It is true that dreams come true, as your truly nerdy recently got loose inside Dave Tate's Table Talk podcast for three unsupervised hours.

Let me back up to how deep this fandom runs.

I first heard of Dave right after he started EliteFTS. A few years later I worked up the nerve to call the Elite sales line — which, in those days, was a phone that Jim Wendler personally picked up. I proceeded to hold the man hostage for an hour. When the smoke cleared I owned a 2x2 rack, a TX power bar, a trap bar, and a flat bench.

I still use every one of those, many years on, on a semi-daily basis in the Extreme Human Performance Center. That gear has outlived cars, phones, several of my questionable haircuts, and at least one toaster (long story, ask the Pop-Tarts).

So "I'm a fan of Dave and the Elite crew" is a criminal understatement. Which is why getting invited to haul my happy ass out to London, OH and sit down across from him felt less like a podcast booking and more like a golden ticket printed on chalk dust.

Three hours. Enormous range. By the end my last two neurons were holding each other for warmth.

Here's some of the carnage we covered:

• Cold water immersion. Ice baths and Wim Hof breathing get sold as recovery. Mechanistically they're a sympathetic sucker-punch — your nervous system stands up, your HRV faceplants, and your app quietly files the damage under "wellness." Great tool. Wrong dose and wrong timing and you're mugging yourself in a chest freezer and calling it self-care.
• The parasympathetic trap. Everybody's chasing a big green recovery score. Nobody mentions that a suspiciously high reading can be your body slumped in the corner in full parasympathetic overreaching — waving a white flag your watch cheerfully reads as a gold star. Sometimes the green light IS the check-engine light.
• Engineered squats. My road into this didn't start under a barbell. It started in mechanical engineering labs staring at how materials fail under load. Bolt that onto physiology and you start seeing things about joint stress that a pure strength background tends to squint right past.
• The 2-Pop-Tart test. Yes. Real. A gloriously dumb, dirt-cheap way to check how metabolically flexible you actually are, using the most indestructible pastry known to science. Longtime readers felt this one coming like a barometric pressure drop.
• CO2 flushing. How nudging your respiratory rate drags tissue oxygenation around via the Bohr effect — and why your CO2 tolerance, not your lungs, is often the bouncer deciding how much work capacity gets into the club.

Underneath the whole three-hour pile-up sits the one hill I keep dying on: most recovery protocols are quietly sabotaging you, because you have not trained hard enough to earn the right to recover from anything.

Recovery is not the art of bouncing back faster. It's building a chassis so stupidly resilient that heavy load barely nudges the needle in the first place. Stop soothing the system. Start engineering one that refuses to flinch.

Go watch. Go listen. Pick your poison.

The full three hours is live right now.

YouTube: Dave Tate's Table Talk — Dr. Mike T. Nelson

Apple Podcasts: right here

Rock on,

Dr. Mike

PS — That 45-degree hyper from EliteFTS is still bolted into the garage, still eating my low back's excuses for breakfast. Elite gear does not die. Neither, apparently, does my ability to monologue about the Bohr effect until a grown powerlifter's eyes glaze. The CO2 flushing segment alone is worth the drive — go hit play.

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Mike T Nelson CISSN, CSCS, MSME, PhD
Associate Professor, Carrick Institute
Owner, Extreme Human Performance, LLC
Editorial Board Member, STRONG Fitness Mag

Mike T Nelson is a PhD and not a physician or registered dietitian. The contents of this email should not be taken as medical advice. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health problem - nor is it intended to replace the advice of a physician. Always consult your physician or qualified health professional on any matters regarding your health.

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