March 16, 2009
Podcast #36 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2009/03/podcast-episode-36-why-ben-greenfield-smells-like-a-spa/
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, welcome back to this week’s episode. I have sitting on my desk right here in front of me the March 2009 edition of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research and I thought what better than to give you some of the practical advice straight from the pages of that awesome research journal. But that’s not all that I have for you today. Got a couple of interesting listener Q and As on eating during exercise and on diet soda. In addition, we’ll have a few cool announcements including one that I’m pretty excited about because I just put the finishing touches on something very useful and potentially intriguing especially to triathletes out there that I’ll let you know about when we get to the announcements. Then we finally have a bonus interview today with my friend Martha from California. She has something called Action Wipes. You’re going to have to hear my interview with her because these things are actually pretty interesting and I use them every single day. You’re going to find out why but you’ll definitely not want to miss that interview. It’s pretty entertaining. Gets a little bit PG 13 at a couple points but it’s not too bad. So, without any further ado, let’s go ahead and shoot forward to the announcements for this week’s podcast episode.
Ben: So every month this research journal shows up on my doorstep and it’s full of really interesting studies like the velocity of the forward kick in elite jujitsu athletes or variables of plyometric training for improving vertical jump height meta-analysis. Now I know that some of these may be a little bit irrelevant to the audience, not to say that they’re good research studies but I like to go through and find the stuff that really strikes home, that’s practical and that you can implement immediately and so today I’m going to go through exactly the things that I found most interesting in the journal this month and I’m going to put them into straight talk that you can understand and implement in your training program or in your fitness program immediately. Ok, so study number one is titled structural protein alterations to resistance and endurance cycling exercise training. In this study, they compared people who lifted weights for 12 weeks or people who rode a bicycle for 12 weeks, in particular what they were looking at was the level of certain types of muscle filaments. One of those muscle filaments was called desmond and desmond is what’s really used to effectively transmit forces when your muscles contract. Then another type of fiber they looked at was called dystrophin and dystrophin as it would sound like is associated with muscular dystrophy. Basically what it means is if you don’t have enough dystrophin present, you don’t have very strong linkages between the filaments in your muscles. Now what was found in this study was that the resistance training and the cycling training – both resulted in no significant change in that dystrophin content and so they both were good at staving off the effect of muscle dystrophy. But perhaps most significantly was found that that resistance training resulted in adaptations that increased the amount of the desmond protein. The protein that really helps your muscles to produce a larger force, while the bicycling really didn’t have much of an effect on the content of desmond. And so from this data, if you’re looking for becoming stronger, creating greater muscle force and really strengthening the filaments associated with being able to produce a force then you should consider incorporating weight lifting along with cycling. Cycling is going to do a lot for you from a cardiovascular perspective but it’s not the best thing to for example get strong legs. That’s why some of the cyclists that I work with who are even doing it for completion, not just for say fat loss, they’re doing a weight lifting program because it really can help with the amount of force that your legs can produce and the amount of injury protection. It’s a topic for a whole different discussion when we’re talking about how much weightlifting could actually help cycling. It’s likely that it doesn’t actually help elite cyclists very much but it’s great if you just need to increase your strength and increase your force and this study showed that you should really incorporate it if all you’re doing is just riding a bike. So I thought this next story was interesting. It also looked into cyclists and what it looked at specifically was the effect of caloric restriction overnight fasting on cycling endurance performance. Because what happens is for a lot of people leading up to a triathlon or a cycling race, they’ll decrease their calories for about three weeks or calorically restrict so they can drop fat. Because you really can have a hard time pedaling even a couple extra pounds up a hill in a race. And what these researchers did was they decreased caloric intake by 40% in cyclists and then they also had them do an overnight fast of about 11 hours prior to a 2 hour exercise test and this 2 hour exercise test was completed at a nice steady tempo pace. Now what was found was that the cyclists’ power to weight ratio was improved meaning that the cyclists lost fat and increased their muscle composition or their power to weight ratio but at the same time there was no significant compromise in endurance cycling performance and as a matter of fact, I was talking about that nutrition plan that I wrote for Ironman and one of the things that I worked into that was a decrease in caloric intake for the last three weeks leading up to the race. That kind of goes hand in hand with the fact that you’re going to be resting a little bit anyways and not working out quite as much. Well it turns out that it actually can help you a little bit and you can also do an overnight fast of about 11 hours prior to something like a 2 hour time trial and still see the benefit. Understand that a long day like an Ironman may require a little bit more fueling. I wouldn’t recommend getting up in the morning without getting breakfast. But I would recommend looking at a slight taper in caloric intake. You can shed just a few extra pounds leading up to a race like that. So, the third study that I want to look at is the effect of high intensity training by heart rate or by power in well trained cyclists. And what this study looked into was an interval training workout, a high intensity interval training workout where the subjects were doing 8 repetitions of four minutes at about 80% of their peak power output. So that’s four minutes of very hard exercise followed by a breather and another four minutes of hard exercise, doing that eight times through. Now one group was correlating their 80% based off of their power. The other group was looking at their 80% based off of their heart rate. What they did was after eight different training sessions like that over the course of several weeks, both the groups of cyclists did a 40k time trial performance. And what they found was that both groups significantly improved in their time trial performance but that the group that was exercising based off of heart rate actually showed just as much if not a greater benefit by doing their interval training while paying attention to what their heart rate was at versus what their power was at. Now, there are a lot of advantages to training with power especially if you’re an athlete who really wants to see the hard data and be able to track changes, improvements. But if you can’t afford a power meter or if you’re used to exercising with heart rate and want to do it that way, don’t let anybody tell you that training with power is the only way to go. There can still be a lot of benefit derived from looking at your heart rate while you’re cycling and not just using a power meter that will tell you your wattage that you can attach to your bike. I’ve got athletes that I coach that use both methods. I personally use the heart rate method and this study shows that you can get pretty good benefits – pretty good gains with each. Now here’s an interesting study. This one is called sustained prolonged exercise at stable heart rate defined by the deflection point identification method. Basically what this study was looking at was can you decide what your maximum sustainable effort is going to be when you’re running or when you’re cycling or even when you’re doing something like swimming rather than looking at the blood lactate that’s produced or rather than going to a lab and getting a metabolic test done which would be the gold standard. If you really wanted to just approximate it, could you do it by looking at the point at which your heart rate starts to go up at a rate that’s not quite correlated to the workload, meaning that you reach a certain point in exercise where when you increase the workload your heart rate really starts to shoot up, and that point that would be considered your blood lactate threshold. If you were to do a blood test in the lab it would be called your ventilator threshold. If you were to do a test when you were wearing a mask, analyzing your gasses. And what they found in this study was that most of the participants were able to actually get that steady state exercise that would normally be predicted with a blood lactate test or with a ventilator test by just looking at the point where the heart rate started to deflect, where it started to go up at a rapid rate compared to work load. So if you don’t have access to a lab or a metabolic test or way to get your blood tested, you can gradually increase your workload, say while you’re on an indoor bicycle and just track the workload at which your heart rate starts to really shoot up. If you were to just graph it on a simple piece of graph paper, it would be the point where the heart rate starts to look like it just kind of reaches a deflection point. That point would approximate where your threshold heart rate is, where your steady state heart rate is and most people can only exercise for about 60 to 90 minutes of that heart rate. So it’s a good way to determine intensity heart rate zones for exercise. I know a lot of this research study is really correlated to cyclists, triathletes, endurance performance and yes I am playing favorites just a bit to one of the demographics that I know listens to this podcast. Don’t worry there’ll be other content in the podcast for everyone. But I thought that was a really interesting and useful study. Now I personally would recommend that you get the blood lactate test or you get the ventilator test done if you get access to that so that there’s zero guesswork involved. But you could graph it yourself if you really wanted to see if you could do this for yourself. Ok, two more studies that were looked at. One I thought was really interesting because this is something that I use in my own training program. It’s called massage after exercise as responses of immunologic and endocrine markers. What this study looked into was whether people who received a massage after intense exercise actually showed a resistance to the immunosuppresion that occurs after you do a hard workout. What that means is if you were to do something like a long training session or a really tough weightlifting session or in this case they did some very difficult power efforts and then you were to get a massage, does it actually help your immune system to bounce back a little bit quicker because in normal situations your immune system actually gets a little bit suppressed from a hard effort like that. And what they found was that the massage therapy actually did demonstrate an improvement in the ability of the body to fight off some of that immunosuppression. In particular, one of the hormones that was looked at in this study was called secretory immunoglobulin A and this actually recovered much quicker when people had a massage after the exercise versus when they didn’t. I personally work with a local massage company called Therapeutic Approach. I actually interviewed my massage therapist on this podcast a few months back. I do it once a week when I’m getting ready for a triathlon and it really helps with injury and recovery from exercise. Highly recommend doing a massage at least once a month if you’re exercising frequently. And then the final study that I wanted to mention was the effects of a short term aquatic resistance program on strength and body composition in fit, young men. Well I have always been a fan of aqua jogging for cross training especially when you’re doing a lot of other hard workouts and what this study looked at was just a little bit more than just aqua jogging. It actually had a group of fit young men participate in an eight week long three day a week program that included things like wearing little gloves in the water and doing arm raises and claps, using boards to increase resistance in the water, using fins. Using noodles and little dumbbells and basically, what they did was a whole series of different exercises. They even put some jumps and rows and things of that nature in and they actually found that these subjects not only grew fitter but they increased their fat free mass, meaning they got stronger but they also increased their lean mass and decreased their body fat percentage but they also had a reduction in delayed muscle pain so they didn’t have as much soreness after the exercise. They were able to have greater calorie consumption meaning that this stuff was actually burning a lot of calories and overall noted a significant increase in upper limb maximum strength and leg musculature power. So I thought that was interesting. I personally do aqua jogging about once every two weeks in my program but it turns out that you can do quite a bit more than just aqua jogging in terms of aquatic resistance training. What I plan on doing at some point this month is taking this journal to the pool and trying some of the exercises that are prescribed in it and some of the exercises the young men were doing in the study and I’m just going to see how hard of a workout this actually is. It looks kind of fun, so if you see me at the pool waving a big giant noodle, I’m doing research. Let’s go ahead and move on to this week’s listener Q and A. By the way just so you know the reason that I do this is to give you the best information possible in how to reach your goals as quickly as possible. This is the type of stuff I do with all the people that I coach and I train and so know that we’re not using any old school techniques, we’re trying to stay on top of what’s going to benefit you the most and if you want to look at some of the coaching and the training that we do, go over to www.pacificfit.net and that’s the online coaching and training web page that I run. Ok, now let’s move on to the Listener Q and Ben, further to your Fat Burning Secrets episode with John Gilbert re: taking in food/carbs during a 60 minute plus workout … how much food/carbs would you suggest? And would that amount change based on the overall length of workout?
Jen asks: Ben, further to your fat burning secrets episode with John Gilbert, taking in food/carbs during a 60 minute plus workout, how much food or carbs would you suggest and would that amount change based on the overall length of the workout?
Ben answers: Ok, so basically John and I were talking about consuming carbohydrate during exercise and how it helps you to burn more calories, how it helps you to burn more fat. The amount really varies from individual to individual. The general recommended rate is 4.1 to 4.6 grams of carbohydrate per minute that for most people this can come out to 200, 250 calories an hour. That’s highly variable though and as the second part of your question asks, it’s also highly variable based on how long and how hard you’re working out. Now for me, if I’m doing a workout that’s longer than an hour, but under two hours, I’ll generally consume about 100 calories an hour. So I’ll have 100 calories about the 45 minute mark and another 100 calories about the hour and a half mark and I consume that from a gel. If I’m actually competing in a race, what I’ll do is eat more calories the longer the race is and the lower intensity that it’s at. So during an Olympic distance triathlon when I’m going really hard and exercising for maybe two hours, I’ll only take in anywhere from 200 to 250 calories per hour and typically I’ll only do that on the bike. In a half hour Ironman triathlon where I’m exercising anywhere from four to five hours, but I’m not exercising quite as hard I up that to about 200, 350 calories. And during an Ironman when I’m out there for anywhere from 9 and a half to 10 and a half hours, I will consume anywhere from 350 to 400 calories per hour. Because again I’m not going quite as hard but I’m going for much longer period of time. So it’s really going to change based on your intensity and your length, but the general starting recommendation is around 200 to 250 calories of carbohydrate per hour for anything that’s more than two hours, and for anything less than that I usually take in about 100 calories per hour.
Paul asks: I am a 45 yo male. I did one sprint Tri last summer and I am training for 2-3 events this year. I am a former bodybuilder who always wanted to get involved in endurance training but the bodybuilding kept me from pursuing it due to the inevitable muscle loss. A ruptured disc and subsequent surgery changed all of that and my bodybuilding days are 100% done. I can do some ‘Jane Fonda’ workouts but I only do those to maintain some strength for triathlon training. Anyway, I try to eat right and I think I do pretty well for a weekend warrior. My big question is about diet soda. I do not drink alcohol, smoke or have any real vices expect that I drink a lot of pop (all diet of course). I probably drink 70-100 oz per day and I know that is too much. What is the truth regarding drinking pop? I have read that it is bad but I see a lot of conflicting information. Am I retarding my progress by ingesting this much pop? Is any amount acceptable? I know you are a straight shooter and you can back up your comments with science and that is why I am asking you. I appreciate your time and I will look forward to your answer.
Ben answers: Great question Paul. I used to be addicted to Diet Dr. Pepper and when I say addicted, what I mean is I would drink about three or four of those I guess they’re half liter bottles per day. I eventually weaned myself off of that by switching to gum and soda water. But I did recognize that it was a little bit addicting and just like anything that you consume on a regular basis, it can be habit forming. The question is, is it dangerous? Well there’s anecdotal evidence that diet soda even though it’s diet, contains artificial sweeteners that can stimulate your appetite. It can increase your carbohydrate cravings or it could stimulate fat storage or weight gain. There’s also studies – animal studies – on sucralose in particular and in sucralose they found that it could decrease red blood cells. It could increase male infertility. It could cause enlargement or calcification in the kidneys. It actually caused spontaneous abortion in rabbit populations it was given to and also cause a 23% death rate in rabbits compared to a 6% death rate in the control group. Then there was another study that recently came out that showed that it killed about half of the good bacteria in your stomach. There was another study that looked at 600 normal weight patients that were age 25 to 64 and it was an eight year long study. They discovered that people who were drinking one diet soda a day were 65% more likely to be overweight, that two or more of these zero calories or the diet softdrinks per day raised the odds of becoming obese or overweight and that the people who drank the diet soda actually had a greater chance of becoming overweight than the people who ate the regular soda or drank the regular soda. I guess you don’t eat soda. So there’s also anecdotal evidence that aspartame could cause some neuromuscular problems, most of these are anecdotal. I usually just try not to take my chances. But the ultimate take home message is that if you’re trying to lose weight, there’s evidence that yes it could retard your progress. It could also be causing some health issues. One of the first things that I do when I’m looking at anything that says health, fat free diet – I turn over the label, I look for aspartame, sucralose or sugar alcohols. That’s anything ending in an OL. If any of that is in there, I put it back on the shelf and that’s tough to do because there’s a lot of stuff out there that has artificial sweeteners in it. And like I say, a lot of times when it comes to beverages will go with sparkling water or sparkling beverage that doesn’t have artificial sweeteners in it. You can do a lot of stuff to water to make it taste good including fruit juice, lemon juice, cucumbers. You can chew gum which has a lot less artificial sweetener than the diet soda that you’re currently consuming. So ultimately Paul, I would have to say it would be a good idea for you to start to wean yourself off the diet soda. Quitting all at once is probably going to be tough but start to look for alternatives and know that if you’re trying to lose weight, it’s probably not going to be the best thing to be taking in.
Now if you have questions, you can email me [email protected] or you can actually leave me a voice mail using the free Skype software at skype.com. I’ll put a link to that in the Shownotes and my user name on Skype is pacificfit. So, let’s go ahead and move on to this week’s interview with Martha from Action Wipes.
Ben: Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming to you once again from www.bengreenfieldfitness.com. And I have somebody on the other line who I met a couple of years ago down at a triathlon, one of the biggest triathlons in the states and in my opinion one of the best triathlons in the world – the Wildflower Triathlon. When I was down there competing as a lot of the participants do, I was camping and that means that you drive into this kind of remote spot out on Lake San Antonio in California and you set up camp and you hang out at this multi-day triathlon festival and as most of you know when you’re out camping you tend to get a little bit grimy, a little bit dirty, a little bit as one of my friends used to call it – gamey. And I was down at the triathlon expo that they have there and I ran into this gal named Martha who I’ve got on the other line and she had – well it was almost – and I’ll have her tell you a little more about it, but it was almost like this cleansing spray that you could spray on your body as well as a wipe that you could use and it literally made your body just feel like you’ve just gotten out of a spa. And these things were called Action Wipes. And I basically got hooked on them while I was down there and Martha gave me a few to take back with me and I’ve been hooked on these things ever since. I’m going to have Martha tell you a little bit more about what they are and how they came about. So Martha, thanks for coming on the show.
Martha: Hey Ben. Hey thanks for having me. Gosh, you did such a good job of explaining the product. I don’t think you even need me anymore.
Ben: Well I don’t think I gave a very good idea. I know there’s a lot of really good stuff in it, but I’m going to let the master give the details.
Martha: Well it’s amazing though. You said we met a couple of year ago, can you believe it? It’s only going to be a year this May. So much has happened in this past year between the two of us.
Ben: You know what, that’s right. That was last year. Yeah you’re right. It was last year. So tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into the Action Wipes as they’re called.
Martha: The Action part of it… I was in technology for 25 years and I just got tired of it one day and decided there was a passion in me that I wanted to pursue and it just came to a boiling point one evening when I just couldn’t take it anymore and decided boy, if I’m going to put this much energy and put my life in danger like this, because I was traveling so much, I might as well do it for myself. So I quit abruptly and decided to pursue this passion which was bath and body care and aromatherapy and essential oils, not knowing anything about it.
Ben: Yeah, that’s a little bit of a 180.
Martha: It was. It was a complete… and my husband was shocked at first. My family was shocked and it definitely put a crimp in our lifestyle because half our salary went away so we had to modify everything that we did but everybody hunkered down and we did it and I can’t tell you that we’re hugely successful yet because like I said, we launched Action Wipes a year ago which was at the Wildflower, but prior to that the first product line that I launched was actually a bath and body collection for couples. And that’s where the Action Wipes – the genesis for the Action Wipes came from.
Ben: I know a little bit about this product that you had for couples, but tell me – well I don’t think we have too many children listening in, how about the PG or PG 13 rated version about this product for couples that you were doing.
Martha: Well it was a way for couples to just balance their relationship. Women love to be romanced. And as much we like the passion inside of ourselves, but really there wasn’t anything on the market that was class, that was classy and not cheesy and raunchy and something that I didn’t have to go to an adult store to get. So I decided to create an all natural bath and body collection for couples that included a candle, a linen mist, a bath and body wash, massage cream, a really cool lubricant and some intimacy towelettes and one of the collections is called Inspire Romance. It’s for when your wife is not in the mood to be passionate but actually wants to at least communicate with you and get her feet rubbed, that’s a great line to start with. It has everything you need to get her in that mood and on the other side, there’s the Create Passion collection. That includes the lubricant and the towelette and everything that you need to have a little bit more fun. So I launched that and started selling it through resorts and spas because it is so classy and from that, the intimacy towellettes, folks started using that outside of the bedroom, taking them camping, to Burning Man, to Kutchella, music festivals and they’re the ones that actually persuaded me to change the label and create Action Wipes for the outdoor and sports industry and so that’s what we decided to do last year and we are focusing on the marketing of that now. We’ve gotten a tremendous response to it. I would have never known that such a product was so needed for outdoor and sports.
Ben: So what exactly is the product? How is it built? What’s in it?
Martha: The towellete, the Action Wipes – what it is – when I created it I was creating it for my own personal use. There was just something that I needed after getting intimate. It was a way that I didn’t have to rush to the restroom to get a wet towel or anything like that and I didn’t want to use my husband’s dirty t-shirt or whatever was readily available. So I wanted something that was big, moist but that was natural. Something that wasn’t going to irritate me or my husband and so I created it with all natural ingredients. There’s a little sudsing action in the wipe that’s made from coconut oil derivative and then we used eucalyptus, tea tree and frankincense as the essential oils because those are natural anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and they’re actually soothing. So if there’s any irritation or anything like that, it helps clean that out. So it’s just made for a natural transition into the outdoor and sports industry, because there’s road rash, poison oak, poison ivy and there’s bugs, insect bites and things like that. So the essential oils – the eucalyptus and tea tree actually soothe all that. So it’s been perfect as an outdoor wet wipe. Now with the sudsing action that’s inside, that’s in it – you don’t have to try to figure out how you’re going to get that sleeping bag all clean and soft and touchable. Now you are, because it doesn’t dry your skin like baby wipes do. It doesn’t have all those harsh ingredients. If you read the back of a baby wipe label, you’re going to see all these chemicals that are in that. In ours, we have six basic ingredients. Water, the surfactant, and essential oils.
Ben: Yeah, I noticed it doesn’t make my skin dry when I use these. I don’t know if that’s because it doesn’t have a lot of alcohol in it.
Martha: There’s no alcohol.
Ben: Or because of the oils or what. But the actual wipe itself, what’s that made of? It’s thicker than a baby wipe.
Martha: That is a polyester. Yeah it is, it’s much thicker. It’s thicker and it’s bigger so the size of the wipe itself. It’s 9 inch by 10 inch wide. I wanted it pretty big so you can pretty much clean your entire upper torso. I say start at the top and work your way down. The fabric it’s made of – polyester…
Ben: To put it less finely, wipe your face before you wipe your butt.
Martha: Yeah, exactly. So it’s made of a polyester fabric which can actually be washed. So after you’re done cleaning your body, you can actually throw it in the washing machine and dryer three to five times. I have samples that I show at the events now that I’ve washed at least five times and they’ve retained that thickness and their strength so you can repurpose them for other things. Wiping your bike down or using it as a shop rag or a dusting towelette within the house.
Ben: Yeah, I actually keep them in the little box I have all my bike cleaning equipment in and use it as a chain wipe.
Martha: Right exactly. The whole purpose is keep it out of the landfill as much as possible. You can even just throw them in the recycling bin when you’re completely done with it because polyester is a recyclable fabric. But repurposing it and the whole green element is what the company is all about. Life Elements is the company behind Action Wipes and the CNM Couples Collection. So, our charter from the get go was how can we contribute to the environment by making our products more earth friendly and recyclable. So that’s what we aim for now.
Ben: Right. What about the spray? Is that pretty much what the Action Wipes have on them? In spray form?
Martha: It’s a little bit different and it’s – I love the spray. The purpose of creating it when I first created it was as I mentioned the wipes themselves can be washed and re-used. So a lot of folks said well if I can re-use it, why can’t I just re-use it on my body. Well once you wash it the cleansing properties of the wipe are washed out. So I was thinking how can we recharge the wipes. So I created this spray and it’s a completely different set and the reason is that because we couldn’t put that surfactant in the bottle because it would clog the spray, that little sudsing action. I had to make up for that using other essential oils so we actually have about seven other oils in that that include lemon, myrtle, geranium, lavender, rosemary. All these cool oils that have been known for their anti-bacterial properties. Their bug repellant properties and all these things. So the main purpose was to recharge the wipe, but we found that because of the properties of these essential oils you can now use it as I said as a bug repellant. Again, I don’t use any harsh chemicals in there. We have a meringue seed extract that actually is an anti-oxidant so what it does, it actually helps your skin cool down. You know how after you’ve ridden hard and you’re all sweaty, just spray that all over you and it pretty quickly starts bringing your skin’s temperature down. And then after you wipe that you’re getting the same effect as the cleansing towellete, getting all that dirt and grime out of your pores. So you can actually use it by itself or use it with your own towel or recharge the spray with it. It became multi-purposeful and I actually have to change the name of it now because I called it Sport Spray, Cooling Spray. But I think it’s just an all purpose spray now.
Ben: Yeah, I guess I never really even – it didn’t really register with me the skin cooling properties. I just always knew that it made me feel really good after I used it after a long bike ride or a long run. But I guess that makes sense. I live and die by that stuff. Like last summer after you gave it to me, after every single long bike ride or long run I would use that before my cool down when I was getting stuff done, when I was stretching, before I showered and it just makes you feel completely fresh and kind of renewed after you finish a long training session. A lot of times when I’m rushing around in the middle of the day, I don’t really have a lot of time to hop in the shower or whatever. I’ll just spray a little bit of that spray. It makes you feel like you just went to the spa. That’s the best way I can describe it. Not that I go to the spa a lot but the eucalyptus and the tea tree oil and the other stuff that you have in it, it really does make you feel refreshed.
Martha: It’s a clean scent.
Ben: It’s almost right in there with the recovery compounds that I use – branch chain amino acids and protolytic enzymes, all this other stuff that I take. Action Spray is one of the things that I’m actually using right after a workout. But in the winter one of the main things I like about this is I haven’t really struggled much with dry skin at all this winter and what I started doing was I take a shower after I swim in the chlorine water, but then I’ve been using the Action Wipes spray all over my skin after a swim workout and it’s just kind of I mist it around my body and number one it makes me not smell like chlorine and number two it does make my skin feel more moist and less – you know that dry, cracked skin type of feeling you get after the chlorine? So that’s what I’ve been using the spray for. And then I keep one bottle of the spray in my backpack and just take it – well it’s permanently in my backpack but I make sure to take it to all my races and just literally mist my body after any hard training session or race.
Martha: It feels good, yeah. It’s just you know – I’m just amazed at the different uses that people are continually sending me, what they’re using it for. So I’ve been really happy. I’m so excited about the line taking off and we certainly intend to expand upon it and as you were mentioning the dry skin and everything. Of course right now I have massage creams and everything else but we want to extend over to the sports line and just create other products that sport enthusiasts and outdoor enthusiasts really need.
Ben: I’ve seen some – well because I’m around the triathlon population a lot, I’ve seen some pretty messed up especially facial skin profiles of older triathletes who look like raisins because they’ve just been out in the sun and not taking care of their skin. So this is one of the reasons that I’m using that spray, just to keep myself hydrated. But then the other thing with the wipes – like I said, I use the actual leftover wipes for my bike chain and cleaning my bike but then I keep the wipes in my glove box because a lot of times especially in the spring or the summer I’ll hop in my car after a workout and just literally wipe myself down. Then I also keep some basically out in the garage where if I’ve finished a bike or a run I can literally just wipe myself down, walk in and my wife doesn’t even know that I worked out. barely.
Martha: That’s the best part. But you know too, just so you know – because of the gentle formula, you can now actually use them on your twins too. If you guys ever run out of baby wipes or anything in the house, don’t hesitate because they’re probably more gentle.
Ben: Yeah you were saying that the baby wipes were probably more gentle before I lost you for a second?
Martha: No, the Action Wipes are more gentle than the baby wipes for the twins, yeah definitely. So yeah. What we’re working on too is a handwipe because it’s so good at picking the chain grease off too. It’s a degreaser believe it or not. Again, these are all just uses that people are writing in. Oh my gosh, I found out it did this and it did that. I’m like oh my god, cool.
Ben: Ok, well I want to give the URL where people can get these things. I’m going to put a URL on the Shownotes to this podcast so people can just click on it and go check it out. You’re at www.actionwipes.com, right?
Martha: Right. www.actionwipes.com and we did set up a 15% off discount coupon for your listeners. They just have to enter BGF for Ben Greenfield Fitness.
Ben: Awesome.
Martha: And again, 15% off at checkout and www.actionwipes.com.
Ben: Ok, so what’s the next event you’re at? Is it Wildflower?
Martha: Yeah, we’re going the Tri Flow Menlo Park Grand Prix and then Wildflower. I’m trying to do as many local events. When I say local – California – as possible. Again, it’s all grassroots marketing right now. So Wildflower, we’ll definitely be there. Sea Otter too.
Ben: Nice. Well I’ll keep my eye open for you at any of the California events that I’m down at. So actionwipes.com, use discount code BGF. She’s got sprays. She’s got wipes. Thanks for coming on the show Martha.
Martha: Thanks Ben.
For personal nutrition, fitness or triathlon consulting, supplements, books or DVD’s from Ben Greenfield, please visit Pacific Elite Fitness at http://www.pacificfit.net