1.Welcome and guest intro

Welcome to the Roadman Podcast, Dr. Samuel Rhee. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our longevity? That is the question on this podcast, and we'll give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh, and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Rodeman, welcome back to the Rodeman Cycling Podcast. I'm super excited by today's guest. It's Dr. Samuel Rhee. Dr. Samuel Rhee specializes in plastic surgery and he's got a name for himself for cosmetic surgery in particular. But today I want to draw on his medical expertise, but I really want to dig into what's his passion and his extracurricular pursuit and its crossfit and strength training and its applicability to cycling in particular. And this is a subject that's actually quite close to my heart at the moment because I started crossfit about two months back and anecdotally I've experienced massive benefits but I wanted to get someone on the podcast that was truly an expert in this, someone that was research driven, that was going to lead with science and not rumor, conjecture or force hand experience like you will get other places. So that's why it's, I'm super stoked to welcome to the podcast, Dr Samuel Rhee today. Before I do that, let me just remind you about our training camp in Jirona. There's a couple of spots left on the training camp in Jirona. If you want to secure your spot, it's roadmancyteland.com forward slash to your own it. Roadmen do all the other things to help us grow on the podcast because even small things, there's so much appreciated. It's small things like sharing the podcast into a group. If there's somebody tinking and getting into strength, trying at the moment, share it around into a WhatsApp group, into the Facebook group. Follow us over on Instagram, it's roadman.cycling. And just like review and rate wherever you're listening to it, roadmen, enough of me bladdering on. really interest an interview with Dr. Samuel Reed. How are you? Nice to meet you. Where abouts in the world are you? I live in Northern New Jersey in the United States. So it's about 25 minutes from New York City. So if you take the George Washington Bridge out of Manhattan, drive depending on traffic about 20 to 25 minutes, you'll hit my house basically. Nice. You got some nice weather going on over there at the moment, I believe. some of it's nice today it's a little cloudy but yeah it's been pretty awesome for the past week or so. Do you guys not have a hurricane or something crazy going on? Oh yes that was about three weeks ago that was awful. We had so much rain about half my neighbors their basements flooded you know knee or hip deep it was it was very very it was very challenging for a lot of people here for sure. I'm so excited about this chat my background is before I got into cycling is law. So I feel like there's a little bit of academic crisscrossed it now into my passion, which is cycling. And I feel like although you're not coming from the same disciplines as me, you're kind of mirroring my past that you're still practicing MD at the moment, but your passion is strength condition and specifically crossfit. Yes, I've been a plastic surgeon now for about 15 years. But about three, four years ago, I started getting into crossfit and strength and conditioning. And that's really been my passion for a lot of things. I mean, I love plastic surgery too. Don't get me wrong. I don't want my patients to think that I've given them up or anything. But I really love health in general. And we do have a lot of athletes that are gym, including cyclists who use CrossFit as their strength and conditioning program, especially in the off season. And I have a daughter who plays, I guess, football or soccer, depending on where you're from. And so, yeah, so it's pretty useful as an adjunct for a lot of different sports too. The plastic surgery is interesting. Can you make me good looking? You look pretty good, Anthony. I got to tell you, I was looking at you on the Zoom call and I was like, yeah, a little gel in the hair and you'd be off, you know, you could go out tonight and had no problems actually. Yeah, I'm looking to work with some very closely and turn this podcast into a video show for next season. So plastic surgery is interesting. I just wanted to even that after a second, this was not often I get to talk of plastic surgeons. So on the one hand, we have, you know, what we both love, it's health and little strategies around, you know, being a little bit healthier, increasing strength, endurance, whatever that is. But on the other hand, we have almost a, not almost a very artificial way of modifying. It's almost It's almost like a shark to what we're trying to get through. I'm working hard to get in shape, but somebody can get a little bit of fat shave though, or they can get the shape, you don't know, it's got a squat anymore because I can fix the shape of your buttocks.

2.Looks versus performance trade-offs

Is that a weird sort of place for you to sit, balancing those two because they seem an opposite ends? Yes. I think body image and performance is a huge interest of mine because it's exactly right. I see a lot of patients who are very concerned about how they look. And we as athletes also care a lot about how we look. A lot of what we do, we do for performance, but we also do it to get into shape, to increase our fitness and to look better. And that intersection between our priorities about looking good or performing, I've talked about that with a number of my friends, we've made the hypothetical. If you could cut, say, 30 seconds off your time or five minutes off your time, but you had to gain three inches on your gut in order to do so, would you do it? And some of my friends say yes, and some of them say no. So I think it's one of those intersections where we talk about that constantly. Well, it's like, have you seen this study? It's an old study. It must be 20 years old at this stage. I remember studying in psychology as an undergrad where they asked a least athlete. So a least was categorized as Olympic level or above that if you could take a magic pill, which would win you a gold medal in the Olympics, but you would die five years later, would you take that pill? And it was something astonishing, like 96% of athletes said they take the pill. That's the ultimate in sacrifice for performance right there is being able to do that. You're right. And I think most people who don't think that as important would obviously say no, I wouldn't say yes to that. But if that's what you train your life to do, that is so important to you. And I could see how, if you apply that to a lot of things in life for people's goals, they might choose that pill. So do you feel like a big part of exercise for me is this dopamine pathway where I'm exercising, feeling good about the hard work and doing the hard thing? Maybe if I decide to have a pizza tonight but I'm gonna go to CrossFit today, I do the hard thing first. Now I'm feeling better about having the pizza later, but also if I'm cross-fitting long enough or I'm bike running long enough, this dopamine pathway becomes self-fulfilling because I'm doing difficult things. I'm seeing benefits. Benefits are motivating me to do difficult things. And the same pathway is this present in the plastic surgery game. Are people, do they get addicted to the surgery and want a second surgery, a third surgery, and wanna hook up that to open main pathway? Absolutely. That is a very good, I mean, there are some very analogous connections to that. So, getting that feeling of feeling good about something, whether it is a bazillion lights on your social media post or performing well on your workout for the day, those or looking at yourself in the mirror after some procedure. and feeling like you look better, those are all, like you said, dopamine hits. And how we address that and how we sort of deal with that is important, it can be addictive, right? So we know people who are completely addicted to social media because that's all they wanna do is get that little dopamine hit from all the likes that they get. As an athlete, I would have to say I'm sort of addicted to working out. I feel not good if I don't really push myself you know, and do something, you know, that makes me feel good, even though it's really uncomfortable at the time of the workout. And the thing about plastic surgery is that you can get that dopamine hit without necessarily putting in effort sometimes, right? So if I'm doing liposuction on a patient, I really want to explore the reasons, the underlying motivations, what the patient wants in order for me to best understand it so that it's actually helpful for the patient and not necessarily counterproductive like he said and then they're just going to chase the next one and the next one and the next one because that's obviously a problem. Yeah because we're in a funny place in society where like you said they don't have to put in effort and I think for me that's always been the key between something where we're chasing a dopamine release that's positive like you know working hard in university you get good grades, you get the dopamine release, you work harder, you get better grades. It seems like quite a positive spoiler up because it's associated with effort. Maybe this is like my distinction, and it's not a correct one. So it's not me if you have a different interpretation. Same with sport. It's healthy because I get to put in effort, and I hit the dopamine from it. But society seems to reward and hold on a pedestal, these sort of behaviors. And we see at least athletes, where they put ultimate sacrifice, try and super hard, and this dopamine pathway is kicking for for them.

3.Plastic surgery and trans athletes

But on the order end, we do have ways of stimulating dopamine, which we look down on as a society, drug use, addiction to gambling, addiction to video games. What solid does plastic surgery follow? Both, which is so true. There are some patients who don't like the way they look, and they're not willing to change their lifestyle or what they do in order to help themselves. And so they turn to someone like me to try to address that. And that is, I would characterize that as what you said, an unhealthy sort of dopamine seeking behavior. There are patients, though, who also, no matter what you do, if you've had, say, three childbirths and you have a lot of loose extra skin in your belly from all those pregnancies, you can't eat better or exercise that away. And that is something that really impacts your quality of life negatively. And if that's something that we can help you with, and you can look better at yourself, even though you've made the efforts and you know, I can't change this on my own, I need help with that, that's a really positive way of seeking, you know, a dopamine release or a positive outcome. To trouble Corifball before we jump into the strength and conditioning itself, because I know everyone's eager to hear about that, and I'm definitely eager to pick your brain. And as somebody who's, I haven't even told you, a newbie crossfitter. We're going to get into that in a second. Oh, wow. But with the Olympics just finished and something that's been very controversial, at least here in Ireland and in the UK. And it's a topic where I've been looking to do a dedicated podcast and I have a guest lined up who's quite a profile, but I've steered away from itself, because I haven't had time to put research. It's a transgender's in sport. And it's something I suppose you may or may not have some exposure to your practice to have you taught on transgender's role in sport? Yeah, super complicated. I do have a number of trans patients in my practice. We have several trans athletes in our gym as well, and I have a couple friends who are trans, and I've never actually broached the subject with anyone who's trans about it. it super controversial because the issue is really, is there a performance advantage for a trans athlete who, you know, identified as male for a long period of time, now identifies as female and, you know, how do we quantify that? And if so, how do if there is a performance advantage, how do we level the playing field? That is there have been attempts to do to try to address that in sport and it's been extremely difficult. And I think people smarter than me have tried to figure this out, like to quantify the advantage if there is one and how to address it. And I don't know. It's, I mean, I have my own intuitive thoughts about it, but that may or may not jive with the reality of the situation. Well, look, for me, there has to be an advantage. And it almost feels like it's inclusion to the point of exclusion. By that, I mean, we're trying so hard to be inclusive of everyone. And I'm the last person to think any sort of discrimination is a good thing, where it's discrimination based on health, based on gender, based on sexual preference. As long as you're not hurt and anyone else go have a blast and live your life, whatever way you want. But if we're trying so hard to be inclusive that we're excluding people of that gender, by that I mean, you know, women's NBA, LeBron James decides he wants to be a woman next week. And now he shoots 2800 fucking points a game because he's a woman. How is that inclusive for women in the women's NBA? It just seems crazy for Kristi Allen and Aldo signing for Mani Neut now decides that he wants to be a woman. and he scores 25 goals every game. It's like he's lived his whole life as Malcolm Gladwell has a great book, Outliers, where he speaks about the advantage of the month you're born in. So if you're born in references, Irish and UK soccer teams because it takes your, if you're an under 15 or an under 14 player, you're born to early half of the year, you could nearly be 11 months older than somebody else on your team and 11 months when you're six years of age, is a huge growth opportunity. So his argument that he puts forward quite brilliantly is it's the extra opportunities that that player is afforded because he's almost a full year bigger. He now gets picked for representative teams, gets to work with better coaches, ultimately gets upgraded to national teams where he gets exposed to better players, trying harder. The exact same argument I think could be advanced for somebody who's lived their whole life as a male. Like LeBron James has had the benefit of playing basketball at the highest level in the world against the best players in the world where women haven't had that advantage in the women's NBA.

4.Testosterone and fairness in sport

Yeah, I mean, let's face it, testosterone is an illegal performance enhancing drug. And if you take a male athlete who's grown up as male for 25 or 30 years, their testosterone levels are gonna be much, much, much higher than a comparable athlete growing up as a woman. And then just to say, well, now I'm going to reduce my testosterone levels at this point and I can compete as a woman when you've already had decades of development with what is now arguably a performance enhancing drug which is outlawed in most sporting, by most professional sporting organizations, that's something that has to be quantified And that has to be addressed, especially in certain competitions. I know weightlifting is a huge one, obviously, but pretty much every sport. So it's not just the fact that LeBron James has played against elite competition. It's the fact that he's just physiologically had an advantage over someone who's been comparably a woman for the same decade or decades that he's lived. So it's complicated. Yeah, you don't get to put a genie back in the bottle with the years they've had access to that testosterone. That's correct. I mean, and listen, trans athletes need to compete. They have every, like you said, every right to compete, like everyone else does. The question is, is how do you figure out to make it equitable for everyone, like you said, and that's tough. Yeah, I think it's the peer to peer competition. That's the difficult one. I think most reasonable rational people will agree they should have a platform for competition, whether it's a different platform, like, prior athletes get a different platform compete as able-bodied athletes, as do special athletes. Right. Maybe that's the case. I'm not sure. You got to remember, even at the most elite level, a performance increase of 3% to 5% even is mind-blowing. That will take you from off the podium, onto the podium for these guys. They're looking to shave micro percentages off their time or whatever they're trying to improve. So something like this could certainly overwhelmed that kind of competition for sure. I think it's an emotionally and academically and even a politically challenging subject. So people have steered away from it. My hope is we don't steer away from it too long until you get transgender's competing in combat sports because you will see injuries, what we know about brain injuries and traumatic even subconcussive impacts in sports like boxing. Like we've won the best, if not the greatest ever female boxer in the world is Irish, K.T. Taylor. She's multiple, multiple world champion. But I would hate to see someone trans coming into women's boxing and kind of, you know, diluting her legacy before it's regulated. But I think that's maybe a conversation for another day. I want to talk about CrossFit. So I, like a lot of cyclists, probably steered away from any sort of strength training, especially when I was full time on the bike. And I feel like a decade ago, the evidence as to whether you should cross train concurrently with endurance training was a little mixed. But I feel like in the last decade, specifically the last five, six years, that's been conclusively an off answer that most endurance athletes should be adding strength training into their overall training portfolio. What drew you specifically to cross training as a subsection of strength training? I mean, there's certain aspects across it which we can talk about which make it very appealing for a broad spectrum of athletes. The way I came about CrossFit was oddly enough, I mean, not oddly enough, but this way we just talked about, about body image, about looking better. So I remember at the time I was a runner, I was running basically three to four miles a day. And I had really, you know, I was, I'm around 165 pounds, I was about 145 pounds, maybe 148 pounds at that time. I was very lean, but I remember going on vacation with one of my friends and he He just looked very buff, very fit. And I asked him, what is it that you're doing? And he told me I'm doing crossfins, like what's crossfins? I said, he said, I can't explain to you. You just have to come with me. So I went with him to a gym and got my butt kicked. You know, it just totally got hammered on it. And I was like, wow, this is unlike any other training I've done before. I mean, I used to go to the gym, sometimes do bench press, do some bicep curls, get on the treadmill, do some running. And that was sort of the extent of my main fitness experience. I wasn't, you know, I kind of grew up fairly unathletic. And when I started CrossFit, they said, OK, well, here, here's a barbell. We're going to teach you how to use it. Here is, you know, back squats and strength training and push-ups and pull-ups and plyometrics and gymnastics. And we're going to teach you how to do all this stuff. And it was that constant learning about different movements, about measuring my progress in a group setting socially that made it very, very appealing.

5.CrossFit's tribal community appeal

And as I started getting stronger and more fit, I could also see myself change, look better, look different. And so that sort of just sort of sent me on the path. And then I just started exploring more of the specific objective benefits from it. And that's what sort of pushed me on it. I think CrossFit have built something very interestingly, whether it was deliberate or not. But the different ways we all learn and the different learning pathways, they've chosen like learning in this group environment. It's almost, I don't think it's too strong or worth to say it's almost tribal, the cross-fit movement. And what, when it feels quite intimidating and it gazes community when you're on the outside looking in, when you're on the inside looking out, it's a very safe environment and it's a very encouraging environment very inclusive environment. And I think that fosters extra development over and above what just going to the GM and going through your own workout, maybe under the guidance of a personal trainer brings on it. It's that kind of we're better together type mentality. Absolutely. I mean, suffering loves company. And if you've ever, if you, and I'm sure as athletes, if you're a cyclist and you've done workouts with fellow cyclists and it was particularly arduous or the training was particularly tough, you can talk about it, you can commiserate about it, you can hang out and discuss it. And that is very helpful. It helps you sort of do all of these uncomfortable things that you don't necessarily want to be doing by yourself. It makes it, that shared misery is uplifting. And CrossFit has always been a social environment. And I think you're right, if you're in it, it's great. If you're outside and you're looking in, it looks really weird to see these people doing these awful looking things and suffering. But it's probably the same for most sports. If you're doing it in a group setting, you build camaraderie. You have a team aspect to it, and that's one of the best things about it. So what's the benefits of CrossFit for endurance sports, and specifically what our listeners low up cycling? So there are a couple of things. I think, like you said, the science has sort of come around at this point where strength and conditioning or cross training for most athletes has been of benefit, regardless of what sport you do. It could be something as supposedly un-athletic as baseball, which is actually very athletic. It could be martial arts. It can be tennis. It can be golf. It can be swimming. It can be running. Most people do play some sort of recreational sport in their life if they enjoy it. And they have found that at crossfit or I mean, sorry, cross training can be super helpful for a couple of reasons. One is durability, right? So if you're overtraining certain muscles in one sport, you may get weaker in other muscles. The other muscles that help support your athletic performance but are not necessarily being trained as specifically. So you're looking at like secondary stabilizing muscles and stuff like that in the instances. So I can't exactly like muscle imbalances that can come from high volume cycling or any other activity that you might be doing. And there has been some evidence and this is where I'm sort of, when I read this recently, it was actually very interesting about the whole efficiency for, for example, in cycling for pedaling. And there were some studies that showed that you can actually be more efficient in your pedaling after weightlifting because of what's it's called co contraction where and this was a phenomenon I wasn't familiar with but when you know when you're when you're moving your pedal on your bike 12 to 15 muscles are being fired through that sequence and in that sequence there are some opposing muscles that contract which also make it less efficient but after weight lifting programs they have found that that peak torque has increased, that those muscles are firing in concert better. And that's mainly because you're just recruiting neuromuscularly more muscles during your weightlifting sessions that help you when you're doing other movements such as pedaling, for example. So what those, so I'm trying to think about our listeners and the clients of roadman coaching. So a typical training week for those guys would be they might ride the bike five days a week where they would take a Monday and a Friday off completely, maybe ride for 60 to 90 minutes Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then typically weekends are longer because they're a nine to five workers at a more free time on the weekends. How would you see crossfit being integrated into a week like that? You got to do really carefully. So we have a lot of of athletes that are gym and one of the things you don't want to do is increase your volume to the point where your primary sport, which in this case would be cycling, is negatively affected. So the first thing is, is I usually talk to my athletes about their off season. So usually they're right, you're peaking for certain type, you know, during certain parts of the year.

6.Fitting cross-training into your week

And then in other parts of the year, you're sort of reducing your volume and your sport and you're sort of, you know, laying off a little bit. would be the types of times where a cross-training type of situation would be super helpful. So in those situations, you can fit in maybe one or two sessions a week, which might help you depending on how much training volume you're doing in your off-season. It is very difficult, I think, to include your sports training session plus, for example, cross-fit session in the same day. That would be difficult for most athletes. Yeah, I found that. So actually yesterday I did do that. And it's a tough day. You're basically reverting to when you're a full-time athlete. Like my day yesterday, I got up, I had pretty chill, sort of first couple of hours, got into some emails, rode the bike for four hours, came back, had lunch, went to bed, done some cold therapy work, and then had a crossfit session and came back, finished it off with a sauna that evening. But that's a full-time athlete's day. That's not a nine to five family man's day. Right, right. And I think without the call therapy, the nap, sorry, I had a little bit of meditation thrown in as well. And the sauna, I don't think I get through those two sessions. Maybe on a single day, but not doing that over any sort of time period. Right. So that's exactly what a pro athlete would do is work on their recovery in order to be able to work multiple training sessions in into a day. So that's the thing about a lot of these types of cross-training environments is you have to work on your recovery. This is fairly high intensity work. You want to be able to use your, you have to look at what your life is. So if you have a lot of stress from your job, if you're not sleeping well, if you're not nutritionally sound, it's really hard to increase the level of training volume without causing some sort of increase in risk of injury. So what you did was exactly what you're supposed to do if you're gonna be training at a very high level, but if you are not and you are, if you have other responsibilities in your life, that's where you have to say, okay, so if I'm going to be doing these many sessions for my cycling, but I do know I need to work some strength then sometimes you might have to just work in a briefer strength session as opposed to say a high intensity interval type training session for your CrossFit, or you may just have to figure out, all right, these are the days I'm gonna do a lot of recovery, and I'll do a two a day if I can. So we're coming to a period in the cycling season now where we're transitioning into off season, and then we'll typically periodize cycling season where we'll go off season, then I'd call it like a train to train where you're kind of doing non-specific stuff, maybe just getting back move with some hiking, some jogging, maybe if you enjoy playing soccer, then you're going into base period, which is traditionally longer endurance miles. And then we build back towards in season, back in sort of April, May, June, next year, and the season kind of goes from then until around September again, and we rinse and repeat. So if you're starting to come into cross training, maybe, you know, not somebody who's never done any strength in conditioning because there may be a little bit of an outlier. But if somebody's been gone to the GM kind of twice a week. And now for the off season, they want to start hitting crossfit. How many sessions per week do you think they should start on and how many should they work towards? I think three sessions a week on average is what most of our relatively high athletes are doing right now in their off season, depending on what other, how much of their primary sport they're engaged in. I would say you also have to pick which particular types of sessions they are, because in CrossFit, there's just such a varied number of movements, right? So you have to look at the programming. You have to sort of figure out if this is something that's most applicable for you as a cyclist, there's certain movements that I wouldn't recommend a cyclist do. So I would definitely talk to your local gym, you know, your coaches and say, listen, I need to work this in, you know, maybe start one to two days a week if you've never done anything like this before. And then work up to three. If you're a particularly young or, you know, fit athlete, I have had a couple that will maybe work for in a week, but they're pretty white. Like you said, they're the ones who are working in a lot of recovery. So Sam, I'm somebody on the wrong side of the age of 30. How important is strength training or low to training as we're starting to age?

7.Training and recovery after 40

It's probably more important at that point for two reasons. Durability as an athlete is super important as you get older. And if you have, and mobility is super important, is super important as you get older. And so if you are losing that by just doing your primary sport and not focusing on anything else, you'll probably lose your general fitness capability a lot more at say 35, 45, or 55 than you would at 25. The issue though, and you have to be super aware of this as you get older is we can't take the training volume at say 45 that a 25 can. So you have to plan your training sessions very carefully and your recovery is way more important as you get older in order to reduce your risk potential than as you're younger. If you're younger, and you know this for everything, right? If you go out on a night on the town, if you're partying, if you're working out two of days, like if you're 20, you feel invincible, but when you're 45, you're going to hurt something badly. And so I think your training sessions can be as intense, but you do have to space them out and watch yourself so that you're not loading too much volume. When I noticed what CrossFit, I've probably been, I would say two and a half, three months of CrossFit, maybe three times a week on top of my cycling training, which hasn't been super intense because the season's kind of wrapping up and it's been a funny season with COVID anyway. Yeah. But I found the CrossFit adding it into my normal cycling schedule. It was almost like a lie detector for me. It exposed other weaknesses because obviously through the podcast and my coaching, I'm telling people what to do all the time. But all of a sudden CrossFit turned a magnifying glass on me. And it's like, okay, is your nutrition on point? Because if your protein intake is not adequate, you're going to be exposed. Is your sleep on points? Are you getting in your, you know, Matthew Walker style eight hours per sleep every night. Are you on point with your, you know, saw on a cold work, your meditation or doing everything to bring cortisol levels down? Because if I'm just talking to talk and not walking to walk, you just crumble when you add in the extra stuff. I was falling apart for a couple of weeks going like I can hardly get out of bed in the morning. Like what the fuck is going on? I totally agree. I felt the same way when I started, it's very taxing. And it does show you where your health needs to be improved or addressed. Tell me, I'm really interested. What made you decide to start? And where are you? Which gym are you in? And what was that experience like for you? So I use one here locally in Dublin called CrossFit Santeri. And it was something I was tying around for a while. I had a few friends who were into CrossFit. And one of them specifically was a scientist. And he was sending me on a lot of paper, showing the benefit for endurance athletes of adding in some crossfit training. So I said, I'd give it a rattle, and I try it once or twice. And the first time I went, I felt that I had a feeling that I haven't had in years. I played soccer before I cycled, and I played at quite a high level since I could walk really. I was playing soccer and was on scholarships and school and stuff. And then I came into cycling and progressed really fast and cycling. So in my sporting life, I had very rare occasion where I was an absolute beginner. And I went into CrossFit and I felt like I had some sort of physical impairment. It was like, what, what's this move from pattern? I have no idea how to do this. Like I felt, I loved the idea of being a complete beginner again and being the worst in the class. Like not being able to do a single pull up. I got holy shit. like I thought I was a good athlete, look how far. Like sure, anyone can do a box jump. If you go in, you know, just warm up and do a box jump. But when you're trying to get 50 box jumps with 50 burpees and pull-ups and it's built into this workout of the day, it exposes you fast. So I suppose like any athlete then, the competitive bulk is kicked in a little bit. I'm like, okay, I have to improve this. I have to improve this. The challenge for CrossFit is there's such a variation variety in the exercises that I'm going three times per week. So by the time it cycles through and I get back to somebody's exercise, like pull up, spare muscle ups, I'm just not getting enough exposure to them at the moment to really improve at them fast enough. So maybe that's something to look as you think integrate in some, you know, open gym time and work on weaknesses. Yes, and no.

8.Ego, humility and learning CrossFit

So the first thing I do, the first thing I want to say is I commiserate with you and I know exactly that. And even though I've done this for years, I feel the same way. You know, you go through so many movements and you cycle back around to something. I was like, oh man, it's been like three or four months since we've done this. And I have to remember all the things that you sort of pick up, all the little like cues and tips and stuff. So it's a constant learning. And the first time I learned these movements, you're right. I felt like a newborn deer, I was so awkward. And it's a good feeling, I would say this. If you have an ego, if you are not a particularly humble person, I've seen a lot of, like I've seen Xpro NFL athletes come into our gym and they just did not feel comfortable because these were movements they weren't familiar with. They were so used to performing at a high level, they did not like that hit to their ego. And they walked out. they literally did not want to do something that challenged them. So for the people who are humble, who really want to be challenged by something, and like you said, at our age, there's, you know, we've built lives where we're very good at what we do for the most part, right? Cause that's what we've been doing. We've been perfecting all of the things that we've done in our lives to go into some new environment and do that is really hard. But it's a growing and it's a great experience. I would say in terms of becoming an athlete in CrossFit, the first thing I want to, I always tell athletes is this. Are you, do you want to be a CrossFit athlete or do you want to be a better, whatever it is, soccer player, basketball player, cyclist, football player? Because if you come into CrossFit gym, as CrossFit coaches, CrossFit is a sport too, we have the CrossFit Games. Two of the best athletes in the world are Irish, Sam Stewart and Emma McQuaid, they kicked ass this year. Yeah. And so we will try to turn everyone into a CrossFit athlete. We're going to try to teach you every movement, do everything, try to get you through the full range of every session and everything that's programmed. And you can spend all that time becoming a CrossFit athlete or you could focus on, listen, what do I have to pull out of this to train myself to be a better whatever it is that I want? And that's OK. So if you're not, you know, fast at bar muscle ups, for example, if you really love CrossFit, like I love CrossFit, I will go into the gym off hours and work on these things. I'll watch YouTube videos and I'll learn all these. Now that's what I've been doing. Yeah. But if, but, you know, because you want to perform better at the gym, however, if you feel like my primary goal is to pull out trainings for me to be a better overall athlete in my sport, You don't have to do that. My goal, you tell me if this is a good goal. My goal is to be the strongest girl in the gym. Ha ha ha. Listen, that's a very reasonable goal. There are many athletes who are women who I shoot for their numbers and if I can get around that number, I'm really, really happy. It's fucking insane the way that someone else girls can lift. Like there's this one girl, I swear to God, I'd say she's like 50 kilograms. She's like a, I don't even know her name, color to pocket rock. And she can lift about twice our body weight. It's insane. You know what that goes, it goes to show you, you don't have to have a ton of muscle, you have to be efficient and use what you have efficiently. And that's what drives me nuts about about these athletes is you're right, they could be, you know, 20 kilos lighter than you and you and they can still outperform me on a daily basis. There are the angles they move the bar on, the efficiency of movement patterns is phenomenal. Movement like the clean and jerk or any of the Olympic lifts. The bar goes exactly through the part of least resistance. There's no extraneous movements. Everything is calculated and perfect. is when you go up the weights, it's any flaw in that technique, just makes it impossible for you to progress. It's beautiful to watch. And if you've watched any athlete perform at a very high level for cross-fury or any sport, but especially you're, like you said, a heavy barbell, that's why I think one of my favorite events in the games or in any competition is a one rep like Max Snatch. Snatch is such a technically complicated movement. And when you've done it and you do it right, It's like a perfect golf swing or anything else. It just feels so easy. And then when you don't execute perfectly, it just feels like a bazillion pounds.

9.Mastering technique before adding weight

So that's the beauty of that sport about it. I was at a technique class on Sunday, going through clean and jerk. And I thought I went through a series of movements and guidelines and demonstrations and I thought I had a kind of nails. And then the coach is like, now you have all that stuff. Now here's all this new stuff. And I was like, oh my God, it's almost like the more you know, the less you know. Right. Isn't that the curve, right? So it's like, you think, you know, everything. And then once you start learning, you're like, Oh, I don't know anything. And then, and then you just, and then it's just kind of comes back up again. I forget the name of that curve, but it's, it's that curve of learning. But you're right. I remember when I first started learning, cleans, the coaches for literally a month just looked at me and just kept shaking their heads and saying nothing because they couldn't even figure out what the hell I was doing with the barbell at the time. I was so bad. And then you just, you just keep working at it. So I'm trying to work through from racing the bike full time for so many years, the cycling injuries, collarbones. So I've had four broken collarbones, a broken scapula, a broken glenoid fossa. So I've kind of got the perfect storm of broken shit going on here. So my, as a result, my shoulder mobility and my external rotation is very poor. So I'm going to try to work through that sort of mobility issues as well as learning these new movement patterns, so it's adding an extra layer of challenge for me. There's no doubt in CrossFit, there's a lot of shoulder mobility that's required. You have to be really careful with some of these movements, I would say probably, and that's why I always caveat new athletes is that you have to get the mechanics down first. The mechanics have to be consistent, and then you work through the intensity, because just because you can move a weight doesn't mean you necessarily should be moving that weight. And a good coach and a good gym will force you to sort of work on your mechanics and then your consistency before adding weight or intensity to any movement. Yeah, it's another element that's completely humbling for, I would say the first month when I was looking at girls lifting around huge waves, I was lifting like wooden plates on the edge of my bars, on a training bar, and I'm like, this is humiliating. But I'm taking a stick with it, stick with it. I'm kind of getting a laugh and a kick out of this quest to be the strongest girl in the gym. Well, see, there's your, that's, you got to be humble in order to be successful. And that just shows that you have humility, which is awesome. So for you, what's the benefits of somebody? Because there's a lot of listeners right now, they're kind of starting to think, okay, I need strength conditioning as part of my life this year. Do you feel like there's a specific benefit of cross-fish over traditional S&C beyond the collegiality and community? Yeah, I think there are a couple things. The first thing is, is that it's usually relatively readily available. There are 14,000 gyms in the world. Hopefully, there's one around you. So, from a convenience sake, it's nice to be able to drop into a gym. I think the fact that you don't have to, you have a coach, you may not be able to afford a personal trainer to coach you specifically every day. CrossFit isn't cheap, but it's definitely cheaper than hiring a personal trainer full-time to help you with strength and conditioning. It's efficient. Classes are one hour typically, and then you're in and you're out. I'm usually a 6 a.m. kind of guy. So I take my 6 a.m. class. I'm out by seven, get my day going. It works into my lifestyle. And if you've never worked with a barbell, like you said, instead of you trying to learn it by yourself or going to a gym and having a personal trainer spend this time, you can continually learn how to do these movements while you're fitnessing, while you're working out. And so it's just from a convenience factor, I think for a lot of people, it works. It's 50-50. Generally, most gyms are 50% male, 50% female. So it's very egalitarian. There's no bro lifting where these ginormous dudes who are like five million pounds who make you feel awful. It's the little girls that make you feel bad instead, which is good. You don't have to worry about that. That's a definite difference I've noticed from the GM. And the GM, the free weight section is pretty much male dominated environment and definitely a bro section. And CrossFit, it seems like a pretty even split across race, gender, even age. Yeah, if you're 50 and you go into one of our gyms here in North Jersey, like the Jersey Shore type of gym, you're gonna have a lot of 20 year old big dudes who are very intimidating.

10.Strength training and immune response

And at a CrossFit gym, it's much more fun to be humiliated by a pocket rocket type of athlete instead. An area I've never looked into or explored and maybe which you're sort of unique position and you might be able to speak to it, links between strength training and immunity. Yeah, so that's really interesting. I think there's some, the problem with all this research is that it's not very well controlled. It's expensive to do clinical trials and really control for all these variables. I will say there is some evidence that after a particularly hard training session, no matter what it is, your immune system dips to a certain degree. But what does that really mean? They're checking these markers and inflammatory markers and other types of biochemical indicators. Does that really mean that you're more susceptible to illness? I would say maybe, but that's only if you're chronically over-training. If you're chronically over-training, absolutely. I think your immune system is impacted just like the rest of your body is. But periodic, intense training sessions, does that actually lower your immunity? I would say unlikely. But the problem is is that the research is not very good about sort of looking at this stuff. And is there specific recovery protocols you would avoid? I had seen some research, so I haven't dug too much into, so you should avoid cold therapy immediately after strength training that will blunt the hormonal response to it? Yeah, so there's some mixed literature about it. This is my personal feeling because of what I've done and based on some of the research I saw, So you're right. And there was a recent study that came out that cold therapy. So after a workout, there's an inflammatory response, generally speaking. And that's how we recover in order to be stronger. It's the adaptive response. You stress your system out. There are metabolic changes, some of which are inflammatory. And then your body adapts and increases muscle fiber density or the number of muscle fibers recruited or whatever it is. If you dump yourself into a cold bath right after training, you may blunt that response so that your body isn't adapting well. However, you see a lot of athletes, especially pro athletes, the minute they finish with a game or a competition, they dunk themselves into cold bath. And I think the issue is this. My rule of thumb for athletes is if you have to train, let's suppose you're in a three-day comp or something, or you have to train for like you're competing, being in that cold bath will help you if you have to go right back out the next day and do another high-level max effort type of workout. Overall, it's not gonna help you in terms of your overall strength and conditioning, But if you're a probasical athlete and you're playing in a three-day series and you have to play again tomorrow, you should dunk yourself into that cold therapy. You should, even if it's blunting your overall recovery response because all of those inflammatory markers and everything are not gonna help you the next day. So your prioritizing short-term performance over long-term growth. That's exactly right. So it's really what's your priority at that time? Yeah, that's a good point. Sam, I really enjoyed chatting. If people want to keep following you on the journey, learn a bit more about cross-fit strength and conditioning, or if they're looking to get themselves fixed, open a new bit of plastic surgery, going on, what's the best place to follow you? My Instagram account is Bergen Cosmetic, B-E-R-G-E-N Cosmetic. And my gym is CrossFit Bison, that's in Midland Park, New Jersey. And my podcast where we talk about all these things with my co-host, David Saibertson, is herdfitusa.com. That's, we talked mostly about CrossFit and athleticism and fitness on that. Awesome. So I'll just get you back on again. I really enjoyed chatting. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Cheers. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best team I've ever put in inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14 day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner, advanced. There's meal plans, shopping list, and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio, and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day, or check out the link in the bio. That's roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day. you