating functional movement with high intensity resistant training. So we have these courses for people who want to learn to do this at home, for themselves as an individual. And we have those courses that are for personal trainers who want to be able to coach other people to do this as well.

Do you Need Equipment when you Exercise at Home?

Heather Sandison, ND: Fantastic. That makes it really accessible, especially this day and age when gyms are closed, and it's hard to go somewhere where you can do this. With that in mind, do you need equipment?

Simon Shawcross: That's a great question, and the answer is yes and no. Like it was to all the previous questions. It's really nice to have equipment. And if you're a trainer, it's great to have the best equipment so that you can work with lots of different populations, people who are very old, people who are obese, people who are shorter than average, people who are taller than average. It's great to have equipment that can help facilitate. You do that in a way that's going to be the most pleasurable or easy experience for those individuals. But at the upper end of the spectrum, no. You can do body weight exercise in a high intensity fashion, going to that point of muscular failure. And there's a new course we've got coming out very shortly.

I think we're going to give away access to one of the courses to one of your listeners. And that course is on no load training. And so there's some really fascinating research that's been happening in the last four years. That shows that, if you maximally contract a muscle without any load, so long as you're contracting maximally and you're straining to gather enough reps, you can get all of the benefits that you would get from using an external load. So there are ways you don't need to use any equipment whatsoever to having a few dumbbells and a chin up bar around to a [Inaudible] ultra expensive equipment.

And I'd say, the key thing is to not get hung up on the equipment. It's not about the equipment. The real machine is here. This is the machine we're looking to improve. Now there are special cases, like I mentioned, where you might want fancy equipment, but use what you have available to you, because really it's about [Inaudible] your muscle tissue. Being aware of contraction, the range of motion, how that feels, what that level of effort feels like at the end of the set. Stimulating up point, as Thomas mentioned earlier, flipping that switch, and then it's done. And then you can go and rest recover, get on with the rest of your life, enjoy your family until day three comes around and you go do it again. You hit that switch again, do it again. Simple.

Thomas DeLauer: And I would just add to that. Is to create the environment where it's a positive experience so that it's a positive experience. In less than equipment, people come to me constantly. "What equipment should I get? Should I get this? Should I get that?" And my response is always the same, "Minimal viable product." Is always what I say. Do the most with the least, because I will tell you as someone that trains extensively. My workouts don't change much. If I have a $10,000 piece of equipment in front of me, or if I have some resistance bands and a couple of dumbbells, maybe at TRX. Nothing changes that much. But what is a constant, is setting the right environment so that it is a place you want to go. If that means putting some brighter paint on the walls to lift your spirits...

If you're going to get hung up on anything, get hung up more on creating the environment than just spending equipment. Because it's spending money on equipment, just leads to this, it's a void fill. You think the idea of getting this equipment and using it sounds great, but then using it is not. How many spin bikes do we see sitting in people's bedrooms as laundry hampers, or laundry hanging on it. It's not about the equipment, it's putting it and give it a distinct place, even if it's a distinct corner of a room. In my opinion, it makes all the difference in the world to just be able to get in your element and then get out of your element.

Why is it Important to Age Gracefully?

Heather Sandison, ND: So Thomas, as we age, can you speak a little bit to why this is so important for graceful aging?

Thomas DeLauer: I think it comes back to the mitochondrial piece again. If we look at aging in general, mitochondria is a big piece of it. A dysfunctional mitochondria will create more of what is called Reactive Oxygen Species. This is ROS. This is a metabolic waste. So we always have a degree of reactive oxygen species. We always have a degree of metabolic waste. Just like when you fire up a car, there's going to be exhaust. There's going to be metabolic waste. While our body comes equipped with its own natural ecosystem to diffuse that or to fight against it and help eliminate it. And what ends up happening is, throughout creating energy, working out, walking, anything, breathing, talking, keeping your eyes open, all uses energy.

Well, every time that you use that energy, you have waste. What happens is when the mitochondria is not efficient or the mitochondria is dysfunctional, it expels more waste. It becomes ruthlessly inefficient. It's just the same exact comparison as having a brand new modern vehicle that it's getting tremendous miles per gallon. And comparing that to a 1977, Ford F350, it's just fallen apart and it's just spewing black smoke as soon as you fire it up. Which one's going to get better fuel economy? Which one's going to do better? Which one's going to produce less waste? I think you know the answer. The same thing happens. And to some degree, as we age, of course, mitochondria is going to suffer. Of course, things are going to change. You cannot deny that. Aging is a part of life. But if you focus on where most of the reactive oxygen species is created, it's created at that mitochondrial level.

So again, if we can make the mitochondria more efficient, then we have less of this metabolic waste that our body has to work so hard to combat. Because what ends up happening, the best way to describe it, is what's called your electron transport chain is basically when you have a pure series of electrons and the potential energy that passes along into the mitochondria, into a cell. And through that process, you have electrons that escape the pathway. So if you think of rolling a 20 bowling balls down an alley, a few of them are going to hit pins and create energy. But a lot of them are also going to bounce off the alley and they're going to start causing chaos everywhere. Well, that's just what happens in your body too. As energy is traveling to the cell, potential energy, excuse me, to create energy. A lot of those electrons are going to release and what they do is they bounce around your body, just like a pinball machine and everything they touch, they essentially wear out.

They essentially cost damage too. We want less of those rogue electrons. And when you are training properly and when you are doing these kinds of workouts that we're talking about, and you're eating the right kinds of foods, and you're eating an anti-inflammatory diet, and you're following a ketogenic diet, and these metabolic reflexible diets like intermittent fasting, you improve that mitochondrial efficiency and you quite virtually have less of those rogue electrons running around throughout your body. So therefore your body is able to spare the antioxidant capabilities that are built in for very vital functions. Keeping your organs alive, keeping your brain healthy, the potential to fighting Alzheimer's dementia, things like that, which is where we really want our energy preserved. And that's what's fascinating. There's a lot of different ways to combat aging in my opinion. But I think focusing on mitochondrial function is probably the biggest piece

Simon Shawcross: Talking about aging and another significant thing that happens within the muscles themselves and the muscle tissue itself, is obviously cytopenia related, where you lose fibers. The fibers that you do have shrink, it's a triple whammy and then fibers convert from pure types to hybrid types, effectively making you weaker. Whereas if you start applying a load and resistance training, you can reverse that process. You can build muscle tissue, increase the size of the muscle fibers, and you can also transform these hybrid fiber types back to a pure type, most likely a type 2A, which is the most metabolically active muscle fiber type. And you're staving off sarcopenia. A very similar thing is going to happen to you, collagen and elastin as well.

Heather Sandison, ND: Yeah. I think I've read literature around longer lived cultures. They tend to have hilly areas and particularly those big muscles in the thighs and hips stay active and stay strong. And that is associated with more longer lived communities, I guess. Can either of you speak to that, focusing on certain muscle groups or anything like that for aging?

Simon Shawcross: They might've looked at those particular muscles. But if you take that out across the whole system, there's only going to be more benefit from every muscle in your body being as close to its optimal, as it can be. Now look, sarcopenia, two degrees inevitable, you will lose strength and you will lose muscle size as you age. But there's a guy called Clarence Bass, who's been training since he was in his twenties and he's in his eighties now. And he basically has physiology tests have been done in universities, that shows he's essentially a 40 year old in terms of his body. And so you can reverse this aging.

And yeah, I think being in one of those Greek islands, where you've got to climb up all those steps to go and get your food, and then walk back down, it's going to get the fish from the sea, is going to have a resistance type training effect on the muscles of the hips and thighs. But there's no reason not to extrapolate that out, to be the entirety of the body. The more metabolically active, the stronger, the better connective tissue you have, the stronger connective tissue the longer you're going to last. I think Thomas touched on it earlier as well. It's like the muscles are the window to your physiology. So all of those internal organs are forced to stay in check and working at their best because your muscles are demanding that of them.

Heather Sandison, ND: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, you guys have really brought to light, I think the power of how efficient this is. it's all very doable, if you have made your exercise routine and your diet work for you in a really efficient way, then it can be done in very little time, with very little equipment, with relatively little help. It sounds like, especially with HITuni, there's a lot of access to support online so that people can make this happen. Start today. Why not?

Simon Shawcross: Absolutely.

Heather Sandison, ND: I feel like you guys have blown down all of the barriers, all of the obstacles to putting this into practice. I think it even surprised me. I feel like I've known this intellectually for a long time. Like, "Oh, it doesn't take much." And my routine, I like to go for runs, so I spend hours a week doing that and you've woken me up to this ability to do it more efficiently, perhaps. So I'm super intrigued personally, and really excited to share this with my patients, and of course with our listeners.

Simon Shawcross: And strength training will enhance your running as well.

About Thomas DeLauer and Simon Shawcross

Heather Sandison, ND: Well, that's fun. I could always afford to be a little faster. So Thomas, if we wanted to learn more about what you have to offer, where could our listeners find that?

Thomas DeLauer: I think the best place by all means is to drive everyone to YouTube. I've got over 2 million subscribers there in the world of intermittent fasting and keto. And I've got very specific videos catered towards older population as well. I've got specific over 40, over 50, over 60, over 70 videos. They do give a full breakdown on, "Hey, here's what you could be eating with the ketogenic diet. And here's how it works." And I go very deep into the physiology there. Because at this point I don't take on a lot of clients in terms of coaching. I think that's the best place to send people to get the most help, to allow people to really get a place to start and understand this relationship with resistance training. But more so just the nutritional piece of it altogether.

Heather Sandison, ND: Awesome. Great. And for you Simon, is HITuni the best place to get more information about what you offer?

Simon Shawcross: Yeah. We have a YouTube channel and a Facebook channel as well. But HITuni will show what we have and hituni.com/blog is where I put a lot of my writing up. And there's some really useful articles that we'll also help people get a deeper sense of what we've been talking about today on the exercise side of things and to dive a little bit deeper into that.

Heather Sandison, ND: Fantastic. Well, thank you both so much for being here today. It's been a real pleasure and a treat to hear each of your perspectives on how to get the most out of your exercise routine. And thank you as always to each of our listeners for spending the time with us.

Simon Shawcross: Thanks for having me.