Features guest Joel Jamieson of www.8weeksout.com
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Robb Wolf is a former research biochemist and 2X New York Times/Wall Street Journal Best-selling author of The Paleo Solution and Wired To Eat. Along with Diana Rodgers, he co-authored the book, Sacred Cow, which explains why well-raised meat is good for us and good for the planet. Robb has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world via his top-ranked iTunes podcast, books, and seminars. He also co-founded the 1st and 4th CrossFit affiliate gyms in the world, The Healthy Rebellion community platform, and is the co-founder of DrinkLMNT Electrolytes.
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I have been enjoying the podcast for several months now and I have to say I was pretty excited to hear about Joel training the Roller Derby girls!
P.S. those Lingerie Football girls wouldn’t stand a chance against the Roller Derby girls. =D
Great interview, always love to hear what Joel Jamieson has to say about training. Thanks for taking the time to do this….
I’ve played with HRV on and off for a couple years, and talked a lot about it with Mike T. Nelson who has done a ton of HRV research.
Frankly, I just don’t find it that useful and I’ll give you an example of why. I’ve been back on the daily HRV testing for a few weeks now, just to play around and gather more data.
Last Saturday I had a USAWA meet. I hadn’t trained up for it because I knew I would be the sole judge, so I didn’t expect to compete.
Monday – Moderately heavy. Hang cleans, bench, one-hand DL, kb pressing.
Tuesday – Very heavy. Max rack pulls, yoke walks, deadlifts, barbell push press.
Wednesday – Felt crushed, knew I would take the day off.
Thursday- Unexpectedly felt demolished, didn’t want to take the day off but I did.
Friday – Felt good, so I did some moderately heavy squats and pull-ups.
Saturday, meet day, another judge showed up so I was able to compete. I pulled a world-record 605 jefferson deadlift, several other PRs, and locked out a 148lb inch dumbbell replica for 15 seconds that I can normally not even break off the floor.
BioForce HRV (ithlete was similar) over those 6 days? Mon: 56, 58, 53, Thursday: 48, Friday: 62 Saturday: 66. Thursday was red.
My point is, obviously HRV correlated with my state, but I wasn’t paying attention to it. I took 2 days off because I felt like I needed to, and went back to training & competing when I felt ready. I think that if you’re not sensitive to your own states, HRV could be a good tool to sensitize you to what you should already be feeling. But if you’re paying attention, all it does is tell you what you already know. I haven’t had an experience yet where HRV gave me a piece of data I didn’t already have in another form.
Apologies if that was too long winded.
Good stuff, much appreciated.
ddn,
You’re absolutely right that athletes and people that are very much in tune with how their bodies react and how they feel will be much better at regulating training appropriately without HRV, but the reality is many people, the vast majority in my experience over many years, simply don’t pay attention to how they feel and don’t regulate training until it’s too late. I would also say your own case demonstrates very well why HRV should be used, you used a loading on Monday & Tuesday that “unexpectedly” left you feeling demolished two days later.
When you use HRV effectively, you can get a much better feel of what loading is appropriate so that you’re not having to take two days off, one of them unexpectedly, and the fact that you hit a red two days after you had trained suggests your loading was well above what it should have been. This is not effective program management by any means.
What if it was an athlete that didn’t have the option of taking the second day off? Then they’re in the red, still trashed two days after training and they have to go out and practice or perform at at high level, that’s exactly how injuries happen and what HRV can help prevent. What if it was someone that was taught they should push through “feeling demolished” on thursday and figured that since they took wednesdy off that they should get back in the gym and get back to work?
If your general training program is to crush yourself, take a couple days off and do it again, then HRV will be of less use than if you’re taking a more nuanced approach to management, but I think that more than anything else, your example shows that HRV correlates very well to training readiness and why it’s important to pay close attention to how your body is responding to loading.
HRV sounds like an interesting tool, the followup with some training data from Robb and Greg should be even better. Found it interesting that resting HR takes so long to show a change while heart rate variability will show it more quickly.
HR monitoring in general has been most useful in helping me go slow when I mean to go slow. It is so easy to push too hard when I intend to do a recovery workout at 70% max heart rate, and the HRM is the lie detector that keeps me in that recovery zone.
Would love to hear more from Joel about an athlete case study with a couple example workouts and modifications he made based on HRV data.
Fantastic podcast this week!
I would love to hear some ideas for training Ultimate Frisbee players!
Good stuff! I took the test from Joel’s program and wished there was a version for women; have no idea where I am compared to other female athletes. Similarly, I tried to follow the programs in the book but found it really challenging to take all the information and figure out how to turn it into an actual training program. Looking forward to more!
Looking to buy the book on Amazon to read on my kindle Fire for the plane ride home from Florida this Sunday night but doesn’t even seem to be available on Amazon even in paper back and only available through Joe’s site?
Holy capital I capital M Internet Marketing highlighter brigade. That is some intense marketing Joe! Tell me you don’t have your black-belt in Direct Mail Marketing? “AIDA” indeed!
Bottom line from the reviews i’m finding around the net… sounds like an A++ must read. Just going to have to wait a week I guess!
lol Joel* not Joe.
What is the official title of Joel’s book? Is it 8weeksout or the Ultimate Guide to Winning the Conditioning War?
Thanks
Arturo
I just listened to this podcast this morning, as I took a walk, which I’m doing a lot of as I recover from last Tuesday’s surgery to remove my pacemaker. I wish I could sum up my story in such a way as to convey the depth of reaction I had to this podcast, but I think that’s more writing that anyone wants to read. Instead let me give my heartfelt agreement/endorsement on the ideas Joel talks about here. I truly wish I had stumbled across this stuff about 15 years ago.
Starting in my mid-20’s, I found lots of creative ways to beat myself up, and discovered the hard way that you really can stress your body to the point of non-responsiveness. At 37 my hr was dropping into the 30’s, and I got a pacemaker, but it didn’t help because it didn’t address what got me there in the first place. I finally figured that part out, and I managed to convince the doctors to remove the pm, a year and a half later. Which was last Tuesday.
So, shoot. I guess I’m saying thanks for the podcast, Robb, and that boy is this good information. I know there are lots of people like ddn out there that already know how to listen to themselves, but maybe this would really help those people like me, that tend to put themselves into situations where you’re always overriding what your body’s saying.
Right on Melanie! Glad it was helpful.
Where can I purchase the 8 weeks out book? Not finding it on the 8 weeks out website. Thanks
Can we get an update on where we can get the book? it sounds great but I couldn’t find it.
Great interview as usual, think I will add the book to my Christmas list. Thanks Robb!
You bet! joel is awesome, love his work. Even if it kicks me out of my strength-only comfort zone!
Hey!
I’m currently trying to recover from post-viral fatigue (EBV) that I got back in March 2012, and was wondering if getting a HRV monitor might be useful..
Do any of you have any experience with using HRV in the other end of the scale, for knowing which days it’s ok to go for a short/long walk without getting a setback etc?
I presume it will in either case be useful when getting past this worst hurdle and starting to train back into shape again without a relapse..
Thanks for all the great info!
Maybe it’s time to get Joel back on again and talk about Robb and Greg’s experience with the HRV? (Or has it already been done already?)
should have a 24/7 streaming URL of maybe your last show or last few shows so that we can just add the URL to our media players or radio players. there are streaming companies that offer pretty reasonable plans last i checked and very convenient to keep track of the show that way 🙂
thx