Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Performace Mindset with Scott Johnston and Brian Carlock
2.3k Plays3 years ago
In this episode, Scott Johnston is joined by UA-coached athlete Brian Carlock. They discuss the background and evolution of Brian's athletic development and understanding of training, and his experience with coaching.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Uphill Athlete Resources
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. These programs are just one of several free services we provide to disseminate information about training for mountain sports. If you like what you hear and want more, please check out our website, uphillathlete.com, where you'll find many articles and our extensive video library on all aspects of training for and accomplishing a variety of mountain goals. You'll also find our forum, where you can ask questions of our experts and the community at large.
00:00:30
Speaker
Our email is coach at uphillathlete.com and we'd love to hear from you. We've been very pleased and of course gratified that our podcasts are being received so enthusiastically. We've had requests to enable a way for listeners to have a conversation about episodes.
00:00:49
Speaker
We certainly welcome this idea and want to encourage those of you who do want to do that to do so on our forum so that the whole uphill athlete community can join in and benefit from this exchange.
Episode Introduction: Scott Johnston & Brian Carlock
00:01:02
Speaker
To do so, please start a new thread on the forum using the title of the podcast under the most appropriate category. Thanks for being part of this community.
Balancing Career and Mountain Sports
00:01:16
Speaker
Welcome to another episode of the uphill athlete podcast. I'm your host Scott Johnston and with me today I have Brian Carlock. He is one of the uphill athlete coached athletes. Brian lives in Florida, but he's a Mountaineer and we
00:01:33
Speaker
Amazingly, a lot of the folks we work with live in what we call terrain challenged places. And I think that what Brian has to say about his training and his experiences working with some coaches and just general comments on how he's been able to
00:01:50
Speaker
fit climbing into first of all a very busy career because Brian is the principal at an ad agency and creative director there so that I know keeps him very busy but he's managed to fit time in for training and for climbing trips. So Brian welcome today, thank you very much for joining me.
00:02:11
Speaker
Thank you, Scott. I'm kind of a little bit amazed that I'm on here. I'm definitely fanboying right now. So I appreciate you having me on.
00:02:22
Speaker
Well, I don't let's see if we can knock that pedestal out from under a little bit today because I really don't think that I warrants too much fandom. But thank you. I do appreciate that. Well, I listen to the podcast all the time. And, you know, there's a little part of my brain right now is like, you know, what the heck am I doing on the uphill athlete podcast? I'm not killing Jornet. I'm not Phil Maffetone. I'm just some guy who's been working at his in his gym for the past year.
00:02:51
Speaker
And I'm probably the poster boy for what not to do with your life if you're into mountain sports.
00:02:58
Speaker
Well, surprisingly, I think there's a lot of people that could join you on that poster. Life does get in the way with what we're trying to do, these recreational pursuits for most of us. And counter to what I think the perception in some of the uphill athlete community's mind, uphill athlete works with very few elite level athletes.
Coaching Recreational Athletes
00:03:23
Speaker
We do have a handful of professionals that we coach.
00:03:26
Speaker
but we coach hundreds of athletes. And I would say that that cohort of professionals makes up certainly less than 5% of who we're dealing with. So most of the folks we deal with are people just like you, Brian, and who have families, jobs, all kinds of other commitments that get in the way of their passion for these mountain sports. It's actually, believe it or not, it's a lot easier
00:03:56
Speaker
To both be a professional athlete and to coach one because basically all those people do is eat sleep and train Well, that's what they should be doing And so it makes you know planning their training it makes you know recovery for them easier so the old the old package of trying to coach those folks and the response they get there just isn't the water doesn't get muddied and
00:04:23
Speaker
with as much with other distractions and life commitments as it does with folks like you. And I think that's what makes this kind of a discussion really valuable. So we're actually, it's more time consuming, exhausting, and probably more expensive to train people like me.
00:04:44
Speaker
Well, it's, yeah, because in a way, yes, because, you know, if I'm, and I do coach, like I said, a couple, some professional alpinists and some professional non runners. And yes, I lay out the training, you know, we've, I've been working with them for a long time. I know exactly how these workouts are going, they're going to feel in these workouts in general.
00:05:06
Speaker
And I get the kind of responses that I expect, or if I need to make changes, they're usually very simple changes.
Unlocking Your Inner Athlete
00:05:16
Speaker
Whereas with folks, the general public, the recreational mountaineer, then we're dealing with, oh, all of a sudden, oh, I forgot that my son's birthday party next Wednesday, or I'm traveling out of town the next three days.
00:05:30
Speaker
My kids came home from school sick and now I'm sick. That kind of stuff is part of the program, which I believe is one of the reasons that coaching can be so effective for people. We can make these rapid changes and accommodate the disruptions to the training schedule and help you navigate some of those bumps and challenges that come along with trying to fit something like training
00:05:59
Speaker
into a busy life.
00:06:02
Speaker
I think that's for me, one of the things that's been a surprise or a discovery is I've really, I think been inspired to try to approach my training as if I was an athlete. I would never really classify myself as an athlete, right? I'm an avid, you know, pursuer of, you know, this recreational or sort of lifestyle hobby, if you will, that means a lot to me, but I've never really considered myself an athlete.
00:06:32
Speaker
I dabbled in sports in junior high and high school, but it never was really of that mindset. I was more into the arts and such. And so I think for me, having the training, the focus, the support that I've had has really shifted my mind into, and friends and family can attest to my obsessive nature, really becoming very focused on, okay, I'm gonna train like I'm an athlete.
00:07:01
Speaker
I'm not an athlete, but in my mind, in my own mind, I'm going to train like I'm an athlete. And you're right, the results so far, and I'm just really now gotten onto the launch pad for really much more serious fitness. We can talk about where I was, which is a little embarrassing.
00:07:21
Speaker
but that approach of thinking about it as I'm going to train like an athlete has made all the difference for me. And you're right, you know, with, with coaching in terms of saying like, Oh, well I had this come up or I had this injury or I had this event that happened. Um, or I had, you know, some friends over and you know, and those little bumps and it's all part of the process. I think, you know, my coach, um, Jason Anton, who's been amazing,
00:07:48
Speaker
I definitely want to give him a shout out and talk a little bit more about what he's done for me. Um, but he always talks about how it's a long game, right? And it's like, we're, we're laying a foundation. We're working for the long haul. It's not, you know, exactly, we got to be at exactly a precise place, you know, next week or the week after. And that's been incredibly helpful for me.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's one of the, coming back, back up, I want to get to that point because I think that's a really important point, but rolling the tape back just a minute or so to where you mentioned, you know, that you're not an athlete, but now you're figuring out that, you know, you can actually train like an athlete. Well, I think that that's, was one of the motivations, maybe the primary motivation for Steve and I when we wrote both of these books was that
00:08:39
Speaker
we knew how a professional athlete would train for these types of events. And we thought there was
00:08:50
Speaker
a great misunderstanding of how to properly prepare and train for this stuff. So we wanted to put out there sort of a template for what you would do if you were that person who didn't have to do anything but eat, sleep, and train. And recognizing that that may not fit into most people's lifestyles, their professional lives and family lives.
00:09:13
Speaker
but that if you had this as a sort of a template, a target and you would say, okay, this is kind of, this is how it works. This is why it works this way. And that that would give you sort of a North star as you're reading the book and understanding that. And then we, you know, amazingly had this coaching business spring up from that because people said, well, I like these ideas, but I can't figure it out myself. I want somebody to help me do that.
00:09:38
Speaker
But I think you're very right in treating yourself like you are an athlete because I do think we are. We all have the inner athlete in us. Some of us are going to be more gifted than others or have more time to train or all those different things that are going to give different results, but we all have that inner athlete.
00:10:00
Speaker
And I believe that having the focus or, like I said, the guidance, kind of a handrail to use to monitor your training. And that's been our biggest thing is helping people trying to understand how to monitor the effects of their training. So I think that's the biggest thing that I want to get out there is that you are an athlete and you
00:10:22
Speaker
We do have the same response to training that Killian Jornet has.
Brian's Fitness Journey
00:10:28
Speaker
He's maybe been at it since he was six years old, so he's going to have different results than you do. But when you go out and do your training, your physiology is the same as his and your response is going to be the same. And I think that's kind of an important thing to get people to understand.
00:10:43
Speaker
I think for me, that's what's been amazing. And to be honest, when I started, it was like, okay, I see other people have achieved that and will, but they've been doing it, like you say, with Killian their whole life. And I joke about me being the poster boy for what not to do. I grew up in a good part of my life in Alaska.
00:11:05
Speaker
I was born in Alaska. As a family, we cross-country skied, we snowshoed, we hiked, we camped. My father, we fished and hunted all over Alaska. And I have these beautiful, beautiful memories of being up in the mountains or in the rivers or in the sea, being out in nature.
00:11:26
Speaker
And so that, to me, was my passion. It was not really so much the athletic pursuit. And so when I look back and when I started to get into this and I look back at my life, it's like, OK, I'm not I don't have that base. Am I really going to be able to achieve some level of fitness because it wasn't there in the past? But I think
00:11:46
Speaker
What's really surprised me is when you do approach it the way that you're describing, the way that I've tried to put myself through it, and it's six days a week. It's my life now. You really do see results. I can tell you I've spent many
00:12:06
Speaker
at the beginning many painful hours trying to work through Neil's shamfit videos. Oh yeah, you're not the only one. But eventually bit by bit it became easier.
00:12:19
Speaker
But I think for me, it was that pull of wanting to be back out in the mountains, back out in the environment, doing the things that I loved, the things that I had grown up with and had eventually career life, et cetera, had led me away from. And I wanted to be able to get back out and do it in a way where I was not carrying literally extra weight, but also the extra weight of not being fit.
00:12:43
Speaker
to really achieve and enjoy my goals. And so I think from that standpoint, the goal is not necessarily athletic pursuit, but the goal is the enjoyment of being out in that place where I loved and being fit enough to enjoy it.
00:12:58
Speaker
couldn't agree more. I mean, you know our little slogan that which is you can't coach desire. And if you don't have that passion, which that you obviously have, then you might as well just, you know, stay in a gym and run on a treadmill and lift weights. And yeah, just you can get certainly get fit that way. But what we're talking about is,
00:13:22
Speaker
what we are hoping through the process that you're undergoing right now or someone who just reads our books and takes it upon themselves to train themselves is
00:13:33
Speaker
that those people have that passion and we want to enable them to go into the mountains in whatever capacity, whether it's on skis or on foot or climbing, however you want to explore them. And because we know, and I think you've experienced this, most people that have
00:13:53
Speaker
been in the mountains, much have experiences. They offer sort of a transformative experience and you come back home a somewhat changed person than when you left for that trip. And if you're fit, as you just said, you can enjoy it a lot more. If it's a death march every day and you're suffering mightily and wishing you weren't there, it's going to be hard to chin up the enthusiasm to go back
00:14:18
Speaker
It's hard to have a transformative experience when you're just trying to drag yourself through it. And, you know, for me in my past, I kind of stumbled into ice climbing and climbing. My initial experience in ice climbing was in the Adirondacks. I got kind of interested in it and got a private guide at a place in Adirondacks called Rockin River. Ed Palin has run that place for ages.
00:14:48
Speaker
and went out for a day and just, you know, had a guy take me out climbing and I was so enthralled. I actually tried to bribe him, just do some night climbing that night. I was like that intense about it.
00:14:58
Speaker
Um, and, and so it's that drive and that desire to enjoy those experiences. Um, and that just kind of launched me into, you know, at the time at 10 year career of, you know, ice climbing, every single chance I got, um, you know, Adirondacks, Catskills, Mount Washington, Smuggler's New Notch, you know, Lake Willoughby, Mount Katahdin. And for me, what was kind of the pinnacle of my experience at the time was climbing the Black Dyke.
00:15:23
Speaker
I'm in in new hampshire and that was like i couldn't believe you know that i actually gotten up it. I it's it's it's an amazing and it's on my you know my goals for it february i'm taking a trip back there for a week with an old partner mine.
00:15:41
Speaker
old in terms of, I used to climb with him and now we're both old. But that sort of, as you said, that drive to get out there and experience those transformational moments feels so much more pure when you're not lugging around a lack of fitness, as it were.
00:16:04
Speaker
Give us an idea. You alluded to the place you used to be in your life and where you've come from and how you've gotten there today. I think that could be a really interesting thing. You said you were kind of embarrassed about where you started.
00:16:21
Speaker
Yeah, well, so, you know, as I mentioned, I had a fairly active life. When I was a kid, we would go out almost every weekend into the mountains doing something. My father was a very avid outdoorsman. He would hunt and fish a lot as well as my grandfather. So we were always out doing something.
00:16:41
Speaker
I went to school at BYU in Utah, right there by the Wasatch. So again, you know, climbing, skiing, et cetera. I spent some time in Driggs, Idaho at Grand Targhee. I was actually the chef for breakfast and lunch. And so the whole rest of the day I had on my own, right, to go out into the mountains. So was just always out in it. When I graduated from college, I went to Manhattan.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I spent 20 years in Manhattan working in advertising and branding firms. And that, you know, there's no mountains in Manhattan. But I eventually got back into it in terms of, you know, going, you know, out ice climbing, as I mentioned. Left Manhattan about seven years ago, family and work reasons. I'm down here in Florida now, as you mentioned, not exactly a mecca of ice and climbing. The only ice here is in our drinks.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I had dabbled with what I'll call gym fitness, which was probably a little bit more focused on a bodybuilder philosophy, if you were. Not that I have anything near a bodybuilder's physique, but just that's kind of mindset and dabbled off and on. But the one big thing that I noticed was there was no real goal.
00:18:02
Speaker
I didn't have a motivation. It was just like, well, I want to be fit. I want to look good, whatever. Very superficial. So, you know, I run into some life situations. I ran into the pandemic and I'm up. All right. I'll say I was 221 pounds.
00:18:22
Speaker
And you end up fooling yourself over time, thinking, oh, yeah. What had you been like when you were younger and more active? I mean, when I was in my best shape, I was probably like 170, 180.
00:18:34
Speaker
You know, I have enough frame where, you know, I'm not a small guy, but I'm not big either. So that's, you know, it's embarrassing for me to even admit that, but on the flip side of that, over the course of, you know, I figured out that it was February 22nd of last year that I had a consult call with Steve.
00:18:59
Speaker
And I was very kind of like, well, let me see. I don't know. And then over the course of that conversation, I was like, you know what? I'm going to do it.
00:19:07
Speaker
So I think the last time I checked, I'm at like 188. So I still have about, I'm going to say 10 more to go to my goal, but it's less for me about the scale weight and more about the fitness. It's just like one metric. But it's taken a lot of work to get there, working with, you know, Jason, my coach, working with Rebecca, you know, which Rebecca Dent dietician who's associated with uphill athlete,
00:19:35
Speaker
And I definitely want to talk more about that experience if we have time. But I was never really an athlete until this. And I had this focus to say, look, I'm going to get through the difficult moments. I'm going to stay motivated because I had a goal that I wanted to achieve. And it wasn't just about the vanity goal of why most people go to the gym.
00:20:01
Speaker
You know, I had a very specific moment where I saw an amazing drone video of somebody climbing the black dike. And I had posted something like, oh yeah, I remember this, like wish I could go back. And on a climbing buddy of mine, a dear friend of mine posted back, he said, well, why can't you? And it just kind of slapped me in the face, like, why am I limiting myself? So I was like, hmm.
00:20:28
Speaker
That's interesting. Why can't I go back to this thing that I love? And so I did some research. I was a huge follower of Mark Twite, Alex Lowe, and Steve back in the day. And so I came across your guys book, Training for the Uphill Athlete, got it, started reading it, went to the site. And then I was like, you know what? Maybe I'll do a consult with Steve and maybe this is possible.
00:20:55
Speaker
But I got to, I got to confess that deep down there was a part of me, right? It was like, uh, I didn't have a lot of faith in myself, but I just made that first step and the next step and the next step. And it was just about each step. It wasn't about getting obsessed about where I am and where I'm not. It was about, let me just take that next step and
The Importance of Aerobic Base Training
00:21:14
Speaker
that next step. And look, I'm not where I want to be yet, but now I have the faith and belief and I am on the launch pad, I say at least.
00:21:24
Speaker
I think there's an analogy you can draw between what you're just talking about taking the next step and let's say climbing. If you look at the entire climb, sometimes it can be so intimidating you just, I'm not even going to start.
00:21:42
Speaker
But if you think okay, I'm looking at the next three feet here and how am I gonna negotiate these next three feet and then then you deal with navigating the next three feet and the next three feet and you know, eventually you've reached the top and I think that that's a you know, a metaphor that works in a lot of ways for a great part good part of our lives I say not become too intimidated to overwhelmed by the prospect of you know having to
00:22:12
Speaker
to eat the elephant in one bite. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's what Jason has been so great about in terms of like, look, it's a long game. And look, Scott, there were so many evenings and mornings where I walked into my garage gym and put my little iPad there and started playing Neil's video, the shampoo video. I was like, I have no idea how I'm going to get through this.
00:22:39
Speaker
But it's just, let me do this movement. Let me do the next one. And let's just, you know, and eventually it, I'm not going to say easy. There's nothing about those workouts that are easy, but eventually it was like, Oh yeah, that felt okay.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah. It's surprising how many people, and I've used that work out with some incredibly fit people who are very challenged by it. Somebody who I think most of us would assume are kind of the epitome of strength and fitness, like the Navy SEALs,
00:23:16
Speaker
I've used that workout with a number of seals who look at it and kind of poo-poo it thinking, oh, well, this looks like nothing. Here's a skinny guy in tight pants doing this workout, you know, and they're used to going in and lifting really big heavy weights over their heads and things like that.
00:23:32
Speaker
And they come back with going, oh my God, I barely finished that. And then being sore for three days afterwards. So it is a really effective tool for sure. But it also is applicable to everyone. And I think it's a great, I'm really proud of that product that we've put together with Neil. I think it's been super useful for an awful lot of folks.
00:23:52
Speaker
Well, you mentioned something earlier, Scott, about the fact that, and you didn't say it in quite this way, but the traditional view of fitness and being in shape is very different than the approach here. And that was definitely true for me. You know, I did a lot of reading and a lot of listening to podcasts and try to reorient myself and this whole concept of developing an aerobic base first.
00:24:19
Speaker
And the more that I dug into that, the more that it makes sense because how can you do...
00:24:26
Speaker
you know, sports specific strength and endurance. If you don't have the ability of your cardiovascular system to support that effort, you know, whereas most people it's like it's hit its intervals, et cetera. And I think the thing that converted me to that was I had an experience with a, um, I was doing virtual training in my gym with a trainer before I connected with uphill athlete. And I had this one moment where I was doing sort of interval and strength training and I got completely gassed out. And in the back of my head, I'm like, well, that's because I have no cardio.
00:24:56
Speaker
And I think that moment set me up because cardio was always like yuck. Over the course of the months at the beginning of working with uphill athlete, developing that cardio base, I mean, I'm completely converted to that idea now. And it's a very different way than what popular culture teaches us fitness is achieved through.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, I call it, I say it's counterintuitive, frankly. You know, and much of what gets foisted on the public about fitness comes from the strength and conditioning world. So it's natural that they're going to have a predisposition towards presenting that as the most important component. And it also, it makes some intuitive sense, like if you want to get stronger,
00:25:52
Speaker
you don't go into the gym and lift lighter weights, you go into the gym and lift heavy weights. So if you want to get fitter aerobically, why would you go and run easily when your limitation is not at that easy pace? Your limitation is at some higher, harder running effort or hiking, whatever, some sort of harder effort. That's where you're limited. So why wouldn't you train at that, what we call the endurance limit?
00:26:19
Speaker
similar to strength training. But it's obviously spent literally millions of words on this already. So I won't belabor the point, but that's what makes this so counterintuitive and hard for people to initially accept. And if you're not willing to dig down and understand the physiology of why this works, then you're just going to go, oh, that's snake oil. That doesn't sound like that could ever do anything for me.
00:26:45
Speaker
But you've you found and and we have found over many many years and I'll give a little Short story that involves sort of at Mark White's expense here. So now Mark forgive me But I think he would I know he understands this and appreciates this now, but many many years ago I'm sure at least 20 years ago when Mark was a
00:27:09
Speaker
had his Jim Jones gym in Salt Lake City. And he was, so CrossFit was just sort of becoming, coming on the scene and becoming quite popular. And so Mark had gotten certified as a CrossFit trainer and used to tell me, well, why should I do all this, you know, three hour bicycle rides or runs or something like that, when I can go into the gym and I can get
00:27:33
Speaker
the same benefit from doing 30 minutes of really hard work. And I said, well, Mark, you're not getting the same benefit. That's the problem. And so at one point, and I don't know much about CrossFit other than what I've read. I mean, I've done a few CrossFit workouts, but
00:27:52
Speaker
They had this workout of the day that they invited Steve, who was in town for some other purpose, to come and join them in this workout. And this was a workout that these guys had done many times and had sort of become really proficient at it. And it involved, I think, deadlifting, rowing 500 meters, and pull-ups. It was like a circuit. You just did that over and over again.
00:28:16
Speaker
And so Steve hadn't done anything like that. And Steve barely lifted weights at all. It was mainly doing, you know, a lot of sports specific strength work, climbing specific stuff. So they started this, this workout and the, the long and short of it was that
00:28:34
Speaker
the two other guys, Mark and his partner, were on the floor in a pool of sweat, dying, and Steve was still going strong, you know, like, and later, and I remember him, eventually they made him stop.
00:28:49
Speaker
Well, that's the aerobic fitness base right there. Yeah, because what was happening was he would get on the rolling machine, the 500 meter rolling machine, and that was his aerobic system was the dominant mechanism for producing energy. And that, in a way, allowed him to recover so that when he had to do the deadlift and the pull-ups, which are much more
00:29:14
Speaker
neuromuscularly demanding that he was able to do that, recover well enough that he could keep going. And I think at one point they finally, you know, he was doing like, you know, sets of like 80 pull ups and he would just hang from the bar with one hand and shake out the other hand and then hang from the bar with the other hand and shake out and keep going. And they finally said, Steve, we're done. Stop this.
00:29:36
Speaker
So that was, and I think that was where a little light bulb went off for Mark going, oh, maybe this aerobic stuff is important. I mean, obviously it needs to be combined with a level of strength. I mean, it wasn't that Steve was only going out and running below his aerobic threshold. That's not the case. But the reason we call it the base, aerobic base, is it's providing a base of support for all this other stuff.
Innovative Training and Nutrition
00:30:01
Speaker
And I think that's where the misconception comes in.
00:30:03
Speaker
It's not an end in itself necessarily. It is for some events, but in most events, it's just a support mechanism.
00:30:12
Speaker
Well, that to me has been my experience because look for the first, I don't know how many months of training it was what I'll call, um, you know, low intent, low and slow, right? For months. And what I found frustrating was not that I couldn't go faster, but what I found frustrating is that, you know, wearing a heart rate monitor and seeing where my heart rate was at such low and slow activity, it was a little,
00:30:41
Speaker
You go back to what you were saying before, it's like, okay, I'm just going to have to do the next work. I'll have faith that it's going to improve. I'm just going to keep going the next three steps, the next three weeks, whatever. But to see that eventually raise, so months and months and months of just doing aerobic base and not even being able to, and I put up chains so I could do tool pull-ups eventually because of that. It's like, okay, I'm going to get there eventually.
00:31:05
Speaker
But seeing that base eventually increase and I think we figured out in the last week or two that I think we're gonna do another aerobic threshold test soon because it looks like it has increased this will be the second increase in my threshold and then I was talking to Rebecca last week about some of the sessions that I've been having and
00:31:28
Speaker
I think I'm showing the beginnings of fat adaptation, which to me was like this like mysterious holy grail that was like, oh, only super professional athletes are going to fat adapt. But I think it's actually starting to happen for me as well, which is, is, you know, again, you go back to the conversation about being an athlete. Well, to me, the idea
00:31:50
Speaker
of being fat adapted is sort of like, it's kind of blowing my mind that that's actually starting to show signs of achieving that. So yeah, totally different from what we're taught in popular culture about what fitness is and how you achieve it.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's sort of like, it is those high intensity efforts, whether it's interval, HIIT training or the sort of muscular endurance circuit training style that CrossFit and others use. That's all great stuff, but it's kind of the frosting on the cake.
00:32:24
Speaker
In our minds, you know, it comes after you have this base as opposed to like in those they're that philosophy and in the cases of those types of Programs is they go right to the frosting. They just want to open that can of frosting and eat it right up Well, it's the sexy part right? That's the part and that's the party's like look at me lifting this weight and pushing hard and You know going low and slow for weeks at a time. That's not very sexy, right?
00:32:52
Speaker
It is not sexy. But eventually what happens is you, yeah, you're low, but you're, you're fast. Yeah. You're going, you're, you know, the heart rate's low. Your intensity feels, your perceived exertion feels low, but you're actually running faster. And we see that all the time. I have noticed that.
00:33:10
Speaker
I have noticed that in the past three weeks, literally with some of my incline treadmill work, I've noticed, wait a minute, my pace is increased. I'm feeling better. I'm not having to take in anything as I work through it. So yeah, it's funny you talk about traditional gyms and workouts and I go once a week to
00:33:32
Speaker
local global gym and they have stair masters there. And so I have to make sure I go early enough before they close down because you know, going there with a 45 pound pack and just low and slow on the treadmill for three hours and 45 minutes, which I gotta tell you the highlight, the highlight of my life, the highlight of my life was I had a, I had a call with Neil
00:33:57
Speaker
Um, cause I had some, I was kind of fanboying him cause I wanted to, you know, just, I'm going to be in Chamonix in July and I know that's where his facility is. And I just wanted to say thank you for, you know, what his contribution has done, but I also had some questions about a few things.
00:34:13
Speaker
So the highlight of my training so far is when I told him, yeah, once a week, although Jason don't tell anybody, I've missed a couple of them recently. Um, three hour and 45 minutes on the stair master with a 45 pound pack and Neil was impressed. So that's, that's the highlight. That was a big highlight for me. I'm just going to like pat myself on the back for that.
00:34:33
Speaker
It's it's it's mind-numbing work so but luckily these days we have some kind of can have media distraction of some sort to Keep our you know keep from going stir-crazy on machine like that somebody asked Somebody asked me if I've seen 14 Peaks and I said hmm eight times and
00:34:54
Speaker
That's great motivation on that machine. I mean, I think people have perhaps read the story about David risky when I was coaching David and he's a banker in Manhattan and he did all of his training in a stairwell in a tall building. And I recall one day, uh, in the procedure, I mean, he's, David's an exceptional athlete, um, and has one of only six people to have ever climbed
00:35:17
Speaker
two 8,000 meter peaks, one of them being Everest back to back within two weeks of each other without using supplemental oxygen. He's not a professional climber. But it was one particular day he did 10,000 feet in a stairwell. I mean, I think that also deserves a gold star in my book. But it can work. In fact, some of that type of training is remarkably effective
00:35:43
Speaker
Compared to let's say Going out and hiking around on rolling terrain letting you live in a place where there isn't a lot of vertical You just don't get the same effect. I mean and I think Mentally, it's much tougher to train on a treadmill or stair machine or in the stairwell Then it is to be out in a beautiful scenery moving around and so if you can handle 10,000 square 10,000 feet in a stairwell Point in the mountains is going to be kind of like a vacation
00:36:13
Speaker
I tried the stairwell here. I think there's literally no hills, very few tall buildings here. I tried the stairwell things for a few weeks and it's super hot and muggy in stairwells in Florida.
00:36:32
Speaker
I think most places, yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about your experiences. You've mentioned Rebecca a few times, and for those folks that don't know, Rebecca is our staff dietician, and she's a high-performance dietician that's worked with a lot of professional athletes, and we feel really fortunate to have her on our staff, and we do offer her services, and it sounds like you've had some remarkable experiences working with her.
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to kind of give a shout out to all of my coaches and all of my many coaches. The whole idea of coaching is very new to me. I have to be honest, it's, you know, you read and you figure it out and you do it yourself.
00:37:14
Speaker
The difference is, and I think I just want to give a plug for coaches in general, is you talk about fast tracking your learning, fast tracking your growth, and sidestepping a lot of your own mental blocks and your own lack of knowledge. So I'm really a convert to coaching now. I have three coaches.
00:37:34
Speaker
First one we mentioned is Jason Anton. He's an uphill athlete coach. And I just have to give him a shout out because he's coached me through my obsessiveness, my anxieties, many times when he's been available for me. And I think there's those moments where you doubt yourself.
00:37:54
Speaker
And for me, it's always been, am I going to be able to actually achieve and maintain? And he's really been there. I've had a number of injuries. I have bunions. I have tennis elbow. I have golf elbow. I've had shoulder pains. And he's coached me through all of that. And he's reminded me that, look, it's a long game. So I just want to give a shout out to him in terms of just how invaluable knowing that he's there monitoring, adapting my training,
00:38:20
Speaker
you know, when I have injuries. But Rebecca, I can't tell you enough about Rebecca. So there's a ton of nutritional info out there, right?
00:38:31
Speaker
we can all go on the internet and we can figure out how to eat right and you know the problem is there's so much conflicting information and it's not necessarily right for us so for me the experience with her in terms of her customization of what she's educating me about meal planning that's based on my goals how my body responds to training and how my body responds to food like we've adapted my nutritional plan a few times based on seeing like
00:38:56
Speaker
You know what, I can't eat two cups of oatmeal in the morning without feeling sluggish all morning, right? And adapting that sort of stuff specifically for how my body is responding. So she's really gotten me through a lot of plateaus. And I have to say that she's transformed my relationship to food, my emotional relationship to food, my relationship to my body.
00:39:19
Speaker
my relationship to sport and seeing much more clearly the intersection between nutrition and sport performance and improvement and growth. Just this past week, I had a really interesting experience with her. For the past two weeks with my wall climbing training, I've been pumping out really fast.
00:39:39
Speaker
And I couldn't figure out what was going on. I had a few ideas. And so she looked at my nutritional tracking and said, well, you're not eating enough. You're not properly fueling with carbohydrates the day of and during. And it's sort of like, well, duh, I know that, but I had lost sight of that because I've been so focused on weight loss.
00:40:01
Speaker
So she said, look, do this, eat this here, eat that here, have a little bit of goo during session and drink some water. And I just had the best wall session that I've had like ever. I was, you know, amazed. So much stronger than previous, you know, topping out.
00:40:23
Speaker
movement, efficiency, not getting pumped. And so having her, you know, I'll say as part of my coaching team, if you will, has made all the difference for me. We're working right now, she and I, on developing, given what I'm going to be doing in February, May and July, I have a trips plan, developing an approach to my nutrition during those trips. And she said something really interesting that I think you would appreciate is she said, look,
00:40:50
Speaker
When you're doing the approaches, make sure that you are not getting into your threshold at all. Go low and slow because then you're going to be pulling from fat reserves and not carbohydrate reserves because you're going to need those carbs when you climb. I was like, that seems so obvious, but I had never thought of it that way. She's amazing. I can't tell you enough about her.
00:41:13
Speaker
I'm actually super excited too because we've clicked so well that I'm now collaborating with her and consulting her on her business and her client experience design. So we're kind of helping each other with our expertise and that's super exciting.
00:41:31
Speaker
That's great. Yeah, that is good. But that conserving of the carbohydrate stores or glycogen stores more correctly, that should be the key for almost any endurance athlete because there will come a time in virtually every endurance event
00:41:50
Speaker
where you need those be able to dig into that glycogen storage and you know for that fast and high-powered kind of kicking in the afterburner so to speak but if you've already drained that you know glycogen tank
00:42:05
Speaker
somewhere earlier in the event, then when you go there, there's, you might push down on the gas pedal, but nothing happens. And I know you talked about this in one of the earlier uphill athlete podcasts. So when she told me about this, I was like, ah, duh, you know, I should know this already. But sometimes you have to experience it. And that really drives that lesson home. And that's where a coach, at least that's where my coaches have really helped me to see like, well, this is what's happening. You remember that thing we talked about? Here it is.
00:42:35
Speaker
And who's the third?
00:42:37
Speaker
Okay. So Janelle Smiley, um, I don't know if some of, you know, us have heard of, uh, Janelle and Mark Smiley. So I don't even know how to describe Janelle. So she's, um, she's a five time national ski mountaineering champion. Um, you know, she did the first female ascent of the south face of Mount Lonington and her and her husband Mark were the first to climb all 50 classic climbs in North America. I think they did 48 summits of those 50 because
00:43:07
Speaker
danger issues. I call her, I don't know how she would like this, but I call her my spiritual, psychological performance coach. Janelle, just as also people to get a little better feel, they don't know about Janelle. Janelle did write a really wonderful essay for us in training for the uphill athlete. So people can go there to read that and see a little more about her.
00:43:30
Speaker
I first really, I knew of her, but I first really came across her on the Enormo cast. Chris Galucid interviewed her and Mark. And at the very end of that interview, they talk about, well, what do you do? And she said this thing, and I'm not going to quote it correctly, but she said, you know, I work with people to experience their life and to perform better in their life coming from a place of love for a thing not out of fear.
00:43:58
Speaker
And I had a recent experience with her that typifies this. So our last conversation, we were talking about my efforts to prep for my trip that's coming up and packing for my trip.
00:44:10
Speaker
And she pulled out something that I was kind of aware of, but not really aware of, that I'd become so overly focused on performance and goals. I want to get up this climb. I want to do all these climbs. I want to get to this level of fitness and this weight.
00:44:29
Speaker
And it was something that I had been feeling, and I think it's easy, and you talk a lot about type A personalities pushing, pushing, pushing, and being too robotically focused on following the program, right? And I've done that to the point of injury.
00:44:45
Speaker
But she was right. I've been mentally setting myself up for frustration and stress. I've been too focused on tracking my exact meals, doing the exact training program, watching the scale, planning for the exact specific schedule of climbs that I want to achieve. And she said, look, don't, and I'm never going to forget this, don't drown your joy.
00:45:10
Speaker
Why do you want to go out and climb? Is it to tick off all these climbs or do you go out because of the love of it? So realize you may not achieve your goals and you can still have those as goals, but go out and enjoy the moment and be in that moment. Because when you think about it being in that moment, that flow state, that's when we actually do achieve our goals.
00:45:32
Speaker
But when we get so hung up on the goal, it sets us up for failure. So amazing. Every time she pulls something out and I'm like, she's just kind of digging inside my psyche and my soul. And so for me, Rebecca, Jason, Janelle, it's sort of like, you know,
The Role of Coaching in Climbing
00:45:51
Speaker
my nutrition, my fitness, and my mental state are properly coached. You've got a great sort of tripod of support there. That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. It feels a little overkill, honestly. I come from very middle class family. We just kind of, we mow our own lawn, we fix our own cars, right? And so it feels a little like, it feels a little bougie overkill.
00:46:17
Speaker
But it works, it works. I mean, Steve and I, the business has grown. Initially, we just were doing this all out of our own back pocket. We didn't know anything about
00:46:35
Speaker
this kind of a business. We knew something about training and climbing, but we really didn't know anything about this type of business. And as it's grown, we have finally come to realize that we can't fix our own car every time. You know, there's some stuff we can do, but there's a lot of stuff that we really is over out of our
00:46:54
Speaker
the realm of our knowledge and our skill set, and our skills are better used doing something else, like in your case, working on advertising. And in our case, coaching people and developing the products that we know will work for folks. And when we need help on the business end of things,
00:47:12
Speaker
We've stumbled around and into blind alleys and talked to the wrong people and gotten the wrong advice. Eventually, we tracked down people that really work well for us and come to realize that, yeah, there's a time when you do need to just take your car to the mechanic because you can't fix it.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, I've been in that exact and am in the exact same situation that you and Steve are in. My career was as a creative director in advertising and branding agencies, and I had the opportunity to open my own shop, which I kind of always wanted to do. But
00:47:46
Speaker
You talk about that love and fear balance. I was always afraid of doing so. But I did it. And you're right. I feel like I'm a pretty decent creative director. But business, it seems like every year, every quarter, I'm learning something new where it's like, oh, yeah. That's the better way to fix things. And a lot of times, it's by getting outside perspective. And I think that's one thing where I'm really enjoying working with Rebecca.
00:48:16
Speaker
Um, because I'm able to get deep into what she does, which I have a lot of respect and passion for, you know, her, her whole, um, you know, focus on, you know, uh, I'm probably not going to say the right phrase, but you know, dietician consulting and coaching. And then I can bring what I do, which is, you know, branding and customer experience design for
00:48:39
Speaker
from my work at Shameless Plug Studio BCC. And I can bring that into this conversation. And we kind of collaborate back and forth in a way where that ultimate, hopefully where the ultimate product ends yields the best of both expertise. So yeah, you're exactly right with what you're saying. Don't fix your own car.
00:49:05
Speaker
unless you're really good at it. Unless you're a mechanic and then you're probably too busy fixing other people's cars. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Sort of like the, you know, the, it's the, what are they used to say? The cobbler's kids who run around without any shoes on. Yeah. Yeah. Well you and I, I want to touch on one other thing cause I want to Scott, just, you know, thank you and appreciate you for a moment that I had with you recently. Um, I'm, I'm going to Chamonix for like a week and a half in July.
00:49:33
Speaker
And I really wanted to get out and climb with a specific guide, Kevin Avery from True North Alpine, who actually happens to be Rebecca's husband. And the schedule doesn't permit me any acclimatization time. I'm going to do an international flight, land in Geneva, go to Chamonix,
00:49:54
Speaker
And the next day we're going to go out. Now I understand that Kevin's really good at helping, you know, foolhardy people like myself acclimatize. But I got really anxious about, look, I put in this past year of really intense physical training, a lot of investment.
Preparing for Chamonix Climbing
00:50:11
Speaker
I had to kind of regear myself. Um, and so I didn't want this one thing to stand in the way.
00:50:18
Speaker
So I had read your guys article on, um, I think it was from 2018 about, you know, uh, hypoxia training. And I thought, you know what? That was a while ago. I wonder if they have another perspective. So I just shot you an email and I was kind of surprised you emailed me back the next day and was like, yeah, let's have a phone call and I'll tell you what we know.
00:50:36
Speaker
And so I just want to let you know, I appreciate you being so available for that. We talked it through and realized that, and you could probably talk to it better than I can, but I've actually have a tent coming. I want to give a shout out to Chad at Hypoxia. He gave me a deal. So I have a tent coming and we're going to see if that helps.
00:51:00
Speaker
Well, in fact, I'm really glad that you did send me that email and that we did have that talk because I feel humble enough to admit that I don't know it all at all. I'm not pretending to be the font of all wisdom. There are some of these things that I think I have a pretty darn good handle on and other stuff that I'm still learning about.
00:51:23
Speaker
And so this prompted me, your email and then our call prompted me to start rethinking our approach to the use of hypoxic training or in most cases, this is sleeping, not training, but sleeping in a tent.
00:51:44
Speaker
And getting ready to sort of do a rewrite and a revision on those two articles that we wrote some time ago. I mean, I think the fundamentals of those articles is still true. When we wrote that, we had
00:52:00
Speaker
fairly limited, you know, mostly personal experience with using Hypoxico tent. I own one. Steve has used one. We both use them in preparation for climbing in Tibet. We did in 2001.
00:52:16
Speaker
But it was fairly limited and there's a lot of studies that have been done on those things, most of it pertaining to how they affect conventional athletes training to compete at low elevations, sleeping high and racing low.
00:52:33
Speaker
But since that time, we've literally dealt with hundreds of people using these hypoxico tents for pre-acclamicizing. And it's allowed me, I think especially because I'm kind of on the forefront of that. And that's one of the things that really interests me is trying to figure this stuff out. How could we most effectively use these? Anecdotally, they do seem to work for some people, I would say. For other people, they don't work as well.
00:53:02
Speaker
So I'm planning to rewrite those articles and probably do a little podcast for about this because I think there's, there is, maybe there's not new information. The main, the way I would describe it is there's a nuanced approach to using these things. There's places where they work, there's times when they work and there's times when they'd be wasted money or probably not going to do much for you and you'd be better off to focus on the training.
00:53:30
Speaker
So I think that kind of exchange that you and I just had was really stimulating for me And so, you know don't it's a two-way street there Brian we didn't you know, we were you asked some great questions I mean, it's the same thing I find on the forum on the website people, you know writing in questions and make me go hmm scratch my head I haven't I haven't thought about it that way or I have never had that kind of an issue pop up for me How do we address it?
00:53:56
Speaker
I'm still in a state of continual learning and it would be really boring if I thought I knew it all. The way I feel, there's still so much to figure out.
00:54:11
Speaker
both rewarding but also fun for me to engage with a much wider population of athletes. In the past, my experience was primarily dealing with a handful of very high-level world-class athletes, which is great. It's fun to work with them. It's fun to see their results.
00:54:30
Speaker
But it's a narrow sliver of the spectrum that you're looking at and now having these last six or seven years, having worked now with literally thousands of more recreational athletes and then seeing what they're dealing with and how they deal.
00:54:47
Speaker
how they handle their things that come up for them and the questions that arise for them. They're often different than what I was used to in the past and I don't have a pat answer for everything. So that's been really fun for me to be kind of pushed in that direction.
00:55:04
Speaker
One of the things that you mentioned makes me think that this is new learning, new experiences, right? And it reveals bit by bit a deeper understanding of an issue. This is something that we seem to have forgotten about science in our culture today.
00:55:21
Speaker
that it is a learning. Yeah. Yes. Um, but I think, I think for me, the conversation that I had with Neil supported the like, okay, he's seen some people have some results and then in you and I talking about it, it's like, okay, given the window and the altitude that I'm going to be at my situation that it has the potential to be helpful. Um, you know, knowing me, I'm going to be obsessive about taking notes and having a diary of, you know, how I prepare and what happens. And so, you know, obviously I'm going to, you know,
00:55:51
Speaker
feed that back to you. Hopefully that will help. But I think for me, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound, it was like, that's one thing I don't want to have stand in my way. And what can I do to control it? I can be as, you know, I can have as strong of a cardio base as I can, you know, I can have, you know, as much muscular endurance as I can at that point. And then maybe this will just tip the odds in my favor.
00:56:15
Speaker
Well, I think in your case, it will be beneficial. Yours is one of those cases, and we don't need to go into great detail because then I won't have anything to talk about on that podcast about hypoxic training. But when you are going from Florida, sea level, to being at 4,000 meters three days later, that's where these tents can, I think, really pay off because if you show up,
00:56:43
Speaker
Lack of acclimatization will mask fitness dramatically. We often hear from people who do live at very low elevations and then they go to climb some bigger mountain and they go, what happened to my fitness? I just felt terrible up there. I just had no, couldn't move, didn't have any, just felt like I hadn't trained at all.
00:57:02
Speaker
And it's not fitness. Fitness doesn't go away in three days. What happened is you moved from sea level to 12,000 feet and obviously performance was going to drop dramatically and it did and you felt terrible. And it does feel like you're not fit. And so I think taking the step that you're taking is a wise one, especially you're going to invest a bunch of money and time.
00:57:27
Speaker
You want to go over there and not only, you want to enjoy it, first of all, but you also want to get the most out of that time that you're spending with the guide. Yeah. And I think too, you know, I have memories ringing from when I lived in Manhattan and I took a trip to the Sierra Nevadas to do some climbing there and we didn't have much time to acclimatize either. And I was amazed at how much it kicked my butt.
00:57:52
Speaker
Yeah, it does everybody you're you know, we're all that way so it's you know, we're You adapt to the elevation you live at and there's there really no there's no other way other than I mean natural acclimatization I will give this away be also going to be part of my podcast natural acclimatization will always beat artificial acclimatization in every case i've seen
00:58:15
Speaker
So, but most people just don't have time to take those three weeks or whatever to really get pretty acclimatized to the altitude. Well, I think this is maybe one of the reasons that I'm going to just, when I go to Chamonix, I'm just going to stay there. I'll just like, all right, I'm done. I'm now in Chamonix. I'm not leaving.
00:58:34
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Well, that was certainly my first experience when I arrived in Chamonix, got off the train and looked up at those mountains. And I just went, I never going back, never going home. This is incredible. It's like climbing paradise right here. And it really is a beautiful spot, one of the nicest mountain terrains, I think. And certainly, it's sort of like there are more beautiful or as beautiful and spectacular places.
00:59:01
Speaker
but not ones that you can ride a trail up to or, you know, be driven in a car or train to right in the middle of the valley. I'm thinking, you know, the Charakusa Valley in Pakistan and the Bal Toro in Pakistan, a few places like that that are equally striking, but much more remote, hard to get to.
Brian's Dual Career & Teaching Insights
00:59:22
Speaker
Yeah. And there's fondue in Chamonix, too. Yes, exactly. Yeah, great restaurants. And yeah, no, it's a nice place to do these kind of activities if you can swing it. Well, O'Brien, I want to be respectful of your time. I know you're a busy guy. Remind me, I know you teach some classes, too. Tell me about that a little bit. Oh, yeah, yeah. So
00:59:46
Speaker
So I'm also an adjunct professor, seems funny for me to say. I'm an adjunct instructor at the Ringling College of Art and Design. Fairly well-known, globally, art and design school. So I teach in their design department, primarily junior and senior level studio classes. It's kind of something that, you know, I've done some lecturing and some sort of guest teaching over the course of my career.
01:00:13
Speaker
And it's something that I kind of stumbled into just about the time that I opened the agency. And it's, I absolutely love it. You know, I have a passion for design and for what I do. And, you know, every semester it's a new and interesting adventure because, you know, there's new students.
01:00:34
Speaker
You know, for me, it's that whole thing about trying to prepare them for the real world because typically college education, you're learning your craft, but they don't prepare you as much. And I'm not sure you can be fully prepared for the real world until you go out into it. But I think that's a big part of my focus with my students is getting ready to actually do what you do in the real world with all the business constraints and issues.
01:00:58
Speaker
And I'm sure you have grown a great deal and learned a great deal by teaching. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. I actually this past semester just taught a course in a different department. And it was really eye opening for me. The students had a totally different orientation. The class was differently focused. And so it's a lot like with
01:01:22
Speaker
you know, the training that I've been doing with uphill athlete, you know, totally, you know, in different way, opened my eyes, you know, about nutrition, about fitness, same way, you know, something that I'd never done before in terms of this other course. So yeah, being able to pass on some knowledge while you're also learning yourself.
01:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, that is, I think, super rewarding. For me, it's been one of the most rewarding parts of uphill athlete is the process of learning. I've always been a lifelong learner and like to be challenged with different things. And this is afforded that opportunity. I think you learn as much from the students, or in my case, the uphill athlete audience, asking these questions and pushing me on certain subjects. And I know I'm
01:02:09
Speaker
I'm a better, more knowledgeable coach than I was 20 years ago, for sure. I wish I'd done some of this stuff when I was coaching Olympians. I understood it in this kind of way, the way I understand it now.
01:02:25
Speaker
I feel the same way about running the agency, about teaching at the college and about this training. It's like, I wish I would have done all of this ages ago and known, but you come to it in your own moment. But I do really agree with what you're saying in terms of teaching something is the best way to learn it. Yeah, I do. I agree. Yeah, absolutely.
01:02:47
Speaker
Well, this has been a fun hour, Brian. It's really passed very quickly. I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a very busy guy. Definitely. And hopefully we can do something like this again. I want to hear about maybe we'll do something when you get back from Chamonix. We can talk about how your acclimatization, your pre-aclimatization program worked for you. What did and what didn't work?
01:03:12
Speaker
I'm super interested to see how that's gonna go. And again, I appreciate you having me on, Scott, because for me, we always look at these athletes who are professionals and they're constantly out there doing the thing. And I think one of the potential hurdles of a recreational athlete is to go, well, that's not really me. But I'm here to say that if you approach it with your own athlete mindset, the goals are attainable. You gotta work for them, but they're attainable.
01:03:41
Speaker
That's a great way to top this conversation off. Thanks a lot, Brian. Super appreciate it. And we'll be in touch. We'll plan on another one of these later. Excellent. Thanks so much, Scott. Yeah, thank you, Brian. Bye. Thanks for joining us today. For more information about what we do, please go to our website, uphillathlete.com.