Episode #158 – Full Transcript

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Podcast#158 from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2011/08/episode-158-how-to-conquer-the-toughest-sport-on-earth/

Introduction:             In this podcast, how to conquer the toughest sport on earth, Shaklee nutrition supplements, choosing the right energy bars, is Gatorade good for anything, can athletes have a low carb diet, overcoming open water swim fear, how hot does oil get when you fry eggs, shin splints and the effect of going low carb.

Ben:                Hey, folks, it’s Ben Greenfield here and I got to tell you, I’m a little bit sore.  I did a Half Ironman triathlon over the weekend and actually this is kind of interesting for those of you who listened in to the last podcast episode that I did with Dr. Timothy Noakes about electrolyte intake. I did end up testing whether or not I actually could do an entire half ironman triathlon in the heat without using any electrolytes or sports drinks at all, and I actually did.  Not only did I do the entire race without cramping but I was in first place overall until about a half mile left at which point I got caught by a runner and ended up getting second place but still, the whole electrolyte thing or no electrolyte thing actually seemed to work out okay and we’re going to return a little bit more about that in this week’s Q&A but today, we have a featured interview with Steven Lad who wrote a fantastic article about something called, get ready for this, “Neurolinguistic Programming” on Friday and you can read that article at BenGreenfieldFitness.com.  Well Steven’s actually coming on the show today to talk more about how to program yourself mentally for success, particularly in sports and specifically, and I don’t want to alienate those of you who are not endurance athletes or not triathletes, but Steven knows that I like to do triathlons and so we talked specifically about how to conquer the mental game of what we both consider to be one of the toughest sports on earth, which is triathlon.  So you’re going to learn a ton of cool, little tips and tricks from Steven and I highly recommend that you go over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and click on the show notes to this episode, Episode #158 and check out Steven’s website.  Okay, that being said, we’re going to move on to a few special announcements.

Special Announcements:

So not a whole lot to go over in the special announcements, I just wanted to bring to your attention that I will be in El Dorado, California, for those of you in the Sacramento, California area, speaking on the evening of August 18th, that’s a Thursday at 7pm.  So that’s coming up in just 1 week from the time this podcast is released and I will put a link in the show notes to this episode, Episode #158, if you want to get more information or attend that nutrition and fitness seminar I’m going to be giving, it’s totally free, in El Dorado Hills on Thursday night.  And then I will also be coming down to Las Vegas to compete in the Half Ironman World Championships on September 11th, so I’ll be in the area between September 8th and 14th and if you’re down in the Las Vegas area I’d love to meet you.  If you’re out there at the race or want to come out and spectate, just drop me a line and you can do so by e-mailing [email protected] or you can tweet to @BenGreenfield.  There are a few other special announcements in the show notes but probably the most important is that I will be making that big announcement about a project I am releasing and I will be announcing that to my VIP text club and here’s how you can get in to that and you’re going to want to be in by this Friday.  And if you’re an international listener and you can’t get in to the VIP text club because it is a US-only text club, simply shoot me an e-mail, [email protected], and I’ll hook you up.

Mike:              Hey, Ben, this is Mike in Connecticut.  My wife just recently got a bunch of Shaklee products as a gift and I have questions about 3 of them in particular.  She got these Shaklee energy chews, the physique shake and the performance drink.  I was interested to hear your thoughts on both of their effectiveness as well as the quality of the nutrition.  Thanks for your time and I love the podcast.

Ben:                So Shaklee energy or Shaklee nutrition.  You go to the Shaklee website and it is like so many nutritional companies are these days, a multilevel marketing company.  You know that right away if you go to a website and you see the word “opportunity” that appears anywhere.  I swear, every single multilevel marketing companies’ website was designed by the same person because all of them have basically a menu on the top or the side in somewhere on that page that says “opportunity” but anyways that aside, in terms of the ingredients, they’re a little bit hard to find.  When you go to a company’s website and you have to dig and dig and dig for the nutritional ingredients, it’s never a great sign.  Be sure, if you’re listening in and you own a nutrition company, make the ingredients evident.  When you hide them, it just raises an eyebrow.  If you go to, for example, my coaching website PacificFit.net and you look at any of these supplements that I have over there, I try and make as detailed a product label as possible available to you and if you ever cannot find one, then let me know because that’s my bad and it used to be up there but I’ve been very careful to try and get you as much nutrition information as possible on that stuff.  That being said, let’s look at the Shaklee energy.  It’s got these energy chews, organic dried cane syrup, organic brown rice syrup, organic rice syrup solids and organic by the way is bold on the nutrition label because it kind of draws your attention to the word organic and not to the dried cane syrup and brown rice syrup and rice syrup solids part.  It’s got wax palm oil, organic corn starch and then green tea extract.  They do use turmeric to color it, which is nice rather than using an artificial coloring.  I’m not really seeing a huge advantage, I don’t know how much this stuff costs but there’s not really anything in here that you couldn’t get without drinking a cup of green tea or taking some green tea extract like in pill form and you’d also be bypassing all of the sugars that they’ve put into this.  There’s only 50 calories and 2 chews but if you’re using these things for an energy pick-up everyday, you’re going to get an extra hundred calories a day.  Not a huge fan of any type of energy chews by any company just because they usually do add a bunch of sugar to them.  FRS energy chews would be another example of such a thing.  When we look at the Shaklee performance, it is a mix of dextrose, maltodextrin, milk protein, whey protein, so that’s basically sugar and protein and then there’s a list of about 20 different preservatives and added vitamins and minerals and things of that nature.  I like that they didn’t use any sucralose, any artificial sweeteners, you always look at those as a red flag when you’re looking at the ingredients of a supplement, but this is basically nothing more than sugar and protein.  I got to tell you in most cases with my clients and with myself, I try and encourage people to prioritize getting any type of post-workout nutrition from just a real food, a real meal, because drinking your calories leaves you a lot less satiated.  Now I do drink my calories sometimes, I do sometimes rush into the house after a workout, have to be right back to work and so I’ll grab something like a whey protein powder packet and throw it into a blender with some fruit or even drink like a premixed energy or recovery drink, except with similar ingredients that’s something like this which is basically just sugar and protein but it’s not ideal versus eating real food, primarily, because it doesn’t really satiate your appetite the same way and so you’ve kind of got an extra 300, 350 calories in your diet that are probably just going to be extra calories because you’re going to want to eat again like an hour later.  And then we look at the final Shaklee product that Michael asked about and that was the Shaklee performance and that is basically maltodextrin, fructose, glucose and then some electrolytes and we of course had that big electrolyte special last week but this is essentially just like powdered Gatorade, no different than many of the other sports drink that are out there.  I never use sports drinks, I never have.  When I have taken electrolytes during exercise, I’ve used them in capsule form just because I find that it’s a lot more difficult to calculate how many calories you’re consuming when you’re drinking them during exercise versus when you’re consuming them from, say like, a gel.  So I’m a bigger fan of using gels and then if you are going to take electrolytes, electrolyte capsules but again, based on last week’s podcast episode, my experimentation with this half iron man over the past weekend and also some of the other things we’ll talk about today, the whole electrolyte debate is kind of still out in the table so, great question though.  Alright, we’re going to move to the next question and it is from Tony.

Tony:              You advocate Larabars.

Ben:                I guess I must, maybe I advocated them in a previous podcast I don’t know.  I’m not a spokesperson for Larabars but I don’t have an issue with them.

Tony:              You advocate Larabars.  However, I’ve spotted Nature Valley roasted nut crunch, gluten-free bars which are substantially lower in sugar when compared with Larabars, 6 grams versus 19 grams.  Obviously the sugar ingredients in Larabars are mainly dates and sugar, is listed on the Nature Valley products so which in your opinion, is the better bet to grab in the convenient store for a quick energy pick-me-up?

Ben:                Really, neither.  If you need a quick energy pick-me-up during the day and you’re not exercising or working out, you should be choosing, just to stabilize your blood sugar levels and to keep yourself insulin-sensitive and not in a state where you’re more likely to convert sugars to fat, you should be choosing fat-and-protein-based snacks.  I would be grabbing like a handful of raw almonds or Brazil nuts or some coconut flakes mixed with some of those types of nuts and seeds and not necessarily a sugar-laden product because it’s a very short spike in energy.  However, if you are doing something like grabbing a bar after a workout or you’re on your way to the gym and you need to throw something out really quick, the Nature Valley, the gluten-free bar, that’s almonds, roasted peanuts sugar, sunflower seeds, corn syrup, yellow corn flour, salt corn oil and then some added preservatives.  So we got lots of, kind of syrups and soy and corn in there and that corn is definitely not a non-GMO or genetically-modified corn and then Larabar, if we look at the Larabar ingredients, for a typical Larabar it’s dates, almonds, unsweetened apples, walnuts, raisins and cinnamon.  Just because the ingredients are more natural in a Larabar and it is non-GMO, it’s vegan, it’s couture for those of you who care about that, soy-free as well.  I’m a bigger fan of the Larabar, far more natural than the Nature Valley product so that’s what I would recommend if you are going to choose one of these bars but again, for a quick burst of energy in the afternoon, you sit around your office, having a drive whatever, choose more protein and fat-based foods.

Allen:             I listened to your podcast the other day talking about the smoke points of oils and I had a practical question.  I use olive oil or coconut oil to fry up my eggs every morning.  I have no idea how hot the oil gets or how I would find out.  Should I be concerned or cook at a mid-ranged temp on my stove instead of a higher temperature?

Ben:                Well this is a great question.  I went over smoke points last week (and you could listen to that podcast, #157 to get more details about that or just go read the transcript.  Every single podcast is transcribed within 2 weeks after it comes out.  You can find the transcripts on the upper right hand side of BenGreenfieldFitness.com but if we look at temperatures during various cooking processes, if you’re simply brazing a food and what that would involve is basically frying the ingredients in a very small amount of oil on the stove top.  Typically you’re looking at about right around 200-250 degrees.  That’s that an oil like that is going to reach.  In most frying processes such as frying an egg, you’re looking at a temperature getting close to 300 to 325 degrees.  So you take your smoke point chart for oils and I linked to one in the last episode and what you do is you match up 300-325 degrees with a common smoke point of various foods and you’re going to find that you’re still going to be okay with frying an egg in extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil or butter, any of those would be fine.  Once you start to get to the deep frying process, that’s where you’re looking at something getting closer up to like 350 degrees and that’s where you want to start to choose oils that are more stable at those higher temperatures, things like lard and incidentally goose fat and duck fat, which is a little bit tougher to get your hands on, they do deep fry it at a little bit more stable temperatures.  Now when you get to the saute process where you’re really cooking something for a long period of time on a pan, on a stove, on a high heat, you’re looking at temperatures reaching up to about 400 degrees and some olive oils are able to have a smoke point that’s just slightly above that and so those would be things that aren’t going to really degrade quite so much at that higher temperature and then finally if you’re going to completely sear something, it can get up to 500 degrees.  Really, the only oil that’s super stable up in those temperatures is an avocado oil and hopefully that helps you out with choosing the oils to cook with but let me say real quick, I’m not trying to create confusion when I talk about it being okay to cook at these higher temperatures with olive oil, it’s simply a matter of semantics.  I’ve recommended many times in this show the use of extra virgin olive oil because of all the healthy compounds that are in it but when I talk about heating an oil like an olive oil at a higher temperature like during a saute method, I’m not talking about extra virgin olive oil which has a lower smoke point than a regular olive oil.  So if you’re going to saute, I would actually use a regular olive oil and not an extra virgin olive oil, so hopefully that’s not too confusing but it just means you have a couple of different olive oils around the house.

Matthew:       I just listened to your podcast about electrolytes, sports drinks and water.  The conclusions about electrolytes are amazing though that doesn’t change the fact about sugars and nutrition during exercise.  Yes, electrolytes aren’t needed in sports drinks but does that mean that sport drink formulas have to be revamped?  Do the electrolytes do anything for the absorption or breakdown of the sugars in the sports drink?

Ben:                This is a fantastic question and it’s something that Dr. Noakes and I didn’t talk about because when you look at a sports drink, not only do the carbohydrates in a sports drink help to stimulate sodium absorption and fluid absorption, meaning that you’re going to absorb more of the fluids from a sports drink than you are of the fluids from say, something like water but you’re also going to enhance fluid absorption when you have sodium and chloride added to a fluid.  Now the question is if you’re going to absorb more fluid from a carbohydrate-and-electrolyte-containing beverage than you are from plain water, is it really that much of an issue?  Meaning if you’re going to switch to plain water from a sports drink because you’re convinced that electrolytes really aren’t as necessary as we’ve all been convinced that they are, are you going to have to drink an extra 2 ounces of water, an extra 4 ounces of water, an extra 8 ounces of water per hour to make up for that decreased absorption of the fluids that you are drinking?  And the answer is that I don’t know.  I’ve actually inquired to Dr. Noakes and I am waiting to hear back.  So this is a fantastic question, there may actually be a physiological benefit in terms of fluid absorption from drinking something like a Gatorade or a sports drink, that may mean that you have to just drink less fluid overall.  So the other consideration is if you are drinking water at the same time that you are consuming a gel or consuming, say if you are taking them electrolyte capsules, will the gel and electrolyte capsules, even though they’re not mixed in with the water actually, still allow for that increased absorption effect.  This is another question that I’ve put out to Dr. Noakes who is the expert on this and I’m simply waiting to hear back so I’ll report back to you but it’s a great question and obviously, it points out that there are extra things that we need to talk about when it comes to electrolyte intake and I guarantee you that I will continue to explore this topic until it really has been completely cleared up so I don’t want to create a bunch of confusion and just leave you guessing because really, and this just kind of returns to the psychological component of exercise and fitness and competition, you don’t want to be second guessing yourself while you’re out there and that was definitely something that I felt during my Half Ironman that I did.  I was just waiting to cramp, I was afraid that I was going to cramp because I wasn’t taking any electrolytes and I’d never done that before and so it does kind of mess with your head a little bit and we want to make sure that we’ve completely cleared up the air, so that’s not happening.  Okay, the next question I think was sparked by my interview with Paul Jaminet from the Perfect Health Diet who talked about a lower carbohydrate intake and some of the health benefits of that combined with the health benefits of eating higher amounts of healthy fats.

Dorianne:      Besides obese, fad-diet followers that you believe you can deplete you can be in great shape as an athlete on 400-600 calories of carbs a day, do you know any real athletes that only eat 400-600 calories of carbohydrates per day?  Are you trying to tell us that you can restore glycogen on 400-600 calories of carbohydrates a day and eat lots of fat and protein and recover in 24 hours?  LOL, you need to playback the Doug Graham interview and learn some basic human physiology.

Ben:                Well, I have to admit, it’s a slightly hostile question (and the same individual left many comments on the actual show over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com).  He’s referencing, or she, the Doug Graham interview in which we talked about 80% carbohydrate diet made up of fruit which of course, flu in the face, the other podcast that we did with Paul Jaminet from the Perfect Health Diet who pointed out the fact that the body’s daily glucose consumption is somewhere in the range of 400-600 calories and that number is actually made up of anywhere in the range of a hundred to 500 calories that your brain and your nerves need to function in terms of glucose calories.  There is a compound in your body not made up of glycoproteins called mucin and mucin is really necessary for things like production of mucus and the lining of your GI tract and that needs anywhere in the range of 200-300 calories to have that glucose part of the protein molecule in mucin.  And then your immune and your intestinal and your kidney cells, those need about a hundred calories of glucose and to burn fat, your body needs about 200 calories of glucose a day and when you add all that up, it means that if you were just going to sit around during the day and not do anything at all, you’d still need to maintain a healthy immune system and healthy function and basically feel good about 400-600 calories of carbohydrates in any given day and that’s actually carbohydrates derived from food that you eat.  Now if you’re going to get up and you’re going to exercise, you can certainly take fats and proteins and turn those into carbohydrates, your body can do that very efficiently, and use those for exercise but you’re not going to be able to reach a really high intensity.  In order for you to go out and do like sprints and weight training and things like that, you’re going to need to consume more carbohydrates than that 400-600 calories of carbohydrates per day or you’re going to need storage carbohydrate in terms of muscle glycogen that your body can rely on and so, no, I’m not saying that athletes can survive on 400-600 calories of carbohydrates per day a week long, year round.  The trick for an athlete or an exercising individual to be able to thrive on a low carbohydrate diet or 400-600 calories of carbohydrates per day is to go through re-feeding cycles where you restore muscle glycogen.  So when you do something like this, you get the physiological and the health benefits of not constantly bringing your blood sugar levels and your insulin levels up through high carbohydrate consumption but you also get the benefit of being able to restore carbohydrates at key strategic times throughout the week.  So for example if you’re following a low carbohydrate diet, you could eat 400 or 600 calories of carbohydrates per day, Monday through Friday and then Saturday and Sunday, step up carbohydrate intake to anywhere from 50-70% of your actual daily calorie intake.  So there is really no black and white when it comes to just eating low carbs if you’re going to be a heavily exercising individual but you can certainly have periods of time that you go through where you’re only eating 400, 600 calories of carbohydrates per day.  I’ve done it, I’m in the process of writing about it, I have clients who I’m working with who have done it and there are certainly some pretty massive health benefits that come with limiting your carbohydrate consumption, even if you are an athlete burning carbohydrates.

Ed:                  I love to do a triathlon but I’m afraid of swimming in the ocean or lake.  I swim an hour twice a week in a pool that is 12ft deep but can you help me or give me some idea of what to do to overcome my fear of swimming in the open water?

Ben:                Well this is certainly a justifiable fear because compared to swimming in the 12-foot deep pool that you’re swimming in, open water has often times reduced visibility or sometimes you can’t see at all and there are always things like animals and currents and other people and boats and all sorts of other environmental variables that make open water swimming something that can cause a lot more anxiety.  Now the interview that I will be playing at the end of this Q&A episode, I would highly recommend that you listen to and I would also read the Neurolinguistic Programming article that my interview guest wrote over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com because that will help you kind of train your brain to overcome fear but there are certainly some other things that you can do.  Now out here in the Spokane, Coeur d’ Alene area I teach open water swim lessons, private and group open water swim lessons during the summer and I have a little beach out in the lake that we go out to and for the private lessons, I have had people who just kind of stand on the edge more or less crying, afraid to get in and what we do with them is the very first thing is we wade out into the water and get to the point where just as you would, when your teaching a child how to swim, you get very comfortable with having your face and your head in the water.  So you start off by splashing your face, getting water on your face and just taking deep breaths and staying relaxed as you splash water on your face and if you’re trying to get ready for a triathlon, sometimes it can actually be beneficial to have somebody else splashing water on your face as well just because you’re going to have other people doing things to you during a triathlon – bumping you and splashing you and things of that nature.  And then the next thing that you do is you just get down and you blow bubbles and you get used to having your face kind of lower in the water, your head a little bit more submerged and you progress from there to actually getting all the way in the water while you’re still in the standing position.  Once you’re very comfortable with that then you start to experiment very close to shore with getting into a horizontal position in the open water, just floating on your stomach, again putting your head underneath the water blowing some bubbles, getting used to that feeling of being submerged in the open water in a horizontal position.  Once you get used to that, you can start swimming horizontal to the shore, an area where you can see bottom where you’re hands are almost touching bottom as you swim and from there, when I’ve taught open water swim lessons, people have progressed very quickly.  Usually the toughest part is being submerged horizontally and once you’re past that, you start to progress very quickly.  Now when you are swimming in the pool, you can certainly do some things like swim with the lane lines removed so you get used to swimming with a lot more chop, swim with as many people in your lane as possible so go to the pool when it’s busy and try it with some more people so you’re getting used to having to swim around folks and getting used to a lot of the chop that’s going to happen in the open water and also, if you can, try injecting a few periods of time during your pool swim where you’re actually closing your eyes and getting used to swimming without being able to see, so you can just close your eyes for anywhere from 3-6 strokes and just practice getting used to swimming without relying on your eyes so much and that can actually help out quite a bit with the feel for the water as well.  So in addition to some of those little suggestions that I’ve given, I would highly recommend that you implement the Neurolinguistic Programming that Steven talks about in the article and that he discusses a little bit in our podcast interview today.  It’s a great question; certainly a legitimate fear that a lot of people have to overcome and those are some of my suggestions for doing it.

Cody:              Every time I run, I experience shin pain.  I’m not quite positive it’s shin splints though because it starts almost instantly when I start my run, it never really gets worse, it’s a mild pain but enough to get me to stop running way sooner than I should be stopping.  The weird thing is when I play football or basketball or any other activity that involves me running, I don’t get this pain.

Ben:                Well there’s kind of 2 different types of shin splints, that one is a bony shin splint and that occurs when you got this tiny little fractures that occur within the bone along the front of your leg within the tibia, which is basically your shin bone, and it’s not like a full-on brake that you have to immobilize but you do get a little bit of inflammation from these little microfractures and they can certainly cause pain in the front of the leg when you get out and run, and I’ll talk in just a second about why you might feel these when you’re running and not feel them when you’re playing basketball or football.  Now the other type of shin splint is muscular and what happens in that case is the muscle attachments on the inside of the front of your lower legs actually get inflamed and typically the inflammation is due to high amounts of impact, too much training, increasing your training volume too soon but essentially it’s just inflammation in the muscles along the front of the leg, it’s not microfractures in the bone but either way, 2 different types of shin splints and typically the bony type of shin splint you’re going to feel when you touch the bone, the more muscular shin splint you’re going to feel when you’re kind of running your hands up the soft tissue on the inside front of your leg.  Either way though, both types are usually caused by improper biomechanics or that increase in volume that’s occurring too soon.  So in terms of biomechanics and the biomechanical reasons that you could be getting these shin splints is right after your heel strikes the ground when you’re running, your foot starts to pronate and pronation means that your weight is kind of moving from your heel to the inside of the front of your foot and this allows your foot and your leg to absorb the impact of your foot strike.  Now if you have low arches, then what you can tend to do is over-pronate and when you over-pronate, your foot turns too far to the inside after that foot strike and the muscles, the tendons, the ligaments in your lower leg actually have to work harder to help destabilize that foot.  So an over-pronation type of gate can cause shin splints.  The other thing that can cause shin splints is just kind of the opposite problem, a really rigid with a high arch that tends to be what’s called oversupinated and that’s the complete opposite of over-pronation, the foot tends to turn the opposite direction towards the outside of the foot after foot strike but that can also result in the same issue with the muscles of the lower leg having to work harder having to support the foot and thus they get inflamed and you get shin splints.  So when you are playing football or you’re playing basketball or you’re doing a sport, typically you’re moving in multiple directions and many times you’re on a softer surface as well.  For example a basketball court on a floating wood surface is going to give a lot more and cause less impact force on your foot than concrete or pavement.  Football typically is on grass or turf.  In addition, you are moving to the side; laterally you’re moving backwards, you’re moving diagonally and you’re placing stress on your leg in many different directions which means that you’re not hitting the same muscles over and over again and that’s likely why you’re not feeling the shin splints when you’re out doing these type of activities but you are feeling them as soon as you start to load that muscle with chronic repetitive motion, motion of that muscle or that bone with chronic repetitive motion over and over again when you’re going out on a training run.  So what I would suggest you do is you lay back on the training when it comes to going out and running and you go after the inflammation, you can do things like ice, you can use compression, you definitely want to stretch your calves.  If you go and you Google shin splints at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, I’ve talked lots of times about multiple shin splints treatments but the other thing that I would highly recommend that you do is go look at your shoe fit, get a good shoe that addresses whether you’re an over-pronator or an oversupinator so that once you’ve gotten rid of the inflammation of your lower leg and you get back up there and train, you’re not recreating the inflammation.  Great question!

Chris:             Hi Ben!  In the past, you’ve recommended avoiding all sugars and starches for active people looking to finally achieve that 6-pack.  My question is about what to eat while avoiding sugars and starches?  What would the diet of an average person look like without sugars and starches and how long would a person need to do that?  My other concern is energy levels and motivation to work out, motivation suffering the most when I feel out of energy.  Will trying to look good and avoid sugar and starches affect my ability to train my body?  Also I’ve experimented with severe carb restrictions in the past and always experienced an equilibrium loss with dizziness within a few days until I started eating carbs again.  What’s the deal with that?

Ben:                First of all, let’s just address this dizziness really quick.  That’s pretty common when you limit the amount of carbohydrates that you take in and it’s a combination of 2 things.  Carbohydrates can carry up to 4 times our weight in water, meaning that your muscles when they store carbohydrates away as glycogen, carry a lot of water in them and when you switch to a low carbohydrate diet, it’s very easy to become dehydrated which can result in dizziness, so make sure that you’re hydrating properly.  The other thing is that you can become hypoglycemic.  Low blood sugars can result in dizziness, that combined with you not being used to burning fatty acids for energy can also result in dizziness and that’s why whenever somebody switches to a low carb diet, I recommend that they really taper off initially their levels of physical activity so that they learn how to cope with lower energy levels before they actually jump back in to hot and heavy training.  Now if you use the calorie cycling strategies that I talked about a little bit earlier, you typically don’t have to worry about that quite as much but certainly, it’s a consideration.  Now let me clear something up; when I talked about trying to get rid of that last little bit of fat on the waist line and eliminating sugars and starches in order to do so, I’m not talking about going on a low carbohydrate diet per say.  What I’m talking about is scanning the labels of any packaged foods that you eat and making sure that you’re not consuming any high fructose corn syrup or added sugars, syrups, sweeteners, etc. just because not only do those tend to really either contribute to fat on the waist line or reduce your ability to tap into that storage fat but they also can produce some inflammation that results in a bloated, kind of puffy-looking waist line.  And so what also goes hand-in-hand with really limiting your processed or refined sugar consumption while you’re trying to get rid of those last few pounds of fat on the waist line is paying attention to other foods that might be inflammatory triggers, namely things like peanuts, wheat and soy, those tend to be the biggest issues for people and so I recommend not only lowering sugar and starch consumption but also eliminating those common allergenic triggers.  So I don’t necessarily think that in order to get rid of the last few pounds of fat, you got to go on a low carb or a no carb diet and that certainly can be something that, when you’re trying to exercise a lot, that can kind of get in the way of that.  So all you need to do is look at your foods and try as many foods that are in their raw, unadulterated forms as possible, so lots of vegetables and lean meats and seeds and nuts and don’t eat a whole lot from packaged containers or processed foods so that way, you’re eliminating a lot of things that are added to those foods like inflammatory vegetable oils and sugars and common allergenic triggers so, I think it’s a lot more simple than you’re actually making it.  Now if you’re asking me specifically about strategies and practical implementations of doing a low carbohydrate diet and still trying to stay active, you may need to wait just a little bit because I do have something coming down the pipeline that’s going to help you quite a bit and you’ll want to look for that next week.  In next week’s podcast I’ll be telling you a little bit more about that.  Alright, we’ve got one little call-in question from a listener that I wanted to share with you, I always like it when I get questions or when I get call-in comments like this and then we’re going to go ahead and move on with this week’s interview with Steven.

Kelly:              Hey Ben, this is Kelly calling.  I have been subscribed to your Triathlon Dominator program over the last 9 and half months and it really paid off for me in my first Ironman experience, it was a full Ironman July 30th.  I had a great experience.  The training was a bit different, I wasn’t used to the high intensity training but I could tell as the months progressed that I got stronger and faster most probably when I run.  I’m a born runner, I’ve enjoyed running my whole adult life and I thought that I had reached my pill but after using your hit training protocol then I was able to even become a lot more faster.  One of the best things that I can remember from your training program is the mp3s that you left on what to expect on race days and other tips for Ironman and one of the best tips I got from that was stripping your bike of the bottle cages from the back of the seat.  Now I trained with those and they were full throughout my training but I took them off for the race and that was the greatest thing because I noticed a huge improvement of my bike time and I was able to refill with just straight water and fuel at the aid station so, thanks for that tip, that really helped me and I noticed I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have gotten the time that I got so Ben, thanks so much.  I’m going to continue this hit training and use it for just general fitness lifestyle but my 20-year dream came true, finishing my Ironman, thanks to your training.  Have a good day, thanks again, looking forward to a few more podcasts too, ba-bye.

Ben:                Well, awesome job, Kelly, congratulations!  And for those of you who wanted to find out more about that Ironman and Half Ironman triathlon training program that I wrote that allows you to train for a triathlon without neglecting your career and your family and your friends, check out TriathlonDominator.com and let’s go ahead and move to this week’s interview with Steven Lad about how to conquer the toughest sport on earth.

Featured Topic:

Ben:                Hey, folks, this is Ben Greenfield, and I can tell you right now that when it comes to the sport of triathlon, it is just as much mental as it is physical.  I don’t care how much training you put in, the quality of your training plan, the quality of your nutrition, if your head isn’t screwed on straight when you get out there and your toes are on the starting line or if you’re not prepared for what your mind is going to have to conquer and overcome when you are halfway through the bike or just starting into the run or halfway through the run or even within just a couple of miles to the finish line then you’re leaving a lot of the success that you could have for triathlon really kind of on the table.  Now I admit I am not a psychiatrist, I’m not a sports psychologist, I’m not an expert in mental training for triathlon so what I wanted to do is get somebody who is one of those things, all of those things or some of those things on the call to talk about mental training for triathlon and I’ve got Steven Ladd here and Steven specifically is the creator of a system that allows you to actually do the mental training that’s necessary for you to be the best that you can be in the sport of triathlon and that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about, what goes into the elements of that system today in the interview with Steven.  So Steven, thank you for coming on the call.

Steven:           Well, thank you, Ben, I’m thrilled to be here and I welcome everybody who’s listening in.

Ben:                Awesome!  So before we get going into the nuts and bolts of how to train yourself mentally for the sport of triathlon, tell me a little bit about you.  Like how you got started with kind of working with athletes in this environment and how you got started with sports psychology and especially the unique type of sports psychology that you do.

Steven:           Well sure.  I was an athlete from early grade school up to high school and I went to college wanting to learn ways to build better athletes.  I knew I wanted to be involved in sports as a career.  If it was not as a professional athlete, it was going to be in the training element in some fashion.  So I took the traditional exercise physiology but then started to be drawn over to the sport psychology side of things.  So I took psychology courses, philosophy and then in grad school, even added in the eastern religion and the spirituality to the mix.  I graduated and I started training all types of athletes from boxers to golfers to marathoners.  Back in the early 90’s, there wasn’t much going on in the way of triathlons, and I had good success.  But I knew there was something more.  I’m always looking to add to my toolbox so I actually dropped everything and headed off to Southeast Asia, in India and there I traveled around and hung out and met some pretty amazing people, some might call them gurus and I saw amazing feats of strength and endurance from guys that did not do any training at all and realized it’s the power of the mind and the power of the mind-body.  I was there about a year and a half and I came back and started training athletes again and this time, the results were quite remarkable.  The only problem that I had, and it was quite a big problem actually, was compliance because I’ve had these athletes follow my program and get great results but it was a very time-intensive and a disciplined regime like 90 minutes of sitting meditation per day and strict cleanses every 3 months and even more crazy stuff that I’ll skip telling you about but although my athletes are dedicated, only a fraction could ever really keep that up for any length of time.  So I knew I had something but I knew I had to refine it and so I started searching out for techniques that would provide the same kind of results but with far less time commitment so the athlete could spend the time training for their specific sport.  It was about 1994 where I started interning and taking training in hypnosis, Neurolinguistic program or NLP and Meridian Energy psychologies…

Ben:                Wow!

Steven:           And with these techniques, my athletes were able to make the same kind of results but without having them to stare at a blank wall for an hour and a half a day.  I then started getting more and more endurance athletes in general and then finally, in the mid-late 90’s, started getting some triathletes and that has kept coming mainly through referrals and I soon realized that these guys and gals were the most dedicated athletes that I ever worked with and also the most appreciative because there really was nothing out there specific to triathlons, so I naturally wanted to train more of them and I also have a passion for endurance sports so it is really a perfect fit.

Ben:                So I’ve taken a look at this system that you created and I’m going to put a link to it over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mentaltraining but when I go through it, it’s pretty unique.  Like when I was a collegiate athlete about as far as we got in terms of like training for sport psychology was we kind of do some visualization a little bit and occasionally relax our bodies and imagine the type of success that we wanted to achieve but this goes way beyond that.  Some of these audios and this manual that you have and I know that this approach can seem a little bit out there to me and I’m sure to some of the people listening and maybe really haven’t gone and acting in their mind this way to get them ready for a triathlon.  So can you describe the idea behind your approach to mental training?

Steven:           Yeah, I’d love to.  And make no mistake about it, this is not your run-of-the-mill sort of sport psychology that you might have tried before and it’s not that it can work in concert with all of that but what we have found is that the many triathletes who have tried some form of metal training, be it books or coaches or psychologists, overall were not as impressed with the traditional stuff as they hoped they were and we’re coaches, we’re actually not PhDs, we’re not big in the theory, we’re totally and completely into results and that is what so many of our triathletes like about us.  We’ve taken 3 primary techniques from the alternative psychology world that we feel offer the best bang for the triathlete buck in terms of ease of use, in terms of time commitment and again, most importantly, results.  Should be clear that we’re not creators of any of these specific individual tools but what we find is most practitioner or coaches that use them with triathletes or athletes in general only use one at a time and don’t really apply them fully to athletes in general and certainly not to triathletes because as we all know triathletes are a whole different breed, they have to because the sport demands so much of them physically and mentally.

Ben:                Yeah!

Steven:           So in a nutshell, these 3 techniques deal with the mind-body, the subconscious and the meridian energy system and I know that sounds a bit eerie ferry at first but it’s really all about results and so we encourage people to give it a shot.  There’ll be a free video on the link that you supply and they can test it out for themselves so it just very quickly kind of go into these 3 techniques and first one is hypnosis, it’s the most popular part of our program and I just want to clear that right now, it’s not the form of hypnosis that you might see like in the entertainment stage, at state fair or in Las Vegas, they’re fun and all but there will be no renegade and triathletes bucking around like chickens if I had anything to say about it.  Here’s really how it works: each of the session starts out with a relaxation module and this allows your conscious mind to kind of let go and relax and it does put you in what we refer as a “light trance” but you are totally awake and completely in control the whole time.  I know it’s concern of some people who are not familiar with hypnosis but you are in control, can stop the process, make decisions anytime throughout the session and what happens is when your conscious mind can relax and let go, your unconscious mind is more open and it’s open to the positive instructions and suggestions that we’re going to be giving you regarding your triathlon performance and these positive suggestions can become of what we call your “deep learnings” so it’s a totally passive way to make positive changes in how you respond to challenges during events and ultimately how you see yourself as a triathlete and so with our original system here, we’ve got 4 hypnosis CD sessions and the first one is on confidence, of being able to elicit a state of confidence if you’re feeling anxious or nervous, you can use our techniques of hypnosis and program your subconscious mind to elicit states of confidence.  And then we have a session for each of the 3 segments, the swim, bike and run and each of those, we take you through in about 19, 22 minutes or so, we take you through an entire segment to perfection and I also have you meet and encounter the challenges that are most common in those segments of the races, swimming, being kicked in the face and swallowing water and on the bike dealing with hills and going out too fast, all the normal stuff and how to deal with them so that your subconscious mind is programmed and allowing you to stick to the game plan, keep your head about you.  The second major thing we use is called Neurolinguistic program or NLP and back in the 80’s and early 90’s, Tony Robbins made this a little more popular among athletes, executives and housewives but it’s a way to use your brain and language patterns to literally reprogram your mind for success, so you’ll be able to enter peak performance states even in seconds whenever you need to call up on them, you clear out sabotage and beliefs, you can program your mind and naturally react to stress in the most useful and efficient manner.  And then finally, we use what we call “energy mechanics” but it’s often known as meridian energy psychology and what it is, is a simple system based on acupuncture but it’s acupressure so there’s no needles but it’s based in the same system as acupuncture.  Instead, you just use pressure to enhance your biomechanical energy or the flow or chi, if you’re going to use the eastern world terminology for it, releasing negative emotions, giving yourself into the flow state and actually use for recovery, enhancing power, stamina etc. and these 3 approaches are what we use and we feel it for any serious triathlete.  Adding these in can really be the missing element to take the training, the blood, sweat and tears they’ve put in to training and fully fulfill their potential.

Ben:                Very interesting.  Okay so, I’m wondering this, I’m sure some of the people listening in are wondering this but I’ve looked into the entire program and I’ve listened to the audio you’ve mentioned you have those CD, I know they’re also available on mp3 and what I’m wondering, because I haven’t had a chance to try this stuff out for a race before, in terms of what to expect like what type of benefits you’d receive, what can people expect?  What do you see with the triathletes that you work with when they start to implement this kind of mental training?

Steven:           Well, some triathletes have individual issues that we address for them when needed, we do that with e-mail coaching but really those are the fine details and to be honest, after 7 or 8 years of working with endurance athletes, the vast majority of the hang-ups, if you will, are pretty much the same so we’ve taken that into account, designing our renegade triathlete system to eliminate those issues and so the common benefits that we hear about all the time and get feedback is that you’re able to induce pre-race just the right amount of relaxation and energetic stimulations.  So you want to be relaxed, you don’t want to be a zombie and so we’ve fine tuned that to quite a degree and teach the triathletes how to induce that state.  Again, getting you to positive mental states and that can be confidence, focus, determination, regardless of the race or who you’re competing against or how bad the situation may be in the moment and of course getting in the zone, getting in the flow state, not just hoping that it shows up without actually being able to induce it and being able to stay in there for as long as you need or want to, being able to mask, delay fatigue and mask pain, you’d have to be careful with this one of course especially with the triathletes because sometimes, it’s simply not appropriate to mask pain but when you’re in an event and you’re just suffering from the pain we all go through when pushing ourselves that hard, we have ways to turn down the pain receptors and the fatigue receptors and really, being able to take your best training sessions in the swim, bike and run and being able to carry those over to race day, basically just bring you’re A game consistently when it counts.

Ben:                Okay, gotcha!  So there’s some terms that you use, like if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mentaltraining, you can kind of see some of the stuff you’ve got over there but you mentioned something about eliminating the interference, what do you mean by that?  What’s eliminating the interference mean?

Steven:           Well, I have to give props where it’s due that I borrowed and then slightly modified that phrase from a book called “The Inner Game of Tennis” actually, about the mental game of tennis by Tim Galloway and in the 70’s it was revolutionary but the version that I use now is peak performance equals talent plus skill minus the interference and the way I used the term talent is the natural talent you’re born with, how athletic you are, what kind of card you’re dealt genetically.  Skill then is the training, the hard work you put in, you’ve developed the skill minus the interference and interference is the mental garbage, is the blocks self-sabotaging beliefs and blocks you have about yourself, about how good of a triathlete you are, about certain segments.  The swim is the most common fear that we deal with so what we’re talking about there is that in order to perform at your peak level whatever that is for you at the time, meaning your talent plus your skill, we need to get the interference gone, down to an absolute minimum so that you’re able to more consistently perform at your peak level which is the combination of your talent and the skill that you’ve developed.

Ben:                Okay, gotcha!  Now as far as kind of working on the mental game, a triathlete actually wanting to take the step into starting down this road, how does it actually work?  Say that I came to you and I was like “Steven, I’m having trouble focusing on the bike.  I‘m having trouble tapping into the speed that I know I have during the run” what would you do?  How do you actually get started?

Steven:           Well, the very first thing that we do and the very first thing in the manual is we have to do some goal setting and I can practically hear the groan, the collective moan of the triathletes out there because everybody and every athlete tends to have the same feeling when they hear goal setting but it’s not quite your usual goal setting and it’s vilely important to truly know not only what your goals are but also what your values are so we deal with that and then how they work together or sometimes against each other.  So once we determine what the ultimate goals really are, we work back from there then we systematically device specific techniques to get the triathlete there as quickly as possible and then we go into the individual trouble areas and areas of need for the triathlete from that point on.

Ben:                Okay.

Steven:           And that could be things like in NLP, we use anchoring where we teach you how to link up a feeling of success from the past and to a personalized small physical action, you can regain the same feeling at the present moment regardless of what’s happening in the present moment, erasing bad memories of failures, clearing out self-defeating beliefs and just reprogramming your mind to deal with the areas of greatest concern for you and what are holding you back from performing at your peak.

Ben:                Now I want to kind of get down into the nuts and bolts even more.  If there were a couple of things that people could do, obviously your program is pretty comprehensive but if somebody just wants to like take something out of this interview right now with you, in terms of like the 2 or 3, I guess like the secrets that you would give people to help them be mentally prepared before their race.  Are there some things that people can do right now that would get them ready?  Say somebody’s listening and they’ve got a race this weekend.

Steven:           Well, I’m not just going to of course tell you, everything’s in the book and the manual, it is of course but what I’m going to tell you is there are about a dozen ways to prepare their recovery essentially in a system but you’d be surprised some things seem like common sense and many serious triathletes don’t mess with what make the connections and one of those is plan your training and train your plan.  As far as confidence goes, the truth is that a good deal of it is required through having a qualified coach, design the program and then train the program.  Your program of course allows triathletes to cut down training hours and cut down their race time and it’s a way to have confidence in yourself by following a plan through and then when you have that kind of confidence, you’ve done all you can, you can go into the race and let it unfold as it will but one that people don’t think about very often is breathing.  Now I know it sounds kind of funny but breathing can be a really lost art, now not when you’re racing and training.  As endurance athletes, we’ll all be breathing primarily in the chest whenever your heart rate is elevating in your training, it’s normal and then you should try to change that but what I find at doing evaluations is that most triathletes that I work with chest breathe all the time and that’s quite a series of problem that causes a chronic tension throughout the entire torso and neck and many triathletes will take a deep breath or several before a race in order to try to calm down but in reality, what they’re doing is still breathing only up in the chest region and that creates a cycle of more tension which then can create more of mental stress and more anxiety.  So what I would advice everyone to do is look into diaphragmatic breathing or check out a yoga class, some of them is primarily on breathing and practice diaphragmatic breathing at all times when you’re at a more resting heart rate and then use that type of breathing before a race and when you feel anxiety in order to help calm the body.  And then the biggest thing that’s of course the cause of our entire system is to learn to master your mental and emotional states.  This means that no matter what the situation, what negative feelings might come up, you’re quickly and easily able to clear it out and replace it with your peak performance mind states.  It’s an enviable skill that enables you to consistently perform at your highest levels in triathlons but also in business and your love life, you name it and those types of skills are crucial.

Ben:                So there’s some things that I learned about in sport psychology when I was taking sport psychology classes back in undergrad and there were a few things in particular that I want to get your say on because it sounds like you’ve delved a lot more deeply into this than like my sport psychology professor.  So can you tell me a little bit about what you think about one thing that he thought was very important which was affirmations and positive thinking?  Does that stuff work?

Steven:           Well, I’ve been known in private with clients kind of bash, the traditional affirmation positive thinking programs and it’s mostly just making fun a little bit but the truth of the matter is you suggest that a triathlete should stand in front of a mirror and repeat affirmations like Stuart Smalley like from Saturday Night Live and the whole I’m good enough and they’re all gone to people like me shtick, it is kind of a shtick and it’s making fun but it’s not that affirmations and positive thinking can’t work, they actually can be very effective but we find not so much in the way they’re used by most coaches and by most athletes and we believe the reason for the lower success rate when these are used in the common ways is quite simple, because you are asking the athlete to deny the truth.  For example, let’s say working with an athlete who is challenged by pre-race anxiety and fear, again very common especially around the water and the swim segment.  We would not simply take the common approach of having him or her repeat something like “I’m supremely confident before each and every race” over and over again and why wouldn’t we do that?  Because quite frankly it’s a lie, it’s not true and even the whole time that they are saying how confident they are, often a little voice in the back of the mind is saying “BS: it’s not true” and so what happens in reality is they can actually be affirming the fact that they’re lying and create a cycle that way and this is the reason we find miniature athletes who’ve given this a shot, have gotten lackluster results and then come to conclusion that sport psychology just isn’t for them.  The way we use our techniques is what makes the difference for athletes.  Instead of denying the truth about how you feel, instead we fully acknowledge it and then we use our techniques to clear out the negative.  Only after we clear it out do we go back and anchor in a positive substitution, this way the positive thought, the positive phrase and image doesn’t have to compete with the negative one so it actually sticks a lot better.  Then we go back in hypnosis and we can program the subconscious mind in the same way for even greater success.  So really, it’s just a matter of taking out the garbage first and then replacing it with what we choose instead of what we’ve developed accidentally or through some negative experiences.

Ben:                Gotcha!  I kind of share the same thoughts about affirmations and positive thinking.  What about visualization?  We do a lot of this and I’ve even spoken with Peter Reed who won a lot of Ironman triathlons and he said he would kind of picture his race in his head and seeing himself crossing the finish line with both hands in the air, that type of thing.  What’s your take on visualization?

Steven:           I think the visualization techniques are great.  Again, it can be very effective.  The only issue that we have with the way they’re used by most coaches and athletes is that they stopped short of getting the full potential out of them.  Visualization is what we consider the first step towards seeing yourself being more successful and accomplishing your triathlon goals and we take it several steps further though by then connecting your visualizations with your subconscious mind through the hypnotic suggestions and also into your mind-body with the NLP techniques.  One of my triathletes told me not too long ago that the way we use visualizations it’s like visualizations on EPO but all kidding aside, the most potent, legal performance-enhancing “drug” really is your brain.  By systematically changing the way that your conscious and subconscious mind are programmed, you will change the way that your brain produces certain chemicals and prove the firing of the synapses and possibly affect even the hormonal balance in your system.  So yes, visualizations are fantastic, we just crank them up a few notches with additional techniques.

Ben:                Okay, gotcha!  I’m sure some people are listening in who maybe never done a triathlon before, they’re beginners, they haven’t even signed up for their first race or maybe they’ve just signed up for their first race  but they haven’t done it yet.  For the people who’re completely beginners, is this something that they would use and if so, are there special like mental training tips or strategies that you would give to someone who is about to do their first triathlon or their first event?

Steven:           Yeah, I give my first recommendation.  Make sure that it’s a sprint event, right?  And as we’ve been chatting all along, once you put in your training time, whether or not it’s optimal or not and whether or not you’re a pure beginner or quite a seasoned professional, in order to have the greatest chance of performing to your current potential, you need to keep your head about you and accept the fact there’ll likely be challenging moments or longer.  Ones, as a beginner, you haven’t personally experienced yet, but events and moments where we’ll be understandable that you might get upset.  So if you educated yourself on what the most common challenges are, if you’ve spoken with a coach and other experienced triathletes, you’ve done some form of mental training about how to keep your composure and have instruction, again, from a coach or a fellow triathlete and how to deal with each one.  That’ll take you a long way to making your first triathlon a good experience and probably keep you coming back for more.

Ben:                Okay, cool.  So again, folks listening in, I’m putting a bunch of information about this type of mental training that Steven has developed at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mentaltraining and if you’re listening to the podcast, I’ll also put it in the show notes if you’re listening to the podcast release of this but Steven, as far as this actual mental training approach and this product that you’ve created that you were showing to me earlier, what is it all about?  Who would actually use this and how does it work?

Steven:           Well, great.  As a quick recap of what’s going on, we’ve worked extensively now with triathletes’ specific psychology for about 7 years now and we’ve developed basically a user manual for the triathlete brain.  So this mental training, and again we feel this is a missing gap that we’re passionate about filling for any athlete, any triathlete, beginner or elite and again just a few of the benefits are being able to, at will, produce the most optimal mental-emotional states for yourself and getting to the zone and staying in the zone and getting out of your own way, if you will, and eliminating fear, anxiety and delaying fatigue and bring your A game up to the starting line more and more often.  And what we’ve done is the tools we provide can be very personalized and fine-tuned and therefore it’s really very suitable for triathletes at any level.  We’ll find benefit because you’ll take it where you are, use the tools again to eliminate the interference and allow your natural talent and all the hard work or skill you’ve put in there to come to pass.  We offer free e-mail coaching, so if you ask us any questions on how to use the specific tool for a specific challenge you’re having, we’re always happy to instruct you on that and get feedback from that.  Now what happened was our private coaching fees are $300 an hour and we have a 3-hour minimum and although these fees seem high for some people, we consistently have a lengthy waiting list but we decided we wanted to get this out to a lot more triathletes around the world so we put together the system and our initial launch is in digital delivery format so this enables us to keep the cost way down in terms of printing and shipping because there isn’t any and pass that savings on to triathletes and better yet, you get the e-manual and the mp3 audio hypnosis sessions within minutes of ordering it and look, we are passionate about helping you guys and then we’re so confident that everybody will experience an undeniable boost in their performance that we offer a lifetime money-back guarantee.  Ben’s going to give you the link to the site and you’ll notice on there it says “60 days money-back guarantee” that’s only because that’s all we’re allowed to put in there because of our merchant provider.  We’ll personally refund your money anytime on the off chance that you aren’t totally thrilled of your improvements and we’re quite serious.  If that happens to be the case and we’d never think about keeping your cash.  We’ve just launched the system and you’ll find it, right now and for a very short time at a very steep discount, it will be going up in price though quite soon and we’re just thrilled to be able to help more triathletes reach their goals and it really is a passion of ours to help everybody surpass whatever their highest goals in this tough sport and the best sport in the world, so we’re excited to getting out there in the community and want to help as many people as we can.

Ben:                Yeah and full disclosure, before this thing was released, Steven sent it to me to take a look at and I read the manual and went through the audios and I’ve seen a lot of this stuff before and frankly, I’ve always thought it was a little bit cheesy but this stuff was a little bit more edgy, I really liked it, it’s pretty legit in terms of really improving the confidence, reducing a lot of that pre-race anxiety.  I’m really looking forward to trying it out in my next race, this next Rev 3 race that I have coming up so I’m pretty stoked about this and I’m grateful to Steven for hooking me up with it to be able to review and then being able to bring it out to you guys.  So again I’ll put the link for it at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mentaltraining and if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com/mentaltraining, all the components of Steven’s program are over there for you to review and for you to look into getting for yourself, which I would highly encourage that you do.  So Steven, thank you for your time today and for coming on the call.

Steven:           Hey, thanks Ben.  My pleasure!

Ben:                Well folks, I will put a link in the show notes to Steven’s website which I would highly recommend that you go checkout and in addition to that, I will put a link to everything that I talked about in this show.  Be sure to leave the show a ranking in iTunes if you get a chance.  Ranking and a comment and if you’d like, you can donate over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com to support the cost of all the folks who download this podcast each week.  Now if you have questions you can of course use the Ask Ben Form over there at BenGreenfieldFitness.com.  You can download the free iPhone or android app which you can get on the right side of the page at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, you can ask your question through those apps as well or finally click Ask a Podcast Question at the bottom of this page.  so that’s going to wrap up today’s podcast episode, have a great week and until next time.  This is Ben Greenfield signing out.

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

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