Episode #966
What if the biggest threat to your health isn’t your diet or your workout routine—but the shape of your cardiovascular system?
In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Phil Batterson, a VO₂ Max and cardio health expert, who also happens to be the guy that recently tortured me with a fitness test. And by tortured, I mean he showed me where I was really at.
We dig into what VO₂ Max actually means in plain English—and why it’s one of the most powerful predictors of how long you’ll live. Seriously.
This isn’t about becoming an elite athlete. It’s about being able to chase your kids around the yard, keep up with your wife in bed, and not get winded during pickup basketball.
Dr. Phil shares why most guys are training wrong for their goals, how you can get way better results in way less time, and why individualized testing beats generic workout plans every single time.
In this episode, you’ll hear how I got tested, what surprised me most, and what every man should be doing right now to take back control of their health.
You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to know where you are—and start.
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You owe it to yourself to at least see what’s possible.
Want to reach out to Dr. Phil directly?
📧 Email him at batterson.phil@gmail.com
📱 Or connect with him on Instagram: @drphilbatterson
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
And I think a lot of people will look at somebody like an influencer, at somebody at the gym, and they’re like, “Wow, that person’s in really great shape. I’m going to do what they’re doing.” And it backfires on them. They don’t think about the years of training. They don’t think about—this person could have some genetic influences, supplementation, vitamin S, you know—steroids, yes. Or they just found what works for them, and they miss the fact of it being individualized. And I want to emphasize that for people listening to this—that that is so important in my experience.
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The TPM Show. Today, I have a super special guest and a man that tortured me—so true story. Phil Batterson is here with us. So Phil has a PhD in Exercise Science. He is a VO2 max cardio expert, amongst many, many other things—we’d be here all day reading his resume—but I’m really excited to do a deep dive into this. And guys, if right now your eyes are glazing over, you’re like, “What the heck are we talking about here?” Stick around, because this is definitely for you. Phil, thanks for being here, man.
Dr. Phil Batterson 1:16
Thanks for having me, Doug. I will say, he did the torture on his own volition. So he came to me wanting to do the test. So I, you know, I wasn’t forcing him to do that.
Doug Holt 1:26
Not at all. I’m a glutton for punishment. And I knew I was getting myself into it. and we were talking about this off air—I actually had a great time. I really enjoyed it. And before we get into it, just so the guys know, it’s something we want to do. First, for the guys listening, like—you know, I went and did a VO2 max test with you. First of all, what the heck is VO2 max, and why would I, myself, drive and go out of my way to actually take a test that is going to be difficult?
Dr. Phil Batterson 1:54
So the technical term—so please don’t glaze over and skip yet—but VO2 max is technically the maximal amount of oxygen your body can uptake and consume during exercise. There’s a reason why we breathe, and it’s mainly to get oxygen to our cells to do the function. So me waving my hands around, blinking, your heart beating—actually uses oxygen. Us talking—all of the things we do—use oxygen.
And when we measure the maximal amount of oxygen your body can actually use during exercise, we’re getting a gauge of how strong your cardiovascular system truly is. We know from years and years and years of studying, you know, like differences in VO2 max between sedentary people all the way up to elite-level athletes—there are thresholds that you need to meet in order to be as cardiovascularly healthy and fit as you possibly can be.
And on top of that, the more cardiovascularly fit you are, the less likely you are to run into issues like cardiovascular problems—i.e., heart attacks, strokes, those sorts of things. And if you’ve ever listened, you know, to say Peter Attia talk about VO2 max, it is—this measure is like the single biggest predictor of all-cause mortality. So the lower your VO2 max is, the essentially closer to death you are, in a sense—not to make it sound morbid, because it is—yeah. But that’s essentially what it is.
Doug Holt 3:25
That’s why it was so important for me to actually do that test with you—because I just turned 48, you know? And man, when I was in my 20s, I never thought I’d make it to 48, let alone be here. And I studied exercise science in college—that was one of my pathways. And what was really interesting is I wanted to see—okay, if this is the number one predictor of all-cause mortality, and here I am at 48 with young kids—I at least should know where I’m at.
And I think a lot of us guys—we hide from wanting to know the test. So we don’t go see the doctor, we don’t get our prostate exam, or all of these ways of measuring where we’re at—our body comp, all the things. And this was a fantastic way to kind of get your feet wet and see where you’re at as a base point.
Dr. Phil Batterson 4:11
Absolutely. I tell people—because actually, our conversation, I was like, “Hey Doug, you want to do this VO2 max test?” And you text me back and you said, “Oh, I’m just going to wait a few weeks because I want to, you know, do a little bit of cardiovascular training.” I was like, “No, no—right now is a perfect time to get it measured,” because it’s essentially looking under the hood. It’s telling us like, well, do we have things to work on? And what things can you actually work on and become the most efficient?
So the way that I look at it is, you know, this isn’t one of those things where you just go get a VO2 max test once every six years and then go from there. You do periodic testing to see, okay, well, what do we need to train? Because, you know, like, let’s face it—we’re busy. We’re busy men trying to pursue, you know, business, family, relationships, everything else under the sun. And, you know, like, yes, you could probably just Google, “Hey, what’s the best way to get in shape?” But the best way to get into the best shape for you is to actually tailor your training to you.
So that’s like the biggest thing—that it will uncover those things you need to work on. And then, you know, if you have a good exercise physiologist, they’ll tell you the one thing or the two things that you need to work on. They won’t try to come in and give you 57 different things to actually change, because, let’s be honest, like, we don’t have time for that.
Doug Holt 5:35
Nor the desire. I want to touch on something you said—it, I actually shot a video for the guys that are in our community, because I was sitting out and you said, “Hey man, here’s a list of things. Just kind of check these things off. Get a good night’s sleep, get a breakfast, low stress.” And I had all the opposites, right? But, you know, you make up stories.
And I was sitting there, I was like, you know, this is exactly the best time, because in my normal day-to-day life—do I always have optimal sleep? No. Do I always have low stress? No. Do I always have a chance to eat the perfect meal? No. So this gives me a perfect indicator of where I could be at, and it’s only up from there.
And we tell the guys—like, so when we teach, let’s say, communication skills, relationship skills—you don’t need to practice those when it’s the best-case scenario. You have to practice those when you’re under fire. And if you can succeed when you’re under fire, then when it is the best-case scenario, it’s just all the better.
Dr. Phil Batterson 6:32
That’s actually a really interesting point, because I send—you know, like, you know, we’ll send like, “Hey, before this, make sure this is happening, this is happening,” and you can almost use that as a checklist now to be like, “Oh, so optimal actually looks like”—yep, being hydrated, having enough food, getting enough sleep.
But let’s be honest—like, what is ultimately practical is what becomes optimal for you. So if it’s not practical for you to be, you know, have perfect sleep every night and do all this other stuff—like, totally understand. It’s just, what are the things—like, the small things—you can change and tweak.
Like, for example, just drinking a glass of water when you wake up. Or, you know, doing like—like what we found from your test was doing probably two sprint workouts a week that are a total of 20 minutes or less is going to be the most optimal for you right now, with everything that you have going on.
It’d be one thing, you know, if I was like, “Oh yeah, okay Doug, so you’ve got to do, you know, seven hours of Zone 2 training, and you have to do three VO2 max workouts, and that’s what’s really going to be, you know, like the best for you.” That just inundates you with way more stress. And then immediately you’re reading that text, and you’re just like, “Get out of here, Phil. You don’t understand me at all.”
Doug Holt 7:54
I’ll just be like, “I’m not doing any of it,” right?
Dr. Phil Batterson 7:55
Yeah. exactly.
Doug Holt 7:56
And that’s the issue a lot of us face. So yeah. So, you know, to set the scene for the guys—we get into the performance center, and you have things set up, and I took pictures for the guys in the app of some of the equipment. We got the mask on. I had skin cancer removed right before then, so I used that as an excuse. I tried everything.
Dr. Phil Batterson 8:19
And he said he still wasn’t able to get out of the test.
Doug Holt 8:23
But something that was unique to me, that—you know, even as somebody who studied this, gosh, almost 30 years ago—is you also were testing the amount of oxygen utilization in my legs as well. So a lot of guys have probably seen the mask, right? You put the mask on, or they’ve had an executive stress test or something along those lines.
And so we chose to use a bike, and we had the mask on. But you also put sensors on my legs. Tell the guys a little bit about that, because I thought that was really cool and unique.
Dr. Phil Batterson 8:54
So this technology is called Near Infrared Spectroscopy, and essentially what it’s doing is just shining red light into your muscle. From how much red light is emitted, and then how much red light is detected, we can actually determine how much oxygen is being used underneath the sensor at any given point. So it gives us a really good idea of how well your heart is delivering oxygen to the muscle, and then how well your muscle is actually using that oxygen.
And you use oxygen at your mitochondria, and if you have unhealthy mitochondria, or if your mitochondria are lacking, then you won’t be able to utilize as much oxygen. My PhD is actually in mitochondrial physiology, but essentially, we find with people—the less healthy their mitochondria are, the less healthy they are. There’s a direct correlation. So that’s ultimately, you know, what we’re trying to get at is, I want to know what’s happening in the muscle, because that’s really what’s doing the work during exercise.
We have a surrogate for measuring whole body oxygen consumption at the mouth. So now I can do both at the mouth and at the muscles to see, well, from a whole body perspective, how’s Doug doing? From a muscle perspective, how’s Doug doing? And then I can use that information to give more tailored exercise recommendations. So it’s cool technology. It’s all wireless. It’s literally just shining a little red light into your legs and then giving us some really cool information.
Doug Holt 10:26
I thought it was fascinating, right? And to see that discrepancy, asymmetry between the legs, and see which one—like my left leg, I think, was a little worse than my right leg if I recall—which surprised me. Of course, I’m trying to figure out why that could be.
Dr. Phil Batterson 10:39
Well, you were telling me too that you had had some imbalances and maybe some injuries or something like that in one of the legs. Nothing, you know, catastrophic or anything like that. But there’s definitely—like, we can identify, okay, you know, is the left leg doing more of the work compared to the right leg? And for me, I’ve had right-left imbalances for forever, and that winds up, you know, Achilles on this side hurting, hip on this side hurting, you know, other things like that. So I’m like, okay, I should probably fix that. I haven’t yet. You know, I know what to do, but I haven’t done it yet.
Doug Holt 11:10
We’re all like everybody is. And again, guys, the reason this is important to you is because again, this is an indicator of all-cause mortality, meaning that, well, basically, if your VO₂ max is too low, your risk of dying goes up. And if you have kids—which most men, most guys listening do—you’ve worked your ass off for your business. You’ve sacrificed for your family. You want to stick around to enjoy it. And you know, don’t flip the coin and just guess and pop some vitamins. This is a really good test to do.
And it’s not easy. It starts off super easy.
Dr. Phil Batterson 12:01
Yeah, it is.
Doug Holt 12:01
And I knew that was coming. I mean, you warned me about it. But I also just knew, as you ramp up intensity, it incrementally—or exponentially—ramps up. It’s like you start off just cruising for the first seemingly ten minutes…
Dr. Phil Batterson 12:01
…and then all of a sudden you’re heading up a hill that’s straight up. It’s a test that everybody fails. And the failure point is dependent on how fit you are, essentially. So you start really, really low. You know, it’s all fun and games. You’re just riding the bike, whatever. And then it gets harder and harder and harder. It’s essentially going up a steeper and steeper hill until you can’t do it anymore.
And the great thing about it—and it’s probably not really appropriate to call it a test—it’s really just an assessment. We’re just trying to take some diagnostics on what’s going on with your engine. But it’s all relative to you, and then we can determine again the individualized training.
And it’s tempting to, you know, compare your numbers to other people and do other things like that. But what I tell people is, even if your numbers come back low, for example, you can improve your VO₂ max—meaning you can improve your cardiovascular fitness—until the day you die. there’s this crazy study where they took sedentary individuals from 20 years old to 80 years old, took them through the same sort of VO₂ max training, and they found that regardless of age, you could improve it the same amount.
Doug Holt 13:47
Really?
Dr. Phil Batterson 13:48
Yes.
Doug Holt 13:48
Wow, that’s fascinating.
Dr. Phil Batterson 13:50
Yeah, so you can improve it the same amount. But the kicker is, as you get older, you lose it also. So you can improve the same amount, but you’re also deteriorating over time. So you need to make sure that you’re doing high-intensity training fairly, you know, semi-regularly, to maintain your VO₂ max as much as possible.
And the reason why that’s important is because in everyday living, right? You want to go and run with your kids, like say on the soccer field, or play some basketball with them or something like that. You don’t want to be the dad that’s bent over after two shots and you can’t keep up with your kid anymore.
You know, we’ve talked about this before too. Like, if you don’t have the cardiovascular stamina to keep up with your wife in bed, there’s probably gonna be a little bit of disappointment going on there.
Doug Holt 14:30
100%.
Dr. Phil Batterson 14:31
And that’s where kind of getting an idea of how fit you are can not only be beneficial just from a numbers perspective—to put a number and track it—because I’m sure all these business guys out here, you guys know the KPIs. You guys know, like, what’s your return on investment for stuff. Same thing: if you measure your VO₂ max and then you do some workouts, you can know what your return on investment actually is.
Doug Holt 14:31
Yeah, I’m excited to retest, and I know we talked about doing that in six months from now. No—six weeks, six to eight weeks, six to eight weeks. Yes, maybe I’m putting it six months.
Dr. Phil Batterson 14:39
Yeah, you’re already trying to get out of it.
Doug Holt 14:41
Gotta get my butt in gear. And we also talked about—just so the guys know listening—for guys that are in the community, of actually doing an event. So guys that want to work with you, they’d work with you for six months. That’s what we were talking about. I got the six-month mark, And then we’d conquer a mountain together as a way of doing—which I’m excited about.
But going back to the everyday activities, right? So, sex in the bedroom. I talk to the guys a lot, and I go, “My wife’s just not interested in having sex.” I’m like, well, she probably is—it’s just not fun, right? You’re not making it fun, right? And one way guys can do it is through increasing their VO₂ max so they can actually not only perform better but longer in bed. And all men want that. All men want a satisfied woman.
But something else, anecdotally, when you were talking, made me think about it—I played pickup basketball with three other guys. Now I’m 5’10”, right? These guys were all 6’2″ to 6’4″, and a couple of them played ball. So I’m out—I’m outgunned. There’s just, you know, there’s two on two.
So what I did is I just ran around. And I’m in great shape, but I was in better shape, so I got them so tired that I could win. and the kids are watching. They’re huffing and puffing, you know, they’re trying—kicking the ball out of bounds, trying to get breaks.
And that was just one of those examples of how—they’re younger than me, they were in their early 40s—and so when you let yourself go, you can’t enjoy those moments of life. And all of us are competitive, and I talk a lot of trash, so I’m talking trash the whole time because I’m beating these guys. I should not be beating them. you know, at the end of the day. So you get to enjoy life better.
Dr. Phil Batterson 16:14
Yeah, if your VO₂ max gets to a point—if you’ve ever met a really sedentary older person—sometimes activities of daily living, like even standing up from the couch or going upstairs, becomes a VO₂ max workout.
Yeah, and if you—you can attest to how hard VO₂ max actually gets at the end of that test.
Doug Holt 16:38
Oh, sure.
Dr. Phil Batterson 16:38
Imagine living your life like that.
Doug Holt 16:40
Yeah, it’d be awful. No, it absolutely is. And we were talking about—so for the guys that have no idea—at the end of the test, you get to a point, to your point, everybody fails, and you have to finish that minute. You know, at the end of the minute, and you’re gone. You know, your legs start to just give up—
for me, at least.
Dr. Phil Batterson 16:55
Yeah, no, that’s everybody. Regardless, it’s everybody.
Doug Holt 16:59
Your legs are just like, “No more.” It becomes a mental game—you have to push through.
What surprised me more than anything is how surprised everybody else in that gym was and how well I did. Not that I did great—because I didn’t—but the amount of shock that they had was like,
Dr. Phil Batterson 17:14
What the hell were you guys thinking?
Well, I think it was the surprise at how high you actually got in terms of wattage. But honestly, I wasn’t that surprised because you’ve got some tree trunks for legs. So I was like he’s going to be able to get pretty high regardless of his cardiovascular fitness—just because you’re so damn strong.
But that was surprising. But then when we actually looked at your VO₂ max numbers, they were a little low.
Doug Holt 17:40
Yes.
Dr. Phil Batterson 17:41
Most likely because you probably have a little bit of excess body fat going on.
Doug Holt 17:46
I definitely have.
Dr. Phil Batterson 17:47
Yeah, so trying to say it as nicely as possible, but what I do—you can get two numbers essentially for VO₂ max. One of them is divided by how much you weigh, and that’s kind of the great equalizer. That’s how we compare with, you know—just to put it into perspective—the highest ever measured was like 100 milliliters per kilogram per minute, which is insane. That’s one athlete, ever, measured.
Most Americans are probably between 25 and 35. So a quarter of that output—a third to a quarter of that output—and somebody who is generally well-trained will be around 50.
But if you think about it, fat is a metabolically inactive tissue, relatively speaking. So if you have a lot of excess fat, it’s essentially just extra material on your body that’s not contributing to your body’s ability to use oxygen.
So actually, I was thinking about this driving over. I was like, if Doug lost some weight and did the sprint interval training, I would expect your VO₂ max to improve probably like 10 to 15% over the course of the next six to eight weeks.
Doug Holt 18:51
That’d be sweet.
Dr. Phil Batterson 18:52
Well, because we’re attacking it on both sides. We’re making you more metabolically fit by doing the sprint interval training.
Doug Holt 18:58
I got a lot of opportunity.
Dr. Phil Batterson 18:59
Yeah, exactly. So I like that optimism, because that’s exactly what it is.
I’ve tested people who—they think they’re pretty fit, and their numbers come back pretty low. And I’m like, “No, it’s okay. You probably just haven’t been training effectively to improve your VO₂ max.”
So ultimately, there are always positives that can come from it.
Doug Holt 19:39
Well, it’s also just the way you look at it, right? So the way I look at that, or any other test for that matter, is, here’s where I’m at today. This is a snapshot, right? It’s not a movie. Here’s where I am today. And then, okay, cool. Now I can choose to do the requisite work to improve. And if I don’t, that’s telling too. right? That tells me that maybe A, it’s not important to me, or B, there’s some other excuse or story going on. And we can do that through every area of our life. This is just fitness. It’s just an easier way to judge—like psychology is a little tougher, as an example.
Dr. Phil Batterson 20:11
Yeah. I’ll also say too, like, a lot of people that I’ve talked to in the past, they’re like, “Oh, well, it’s just not bad enough yet.” Yeah, you know, “It’s just not bad enough yet for me to need to train.” It’s like, well, the options are: try to fit in an extra 20 minutes every other day to do some training, or continually increase your risk of having a heart attack, having a stroke, something really bad happening, and then not being able to, you know, see your kids grow up, or go to important events, or be able to support them with the things that they need to do.
Doug Holt 20:47
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Dr. Phil Batterson 21:40
Well, for me, the most impactful men in my life have led by example—100%. So, you know, like by showing your kid that, hey, this training is important. And it’s like, most of the time you could do the training with them. Like, there are so many triathletes that I’ve coached before that, they’re like, “Yeah, I got my little son. I got his, like, bike set up next to mine.” So I’ll be riding for, you know, like four or five hours—I’m not asking you guys to do that—but, you know, the son will jump on and then jump off, you know, periodically. And that’s just like a really good learning experience for them as well.
Doug Holt 22:12
Yeah, so my son, he knows I go to the gym four to five days a week, and so he asked me last night—he said, “Dad, I want to start working out with you.” He’s seven. So I’m excited to get him in there, and get him going. One of the things that I think a lot of guys—and by the way, 99% of the men that are listening to this—wait till it’s too late, right?
Yeah, they’ll contact a company like ours, TPM, or another men’s group, when things have gotten so bad, right? Or guys will start getting into fitness or getting their health after the stroke, after the heart attack, or the doctor looks at them and goes, “Hey, this is imminent if you don’t change things.”
So guys, this is why it’s so important.
Now, for your testing, you can go mobile with it, right? You can take it and actually test somewhere else. And for those guys listening, Phil’s actually one of the people that has come on to the Academy, which is our four-level program coming in to educate men on fitness and health.
And coming through, we’ve talked about having you come to the TPM ranch when guys come in. So let’s say a guy can’t get here, right? And he’s like, “Okay, I get it. I need to do this. This is not a ‘want list’ anymore. This is on the ‘need to do’ list,” yeah, and he can’t make it here to the TPM ranch to work with you specifically. What should he look for?
Dr. Phil Batterson 23:32
Yeah. So there are ways of doing, like, field tests, for example. It’d be very similar to exactly what we did with you. Okay, you would find a bike, a rower, a treadmill—whatever you’re most comfortable with. And then you would do, essentially, it’s called a step test. So you’d start really, really easy, and then, wearing a heart rate monitor, you would just go harder and harder and harder until, you know, hopefully you’re not falling off the treadmill or anything like that, but until you fail. And then you would take your max heart rate, and then you would use percentages of that max heart rate to determine how hard to exercise.
I would be, you know, more than happy to consult on the data analysis and give you recommendations, because there are crazy rabbit holes that you can go down where people are going to recommend, you know, 10 hours of easy training per week—which nobody has any time for that—sure, all the way to, you need to do high intensity interval training every single day.
And there’s a happy medium that you need to find, and a balance that you need to find with all of that. And it needs to be based off of, like, where you’re at, what you have available to you, and the stress load that you have on your life.
I’ve worked with a lot of endurance athletes—specifically endurance athletes—who are coming off of overtraining syndrome, where they just bury themselves, you know, type A individuals who really like to exercise and think more is always better. Yep. But I’ve also worked with people on the other end of the spectrum, you know, so it’s a matter of meeting the individual where they’re at.
So yeah. So if you do want to, you know, get an assessment of what your VO2 Max is and those sort of things, reach out to me, and I’d be happy to, you know, kind of give you a protocol, and then we can kind of, you know, bounce ideas off from there.
Doug Holt 25:23
Awesome. one of the things I liked when you and I talked was the 80/20 kind of approach, where, for those that aren’t familiar with it, 20% of your inputs get you 80% of the outputs. Because I’m definitely the type that I go work in extremes. right? So if I’m going to lift weights, I’m going to lift weights seven days a week. If I could fit an eighth, I’d do that.
And I enjoy it. I enjoy torturing myself to a certain degree. And so here I am in this stage of my life, I actually have to force myself to not do as much—for joint integrity and all kinds of other things—to get out what I… and plus, time. I travel a lot, as the guys that listen to this know, and so I’ve got my family obligations.
So having that, where you go, “Okay, Doug, after your workout or before, two times a week, just do four sprints,” yeah, right? And it was more programming than that, but the guys don’t need to get in the weeds of it. And that’s so doable.
And even with the rest times, I’m like, well, cool. I have messages from my clients I can listen to during the rest times, or music. So I can really utilize that time effectively and efficiently, so I can go play catch with my son, so I can kick a soccer ball with my daughter, or whatever else I want to do.
Dr. Phil Batterson 26:36
Yeah. I also have a background in engineering, so I always look at things as like an optimization problem. And for most people, you know, as long as you are healthy enough to do it, that high intensity interval training or sprint interval training is going to, hands down, be the most time-efficient thing you can do.
The thing is, you don’t have to go and absolutely destroy yourself. Because, you know, even if you’re doing anything you do that is more than what you have been doing, it’s going to be beneficial for you. You know?
So that’s what I always try to bring to the table. Like, I’ll have CrossFitters come to me, they’ll do a VO2 Max test, and I’m like, “Yeah, your VO2 Max is great. Your other metrics of your high exercise intensity sustainability is great, but you never do anything that’s easy.”
So if you’re going to do anything here, you’re probably going to get the most bang for your buck if you actually just, like, take some easy days, because you don’t recover very much.
Whereas, you know, somebody like you, who’s like, “Yeah, I go to the gym and do strength training, and I don’t really have too much time to devote to crazy cardio workouts,” I’m like, “Yeah, sprint interval training, you know, for four to six weeks is going to be really, really good.” Yeah?
Or interesting, quite honestly.
Yeah, no, that’s also true. Right? Because if I told you to, you know, sit on the bike and ride your bike for an hour to two hours, half the time you’d be like, “No, man.” Talk about mind-numbing. You know, like, it’s tough.
Doug Holt 28:05
It is. It is. Even when I played competitive—well, my version of competitive—soccer, I did stadiums, I did sprints. And soccer is a sprinting game in my eyes, not an endurance. But just going out for the long, “Hey, let’s go for a three-mile run,” just wasn’t interesting to me, unless I was doing it with somebody and it was a social event or something like that. whereas a lot of friends—and like yourself—who are endurance athletes, and for them to go, you know, run 20 miles in a day is what they look forward to.
Dr. Phil Batterson 28:33
Yeah. But at the same time, even that I think can get misconstrued because a lot of endurance athletes get stuck in just the “let’s just go long and slow” because it’s easy. it’s like, from a physical perspective, it’s easy—maybe not mentally as much—but, you know, they’re the type of people that would probably benefit the most from doing the high intensity stuff. Sure. So it’s all about, you know, kind of finding that balance and then what’s going to pull the biggest levers. You know, give the 20% of the inputs that are going to give you 80% of the increases. And then just focusing on that.
Doug Holt 29:09
So I have 18 different degrees and certifications. It’s a lot. A few, I got a few. But I still will have somebody else write my programming, because at the end of the day, I’m going to end up doing what I enjoy, and I’m going to skip the stuff I don’t like. Like, if I have to cut out of the gym early, I’m going to skip the stuff I don’t like. The stuff I don’t like is probably the stuff I need the most, and I know it. But I’m also a human, right? And so I’ll go, “Okay, I’m going to do compound lifts. I’m gonna do heavy weights.” I love that stuff. And external rotations or anything else are going to go out the window.
Dr. Phil Batterson 29:42
Yeah, So add those sprints before you go and do your strength work. Just so you don’t cut it out at the end when you’re tired. It’s funny you say that because right now my focus is I’m doing a two-and-a-half-mile race that’s 2,500 feet of gain. So it’s just like, essentially, just running up a huge hill. And I know I need to do strength work, but I always put the strength work after my high intensity interval training because—well, A—I’ve had some, you know, back issues and other things like that, so it kind of can hurt me sometimes. But B, it’s just deprioritized on my list. Yes. But if I was trying to develop strength, then I’d switch it around. So really, it comes down to is like, well, you know, it’s like, what do you want the primary adaptation to be? Put that first. And then, if you do struggle, you know, with like, “Well, I really like strength training, but I hate cardiovascular training,” force yourself to do the cardiovascular training first and then give yourself the reward, you know, of the strength training afterwards.
Doug Holt 30:40
In my former life, as I talk about, I was—in my early 20s—I was the assistant director of the International Sports Science Association of Education. And because of that, I did research. So I can justify just about anything I do because I’ve done so much research. You know, caffeine is bad for you when I’m not drinking coffee—I can give you 20 studies of why caffeine is bad. When I drink coffee, I can give you 20 studies how good it is for you.
And I think we all do that justification. I also, you know, in training so many people in the physical side, if you ask guys like, “Well, what’s your goal? Do you want to lose body fat? Do you want to increase strength? You want to increase muscle size? You want to increase endurance?” What do you want to do? And they always say what? “Yes.” Yeah. “I’ll take all of those,” right? Unless body fat’s not an issue at all, then they… you know, or vice versa.
And so to your point, prioritizing what it is you want is key. Go number 1, 2, 3, 4. I’m gonna guess most of the people listening to this would prioritize being alive over just looking good naked or looking better. However, there needs to be motivation for both. You know, there just is. And so for the guys listening to this, if there’s something you don’t gravitate towards—so for me, actually, I do like sprinting—but that would be something easy for me to skip out on. Like, “Oh, you know, I gotta call Phil, so I’ll do the sprints later when I get home.” It’s like ab work. I hate ab work. I always say I’m going to do it when I get home, right? And I never do. No. It literally never—so. But put that first, to your point, and then your tendency will be to do the stuff you like. You’ll just keep that in, you know, going forward.
Dr. Phil Batterson 32:17
And that’s, you know, it’s like, I am sure, you know, if there’s exercise physiologists out there, they’ll be like, no, you can’t do that because it’s not optimal. It’s like, well, like we talked about earlier, what is practical becomes optimal. So if you put something that you don’t really like at the beginning, sure, and then you reward yourself with something, eventually it’s like, oh yeah, I got to do my sprints, and then I get to go, you know, lift some heavy ass weight.
Doug Holt 32:41
Well, that is optimal to me, because what’s going to happen if I don’t do that, Phil, is I won’t do the sprints.
Dr. Phil Batterson 32:46
Exactly. No, that’s exactly my point. there’s this thought experiment that I tell people. It’s like, well, if there was a study that came out that said, you know, like swimming five days a week in 40-degree water is the perfect workout for developing your cardiovascular system—it’s not—but even if that was shown to be the best way, if you hate swimming, if you hate being in cold water in the dark at 5 a.m., that is not the most optimal for you.
So that’s where, you know, it’s really easy for someone like myself as a scientist to get lost in, like, what does the research say is the most optimal? Yep. But what I’m working on now is translating. You take the research and you say, okay, these protocols are really good for developing VO2 Max, for developing endurance, but where—how—do we meet people where they are, and how do we get them to actually… It’s the habit change and the behavior change that we’re really looking for.
And most of the time, what’s been shown to be the best for an elite-level cyclist—actually, I can almost confidently say all of the time—that what has been shown to be the best for an elite-level cyclist is not the best for the everyday person just looking for health and wellness or even performance. So yeah, I’ve been fighting those battles, you know, quite a bit lately.
Doug Holt 34:08
Let me ask you the question. So, you know, when I was in college going through exercise fizz, you know, it was always the RICE, right? Rest, ice, compress, elevate, right? You know, my teacher called it RICE wine, and then have a glass of wine after, you know, that was his deal. Yeah? But now you don’t ice, right? Yeah. As opposed to—yeah. So how do you, as an exercise physiologist, as a scientist, how do you walk that line of being dogmatic, of like, hey, we always have to ice at a certain time, versus always going, hey, there’s kind of a middle ground?
Dr. Phil Batterson 34:41
That is a really tough question to answer. But again, I have seen time and time again these research studies where people get, you know, really dogmatic about things—not work for others. So it’s kind of from experience where you start to realize, like, you know, if you zoom in on most of those graphs, you have the average, and then you have 10 dots from the 10 people in the study.
And it’s a distribution all the way across, from people who get no benefit—actually negative benefit—from it, to people who get extreme benefits, you know, from whatever it is they’re doing. I take the studies to inform me on where to start, and then every athlete I work with is an “n of 1” experiment. Got it. And it’s purely to the individual.
So I use the scientific principles, I use the physiological testing, and then create a science-informed training plan, and then continually check back with the person I’m working with: “Hey, how’d that feel? How are you feeling after doing this sort of stuff?” Because if you know—for example—one of the, you know, like, peak VO2 Max workouts that’s being pushed right now is called the Norwegian 4×4. You do four minutes as hard as you can, four minutes of rest. And it is absolutely brutal.
It is so damn hard. That is not a workout for somebody who has never done a VO2 Max workout in their life. And then, you know, so that’s what’s being touted in terms of, like, the, you know, social media and stuff like that. But there’s other research that’s shown that doing 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off is an effective way of improving VO2 Max. Doing sprint interval training is an effective way of improving VO2 Max.
Even doing, like, long slow distance. So if you’re somebody who just likes to go out and just run, and, you know, you kind of just want to get lost in running—you don’t really care about, like, your intensity and stuff like that—if you did that 30 minutes, three times a week, I can guarantee you, if you’re doing nothing, you’re going to improve your VO2 Max.
So that’s the point. And it gets more tricky—the more well-trained an individual is, you have to get a little bit more creative, and you have to really kind of rely on those studies. But yeah, I treat everybody as an “n of 1” experiment, and using the information that I’ve, you know, read from science, used in the past with other athletes, that’s how we get to the end goals that people are looking for.
Doug Holt 37:13
I love it. It’s tailored to the individual. I remember when I was a strength coach, so I had a facility in Santa Barbara, California, and in there—so it was independent contractors—one of the guys that trained out of there was on the cover of Men’s Fitness more than anybody. Wow, right? And he looked it, And a great guy, very knowledgeable, right? Had a master’s in exercise, kinesiology, science of kinesiology.
Then we had another guy who makes me currently look really good shape—but better as a strength coach and a trainer, right? Because—and I think a lot of people will look at somebody like an influencer, at somebody at the gym, and they’re like, wow, that person’s in really great shape. I’m going to do what they’re doing. And it backfires on them.
They don’t think about the years of training. They don’t think about—this person could have some genetic influences, supplementation, vitamin S, you know—steroids, yes, you know, or they just found what works for them. And they miss the fact of it being individualized. And I want to emphasize that for people listening to this—that that is so important in my experience,
Dr. Phil Batterson 38:20
Absolutely. That’s like, you know, the countless individuals chasing what the pros do. They watch what their Strava accounts are, they’re like, oh, you know, this guy—the training Bible just came out, you know, for the speed skater. So I’m going to train exactly like him. And you’re like, the reason why that works is because that guy found the coach that works well with him and the individualized training plan that worked well for that build-up for that particular event.
Yeah, and he kind of got lucky, because nobody else figured it out to the same extent that he did. So there’s got to be some logical fallacy going on there where, you know, you see somebody who has had success, and then you want to emulate them, which—yeah, like, obviously—but just because somebody has achieved, you know, say what you want to do, or, you know, something bigger than what you want to do, doesn’t mean that following that instruction booklet is going to lead to the same outcomes for you.
Doug Holt 39:17
Yes, yes. I always say success leaves clues, but it’s more important to work with somebody in any endeavor in life that’s helped somebody like you get to that goal. right? That’s the key.
We were joking—there were two other guys who were also, I’ll call exercise nerds—and I don’t remember the exact question I posed. Posed around stretching, mobility. There was a debate around mobility versus flexibility, right? As nobody else would debate about. And the joke was watching NFL players warm up. And I don’t know if it was you or it was—
Dr. Phil Batterson 40:04
Yeah, it was Michael and I.
Doug Holt 40:05
Oh yeah,
Dr. Phil Batterson 40:06
And yeah. The idea was to almost never do what professional athletes do to warm up.
Doug Holt 40:09
It was exactly that.
Dr. Phil Batterson 40:10
They take four hours of just doing, like, static stretching and all this other stuff. And, you know, that’s probably because it’s been ingrained in them, you know, since they were in high school—maybe before that—that this is the thing I need to do to get mentally ready, and then they think it physically prepares them for the game.
But in all honesty, like, you know, you’re doing those four hours, and then you’re standing on the sidelines for 20 minutes before the kickoff. You’re getting cool anyways. Yeah? So it’s not like, you know, it’s—yes, new debate us idea.
Yeah, it’s a really, really easy thing to fall into, you know, like trying to do exactly what, like, the pros do. And I see this happen with—I work with college cross country athletes fairly regularly—and they’re like, oh, this pro athlete, he’s running 100 miles a week, so I need to run 100 miles a week.
Like, no, that’s what’s best for him. And he’s figured out what he needs to do. But I can guarantee you, if you start running 100 miles a week, it’ll feel good, it’ll feel good—and then you’ll get sick, and then you’ll get injured, and then you’ll have a shitty season.
And almost every single time when they ignore that advice, that’s what happens. So yeah, bottom line is, you know—it really helps to work with somebody who, you know, can find the 80/20 for you and convey that in a meaningful way and work with you to actually, you know, kind of individualize whatever you’re doing.
Avoid, kind of like the cookie-cutter plans and other things. And don’t get me wrong, they probably would help you. You know, if you’re doing nothing, anything’s gonna help. But it’s not going to be the most optimized for you and your lifestyle.
Doug Holt 41:46
I love it. Well, I love what you’re doing, man. Thanks so much for taking care of that, for what you’re doing with the Academy, for the men and the movement, it’s absolutely awesome. if guys want to reach out to you, what’s the best way?
Dr. Phil Batterson 41:59
Best place—you can, well, you can email me and you can put my email in the episode description. It’s my last name: batterson.phil@gmail.com. But typically, I do most of my early business through Instagram. It’s just @drphilbatterson on Instagram. So check me out over there if you have any questions, you know, just about cardiovascular training, or are looking to maybe hire a coach and are kind of like shopping around, I’d be more than happy to sit down, see if my coaching would be a right fit for you—those sort of things.
Like, the reason why I wanted to work with you guys at The Powerful Man so much is I really think I can make a really big impact. You know, all these successful men, you know, in business now working towards relationships—I want to help you guys with the fitness side of things. So I want you to feel like you can conquer that mountain, you know, literally and figuratively, and I have the tools to help people do that.
Doug Holt 42:58
Love it. Love it. Well, we’ll check back in eight weeks and see how I do. Heck yeah.
Gentlemen, as I always say: in the moment of insight, take massive action. And guys, whether you work with Phil or not, work with somebody and get your VO2 Max tested. Get all your tests done. I recently had a blood test, VO2 Max test. Andrew, The Gift, has donated us an awesome body scanner that Phil has actually used here. It is actually an amazing way of getting those assessments.
But do something. Get off the sidelines. Get off the couch, and just take action. And like Phil said, if you’re not doing anything, man, walking is a start. But do something. Don’t wait for the perfect plan, for the perfect time. The best time is now—just like me taking that VO2 Max test. I was exhausted, didn’t sleep well, didn’t eat—all of these things against it that made it the perfect time, because there’s so many other days of my life that are just like that. It’s just the way we work. So now is the best time to take action, no matter what you’re doing, whatever area of your life you’re trying to improve.
See you next time, guys, on The Powerful Man Show.
