Hola from sunny South Padre Island and the wind forecast is looking like it might actually cooperate today. Before I hit the water, one thing worth understanding about why this system matters for lifters specifically as I know don't want to a cardio bunny. The big thing that improves with a better aerobic / cardiovascular system is that the rest time between sets — and your ability to come back ready the next training day — is dramatically better A bigger aerobic engine means faster recovery...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Hola from the road to South Padre Island, where all goes well. I'll hit the island tonight. The wind forecast is promising, so I'm choosing to believe it, and Jodie flies in tomorrow. A reminder that at midnight this Wed, the three bonuses on Flexible Meathead Cardio Level 1 disappear. I have been mentioning these all week without really breaking down what each one actually is. Let me fix that. Bonus 1 — SS-31 Peptide/ Elamipretide Technical PDF This one is for the people who are not...
2 days ago • 2 min read
Hola from Austin as I am about to head out to do a podcast with my buddy Tex all about creatine, but before I head out I wanted to answer a question I got this week “Ok I get that I need to build the aerobic engine. But what actually changes? Like physically, in my body?” Great question and most programs never actually answer it. Here is what happens when aerobic training is programmed correctly — right intensity, right volume, right progression, in the right order. The physiology of a...
3 days ago • 2 min read
On the drive to Austin today I kept coming back to a study I had been sitting on for a while. And it is not a new study at all, but still nobody is talking about it which is exactly why it keeps nagging at me. I've spent decades, literally, reading research and looking for the largest increase in aerobic performance in trained subjects - not just untrained nooobes who wander the purple halls of PF. And for 6 years now, this study is still the single greatest VO₂ max increase I have ever seen...
4 days ago • 2 min read
Sitting at Black Rifle Coffee in Moore, Oklahoma with an aggressively large black coffee and a laptop. Black Sunshine is in the parking lot pointed south. Later today I roll into Weatherford TX to spend some time with my coach Adam T Glass and his wife Ashley — one of the sharpest and most original thinkers in the strength world and someone I am lucky to call a friend and coach. But before I leave Moore, I need to tell you about something that goes away tonight. At midnight PST, the fast...
5 days ago • 1 min read
Running a bit late this AM as I am stuffing Black Sunshine full of kiteboarding gear and pointed south not looking back. Here is a question that came up just the other day - yes, once again! “Can’t I just lift weights faster? My heart rate goes up. Isn’t that cardio?” It is one of the most logical-sounding wrong answers in the history of exercise, so I thought it was worth taking another stab at this Zombie Myth as my buddy Lou Schuler calls them. Here’s what your heart is actually doing when...
6 days ago • 3 min read
As you saw earlier today, the Flexible Meathead Cardio course level 1 is open again so this is perfect timing to unpack the Zone 2 cardio debate with my friend Kristi Storoschuk, a PhD candidate in exercise physiology. We dig into what “zone 2” really means (including lactate thresholds and why common proxies like heart rate and the talk test can miss the mark), where the 80/20 endurance model came from, and why messaging around zone 2 for mitochondrial function, fat oxidation, metabolic...
7 days ago • 1 min read
There are three kinds of lifters. The first one trains like the apocalypse is personally coming for him every single session. Every session is a suffer-fest and even weight training is turned into a ritual of snorting pre-workout off the gym sink in an effort to put forth enough effort of beyond failure training to make Mike Mentzer's ghost smile down upon their heroic gym deeds. Every conditioning piece is used to its fullest degree as if it committed a war crime against his own nervous...
7 days ago • 4 min read
Hola from the frozen hellscape of Minnesota, where I’ve been rudely ejected from the warm embrace of Vegas and dropped straight into a climate that feels like it’s trying to repossess my soul. I dragged my jet-lagged carcass out of bed the other day, layered up, and hit my AM row in the 43 F Extreme Human Performance Center (aka my garage gym) anyway… because I am not a coward. haha Then I punished myself further with some rower sprints, just to remind my body who’s in charge before I head...
9 days ago • 4 min read