Okay, I know that you listen to this training podcast so that you can get ideas for your own training for climbing, but if you’re tired of trying to figure it out for yourself, and I have been there, I was just there earlier this year, and you want help, Matt Pincus is one of our coaches here at Training Beta, and he is taking new clients right now. He works with people from all over the world of all climbing levels to help you get stronger and better at climbing and have better tactics. If you wanna learn from him, have him make you a training program and have him be there for you all month long, you can go to training beta.com/matt. Again, you can go to training beta.com/matt, and he would love to help you out with your own personalized training program.

(01:04)
This is the Training Beta podcast, and I’m your host Neely Quinn. Thanks for joining me for another episode. All about rock climbing, rock climbing training, all things rock climbing. I have been away from the podcast since, I think it was May 24th and now it’s July 13th. And sometimes I just have to take a break so that I can focus on other things because podcasting, podcasting can be a little bit time laborious and, um, yeah, it takes a lot of energy and time to do this. So I gave myself time to focus on finishing school, so I’m officially a life coach, which I’m really excited about, and I’ve been working really hard on getting our new route climbing training program up and available. Um, Matt Pincus created it. I’m trying to edit it and make sure that it’s usable and pretty and bug free. And so that’s been taking a lot of my time and focus, but I’m really, really excited about it.

(02:12)
Matt did an excellent job of creating a program, actually three programs for root climbers that will help to make people better climbers, but also have more power, endurance and strength. And so that’s gonna be coming out hopefully. I thought it was gonna be coming out a long time ago, but it’s just been a lot of, uh, issues and so it’s probably going to be available in the beginning to middle of August, and I will be launching my coaching or making my coaching services available after that sometime. So stay tuned for all of that, and thanks so much for your patience with me about getting new episodes out. But today I have a really fun episode. This is Thomas Cunningham’s second interview on the training beta podcast. And Thomas’ first interview was about how he trains very efficiently as a busy dad of three, a busy ER physician.

(03:15)
He also does research on the side, um, and he also manages to climb five 14 C outside, even though he has only around 10 to 15 climbing days outside per year. So he makes the very best use of his time and energy when he is training and when he is climbing outside. And so we talked a lot in that episode about his training and some other things, which I highly recommend you listen to it. It’s super valuable, especially for anybody else who is time poor. But what we didn’t get to talk about, which I really wanted to talk about, is his use of the whoop, which is a wearable, um, like bio meter, I don’t know what to call it. A a wearable you, you learn about your resting heart rate, your H R V, your sleep, your recovery, um, uh, your respiratory rate. But we’ll talk all about that and he uses it in various ways with his training and with his climbing performance.

(04:19)
So we’ll talk about that. But we also talk about the continuous glucose meter or A C G M as he’ll refer to it. And basically what that is, is you wear it on you and it is, it takes readings every five minutes of your glucose, your blood glucose, and so you get, uh, pretty much a real time, um, knowledge about how foods are affecting you. So he’s done this with himself. He also asks Sam Elias and Jonathan Hurst to wear one of these things, and then he worked with them to sort of optimize their diet, um, using the results that they got. So to me, this was super fascinating as a nutritionist, um, and also very validating because the things that they learned and the things that they changed were things that I’ve been telling people to change for a long time. And so it was really cool to just see like data backing this stuff up in professional climbers.

(05:22)
Um, oh, and if you wanna work with Thomas, he’s actually taking clients right now to help them with this kind of stuff. And you can find that@thomascunninghammd.com. We’re also gonna do a third interview where we’re gonna talk about blood work, so using blood work to optimize like supplements, um, and all kinds of things. So we’ll do that soon, and he is got some research to back up everything that we’re gonna talk about. So anyway, without further ado, here is Thomas Cunningham for the second time, and I hope you enjoy, I’ll talk to you on the other side. All right. Welcome back to this show, Thomas. It’s really good to talk to you again.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Well, last time you kind of changed my life and so I figured it would, it warranted a second interview because we talked a little bit last time about the whoop and I got one and it’s like really helped with my sleep, and we can talk about all that later, but I just wanted to say thank you, so thank you.

Yeah, definitely. I, I I would say it had a similar effect on my sleep as well.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s awesome having data in front of you. I’ve, I’ve always been sort of scared of data in ways because I thought it would do negative things to me, but it’s really not at all. So it’s awesome. Um, okay, so before we get into this, can you tell me who you are just for anybody who didn’t listen to your first interview?

Sure. Uh, so I’m Thomas Cunningham. I’m a emergency medicine physician, uh, based in, uh, Louisville, Kentucky. Uh, I have three kids, beautiful wife. Um, I do a little bit of research, uh, climbing research in athletic research on the side, affiliated with the University of Louisville, um, and climbing is probably the biggest passion, biggest hobby that I have at this point.

Nice. Yeah, and you had some great success with climbing recently, um, and which is why I had you on the first time. And well, how’s, how’s climbing going for you right now?

Oh, it’s going really well. Um, I think that since we talked last, I’ve only made it out maybe once or twice, so we’re kind of in more of the, the gym and the training block and, um, trying to put in some, some hours to get strong.

Yeah. Yeah. And I had a really good time listening to your training last time. Like I found it to be so methodical and strategic and like so efficient because you have kids and a wife and a job and all of that. So curious, like what kind of phase are you in right now and what are you doing?

Yeah, so I, right now I’m kind of in more of a strength block, um, trying to really put in a, a good base at the beginning of this summer and try to work on some of those weaknesses. So, uh, specifically I have a pretty good weakness in full crimp, um, specifically like my back two fingers or back three fingers. I’m pretty weak in that high angle crimp position. And so a lot of projects that I’ve looked at, I think that’s a big area that I’ll need to improve upon to be able to do some of the boulders on, on the routes. So I’ve been doing a lot of back three, uh, weighted hangs, um, and then a lot of like full crimp on and smaller edge one arm hangs, um, in my hang boarding. And then accompanying that with, um, pretty high volume and high intensity weightlifting as well to try to really, you know, send the growth hormone IGF one up there to try to maintain some of that growth.

Okay. And when you say high volume high, you said high volume what?

Yeah, high volume and then kind of some kind of staggered intensity weightlifting. So I’m doing four days a week where I’ll do, um, about five lifts where I’ll do reverse curls, shoulder press, bench press, dead lifts and weighted pull-ups. Um, and so I’m doing that like four times a week. Um, but really low reps that high weight, so trying to experiment with some like really high intensity, high frequency, but lower volume on the day to try to kind of bust through some of the plateaus that I have with those areas.

Got it. Got it. So I mean, it is like real classic strength training there where you’re doing low mm-hmm. <affirmative> low, uh, reps high weight.

Yeah. Really trying to avoid any hypertrophy. Um, yeah, I kind of have a bigger upper body build, I think at baseline and tend to put on lean muscle mass in my shoulders, um, in deltoids pretty, pretty easily. So I try to keep the reps really low, but the weight high, so I’m just more focused on like that neuro recruitment and really kind of firing those muscle fibers and getting the strength up

Four days a week is a lot though.

It is, yeah. But I’m, I’m doing, I’ll do, um, I’m doing kind of a, I think Steve Bechtel is the one that came up with this, um, this program. And he does, um, one day where you do five sets of two reps and then the following day you do two sets of five reps and then you have a day off, and then you repeat that again. So another five sets of two reps, and then the following day you do two sets of five reps, and then you have two days off, so it’s kind of two on one off, two on, two off. Um, so it’s really, I mean, you’re only doing 10 repetitions Yeah. Each of those days. So it’s, it’s really, you know, it’s, it’s not that, that much volume, it’s pretty low volume, but it’s, you know, after a good warmup it may take, you know, 20 minutes and that’s it to do like the whole lifting session. So I’ve been incorporating that kind of into my warmup, kind of maybe two thirds of the way through. I’ll start doing some of those lifts and get warm and then I’m putting that at the beginning, um, of my, my sessions and I’ll kind of incorporate that into the, the warmup into the hang board session. And then if it’s a power day, do a little bit of limit bouldering after that. Or if it’s a volume day, I’ll do some circuit search ride wall after the lifting. Hmm.

(11:30)
You know, I, I’ve done, um, I’ve done a lot of different, like, purely strength programs, um, and have varied, you know, like volume and then intensity and, you know, maintenance and, you know, I, I’ve been, you know, doing some form of lifting for, you know, probably 20 years. I started in high school with high school sports, so, um, I was just looking for something to kind of shake up, you know, the normal routine. And so, you know, I think, I think probably the biggest thing is that I’ve never really done the frequency, you know, like never would I have done in the past like lift deadlift and then do it again the next day. Yeah. Or lift bench and then like do it again the next day. But the, the volume is so low that you can still recover. And so on that first day where you’re only doing like two reps, you know, I may start on that first set pretty low, not low, but maybe 60 or 70% of my one rep max and then kind of add up and it’s almost like you’re finding your two rep max for that day. And then the next day I’ll use, you know, maybe 70%, 75% of that prior day’s two rep max to do my five reps. Mm-hmm. And, and I mean, I’ve, I’ve probably gone up, I’m trying to think, maybe 15 pounds or 20 pounds in almost every lift. Oh. Which I, it is like really, really good.

Yeah. That’s amazing.

I mean, that, that’s huge. Yeah. I mean, I think like over the last year I was maybe only doing, you know, maybe a five or 10 pound gain. So I mean it’s, I, it’s probably just cuz I’m changing up the, the system, but I’ve, I’ve seen really good results with it.

Well, yeah, because the next thing I was gonna say was I bet a lot of people listening are like, is that really gonna help you? But I mean obviously it is.

Yeah, I think, I think it is. Um, and I’m, I think I’m on, I think I did four weeks and then a week off and then four weeks week off and then I’m on, I’m on like another week right now and I’m trying to figure out if I want to just try to maintain or, or give it another four weeks. Um, the gains are starting to kind of plateau out, but, you know, eight week, eight, nine, it really was pretty noticeable.

Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like it’s super easy to just incorporate it at the gym or at a home gym mm-hmm. <affirmative>, whatever.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, especially from a time standpoint, I think integrating the lifts into the end of the warmup and then into your hang boarding is really time efficient. So you may be doing some stretching and then you go do a bench press set and then you go do a hang board set and then you do some stretching and then, you know, you just keep going around in the circle.

Yeah. So you live in Louisville and I’m always curious like, what do you do in the summer if we’re climbing

Nothing outside,

Nothing else. <laugh>.

I, I have some friends that went down this week, um, and they basically told me it was like grabbing a wet bar. So it was, it was just really bad, so. Okay. I, I think that, I think that if you’re like project shopping or maybe you really got your eye on a project that you have no idea what the beta is or there’s no footage or video or you don’t know anybody that’s been on it, then I think it’s might be worth going down and checking it out and making sure the gear’s good and making all your clips are in the right spot and the, you know, all the beaners are safe and nothing needs to be rebolted. Um, and just checking it out. I think that’s about the best utility in, in June and July here, <laugh>, it’s, it’s, I think it was 89 degrees on Saturday this weekend, so mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Okay. Yeah. So June, July and then August also and then start in September, sort of

September. Yeah, September is, is definitely flammable.

Okay. So right now you’re in the gym for the next three months-ish.

Oh yeah.

Sweet. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about all kinds of stuff that we said we were going to talk about in part two. Yes. And one of those things, well, I’ll just name ’em here. So we’re gonna talk about the constant glucose meter that you’ve had, you’ve been doing some experimentation with. Um, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about the whoop, um, which is like a BioTracker and then some on blood work and hormone optimization and supplementation. So let’s start where you wanted to start, which is the glucose meter. Tell me about that. Yeah, what is it? And it’s so cool cuz after the first episode I’ve had so many people be like, do you think I should get one of those? And I’m like, I wanna get one of those. So <laugh>,

We should do that. We should, that should be part three is your glucose data.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, tell me all about it. So what have you been doing with it and what is it? Yeah,

So the con continuous glucose monitor, there’s several different brands. Um, they’re out there. I, I don’t know if there are non-prescription brands that are widely available in the us The two big ones that are by prescription are the Freestyle Libre brand and then the Dexcom, uh, those are frequently used in diabetics to measure your glucose real time. It’s about maybe a three to five minute sourcing. So every three or five minutes it will give you a readout on your mobile device. You just scan the, the meter that’s, that’s on right behind your tricep and it’ll give you a readout of what your glucose is, uh, way that they’re applied.

I’m gonna stop for one sec because I’ve had some questions on this. Like, when it’s on you, it’s, so the thing is continuously in your bloodstream, like in your skin or something.

It is a, so it’s applied with a spring loaded mechanism that you put on the back of your arm mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And when you deploy the device, it pushes a very small catheter, kind of like a plastic straw that is just under a centimeter long. It pushes that into the subcutaneous tissue using a very small needle. Um, and it sounds scary, but I’ve had several people that, you know, you’re really scared to push the button to deploy this thing in there, but, um, you really can’t feel it. Um, the needle is so small and it goes so quickly that it is easier than, say, getting your blood drawn or pricking your finger for glucose or getting an iv. It’s, it’s much less painful than that. So you deploy this and it sticks onto the backside of the arm and it will stay there for about 10 to 14 days are the shelf life of these depending on the brand and the model. Um, and then you just activate it through your mobile device. Um, and it’s completely wireless. There’s no cords, there’s no active monitors, it weighs nothing and its location on the back of the arm is, is pretty seamless.

And so maybe you already said this, but like, when you say activate it, you activate it once and then it, it takes your, your reading every three to six minutes or whatever you said

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. And it has, depending on the model, it has about a eight to 12 hour, uh, kind of database that it’ll keep in there. So if you don’t scan your phone over the device, it will store those readings. Um, but sometimes that can become an issue overnight if you don’t like scan it right before bed or like, say you scanned your, your device on the back of your arm with your phone, um, to upload that data at five o’clock and then you don’t do it till the next morning. You may have a, a small hole in the data, but all that data just with a swipe of your phone, you don’t even have to push the button. You literally just like, it’s kind of like Apple Pay where you put the card over the, the sensor, you just put it over the sensor on the back of the arm and it, it vibrates the phone and it, it tells you your real time glucose and then it keeps a running, running, uh, graph of that. And so that’s really helpful. You can see your, your running graph of the glucose over the entirety of the day through your workouts. You can make little notes, which is really helpful to, um, you know, clinicians and providers or trainers, nutritionist, dieticians to be able to take a look at that data with the notes and they’re all timestamped so you can know, you know, this is when I ate this, this is when I worked out. So it’s really helpful.

Yeah. Cool. So you can, so what kinds of, well, I’m just gonna let you go, you just talk about it. Tell me what you’ve been finding.

Sure. So I, I would say the most interesting piece is using it for pre-workout fueling and then also using it for intro workout, fasted aerobic bouts. Those are kind of the two big things that I think are the most useful. Um, the first piece as far as the, the pre-workout fueling, it’s really nice to be able to program your meals so that your glucose will get a nice little plateau right where you want it without any big spikes or big dips so that you know exactly how long before your workout you need to be eating and what kind of macronutrients that meal needs to entail to make sure that you’re not getting too big of a spike or too big of a drop before your, your workout. And then the second piece, we can probably go in a little bit more detail, but one of the big things about aerobic training, um, and it’s called a lot of different things.

(20:48)
I call it aerobic training, but to be more specific, maybe like high end zone two or low end zone three around say 70% or 60 to 70% of your VO two max is really where you get this threshold where you’re using fats as your main energy source and you’re not really using glucose or glycogen. And so looking at a CGM during a workout, those levels should be relatively stable. So you can do intra workout analysis to know kind of how hard you’re going. You can also look back and say, oh, you know, how, how metabolically flexible am I from a chemical level based on what my glucose is doing during this 30 minute aerobic training session? And so you can use that to really tailor in your aerobic training.

Okay. Do you, can we talk a little bit more about that to explain how that would look mm-hmm. <affirmative> if you were, so gimme an example of, or do you do this yourself during aerobic workouts? Yes. Okay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, so what does it look like while you’re working out, when you’re, I’m assuming you’re taking readings to see if you, if your blood glucose is dropping rapidly or if it’s stable and that means that you’re burning fat.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. Yeah. And it, and it can go either way. Um, so ideally you would want to really isolate the conditions of your workout. So doing it after a night of fasting and before any substantial carbohydrate intake in the morning would be ideal as to not confound, you know, any of the glucose that could be in their bloodstream or waiting, you know, maybe six hours after breakfast to do it. I’ve done that before and had pretty good results. But ideally doing the workout, say you ate dinner, you went to bed, you woke up in the morning, you know, maybe you have some water, you take your vitamins, you know, maybe you’re doing a little bit of a pre-workout supplement or, or something like that, but really no carbs is a big deal. And then initially what you should see when you start that workout.

(23:01)
Now granted you’re not going too hard at the beginning because if you do, then immediately your liver is gonna start gluconeogenesis and you’re gonna start making glucose and you’ll see it in uptick, which, which is useful then, you know, okay, wow, you know, this is, you know, either I’m too tired, I’m not metabolically flexible, you know, I need to to back off. But if you are in that appropriate zone, you should see a pretty stable glucose curve where it’s pretty flat. And in fact you may see a little bit of a drop at the beginning, just, just a bit as that glucose that’s already in your bloodstream gets used up. Um, initially it’ll kind of dip just a little bit and then you’ll get into this really steady state, um, fat oxidation line. And the longer you can hold that, the more metabolically flexible you are and the more aerobically fit you are.

(23:53)
So you can kind of use it as a metric of performance where, say at the beginning of the aerobic training, you may last 20 or 30 minutes and then all of a sudden your glucose starts to rise. You may see a little little dip in a rise. And so that’s, you know, your body’s saying, oh man, we can’t use fats anymore. The intensity is, has gone on too long. You know, all of a sudden the heart rate starts to creep up. You know, our exercise, our p e is going up, so our per perceived exertion is going up. And so now our body is relying more on glucose than fats. And so I think using that as a marker over time to see how long you can maintain that stable glucose curve is really useful.

Hmm. Okay. Couple questions. When you’re doing this, what kind of workout are you doing? I know you’ve talked about doing like, uh, tread wall workouts.

Yeah, I think the tread wall is the easiest to really hit that steady state, although you could do it on, um, say like a fixed boulder wall where you’re doing, you know, circuits, you know, maybe like a figure eight or just like in a circuit, you know, clockwise or counterclockwise, you know, with a real easy, uh, circuit going round and round. And I think that the ideal time is different for everybody. So I think with beginners, they may be better at doing just, you know, say maybe 10 or 15 minutes of continuous climbing and then just working up from there. And so I really like to start people with that type of protocol because it’s, it’s almost, uh, self-selective where if you’re climbing too hard, there’s no way you’re gonna last 10 or 15 minutes. It really forces you if, if that’s your main marker is okay, I wanna stay on the wall for 10 or 15 minutes.

(25:46)
If, if every hole that you grab has to be the biggest drug possible, that’s okay because it’s really not about training finger strength, it’s more about, um, you know, training those blood vessels in your forearms to be really efficient at cycling the oxygen to really maintaining as much fatty oxidation, using oxygen as we can. But as you get stronger and better, you become really, really good at climbing low intensity for a really long time that you have to up the ante a little bit and climb more difficult circuits. But there comes this dichotomy where if it’s too hard, you really can’t stay on the wall for 10 or 15 minutes. But if it’s too easy, you can, but you don’t really hit that sweet spot, you know, where the heart rate is either too low or too high. So then switching over to some form of interval training where your climbing time is at least I would say three or four times the time.

(26:43)
So I, I do like a three minute on, one minute off on the tread wall or on the circuit where I’ll do three minutes of continuous climbing and then one minute off. I think really any more than one minute gives your body too long to rest and the heart rate will go down too low. Cuz you really wanna maintain that steady state. The more steady you are at that area, the more you know metabolically flexible you’re gonna become, the more efficient you’re gonna become, um, at using fats for energy source and the better you’re going to really signal those, uh, mitochondria to get better and more efficient.

Okay. So you’re also using your whoop during this time, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, like you’re using a heart rate monitor and you could just use a regular heart rate monitor for this to see that yes, indeed you are in zone two or wherever you want to be, right?

Right. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think both are useful. Um, I think that it has yet to be validated in climbing with all, all of these metrics, but that’s what I’m working on, um, is to try to look at VO two max heart rate glucose steady state aerobic training, uh, because I think that’s just so important really to any sport that relies on endurance or power endurance is really being able to figure out the, the zone two, they have it figured out for running, they have it figured out for cycling, but we really haven’t figured out the best way to do that. I think tread wall probably is the best, but, um, you know, that’s one of the things that we’re looking at in research right now.

Okay. And, and so like in a 10 to 15 minute tread wall workout, how many times are you testing your, or like waving your phone over your glucose meter?

Sure. Um, so I’ve done it both ways. I’ve done it where I get really excited and I I wave it over there every rest period, <laugh>, you know, every, every time I come off the wall I’m like, poo and then take a look at it. And then I’ve done, um, as I became more accustomed to kind of feeling that intensity and using my heart rate, um, I’ve just not looked at it and then tried to take a look after the fact and said, okay, this is how I felt and how does that feeling correlate with where my glucose was? Um, and on days, on days that I feel really poorly, um, I will have, you know, a premature, uh, dip where that glucose like starts to fall down and then it spikes up. Um, or I’ve had moments where my heart rate just, you know, jumps off the, the table right off the gate and then my glucose is starting to spike because I’m just not metabolically flexible that day and my body needs more glucose and the intensity’s too high. So I think that it, it’s useful both in, in the workout and after as kind of a, a metric, just the same way heart rate would be. Um, I think it’s a little bit more nuanced and a little bit more sensitive for that metabolic flexibility than say heart rate is. Um, so I think it’s a little better of a marker for that fatty acid oxidation than heart rate, but I think that they can correlate nicely.

All right. So many questions. All right. So arcing is basically what you’re talking about right now and uh,

Yeah, I think, I think it is arcing, but I think it’s maybe, maybe a little bit more intense than the arcing. Like maybe we could call it like high end arcing <laugh> maybe.

Okay. And it’s kind of gotten a bad rap, right? Like people kind of make fun of it a little bit because it’s so easy and it takes so long. It’s not easy, but you know, like it’s easy climbing in as climbers we’re driven by doing hard things and whatever. So you’re taking this from different sports, you know, research. And so what I wanna know and what everybody wants to know is like, what is this going to do for your climbing?

Yeah, sure. So I mean, most, most of I know we running and cycling are the big ones that we, that we look at from an endurance perspective. And most of the literature says that 80% of the training volume should be done at or below that say high zone two or low zone three on a five zone system. And then the remainder 20% is in that say, zone five or the really, you know, zone four, zone five. So really high end. Um, and this would, this would probably be less useful for a boulderer, but someone that’s doing long routes or multi-pitch, this would be super important because the vast majority of the time that you are on a sport climb, you are utilizing your aerobic system. Um, and your aerobic system is the most metabolically flexible and has the largest ability to train up. Whereas your power endurance system, you’re really limited by time.

(31:36)
I mean, you can maybe get 90 seconds to two minutes of that type of intensity, but that’s pretty fixed. Most people can’t really train that up. But what you can train is the ability to stay in your aerobic system longer at harder intensity. So if you were to look at some of the top climbers, they are in that top zone the same amount as a beginner climber on a successful red point. The only difference is that they’re able to sustain aerobic fatty acid oxidation at a higher intensity for longer than that beginner climber. So that’s why it’s so important to train because the reason that you’re falling off is not that you don’t have enough power endurance. Well, I mean maybe you don’t have enough power endurance, but if you’ve optimally trained, you know, that power endurance system or that upper end system where you’re really using glucose, um, after six or weeks, like you’ve maximized what you’re gonna maximize, but it’s that aerobic system. If you can really push the limits and stay in that kind of orangey orange to red zone where you’re not completely gassed, but you just kind of sit there in that pumped but not too pumped zone, if you, if you can keep doing that longer and don’t have to go over into the red line, that’s what’s going to kind of separate success from failure.

I think. I think I lost you a little bit when you said that a high end climber spends the same amount of time in their aerobic, I think you said aerobic zone as a, a beginner climber. Can you say that again and explain that?

Sure. So if we were to look at, say like a successful like limit red point mm-hmm. <affirmative> on say an 11 a climber or a 15 a climber, they are probably going to spend the vast majority of that climb in their aerobic zone mm-hmm. <affirmative> equally to the advanced climber. And their reason for success is not because all of a sudden that power endurance system is so much better in the elite climber than the less elite climber. It’s that the reason the elite climber is climbing so much harder is that they can sustain harder moves in that aerobic zone. So I think it’s a misconception that you, you know, don’t have enough power endurance. I think what it means is that your aerobic system is not optimized. You know, if you look at someone like Jonathan Seagrass, he can probably climb V 10 all day long and he’s not using power endurance, he’s aerobic, he can just climb, he climbs those moves with the same metabolic system as someone that’s a beginner climber climbs v1. So to think that you’re gonna do one minute repeats on limit boulders and that’s all you’re gonna train, you’re not training your metabolic flexibility and your aerobic system is, is not gonna be benefited by that.

Hmm. This is really cool now. 80%. Okay, so let me ask you this. Have you worn a CGM and done your whoop and like done all that data while you were sending something or like on a big red point burn? Yeah,

Oh

Yeah, for sure. And what does it look like for you?

Yeah, I would say that, I mean, it depends on the climb, right? So if the climb is like straight off the deck boulder, then you know, my, my glucose is probably pretty high from the get go. Um, and I want it to be that way because I don’t want to be in this, you know, fasted aerobic training state. So I that we have to separate training, fasted training, aerobic training from performance mm-hmm. <affirmative> and everything that you’re doing to ensure that metabolic flexibility is great. But then come red point time, it really depends on the anatomy of the climb. So if you had a climb that was say really sub maximal for the first, third or half and then you say had a boulder and then you had another sub maximal piece after that, which is pretty typical of the Red River gorge, you would see, you know, your glucose to be probably steadily rising or maybe a little flatter until you got to that boulder or right before the boulder. And all of a sudden you’re gonna start seeing a, a spike and it’s just gonna keep going As your body kind of gets into that more, um, heightened state, your body’s just gonna flood the system with glucose. And so I think using the anatomy of the climb to your advantage is a big deal because if the boulder’s at the beginning, you may wanna really get your warmup tailored so that you can get that glucose up to your really good say performance sweet spot.

How is your glucose, I feel so stupid for not knowing this stuff, but, um, how is your glucose rising as you’re going up? Because it seems like, especially from what you described in the training, that it would be going down as your body is using it,

Uh, in a fasted state. Right.

I think,

Um, or a steady state, low intensity if, if you’re on a red point when you step off the ground, I mean epinephrine, no epinephrine, adrenaline, everything is surging. There’s, it’s very, it would be very hard I think to be in like a steady state glucose. Your body is gonna be in that sympathetic drive. And so when that starts happening, your liver’s gonna start making and churning out glucose, glucose, glucose. Um, and so your glucose levels will definitely rise. Um, and then even, you know, even if you’re the best breather, you’re totally relaxed. The beginning of the climb is fine. I, I find it hard for my glucose to be flat or plateaued. It’s usually steadily rising. And then say I get to a rest before the boulder or something, you know, I’m gonna start really trying to use my breath, you know, really cycling that breath up to get even more norepinephrine and adrenaline release.

(38:09)
All of a sudden my glucose is flooding my system, everything’s maximized and then I’m, you know, trying to hit that, that boulder with as much intensity as I can. There’s really good research about performance and glucose levels being pretty linear up to a point. Um, and so, you know, most people, not everybody, but most people are gonna perform better at say a glucose of one 10 than they do at a glucose of 80 mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And usually everybody’s a little different, but somewhere around, say the one 15 to 1 25 mark, which is a little bit above say a neutral glucose mm-hmm. <affirmative> is usually that say performance zone. And so that’s something that I think only wearing a CGM can get you is finding out that zone using some really precise workouts, um, and tailoring your pre-workout meals to try to figure out, say how you feel.

(39:13)
And so trying to simulate like a red point or simulate, you know, a limit boulder session, you know, taking in x, Y, and Z amounts of carbohydrates and then seeing how your body feels at say a hundred, a hundred ten, a hundred fifteen, a hundred twenty, a hundred twenty five. Um, and I think everybody is, is a little bit different. And the athletes that I’ve looked at the C G M with are, are all different and their glucose responds differently to pre-workout meals. It responds differently on the climb, it responds differently during the day. The fueling strategies are all different mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so trying to figure all that out without a C G M I think can be really difficult.

Yeah, for sure. And and also I’m really curious about, cuz like, one of the main things that I teach people for with nutrition is that you have to keep your blood sugar, uh, like very even all of the time. And then, you know, you want to use some simple sugars before you right. Before you try hard so that you have extra mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But it, like if you wake up and you’ve been fasting and say your blood glucose glucose is like at 80 like you’re saying, or 85 or whatever, and then you have say a, a banana or something small but just carbs mm-hmm. <affirmative> and it gets you up to that 100, 1 10, whatever, and then you try to send something, right? You’re gonna have, it seems like common sense wise that you’re gonna have a much harder time sending it on just that banana than if you were to have a larger amount of calories.

Agreed.

So like where does that factor in and is that just with your personal experimentation and all that?

I th I think so, and I’ve done that. Um, I, I perform really poorly on power or power endurance type routes or workouts without a morning meal. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I think that’s, you know, pure evidence of that. I mean your body and your liver are very, very smart at where your glycogen stores are, where your total energy stores are, where your protein is. Um, and your body needs all those macros to make the glycogen to store the glycogen to use to produce energy to break it down. And so if you’re going in fasted, you know, that may be great if you’re trying to increase your metabolic flexibility during an aerobic session, but it would be very poor if you’re trying to go in and do that for a power session or go to a day at the sport crag. You want to make sure that your body is properly fueled, that your glycogen stores and your protein and your fats and your glucose are all optimized so that you have this nice little plateau, it’s not too high, it’s not too low, um, and you’re not getting any spikes of that insulin.

(42:05)
So if you’re fasted, your insulin sensitivity is gonna be much higher and you pop that banana right before your climb, you’re gonna have this, you know, super, you know, not super high, but probably a very abrupt upkick in your glucose. Um, and then your insulin is gonna be released and you may end up with a dip because there’s no other macros there in the system. Your body is fasted, you may end up hypoglycemic, uh, versus if you already have a good balanced meal under your system, then adding half a banana and some fluids is gonna pop you up a little bit and sustain that. Um, and I definitely see that in athletes that have had either a poor night’s sleep, a a really late meal, so then their glucose in the morning is, is affected or they don’t have a great breakfast and then they try to fuel before the climb and their glucose is all over the place.

(42:59)
You know, it’s like their body just doesn’t know how to respond, their insulin is shooting. Cuz most of the time people are pretty, um, insulin sensitive and so their glucose will shoot up and then it shoots down and then their body’s releasing, um, glucose from the liver to try to compensate from that. And then they get this, like this little wave pool, you know, and you can definitely see that either in a stressed athlete, an overtrained athlete or a poorly fueled athlete. You’ll see the glucose just, you know, this up and down, up and down, up and down and there’s no stability. Whereas a good night’s sleep, good feeling in the morning, it’s very flat, kind of peaks up nice plateau. You may see a little KickUp during a red point go. Um, but then it really helps to look at that later in the day as well to know kind of when you start to come down a little bit after a red point and to know, you know, how much to fuel and um, when to fuel and, and when to do that during your say second or third tries.

Yeah, for sure. Um, I don’t know if it’s better for me to just ask you more questions or if we should just use your case studies as sort of examples of all of this stuff.

Sure. Um, we can definitely kind of look at some case studies. I think that’d be a good idea

Because I think what people are probably most interested, like all this is obviously fascinating to me, but I think people will probably wanna know like how, I know it’s different for everybody, but what is a good way to fuel, you know, like kind of some trends in timing mm-hmm. <affirmative> and, and stuff like that. So yeah. Tell, tell us about that and maybe we can get into some of those details or tell us about your, your people.

Yeah, so I, I think kind of two of the, two of the more kind of higher end athletes that we’ve looked at are Sam Elias and then, um, Jonathan Horst. Um, so kind of a, a nice kind of dichotomy there where, you know, Sam is, is a high end performing athlete at an older age and John is is a high performing athlete at a younger age. So you have, you know, in the forties and then in the early twenties. Okay. So the, the neat differences there are one metabolic flexibility. So, you know, Sam Elias’s ability to maintain glucose levels in a fasted state is remarkable. Mm. I mean he can have his glucose is, is just right on the line all day long. Whether or not he eats or doesn’t eat really. Um, versus Jonathan is um, he has done less fasting, um, but he has insulin sensitivity is really, really high.

(45:28)
So he will have just these little, little blips with the meal where meal will go up and then it zips right back down, but at the same time it gets him into trouble, um, with hypoglycemia. Whereas with Sam, I think because of his ability to use fats as an energy source, he is less likely to have hypoglycemic episodes, but he’s more likely to have these, these spikes that get a little bit high. So we had to approach both those individuals on kind of different sides of the coin for fueling strategies. Um, we’ll talk about Jonathan’s was more what he was eating the night before and how late he was eating. Um, you know, if he had, you know, the protein shake at 8:00 PM with really not a whole lot of carb, he did really well. He’s a real big fan of, of doing the protein at night to try to help maintain that, that lean muscle mass.

(46:20)
But then if he were to have carbs or cereal or ice cream or something like that late at night, we would see this kind of up and down, uh, glucose curve all through the night. And then he would end up with some lows in the morning and then sometimes over fuel in the morning time cuz he was really hungry and then he would see kind of this, this dip again and he would end up having to, you know, almost refuel, uh, too early too often throughout the day. So it was hard to maintain a really stable curve. So we, we kind of tweaked some of those things at nighttime and tried to maintain, you know, kind of an eating window that was a little bit earlier with less carbs and then trying to get more macros in in the morning. And we changed a little bit of his, uh, kind of pre-end mealtime treats so to speak. Um, we experimented with things like clip bars and we bananas and apples. Um, and the fruits really seem to be the best thing for him to, to maintain that steady curve.

Hmm. Okay. And so just to clarify, Jonathan is a root climber, is he working on a specific thing while he was doing this?

Um, he was doing mostly Red Point, red pointing, I think he was out west and then also in the Red River Gorge. Um, so I mean 13 plus 14 minus, I mean strong. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. Okay. And what, so do you know where he star? Could you give us like a layout of kind of what he was eating before he, you guys looked into this and then sort of what he ended up eating throughout the day? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Yeah, so I, I think the big change that we made was some of the carb snacking at night was definitely adversely affecting the morning glucose. So we tried to take that out, um, leave the protein, the protein by itself seemed to be fine. Um, if I eat protein at nighttime, I still have a, a pretty poor sleep and an adversely affected glucose in the morning. It’s probably because I’m a little less insulin sensitive, but he seemed to do really well with the protein, but the carbs at night were poor. So we took, took that out. And then in the morning time we tried to add, um, protein back in, um, and maybe even a little bit of some fats with that on the, the red point days to help carry some of that energy a little bit throughout the morning and try to focus on, you know, a he was really doing like this big breakfast and then he would do like these, these little teeny snacks through the day and then he would eat like a massive dinner at like seven or eight o’clock at night and he was after his like first attempt he was tanking and then he would try to do like half cliff bar or like a, you know, electrolyte drink.

(49:04)
And then it was almost like these negative returns where he was had like maybe a good first go, but then the second go his body’s really trying to compensate his fueling is low and then he would tank more and then he just was in this negative return through the day. So kind of focusing on taking the breakfast and moving it closer to the first red point go was one big change that we made instead of, you know, eating at 8:00 AM in the morning, if our first go isn’t gonna be till one or two, it was not working for him to like eat that early and then wait five hours and then just try to red point and then not eat again till dinner. So we try to move that breakfast a little bit closer to the first red point, go maybe, you know, two and a half, three hours out and then have a little bit of a snack and then after the first red point go have a small, small lunch to try to carry us through maybe the two, two or three other goes after that.

Okay. And when you say breakfast, was he, you mentioned protein and fat, but was he also having carbs in that breakfast? Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>, yeah. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. So like what did his breakfast look like, do you know?

Yeah, so he would do like a scoop of protein and like a pancake powder or an oatmeal powder. Um, and with a little bit of some fruit, um, would be kind of the big, the big thing that he was using

And any fat and

Some yogurt.

Yep. Okay. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and then so what, what do you think would’ve happened if you had done, like, had him have his breakfast at eight and then had him have a normal lunch at like 11 or 1130?

Yeah, I think that would, that would definitely be an option. I think that it would, it would be more about, um, how late in the day he was gonna try to climb, um, or just the logistics of the crag and when he was waking up. So, you know, it may be you wake up and have a small breakfast and then do maybe another small lunch, um, and then go, but then I, I think that still having that at 11 would be still pretty close to climbing. I wouldn’t want to have too much, too much of a big meal mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but yeah, you could definitely maybe split it up, split the breakfast up and do kind of two smaller meals. Um, I find better success kind of just prolonging the fasting period through the morning and then pushing the breakfast a little bit out so that, you know, you’re not feeling too, you know, bloated or, or weighed down if you have kind of two meals. And now we’ve had two sessions where your body’s releasing insulin and we’re starting to get into, you know, some energy deficits and, you know, feeling fatigued.

So with the, and then I wanna ask one more question before we get into his performance, but when you say that he was having just protein at night, are you saying that that was his whole dinner or was that an after dinner snack? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>

After dinner snack. Okay.

Got it. So a dinner would be like a normal protein? Yeah. Normal

Dinner, carved dinner. Yeah. Chicken, veggies, rice, stir fry. Okay,

Cool. So then what did you end up seeing with his performance with changing these things?

Yeah, I mean, so his, his, um, more, more quality goes, um, was probably the biggest thing. Feeling better on the, on the kind of repeated attempts was a big deal. Um, I think, you know, he’s, he’s young and the first go is always like really good, but he, I mean he has had, he’s had days where he’s like, have four or five like Red Point goes and stuff. I’m, I’m looking at the dad, I’m like, you’re a monster <laugh>. Um, so that was, that was kind of a big deal is to say, okay, you know, you like to do these these big days and to have, you know, all of these hard attempts and so we need to figure out a way to kind of carry those energy levels through the day. And so moving the breakfast a little bit closer and then using a little bit better of a fuel strategy through the day with, instead of just snacking, taking like right after that first go and then having like a proper lunch, um, with some more sustained macros has helped like the second and third and, and fourth goes feel much better most of the time, you know, his notes and what he’s expressed is like, the first go really wasn’t the biggest issue, it was that we were feeling really poor after that.

(53:13)
Um, and then the rest of the day kind of suffering

Mm-hmm. <affirmative> so he had more quality goes mm-hmm. <affirmative> and uh, which is just like the most important thing that could possibly happen. <laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. Um, did he end up eating more food, do you think?

Yes.

In general, which I think a lot of people would be afraid of doing.

No. Yeah, he, um, I think, uh, like he was, his protein intake was, was great. I mean, he, he had plenty of protein. I mean probably maybe a hundred and 120 to 150 grams probably a day mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, but I think that the, like the fat and the carb, um, ratio could be a little bit better. Um, and I think that just relying on, you know, like the, the macro bars and stuff like that and instead getting maybe a little bit more of a proper lunch, um, you know, with some avocados or some Turkey and sandwich or, or something that’s a little bit more complete, um, helped stabilize some of those afternoon glucose levels.

Yeah. That’s awesome. Cool. Um, anything else on Jonathan?

No, I think that we’re good with that.

Okay. And just to make sure people know who we’re talking about, we’re talking about Jonathan Worst actually first. Yes. Not another Jonathan, but, um, okay. And then do you wanna talk about Sam?

Yeah. Um, so I would say with him the biggest takeaway that we had was figuring out right before go time kind of what to be using as a proper strategy to get his glucose to like 1 35. So we did about a two week analysis where we didn’t do any dietary changes, we just looked straight at the glucose level. Um, and then we made notes about how we felt during each go or how we felt during the training session. Um, and he was eating relatively the same things to try to help kind of keep the glucose levels in the same range as through the day. And we found that he performed, you know, a lot better at a little bit of a higher glucose. Um, I think that’s probably because he’s so good at using those fats that he is a little bit, um, reliant on that. So for him to kind of kick that power system in, I think it takes a little bit more glucose readily available for him to use that in more of the kind of upper end power range.

So instead of like, what would you see from somebody who wasn’t so good at using fat, like taking glycogen from the muscles or taking glucose from the liver or something.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, I think younger folks that are real snappy, really powerful, um, they, they are able and very efficient at using the glucose as in energy fuel source. Um, and so at a lower, say, blood glucose range, their, their perceived effort or their ability to perform power activities is a little bit better.

Hmm. Okay. So carry on about Sam. What else did he, what happened?

Sure. Um, so one of the things, um, that we found is that, uh, with the, like when he would eat an apple, um, his glucose would just like shoot way, way, way up, which was really interesting. I mean, he would go like one 40 s one 50 s with the apple, and then he would like crash pretty quickly versus doing a banana. It, it popped maybe 15, 15 points and had some more stability to it. So just switching, um, that fuel source over prevented that big insulin spike and gave us a better, more stable glucose and felt better, had better stable glucose levels pre-lim felt better on the climb. So that was a big change that we made. Um, he was, he does some periodic intermittent fasting and 24 hour fasts, which I think really help with his, uh, metabolic flexibility. But adding a better breakfast in the mornings on his crag days was a big deal.

(57:32)
He’d have, you know, maybe just like a small breakfast or like some toast or maybe some, you know, a small thing of meat or something like that. And so we added, um, you know, a bigger breakfast, like a breakfast burrito or some sweet potatoes with eggs and sausage or something that had a little bit more of a complete breakfast and macros to it. Um, and I mean, he had some, some monster days. I mean, he’s always been, um, you know, a workhorse and he’s always been able to put in some, some big days. But I specifically remember an example where he had, you know, this kind of well-placed breakfast burrito, um, maybe two or three hours before the warmup. Um, and then he had a, a nice lunch and I wanna say he did five or six 13 pluses in a day. Mm-hmm.

Which is really good for him, which

Is Yeah, yeah. Like really great.

So that’s different because normally he would’ve had the small breakfast and then what would he have normally eaten for fuel in between?

Yeah, I, yeah, I mean he would, you know, he would snack on, you know, the macro bars or the apples or maybe, you know, a small meal here or there. And so I think putting a, a bigger breakfast in the morning closer to the warmup time was a big change. Um, and then changing out, you know, just that, that, that fruit from apple to banana preventing the crash. And so then instead of it crashing, we were more stable. And so we didn’t have to, you know, eat half of a cliff bar three or four times throughout the day. We could kind of have more steady glucose and then have a lunch steady glucose banana. Keep going.

This is so funny. It’s like, like I said in the first episode that we did together, this is just exactly what I tell people to do all the time. And so it’s just really validating to hear the numbers go along with it and just to see like how motivating the numbers can be to make these athletes who are, who were probably like pretty set in their ways, not necessarily stubbornly, but just like, this is my habit, this is what I do to make them change and see really great, um, benefits from it.

No, I mean there, I think that there’s no greater tool for dietary control than having that data right in front of you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, it’s, it’s just like, you know, when I eat, when I eat that piece of cake or that trail mix or, you know, whatever it is, it’s hard for the brain to conceptualize the downstream reaction. But if you have the graph right in front of you and you eat it, and then you say, oh, wow, like look what this did, like this was, you know, inappropriately spiked my glucose and now my insulin’s off the chart, and now I’m gonna be sleepy and I’m over gonna overcompensate, and now I’ve just, you know, my insulin sensitivity’s gonna go down. And I mean all these downstream reactions, it’s really easy then for the brain to get behind that. I mean, when I have had the CGM on, I have definitely made conscious decisions not to eat something solely based on the fact that I don’t wanna look at the data on my screen later, <laugh> mm-hmm. <laugh>.

Yeah. That’s the same thing with like any diet logging mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Um, and I just wanna be clear that when, because Sam had this experience with apples, that doesn’t mean that everybody will have the same, like, we’re not, I’m sure that you are not saying don’t eat apples because everybody’s response to everything is very different. It’s very personalized.

No, yeah. I mean, um, I do, I do really well with, with apples probably equally as, as banana, I actually get less of a, a jump and I, it probably is because of the fiber in the, in the peel of the apple, but I get, um, less of a jump with the apple than I do with the banana. And I use the banana personally because I get a little bit of a quicker uptick mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So every, everybody is completely different.

Yeah. And in the last interview that we did, you had said something about how with the CGM you realized that it takes you longer to have that spike from a banana than you thought it did. And so you changed your timing before. Can you talk about that a little bit more?

Yeah, so I mean, if you just try to Google or look at some of the glycemic indexes or, you know, peak time to glucose or peak time in the bloodstream, you get some pretty generic answers and they’ll group a bunch of foods together. And so I think it just goes to show you that, you know, if the data says it’s an hour, it, it may be 45 minutes, it may be 30 minutes. And so if you have this sweet spot where you know you feel really good, and that’s 125, if you are off by 10 or 15 minutes, then your energy levels may not be optimized because that’s the amount of time that you’re gonna be on the route. So knowing ballpark, okay, this takes me 45 minutes, not 30 minutes means okay, I can rest a little bit longer, I can wait a little bit longer, hydrate a little bit more, and wait until I get into that sweet spot, and then I know my energy levels will be in the right spot to start the climb.

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. I mean, this is getting like very technical, which you need as a person who only like all of us need because almost none of us gets out as much as we wanna get out. And so when you have these 10, 15 days a year that you get to go outside, like you need to know what’s actually gonna work.

Yeah. And it’s not, it’s not something I think that you have to wear all the time. Um, I think that, you know, for, for most of the athletes I’ve worked with, we’ve, we’ve done about a month. Yeah. Um, so like two sensors worth of data, you know, four weeks is, is pretty much most of the time that you need to, to get some training log in, to get some different workouts in, to know how you respond to most, most foods. Um, and I’ve found that most people eat, uh, pretty much the same things. Um, over the course of a month, you’re gonna get exposure to most of the foods that you’re gonna encounter through the year. And so I, using the data that we get in those four weeks, accompanied with some of the heart rate data, you can take that and really apply it downstream. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. So any advice for, for people who are now on Google, like buying a CGM and how, how they should use it? I know we’ve gone over a lot of this, but like any other tips for people?

Yeah, I would say try to avoid changing anything right up front and avoid, um, jumping to any conclusions too quick. Sometimes it can take, you know, several hours or maybe a day or two to kind of calibrate. And so I usually tell folks, put it on and wait a week or two and just do your normal and kind of see what happens. Um, and then after that, maybe try to make some really dialed in changes, but you really want to figure out kind of where your, your pearls and pitfalls are without changing your nutrition because things like stress or sleep patterns or, um, you know, any of those kind of allostatic elements are gonna change your glucose as well. So you don’t wanna, you know, all of a sudden intermittent fast with the glucose monitor on if you’ve never done that because all of the changes you see may just be stress response, it could be a hormonal response. Um, you really want to try to do exactly what you’ve been doing, at least for the first couple weeks so you can see a true representation on how you’re reacting to those foods. And then if you want to, you know, talk with a, you know, trainer, dietician, health provider, somebody to kind of make some some nuanced changes and, and some testing.

Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing. There aren’t very many people who do specialize in this kind of thing, can do, you know, like people can’t work with you, can they?

Yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. So I have, my website is, is up and running. Um, it’s uh, Thomas Cunningham md.com and we do, we offer consults, uh, various, various degrees of that. We do, um, you know, injury consult, we do, you know, performance consults, CGM stuff as well. So you can take a look there and, and inquire.

Nice. Sweet. Okay. Have fun. Um, all right. We’ve been talking for a very long time about just this <laugh>. I do wanna get to like a couple other topics. So let’s, yeah, let’s move on. What would you like to talk about between the whoop hormone optimization blood work and supplements?

Let’s do the whoop.

Okay, cool. That’s what I was hoping you would say. So we talked, cause I think, oh, go ahead.

I was gonna say the, uh, uh, the other ones that that could, that could go on for a while, that would be, that’d be a whole episode I think in and of itself with Yeah. With those.

All right. Well let’s do our best with the whoop, you had talked mm-hmm. <affirmative> a little bit about it in the first episode about how you use it, like we were talking about with your aerobic workouts. Um, and then do you want to just Yeah. Talk about how it has affected your life?

Yeah, sure. Um, I, you know, I think one of the negative qualities that I have as an athlete is that I don’t know when to rest and I have a hard time mentally taking into account all of the allostatic load that is around me. So that’s, you know, family life, kids stress at home, stress at work, you know, training, load, training, stress. And so, although my brain may be telling me, no, you’re, you need to keep going, keep training, it’s, it’s harder for me I think to listen to my body. And I think that’s where Whoop really comes into play or, you know, any of the, the kind of bio trackers. And so it, it takes into account all of the biometric data that it has to give you a recovery score and a sleep score in the morning and kind of tells you where that load and where that training stress is. So it looks at things like your heart rate variability, it looks at your resting heart rate, your blood oxygenation overnight, your temperature, your resting heart rate, and then your sleep quality and your sleep data from the night before. And it kind of uses an algorithm that’s proprietary. I wish they would share that, that then kind of gives you your readiness score for the next day. And so that has allowed me to figure out the things that I do that help me, and then also the things that I do that will hurt the recovery. Mm-hmm.

<affirmative>. Yeah. I just wanna share real quick that I got a whoop and my HRV is, I don’t know it, it’s variable, but, and I would like to talk about that a little bit, but I, um, I would like go climbing and, and live my normal life. And it was like, you’re between like a 50 and 80% recovery score most of the time. And then I went out and I, I went to a wedding and I was actually out until 5:00 AM and got kind of kind of drunk. And the next day my whoop was like, you are dying. We’re sending an ambulance to your house right now. Like, your HRV is zero. Your, your, uh, recovery is 20 per like 8% one day. And so it <laugh> it was pretty, pretty accurate, you know, most days it’s pretty funny.

Oh yeah, definitely. Um, so I, I think that the nice thing is that regardless of your sport or whatever training load you’re putting in, the HRV is a pretty good marker for the strain on the system. The whoop relies pretty heavily on cardiovascular load, which I think is less applicable to folks in a strength sport, uh, like climbing or weightlifting, um, or something like that. So I don’t really look at their strain score, which is basically your cumulative cardiovascular load for the day. I may have a, a really hard limit bouldering session and weight training session and that strain score that it gives me may not be really representative of how hard I was training, but you can definitely bet that the next day my recovery score is gonna be lower. Hmm. Because my hr, my HRV will definitely dip because of that stress. So the HRV or heart rate variability is looking at the difference between the heartbeats.

(01:10:17)
So if you look at on an ekg, the difference between the R waves, which are like the little peaks that pop up on the cardiac monitor and nobody’s is exactly the same beat to beat. Everybody’s is a little bit different, beat to beat. And what that tells you is the balance between your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system, which are the two competing kind of pathways that the brain uses in kind of this excitatory system or the sympathetic system or the rest and digest system or the parasympathetic system. And so, um, the more activated or more sympathetic you are, the more narrow and the less variability you’re gonna have in that H rv. So if you do something that’s really taxing, really stressful on the system that H RV goes down, um, if you’re doing things that are very restful and you’re bringing things back towards the midline, then that’s gonna really increase your rv. Uh, which is why things like yoga and meditation, sauna, steam room napping, um, all of those things are going to move that H rv, um, back to a balanced state and really help with recovery.

Yeah. And just to clarify when you say the difference, cuz I think a lot of people don’t know this, it’s the difference in time. So you might have like, yes, five millisecond or 50 milliseconds between one two heartbeats and then the next one it might be 54 milliseconds mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So it takes an average of that. Yeah. But you know, one of the other things that I’ve noticed with it is that like on a, the day before I get my period, my H RV might be 35, like pretty low, and then I’ll get my period the next day and it’s like 75. And so it, I think that there’s a huge, uh, hormonal impact, especially for women. Yes. That for sure I’ve not seen talked about, but I’ve been like very blown away by it, which correlates with like what we’re, what we’re predicting in the first half of our period of our menstrual cycle, our performance should be better, et cetera.

Yes. Yeah, I mean I think that there’s really good literature, obviously I can’t speak to this personally, but, um, there’s very good data in performance for a female based on where they are in their menstrual cycle. And I, I think that it definitely makes sense that your HRV would, would kind of predict that.

Yeah. It’s kind of crazy. Um, but the other thing that you had talked about, and we won’t talk for too much longer, I think we’re already at an hour and <laugh> Yeah. We’ve, um, so you had talked about how you use HRV and your recovery scores to tell you like when you’re done with a training cycle basically, and when you’re, and then you do a rest or a deload week mm-hmm. <affirmative> and then your HRV typically goes way up. Is that right?

Yeah, so usually people will deload maybe every fourth, fourth, fifth, sixth week is usually what, what the literature shows. Um, and I try to be a little bit more flexible where I’ll try to go until I get some non-return gains or I start to see that HRV start to go down. And so whenever I start to see several days of data where the HRV is below my norm, I have to start asking questions. And the questions are, you know, am I getting sick? Um, is there some other form of stressor that’s going on that is adding to that allostatic load or am I getting overtrained or undercovered mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so I think that all of those things come into play, but they, they force me to ask those questions. And I think as an athlete it’s really important if you don’t have a one-on-one coach to have some external mediator that is forcing you to ask those questions they need to be asked.

Yeah. Yeah. And how do you find it motivating you?

Oh yeah. So the biggest motivator is, um, they have a log book where you can log almost any activity you can think of, whether it’s meditation or cold plunge or sauna or meditation or, or anything. And then it allows you to, um, look at the insights on how that affects your recovery. So like if you look at things like alcohol, I think that if I have more than one drink, it negatively influences my recovery by like 9%, which is pretty standard with which they, they show. And the closer to bed that I drink one or two drinks, then that is, is it gets worse the closer to bedtime you drink that. I also have decreased, um, slow wave sleep or my restorative sleep with alcohol as well. Um, but the other neat things is things like magnesium, uh, chamomile tea, um, really boost my deep wave sleep and improve my recovery. Um, things like meditation, um, sauna, cold plunge, those will increase my recovery by like one or 2% when I do those things. So I can really try to tailor in recovery if I have a really big workout or my recovery becomes really low or I need to deload, then I know kind of what things I have, um, in my toolkit to use to try to get the recovery started on the right foot. Mm.

Yeah. Lots of alcohol, not sleeping well. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Alcohol definitely affects my, my recovery and my HRV like a lot. It was pretty

Crazy to see that. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I think that’s the number one thing that that adversely affects most people.

I mean, honestly it’s made me stop drinking altogether. I don’t even care to do it anymore.

Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s hard to, it’s hard to rationalize. Yeah. I have a kind of, my general rule is, um, I don’t drink, but if I do, it has to be something good and I don’t drink more than one unless it’s a special occasion.

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Especially with all of the training that you do. Like you do a lot of stuff. Um, what else about the whoop that you’ve noticed and have you experimented with that with any of these athletes?

Um, I have some friends that I have gotten to get the whoop mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but nothing formally with, with the data. Um, I think that it would be, I have on the whoop you can form like little different teams and get, kinda share your data and that kind of thing. So that’s kind of a motivator where you can look at everybody’s sleep scores and strains for the day and heart rates and heart rate variability. So it’s kind of a fun little competing thing that we do with some of the, the local folks here. But, um, I would say the, the biggest thing other than looking at the recovery and, and the HRV is the sleep. Um, and because I do a lot of shift work and my bedtime really not the same using their sleep tracker and being able to plan sleep is a big deal.

(01:17:16)
So they will take in your cumulative strain and your recovery score of the day and then they will estimate how much sleep you need. So they look at things like your sleep history and how often you are awake at night. So on average I’m awake for about 38 minutes, I think is what it was when I checked this morning. So they will take like my baseline sleep need, which is like seven and a half or seven hours, 40 minutes. And then they will add on the time I’m awake that 38 minutes and then they will add on additional sleep time based on what my cardiovascular load was for the day. So my overall say time in bed maybe, you know, eight hours and 40 minutes mm-hmm. <affirmative> or something like that, which was significantly longer then I would have assumed or was getting in the past.

(01:18:05)
And so now it, you know, if I get off at midnight or 1:00 AM you know, I, in the past I may have thought to myself, okay, I need to be in bed for, you know, seven hours or eight hours and wake up in the morning, but now I, it allows me to kind of set that alarm for later in the day, try to sleep later. And so I think that helps with kind of getting the, the proper amount of sleep over the course of, you know, weeks to months that makes a big deal. And I think sleep is probably the number one performance drug that you can probably take <laugh>. Yeah. If you, if you look at the data. Yeah.

Yeah. It is interesting. I’ve always thought that I was like a good sleeper and I got enough sleep and it turns out that basically it’s like if you’re in bed for a certain number of hours, the amount of sleep that you’re getting is like an hour less than that.

And yeah, I think most people are like 90%, 90 to 94% efficient, so yeah, like 45 minutes or an hour of a wait time.

Yeah. That’s crazy. So again, very motivating. Um, I don’t think we have much time to talk about anything else unless you have quick words on anything else.

No, I think we’re good.

Yeah, maybe we’ll have to have a part three

<laugh>. Let’s do it,

Which will turn into part four. Um, <laugh>

Plenty to talk about.

Yeah. And, and just to clarify, neither of us is associated with whoop, we just, uh, yeah, it’s just really cool. Oh, one last question about that. A lot of people are like, well, is it better than then Apple Watch? Should I get an aura ring because there are so many others, but just a quick thought on why whoop and not another one?

Sure. Um, for me it was more about the, um, the wearability. Um, so from a climbing standpoint to have something on my finger, like the aura ring to measure data just did not make sense. Um, and then as far as an Apple watch, um, again with the climbing, it just didn’t make sense for me to, you know, spend all the money to get the watch with the face that’s exposed. It’s kind of big and it’s clunky. Um, I’m, I’m not really a watch wearer, so even putting something on my wrist like a whoop was a, was a big step for me. But the way that the whoop fits the band kind of goes over and it’s, it’s pretty, I don’t wanna say indestructible, but you can, you know, scratch it and bang it and there’s, there’s no face, there’s no, um, screen or, or anything like that.

(01:20:37)
So it, it’s, the durability of it was really nice. The wearability of it was really nice. Uh, I think that the, the way that they’re able to integrate the workout data, the strength training data, the sleep data is at the time probably better than anything that the, the Apple data can do. I’m not really experienced with some of the third party apps for the Apple Watch. I know that there’s definitely things out there that are probably comparable, but the whoop platform is, is really nice on the phone. It’s, it’s really integrated and they give you the whoop band for free. You just pay for the subscription, which I think is a pretty good deal. Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. That was great. All okay, well thank you Thomas. Thank you so much for all of this information. Yeah. Um, for taking the time to do these, you know, studies, basically case studies with people and, and tell us all about it. And I’ll be sure to put your website, Thomas Cunningham md.com on the show notes. Um, but yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Dr. Thomas Cunningham. If you wanna work with him, you can go to Thomas Cunningham md.com and I’m sure he’ll do a fantastic job of helping you figure out your own glucose optimization and using the whoop and anything you really wanna talk to him about. So I really liked that interview and we’ll be doing, like I said a third one sometime in the next month or two where we’ll be talking more about blood work and that’ll be really interesting too. So in other news, you probably know this, but the Training Beta podcast is an offshoot of my website training beta.com. And over there I just wanna remind you about what we have. We have tons of blog blogs. I was gonna say Blogcasts <laugh>. We have tons of blog posts that we’ve been doing since 2013, all about like hundreds of blog posts that you can read at your leisurer about all things climbing and climbing training.

(01:22:51)
We also have some programs. We have our bouldering program and our root program, which our subscription programs, the root program that we currently have on the website is the original root program. And it has been up there since 2013 and or maybe 14, but in it, it’s completely different from our bouldering program. But that’s what I’ve been working on. I’ve been working on making this new root program be um, on the same platform as our bouldering program. It’s by the same author because currently our Root Pro program is done by Chris Peters who used to be a climbing trainer. And our bouldering program is done by Matt Pincus, who you all know and have heard on this on the show. So that’s what I’ve been working on. But those programs are really good still and you can check them out at training beta.com/programs. And we also have, if you want more personalized help, we have Alex and Matt and Matt is taking new clients right now.

(01:23:52)
Alex is not taking new client like long-term clients, but she is doing hour long sessions with people at the moment. And you can find both of them@trainingbeta.com slash matt or training beta.com/alex. I’m currently not seeing any nutrition clients, um, just cuz I’m so busy with other stuff. But I do have my Nourish program, which is an online program where you can learn all of the things that I teach my clients and figure out your own changes that you need to make for your diet to reach your goals. And that is at training beta.com/nourish. And I think that’s pretty much it right now. We have some other things and you should just check it out@trainingbeta.com and I will be back soon to tell you all about some new offerings. But for now, I really appreciate you listening all the way to the end. I know this one was kinda long, so thank you very much and I’ll talk to you soon.