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Dr Mike T Nelson

Creator of the Flex Diet Cert & Phys Flex Cert, CSCS, CISSN, Assoc Professor, kiteboarder, lifter of odd objects, metal music lover. >>>>Sign up to my daily FREE Fitness Insider newsletter below

Featured Post

Cold water vs your gainZ

Aaaah, my buddy Joe Rogan. I will get hate for this but overall I love Joe and his show most of the time… …however, the practice of going ballZ deep at 33F in the ice bath as a recommendation to start is bonkers. This has also spun off a whole slew of “Cold Water BroZ” via the cult of Joe with their own epic posting about their love of cold water immersion after lifting ‘cuz "recovery, bro." Can doing cold water immersion (CWI) immediately after lifting stall your gainZ? Here's what's...

Lactic acid didn’t do it. Your buffering system got mugged. There’s a certain kind of coach I’ve met a thousand times. Good intentions. Solid heart of 14 karat gold. Probably owns at least 3 overpriced recovery gadget and still says “lactic acid” like it’s 1997 and we’re all wearing Zubaz pants in a Gold’s Gym parking lot with his gallon of distilled water. ...but then his athletes starts dying halfway through a brutal set of intervals, and they spit out the same line that’s been passed...

What up you savage? I wanted to take a slight round-a-bout from our technical breakdown to answer a bunch of questions that came in about the Phys Flex Cert… ..and to remind you that the Fast Action Bonus of your 1 hour private call (a legit $250 value) with your truly nerdy here closes tonight, Wed April 22 at midnight PST. Story time as just today a coach named Chris emailed me some solid questions. Then another coach emailed me. Then another one. By the third round, I realized I was...

The fitness internet has the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel with a crypto account full of DOGE coin. A study drops with a huge number and some IG GooRoo between ab shotz and posing in front of his rented fancy car rips that number out of context, sprays it across social media like cheap cologne in a strip mall bathroom, and suddenly every shirtless man with a ring light is telling you the sauna is basically anabolic sorcery. Then the supplement companies arrive followed fast by the...

Newsflash Brosefus, your body does not want to add more muscle, run faster, and get leaner all by itself. This is not a motivational failure nor a mindset problem where you just need to biohack your way out or keep trying harder. This is physiology at its most fundamental as your body is designed to survive above everything. A massive part of this survival mechanism is homeostasis, your body's insane, around-the-clock commitment to holding its internal environment constant no matter what you...

Somewhere between the bottom of my triple espresso and the third set of 30-second Wingates, my lungs started doing their best Bill Lumbergh impression. "I'm gonna need you to go ahead and breathe less terribly on Saturday." That's when it hit me that I've been watching something deeply strange happen in fitness coaching for the last two decades…. The programming knowledge, the research literacy, the content quality, the nutritional sophistication — genuinely excellent compared to what existed...

Another sunny, semi-windy day here in South Padre, where your favorite nerd was back out playing in the wind again. The best part? Even after getting my lifting and rowing done, I still had plenty of energy left to go kiteboarding. Wahoo. A big piece of that is just doing the basics with violent consistency, as you know. But the other part comes from the four pillars I teach in the Physiologic Flexibility Certification, which opens again this coming Monday: Temperature pH Expanded fuels...

Quick one before I head out to the water — wind is up and the kite is calling my name. Last Thursday I told you about the nootropic I accidentally took too many servings of at once. Ooops. Unlabeled sample bottle, assumed one serving, was emphatically not one serving, had one of the cleanest deep work sessions of my adult life and reported back to Tomer at Switch like a completely unrepentant human guinea pig. Since then, over 75% of the initial batch is already pre-ordered. Tomorrow the...

In this episode of the Flex Diet Podcast, I sit down with my good buddy Ari Whitten to talk all about red light therapy (photobiomodulation) and why it’s become so popular lately. We dig into how red and near-infrared light fits into an evolutionary sunlight context, why those wavelengths penetrate tissue differently, and how they can influence mitochondria, recovery, and performance. Ari also breaks down the confusing part most people miss: device choice and dosing aren’t one-size-fits-all,...

Back in SPI today — wind is up, so it's time for another "Send It Sundays." Little tired, but stoked after giving my talk at the Sports Pharmacy Summit down in Fort Lauderdale. Huge shoutout to Sean Casey and the whole crew for putting on an epic event — y'all crushed it. Had a blast nerding out on HRV and Met Flex, and it was great connecting with so many of you there. Here's what went down this week Newsletters: Cold Water Immersion and Your GainZ: Cold plunges might feel hardcore, but...