It’s time for Episode 443, Q&A #36!
Submit your own questions for the podcast at: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/
Individual question videos are linked in each question title, but if you want to see the complete video for this podcast, be sure to check out our YouTube channel.
Show Notes:
1. Carb Ups/Cycling For Women? [2:53]
Shelly says::
Hi! I am new to your page and it seems like you would be a very knowledgeable and kind person to ask. I’m sure you get a ton of questions, so I’ll make it short. I’ve been successful with keto in the past but now that I’m back on it, cannot lose. I’ve been told my body is used to it and to give it time. My question is about carbing up as I’ve heard it’s necessary for women because of hormones, etc. Carbing up is more complicated for me, but if needed to be healthy I could do it. What are your thoughts on women needed higher carbs at times? Thanks in advance!
Shelly
2. Right Diet For Better Body Composition? [7:38]
Jack says:
I just watched your video on body composition from fasting. You touched on the component of heavy workload in modern athletic people and how their diet should reflect that. I am athletic fit. I train 5-6 days out of the week. Lifting weights, boxing, BJJ/wrestling, and am currently training for a half marathon. I do all this and still can’t get my body comp where I’d like it. I eat relatively low carb but have upped them recently for the HM training. Before the summer I did 20% deficit and IMF for 5 or so months and got myself into around the 10-11% body fat range. Then I went off on vacation and have been eating around maintenance since. Point is I still can’t get my body composition how I want it. I have abs but fat around my mid section and on the sides. What am I doing wrong? Male 6ft 185.
3. Junk Food = Vision Loss? [11:08]
Levi says:
Hey Robb & Nicki,
Recently, a story has been circulating about a teen losing his vision from a “junk food” diet–namely, he was eating a predominately carbohydrate diet, full of chips, fries, bread, and cold cuts. Since hearing this, I have been curious: is this actually possible to lose vision (other suffer other ailments) from a junk food laden diet? What happens if someone goes on an-almost all carb diet? I would love your input.
Here is the article I am referencing: https://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20190903/teens-fussy-junk-food-diet-leaves-him-blind#1
4. Keto and Histamine Intolerance? [21:01]
Christie says:
Hi Robb and Nikki! Hoping you can help me. I am eating a dairy free, nut free, ketogenic diet (for leaky gut and inflammation purposes) I track macros utilizing the Ketogains method. I am experiencing what I believe to be a pretty intense histamine intolerance and have been for the past year and a half. I can’t figure out what to eat! Keto foods seem to be predominantly high in histamine. I love Keto. I feel incredible when I eat this way. I am already taking DAO and Quercitin. I don’t drink alcohol at the moment nor do I consume fermented foods. Can you please shed some light on how someone with a histamine intolerance can navigate their way through keto? I am at a loss and feeling pretty discouraged. Thank you to you both for all the important work you do and your continuous accessibility.
5. Home Gym Setup? [26:50]
Bill says:
Hi Robb,
I’m finally ready to take the plunge and invest in some equipment for a home gym. I cleared some clutter in the garage so I’ve got a bit of space…not a ton, but enough I think for a few choice items. My question is what are your must haves for home gym equipment, that ideally doesn’t take a ton of space?
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Submit questions for the podcast: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/
Transcript:
Download a copy of the transcript here (PDF)
Robb: We’re on the air, babe. What’s new with you?
Nicki: Oh, you know. Just chop wood, carry water. That’s a daily…
Robb: Chop husband, bury body.
Nicki: That’s a daily task. We had our first scorpion sting.
Robb: We did, yes. Zoe was lounging around in her bedroom.
Nicki: She was playing and she said she felt something crawl on her leg. So she stood up, and then I just heard screaming. “Help, help!” She was screaming.
Robb: Of course, I was out of the house when this happened, so.
Nicki: I’m like, “Oh my gosh. What’s going on?” I run down there and she’s on one leg, leaning against the wall with her other leg in the air, and I see that little thing crawling along the carpet. So that was eventful.
Robb: We dispatched that guy. The vegans can-
Nicki: He got dispatched.
Robb: Go chase.
Nicki: Apparently, baking soda and water paste helps.
Robb: Thank you Kate Welbourn.
Nicki: Thanks to Kate Welbourn. She gave me that pro tip, and Zoe said she felt like she got zapped. So apparently, I mean I’ve never been stung, but apparently we’ve heard this from other people that it feels more like a-
Robb: Kirk Parsley got zinged by one also, and he said it felt like an electrical shock.
Nicki: More like an electrical shock than a sting.
Robb: Luckily, the scorpions in Texas are not like the Scorpions in most of Arizona-
Nicki: Arizona.
Robb: And New Mexico, which are apparently fatal and require a $50,000 dollar-
Nicki: We wouldn’t have moved here if that was the type of scorpion, but yeah. So that was an exciting detail.
Robb: Zoe had been bragging pretty vigorously.
Nicki: She’s the only one that hasn’t been bit by a red ant, a fire ant, yet so she’s like, “I’ve never been bit by an ant, I’ve never been bit by an ant.” All the rest of us have, and then she got hit by a scorpion.
Robb: Well, and this is all in pretty stark contrast to Reno, which is so dry that there’s just nothing alive there.
Nicki: Right.
Robb: So, there were no bugs.
Nicki: Right, right, right.
Robb: Okay, so.
Nicki: Ready to-
Robb: As interesting as all that is, I doubt that folks showed up for much of that.
Nicki: They might be curious.
Robb: Although maybe a little bit of that. They might be, but we still like the area.
Nicki: Yeah, we do.
Robb: So, so far so good.
Nicki: So far.
Robb: Yeah, yeah.
Nicki: All right, let’s see. This week our first question we have is from Shelly on carb ups and cycling for women. She says, “Hi. I’m new to your page and it seems like you would be a very knowledgeable and kind person to ask.”
Robb: Clearly she hasn’t followed us very long.
Nicki: “I’m sure you get a ton of questions, so I’ll make it short. I’ve been successful with keto in the past, but then now that I’m back on it, I cannot lose weight. I’ve been told my body is used to it and to give it time. The question is about carbing up as I’ve heard it’s necessary for women because of hormones. Carbing up is more complicated for me but if I needed it to be healthy, I could do it. What are your thoughts on women needing higher carbs at times?”
Robb: Man, this is an interesting one to unpack because we cruise over to our good friends Tyler and Luis at Ketogains and they have tens of thousands of women following their protocols and they’re not exploding into fits of adrenal burnout and thyroid downregulation and whatnot. I think a big part of that is that people are really on point with electrolytes-
Nicki: Electrolytes, yeah.
Robb: Within their stewardship. That said, and there’s going to be a little bit of a common theme here, with leaning out we do need a caloric deficit. So, by hook or by crook we kind of have to figure that out. One of the things, multiple things interesting within that Ketogains community, mainly women. 85% women, 30 to 55, something like that. So, you would think that they would be right in that strike zone where they would be the most prone to having problems, but they are on point with protein, they’re on point with electrolytes, and people are continually stunned by how few calories they need to eat to be at their caloric deficit, or even a maintenance. We’ve talked about this on other shows previously and not everybody is like this, but Luis is several inches shorter than I am, about 10 pounds heavier than I am, and he runs 1,600, 1,800 calories a day, which doesn’t make sense on the one hand.
Robb: I’ve actually made the case, and I’ve talked to Tyler and Luis and some other people, that because of some thermodynamic efficiencies with keto and low carb in general, you may not need as many calories as what the standard recommendations make. This is all out there crazy talk stuff. There is no randomized controlled trial supporting this, but it’s just an observation that people who eat a generally whole, unprocessed diet, particularly on the lower carb side generally seem to need fewer calories. Now there are people, we know a guy, Ken, who is similar dimensions to Luis and he needs to eat 4,500 calories a day for maintenance. So, there are outliers out there. Again, it seems like Luis is eating far too many calories, and then it seems like is eating far too many calories.
Robb: All of that said, I don’t know that leaning out specifically is going to be made or broken by the addition of carbs. Shelly-
Nicki: The thing that sticks out to me is we don’t know what her macros are. Shelly, she says she’s new to your page so she could be following a keto protocol from somebody else on the interwebs that’s very fat centric and very low protein, because we’ve seen this a lot in people that have come over to the Keto Masterclass. They’re astonished at the amount of protein that you recommend.
Robb: Right.
Nicki: So, one of the first things that sticks out to me is that she needs to make sure that she’s focusing on protein and using fat as a lever, not fat as a means of getting into ketosis.
Robb: Right. Great, fantastic point. Then even though I’ve been singing the praises of the Ketogains folks, they do oftentimes move women and athletes in general to higher carb levels at some point. This is just stuff that they play with. Usually it’s for folks that are doing more glycolytically demanding sports and they just generally feel good at that higher carbohydrate intake level. So, I’m not saying that you absolutely should not increase carbohydrate, but simply increasing carbohydrate may not be the way that you fix what’s ailing. We definitely need, if the goal is to lean out, we need a caloric deficit. To Nicki’s point, probably the best way to facilitate that is making sure that you’re on point with protein. Then really getting in and using something like the Keto Masterclass or the Ketogains macronutrient calculator to get a good idea of what the appropriate caloric level is to say nothing of the overall macronutrients. Anything else? Could I beat that one to death further, or is that pretty good?
Nicki: No, I think that’s good. Let’s see, our next question is from Jack. He is wondering what the right diet is for his body composition. Jack says, “I just watched your video on body composition from fasting. You touched on the component of heavy workload in modern athletic people and how their diet should reflect that. I’m athletic and fit. I train five to six days out of the week lifting weights, boxing, BJJ, wrestling, and I’m currently training for a half marathon. I do all this and I still can’t get my body comp where I’d like it. I eat relatively low carb and have upped them recently for the half marathon training. Before the summer, I did 20% deficit and intermittent fasting for five or so months and got myself into the 10% to the 11% body fat range. Then I went off on vacation. I’ve been eating around maintenance since. Point is, I still can’t get my body composition how I want it. I have abs but fat around my midsection and on the sides. What am I doing wrong? I’m a male, six feet and 185 pounds.”
Robb: What do you think is going on here, wife?
Nicki: I think this guy is over training.
Robb: Might be some over training.
Nicki: When Glassman used to mention that fat aerobics instructor training five to six days a week, BJJ, wrestling, lifting, boxing, half marathon. So, there’s clearly a lot of stress from training and work output.
Robb: A significant amount of work output going on there, yeah. There’s a reality that if you want to be really, really lean, you may not be at a body … Now, some people score the genetic lottery where they’re super lean and they have great performance but a lot of people, they find that their best performance is at a body composition that is, for men, around that 8% to 11% range and women 3, 4, 5 points higher than that. So, this is where if you want to look like a fitness model, then you need lower work volume. Two potential things here. Guy may be over training, over exercising, which is causing the stress response.
Robb: Then also this circles back to that point of generally if you want to lean out, you’ve got to have some amount of a caloric deficit. So if we’re not affecting that, then we need to figure out some way to get that appropriate caloric deficit, which like in the previous question, really be protein centric. Then figure out, are you fat or carb fueled, or a little bit of a mixture of both?
Nicki: How’s your sleep? Sleep can really affect body composition.
Robb: How’s your sleep? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, clearly.
Nicki: If you’re training in the evening, that can affect how you sleep and how you recover.
Robb: Which is why it’s taken me 20 years to get to nearly a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Nicki: Because we don’t train at night.
Robb: Because I don’t train at night or very, very rarely. So yeah, those are all factors and again, this is where you have to pick your poison or the primary goal. If the basic training is the thing that’s driving you forward but that training may be antagonistic toward the body composition, then the body composition is a secondary goal. If you just want to be lean, then we may need to modify the timing, the volume, the intensity of the training to have a sufficiently low enough stress response going into your body to afford the body saying, “Okay, I’ll run at a lower body fat level.” Or, at least do it in a way that’s reasonably easy. Yeah.
Nicki: Okay. Let’s see. We have a question from Levi on losing your vision when eating junk food. “Recently, a story has been circulating about a teen losing his vision from a junk food diet. Namely, he was eating a predominantly carbohydrate diet full of chips, fries, bread, and cold cuts. Since hearing this, I’ve been curious. Is that actually possible to lose your vision or suffer other ailments from a junk food laden diet? What happens if someone goes on an almost,” I’m assuming he means almost all carb diet, because it just says an almost carb diet. “I would love your input.”
Robb: Yeah. Gosh, a lot of different things that I’m thinking about here. If we just look at the situation that people face in developing countries, particularly if there’s a natural disaster and people don’t have access to their more traditional foods. They just get a bunch of corn or rice distributed to them, these people can end up in nutrient deficiencies and blindness due to a lack of adequate vitamin A, is still a global problem. A significant global problem. There were some genetic engineering attempts around creating I think it’s called a golden rice, which is a type of rice that has a little bit of an orange hue to it, which contains beta carotene. The Weston A Price folks will freak out. They’re like, “Beta carotene doesn’t convert perfectly.” No it doesn’t, but it also is enough to prevent blindness in these people. So, this is where good enough may be in fact good enough but yeah, if you sufficiently strip the nutrients out of a diet, this is the inevitable result that we see.
Robb: There’s some really interesting stuff around this within say, like the carnivore diet. In theory, people should be developing scurvy and a bunch of other nutrient deficiencies, but if we reduce carbohydrate intake, we reduce the need it would appear for vitamin C. Vitamin C, the receptor site, seems to be competed with glucose. So, high glucose levels are going to necessitate an inherently higher level of vitamin C, and you find some just fascinating historical accounts where mid-Victorian navies were either doing really well from a health standpoint with their sailors, or crippled because they had too little protein in it. Usually when they put this stuff together, they linked it back to protein because protein tends to be the most nutrient dense food products that we can eat, but this was a really common feature of these early mid-Victorian navies. Japan being one of the primary examples and they actually did research with some European navies and looked at the dietary composition of those folks who were not suffering the nutrient deficiencies that were found in the Japanese Navy.
Robb: So, we wrote that up in I think the carnivore 101 thing that we have. We have that somewhere where we could put some links in the show notes, but yeah. It’s interesting. The 20th century was really a story of trying to prevent nutrient deficiencies. Things like goiter from low iodine and beriberi, B vitamin deficiencies, we largely fixed that. Some of the solutions were good, some of them were kind of knuckle headed, but we’ve gotten to a point where enough people eat sufficiently nutrient denuded food. I guess you could sprinkle B vitamins on potato chips or something, but that’s probably going to negatively impact the flavor. So, the brands that don’t have it are going to-
Nicki: Sell more.
Robb: Sell more and all that type of stuff, but yeah. You can definitely get yourself into a spot from eating a super processed diet where a whole host of nutrient deficiencies pop up. I mean, a kid in the developed world going blind, that was just unheard of. You had to really be in some austere environments for that type of nutrient deficiency to historically occur, and now this is becoming somewhat commonplace. I like the WebMD line. It’s, “Teen’s fussy diet leaves him blind.”
Nicki: Fussy junk food diet, yep.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: For whatever reason, it’s making me think of the comment stream on one of Diana Roger’s at Sustainable Dish on Instagram. One of her recent posts where somebody, a whole lot of people, were chewing her out for suggesting that Pop Tarts … She makes the case that removing meat from the diet, especially from schools and all these places, it’s one place where a lot of people who don’t have a lot of access to high nutrient quality foods, that’s the one place they get it. If they’re not getting it in school, then they’re-
Robb: They’re getting it nowhere.
Nicki: They’re getting it nowhere.
Robb: God, people ate her alive. They were, “You’re just speaking from privilege.”
Nicki: “You’re elitist.”
Robb: “You’re elitist.”
Nicki: It’s just like, no. I’m making the point that everybody needs access to this, and if we take it away from the one place where a lot of these children it’s the only meat that they get in their day.
Robb: This is where this whole climate change plus meat policy is really going, to crazy land in a lot of ways, because Diana has made the case and we make the case in the book that’s due out next year, Sacred Cow, the people that are going to be most negatively affected by this are the poor and minorities. Just disproportionately, because these are folks that in many circumstances these kids, the only meal they get, the only one, is the school lunch program. Now, there’s this huge movement to remove all animal products out of the school lunch. Part of my cynical side is just like, “Fuck it. Bring it on, let it go,” because it is going to so catastrophically affect the health of a generation of kids that this vegan question is going to be put the fuck to bed, but there’s going to be millions of kids damaged in this process.
Robb: Part of me is like, “Going to make an omelet? Got to break some eggs.” These motherfuckers want to push this agenda, cool. Okay, let’s just let them go and then this is going to be stuff that you just, Walter Willet and all these other assholes, will not be able to hide this stuff. There will be so many people so sick and so negatively affected, and as it is, our meat consumption has been decreasing over time. Yet, all of our health problems get worse. So on the one hand, I feel like it’s our obligation to go in and try to fight against this stuff but then on the other hand, we could be 10 years away from the vegan plague being done. Kids grow fast, so you see nutrient deficiencies super quick in kids. This is going to be something that cannot be hidden within the janky nutritional research scene. I’m sure that they’ll spin it in some sort of asinine way, but my cynical side is like, “Fuck it. Let them do it and let’s see what happens.”
Nicki: That’s tragic.
Robb: It’s tragic.
Nicki: What happened to this kid is tragic.
Robb: Yeah. Just on the B vitamins side, B12 deficiency, these kids will not develop neurologically the way that they should. They will be dumber, they will be less able to do any one of a number of things, and they will be hamstrung the rest of their lives because of these food policies.
Nicki: What is the cost to society with that?
Robb: What is the cost to society around that? Yeah, and this is part of the reason why we’re hair on fire about this stuff, because it really fucking matters and it’s a complex topic, and it’s really difficult to unpack. The vegans have an asymmetric warfare where they just stand on the other side of the fence and throw a grenade over. It’s basically like, “Meat causes cancer,” and they go running. Then we’re left to pick up the aftermath.
Nicki: Any killing is inhumane.
Robb: The big push right now is to just moderate meat consumption. Whenever I hear someone say, “Well, we just need … ” What was Chris Weaver’s deal?
Nicki: Oh, everything in moderation.
Robb: Everything in moderation, yeah. That is just the most bullshit position to throw out there. What does moderation even mean? There’s no quantifier to that, there’s no benchmark for where you’re assessing things and in an environment where we have an example like this-
Nicki: I’ll just have a little chips, and a little fries, and a little bread, and just a half of a Pop Tart.
Robb: He moderated himself into blindness, which I don’t know if it’s reversible or it’s permanent, but these kids that end up B vitamin deficient through their formative process, there is no bringing them back. They’re going to be broken the rest of their lives. So, yeah man, and it’s a not popular position. We get in trouble with the Googles and the Facebooks because these things are seen to be not scientific, promoting anything like an ancestral type diet. God, all kinds of nomenclature gets applied to the sustainability features of this story, but I’ve never been good at shutting my mouth and keeping my head down in the past, so it’s unlikely I will do that in this case.
Robb: For the folks listening, this is the fight that we have and it’s unfortunate, but I think at the end of the day we’re not really in a position of winning hearts and minds on the other side of this thing. Basically, we need to get the people that are into this stuff to organize and rally because the vegans are really good at doing that, and we so far have not been. If you have an autoimmune condition and you want access to the food that you need to eat to deal with your autoimmune condition, you need to think about what the overall sociopolitical platforms are that you’re supporting. Man, that was a long fucking digression into that.
Nicki: That was long, yeah.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: I’m sure we’ll be talking about that more as we get closer to the release of Sacred Cow.
Robb: Yes, yes, which we’ve already had death threats around that. So, that’s a good time.
Nicki: Yep. Okay, let’s move on to keto and histamine intolerance. Christie says, “Hi Robb and Nicki. I hope you can help me. I’m eating a dairy free, nut free ketogenic diet for leaky gut and inflammation purposes. I track macros using the Ketogains method, and I’m experiencing what I believe to be a pretty intense histamine intolerance, and have been for the past year and a half. I can’t figure out what to eat. Keto foods seem to be predominantly high in histamine. I love keto. I feel incredible when I eat this way and I’m already taking DAO and quercetin.” Quercetin? Quercetin.
Robb: Mm-hmm (affirmative), quercetin. Yep.
Nicki: “I don’t drink alcohol at the moment, nor do I consume fermented foods. Can you please shed some light on how someone with a histamine intolerance can navigate their way through keto? I’m at a loss and feeling pretty discouraged. Thank you to both of you for all the important work you do and your continuous accessibility.”
Robb: Oh, man. Okay, Nicki. Channel, what is Robb thinking?
Nicki: I have no idea.
Robb: No idea. Man, these things are really tough and this is some of the stuff that I hope I look back 10 years from now and I’m like, “Fuck. I really had that stuff wrong,” but one could make the case that people end up in these histamine intolerant states because of a narrowing of food choices. So, it narrows the gut microbiota, but then people oftentimes narrow their food choices because they feel like dog shit. Then they feel better, at least for some period of time, with a narrowing of the food choices but even within this keto land, there are foods that are not really in that pro-histamine list like the fermented foods and stuff like that. What’s one thing that would deal with the histamine problem almost immediately? Going carnivore. What does going carnivore potentially do? Further limit your gut microbiota. Now, we don’t know, is that overall good? Is that overall bad? Is it overall good for me and overall bad for you? That’s a bunch of the shit that we don’t know and needs to be unpacked, and I wish I had a better answer to this.
Nicki: So, what are the primary foods that cause a histamine response?
Robb: Definitely fermented foods, things like sardines. The list is tier producing when you consider eating a paleo, ketogenic type diet. Yeah, I mean it’s a lot of the major stuff. So, the options are to try to stay within the foods that are not problematic. There are options also of doing some things like the GI-MAP test and to see if you maybe have a pathogenic overgrowth of certain bacteria that maybe has displaced some of these. So, you have histamine producing bacteria. If you can displace those or reduce their number, then you tend to produce less histamine. There are other bacteria that can actually metabolize histamine. So, there’s some different strategies around that. Some people find that maybe there’s some small intestinal bacterial overgrowth that feeds into this. This is just where you’ve got to grab somebody that’s a good gut person Chris Kresser, Mike Ruscio, Lily Nichols, [inaudible 00:25:27]. All these people who are really, really good with this stuff. You need to get in and do some testing and try to get a sense of where your gut microbiome is, and then we can do some tweaking and fiddling.
Robb: Maybe we add a little bit of resistant starch to the mix, and also do something like there’s a couple of different probiotic strains like the VSL 3 that’s used for Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, I believe. Then this product called Seed, which is probably one of the best research backed probiotic supplements out there, but you need somebody to help you navigate that stuff. You need to figure out, what’s your baseline? Then develop a plan, test the plan, and then assess and go forward. So Christie, I wish I had a more concrete plan for you. The things that I could say right now that would probably help address things, just limit those histamine producing foods, which the ultimate expression of that is probably something that looks like carnivore and/or find a functional medicine person who is well versed in figuring out gut issues. Start figuring out how to rebuild the gut microbiota so that the histamine production is less of a problem. That is way easier said than done. It is for folks going through it. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do.
Nicki: Okay. Let’s see, our last question for today is from Bill on a home gym setup. “Hi Robb, I’m finally ready to take the plunge and invest in some equipment for a home gym. I cleared some clutter in the garage so I’ve got a bit of space, not a ton, but enough I think for a few choice items. My question is, what are your must haves for home gym equipment that ideally don’t take a ton of space?
Robb: Why don’t you, what’s your faves?
Nicki: Definitely dumbbells, definitely a pull up bar, definitely a barbell and a rack but we have just a moveable rack. It’s not fixed to the wall, it’s not a big rack structure although that would be nice if you had the space.
Robb: One of the things to play around with this stuff. So, we have a pull up bar up on the wall, which is cool, but you could make cases that a power rack with a pull up bar, it’s all self contained. The cool thing about just having some independent squat stands, Olympic lifting style deal, is our whole gym is totally mobile and portable other than the pull up bar that’s stuck to the wall.
Nicki: We can squat outside in the driveway if we wanted to do that and pull them out easily.
Robb: Mm-hmm (affirmative), and super easy to do it. Dave Warner really got that whole portability idea in my head, so we’ve tended to opt for trying to use as little fixed objects as you can. I mean, the pull up bar is one of those things where you want that pretty well fixed. You don’t want it coming down onto your dome. Bumper plates, kettlebells, dumbbells. I’m still pining for a really nice selectorized dumbbell set that goes five pounds to 100 pounds or something like that. I think something like that would be cool because it’s just super small footprint and comparatively inexpensive. I know they’re a little ungainly compared to actually having the dumbbells but because of the relatively small space like that, just the selectorized thing takes up hardly any footprint and again, is super portable. Jump rope.
Nicki: Jump rope, yeah.
Robb: Then-
Nicki: You could either do a rower. You love the Assault Bike.
Robb: I played around with the Concept 2 Rower, I’ve done some other machines and honestly the thing that I’ve enjoyed the most is the Assault Bike. For me, the rower, I already sit a lot and even though you’re sitting on the Assault Bike, you’re sitting up and it’s in a very different posture. The loading is totally different on my low back than what it is on any of the rowing machines, and the Assault Bike is awesome for steady state cardio. It’s insane for intervals, it’s great as part of a circuit. The Assault Bike is cool because of the adjustability of the seat. I know there were some other-
Nicki: Yeah, the bike we had before-
Robb: It was a Schwinn Airdyne.
Nicki: It wouldn’t adjust.
Robb: It was so nonadjustable, it sucked.
Nicki: I hated it because I felt like I was never in the right position, and it was uncomfortable.
Robb: You use this one a little bit. You’re still not a huge fan of doing that stuff, but you’ll use it as part of the circuit whereas the other one was not. So if there was one piece of cardio gear that I would recommend, the Assault Bike is super versatile. It’s relatively inexpensive and again, it’s portable. When it’s sunny-
Nicki: You can take it outside.
Robb: I drag it outside and sit in the sun. If the weather sucks, I roll it inside and then I can use it as part of the circuit. I discovered on Netflix that even though the Assault Bike is a little bit on the loud side comparatively, but I just put my Netflix. I don’t have a real good setup out there for watching shows, but I just put on the closed captioning and then I’m able to just watch it, and it’s awesome.
Nicki: So, I have a question. Do you get bike sick if you’re reading while pedaling the way that people get carsick when they read in the car?
Robb: No, because my center of mass is not actually changing.
Nicki: Okay.
Robb: So, my vestibular equilibrium is not challenged during the process, yeah. Good question though, I appreciate that, but I cannot walk on a treadmill and type. Chris Kresser wrote this whole book, he walked 200 miles or something writing his book. I get seasick and fall off of things. So anyway, so.
Nicki: Let’s see, anything else? Definitely jump rope.
Robb: If you guys want to check out-
Nicki: Weighted vest if you, you know.
Robb: Weighted vest but really quickly if you guys want to check out the Assault Bike it’s at Assault AirBike on the Instagram, #AssaultBike. Give them a check out, but yeah. The weighted vest is also another really good option. I use that a lot whether I’m doing ring rows, push ups, pull ups, and then also just getting up and stomping around.
Nicki: Just stomping around, walking the dog.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: Wheelbarrow if you have one already, you don’t need to buy it if it’s not something that you use around your house, but we’ll but dumbbells-
Robb: Super legit, yeah.
Nicki: Or bumper plates in a wheelbarrow and wheel that around the cul de sac and the driveway.
Robb: Yeah. Anything else? We have bumps, squat stands-
Nicki: Pull up.
Robb: Assault Bike, pull up.
Nicki: Ring.
Robb: Ring.
Nicki: Oh, you said rings, yeah.
Robb: We have a bunch of different rings. We ended up hanging rings in the front yard for the girls, and the rings are dog chew toys. Little plastic dog chew toys, and we put them into the fourth crossfit affiliate gym ever, and that was in 2004 and the things have not been chewed on. So, they’re remarkably robust and still exist.
Nicki: They’re Nylabone or whatever it was.
Robb: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those things are like four bucks.
Nicki: Our four dollar rings.
Robb: So, if you wanted to go el cheapo and this wouldn’t be great for muscle ups or anything, but for body rows and even some support, five bucks for some come along straps and then four or five bucks for the Nylabone dog chew toys. Then just somewhere to hang it, and you’re in business. You can do a lot of good stuff with that.
Nicki: Cool. I think that’s – no mas.
Robb: No mas?. So, we have a big announcement coming out soon.
Nicki: We do, on November 1st we’ll be announcing that on Instagram and also via email. So, if you’re not yet following us at dasrobbwolf, D-A-S-R-O-B-B-W-O-L-F or subscribed to our newsletter, then you’ll want to make sure that you ware so that you get the big news on November 1st.
Robb: Cool. Thank you wife, thank you listeners.
Nicki: Always, continue to submit your questions at RobbWolf.com
Robb: Cool. Talk to you all soon.
Nicki: All right.
Robb: Take care.
Nicki: Bye.
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