Interview with Mike T Nelson (part one)

Towards the end of 2010, I approached some of the strength enthusiasts, writers, strength coaches and personal trainers that I knew and asked them to do interviews.  Little did I know how much I would gain from doing this. 

Without exception, I was simply blown away by their generosity.  They all gave freely of their time and expertise in discussing all manner of training tips and issues and I learned a great deal from them.  If you missed any of them, you can find them here: 

• Tim Henriques
• Bret Contreras
• Eric J Moss
• Rob Russell
• Steve Kamb (Nerd Fitness)
• Josh Hanagarne (World’s Strongest Librarian)
• Brent Barbe
• Isaac Wilkins

 

Going into 2011 with a bang…

So I am both pleased and proud to announce that I am starting 2011 with a number of interviews, including this great two-part interview with Mike T Nelson A.K.A the Crazy Professor, a PhD candidate in kinesiology at the University of Minnesota in the department of Exercise Science.

 

 

The two-part interview

This post covers part one of the interview, in which Mike answers a number of questions about different topics, including stress, sleep, oldtime strongmen, kiteboarding and why you shouldn’t fall in love with your foam roller.  In part two, we get into the nitty-gritty of metabolic flexibility.

 

 

Introducing Mike T Nelson

Let’s be clear about one thing: Mike is not a run-of-the-mill internet “expert”.  He has spent the last 16 years in college, completing a BA in Natural Science and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering (Biomechanics) before starting his PhD.  He’s also a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), adjunct faculty at Globe University and a founding member of The Movement who will have three certifications for trainers this year which are conducted by invite only: The Biomechanics of Physique Transformation, The Biochemistry of Nutrition and Biopsychology.

In the past, he has completed the RKC, Z-Health Master Trainer and is currently a professional member of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN).

Also, Mike’s going to have a book chapter out later this year in the academic book entitled “Protein and Strength Athletes: A Sports Nutrition Controversy.”

  

 CB: Mike, thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to do this interview.  I am sure that most of my readers will have come across you before but, just in case, could you give us a quick summary of where you are working at the moment, your PhD research project, your role in the department of Exercise Science and what you are working on at the moment?

MTN: Thanks Chris!  I really appreciate you taking the time to interview me today as it is a great honor.  Yes, I tend to be a “little” busy these days.  I am in the process of wrapping up my PhD and working on publishing three papers that will go out for peer review.

The first one is on heart rate variability (HRV) which is a method to look at the state of your nervous system.  The second is a study done on human subjects (college students, not rats) looking at Monster Energy drink in relation to heart rate, rate of perceived effort (how hard did the exercise feel), and ergongenic ability (do the darn things really give you more energy during exercise) along with a few other things.   The last study will be more focused on metabolic flexibility that we will talk more about later in part two of this interview.

In the past I worked as a teaching assistant and research assistant there too at the University of Minnesota for many years.  Currently I own Extreme Human Performance and I work in White Bear Lake training various athletes of all types and doing more nutrition consulting both here in Minnesota and across the world via the internet.

CB: Thanks for that introduction, Mike.  Let me ask you a couple of shorter warm-up questions to ease into the interview gently!  Firstly, you are proverbial for working as hard as anyone in the industry.  But while working hard is as good a guarantee of success as any, it can lead to stress.  Do you experience stress in your current schedule?  If so, how do you manage the stress?

MTN: Great one!  Experiencing stress would be an understatement.  I also work part time as an engineer for a medical technology company where I’ve been for almost 11 years since it allows me some stability while working on research.  I don’t have any kids or even a pet fish, but I did get married this past year to the most wonderful person ever.  

The biggest tip is that despite what you think, stress is actually NOT how much stuff you have going on, but is related to how much you THINK you have going on at the current moment in time.   The reality is that you can only efficiently work on one thing at a time, but your mind will wander to all the other POSSIBLE things you COULD be doing.  Everything from water the plant, finish a report, update your blog, to what is for dinner.  The brain is not wired to keep all these things in order at once and David Allen calls this “psychic RAM.”

Just like the RAM on your computer it can only hold so much at once.   The fix is to write down the other items on a list, sorted by location; so if you are at the grocery store, you only want to see the grocery list not a note about a blog post you need to work on since you are not going to bolt out of the store and drive home to work on the blog post without groceries!

Once items are sorted by location or resources (phone, computer, internet), you scan the list and work on the one that jumps out at you first –the highest priority.   This dumps the psychic RAM in your head allowing you to focus on the task at hand.  If something else pops into your head while you are working, you make a note and drop it in your inbox to be dealt with later.   In the process of writing up this interview I created about 12 other notes of things to do later.  I did not jump from one half done thing to the next, combined with checking email, twitter and facebook 47 times a day.  

Bonus tips: when I get really stuck, I need to go move and lift some weights in the Extreme Human Performance Center (my own garage gyms as we all know garage gyms kick butt).  Sir Richard Branson of Virgin was recently quoted that working out easily gives him an extra 4 hours of productivity during the day.  Hard to argue with his results.

CB: Thanks for the great tips, there Mike, and thanks for picking a Brit as an example!  Moving on from stress, let’s talk about sleep.  I remember hearing you post one time about how you worked so hard that you went 38 hours without sleep.  Obviously, that’s not your normal routine!  But I also read somewhere that you’ve worked on various strategies for optimizing the amount of sleep you get.  Can you give us some tips?

MTN: Yes, that sucked large moose balls.  I had a revision of my Monster Energy drink study due the next morning and I had to turn it in and I had to pull an all-nighter to get it done.  The great part is that I got to see Seth Godin speak right after I sent it in and then Dr. Lorimer Moseley (my favorite pain/brain researcher) speak that night = awesome!

When I get really stuck and sleep is not an option, movement is not helping, and I have a deadline looming, I will pull a caffeine power nap.  Take some pill form of caffeine of around 100-400 mg (or Biotest Spike works great too), sleep for about 20-40 minutes and when you wake up you will have peak blood levels of caffeine and a bit of rest too.  Not recommended for daily use, but works amazing well in a pinch. 

Going to bed and getting up around the same time each day is a great start.  Everyone will be a bit different, so work to find your best times.  Once you get a baseline established, I like to have my clients then work to see how much variability they can add to it without any deleterious effects.  In a perfect world, everyone (ok I do for sure) wants to get by on less sleep and stay up later at times.  If you sleep 10pm-7am for 9 total hours and feel great, try going to bed around 11pm and see how you feel.  If ok, then try midnight, etc.

Perhaps a good friend comes into town and you stay up until 2am at the pub, that adds a lot of variability to your sleep schedule.  How do you react?  The goal is to be as ADAPTABLE as possible, especially in regard to movement, food and recovery (sleep).   For most people, life will add enough variability in for them so they need to work on establishing a baseline first where they don’t need four pots of coffee to sleep walk through the day (not the readers here per se, just the people you see out there). 

CB: Interesting.  I’m not really a caffeine responder so it will interesting to see if that works for me.  I imagine I might have to set an alarm as well!  You often have inspirational pictures of the oldtime strongmen such as Eugen Sandow on your blog.  And I recall that you were very complimentary of my series on oldtime strongmen, saying at the time that there is a lot of knowledge there that we have lost.  Are the oldtime strongmen a significant source of information and inspiration for you in your work or in your lifting?

 Eugen Sandow: a source of inspiration for Mike

MTN:  Definitely.  It will probably shock some people that outside of research, I don’t read hardly any new books on exercise at all.  I will read research on nutrition, physiology, stress, neurology, but virtually nothing on exercises as I get in my time machine and read all the early works.   The athletes back then did not use drugs (I don’t recommend drugs, but in the end it is a personal choice for each athlete), so the information they collected is more relevant to most trainers today. 

If you are whacked out of your mind on tons of anabolics, that is NOT going to work for a natural trainer and is a very poor starting point.   They also had limited equipment back then so they were much more creative and not afraid to experiment.  What worked was passed along and what did not work was thrown aside.  Results mattered.  I loved your piece on the old time strongman since I really believe people “out there” in the commercial gyms need to look at those lifts again. 

How often do you ever see people even doing a deadlift in a mainstream gym?  In most US gyms it is about as rare as a purple unicorn.  If you go beyond that and get into lifts like the behind the back deadlift, suitcase deadlift, Zercher squat, drag curls, overhead press, plate presses, plate curls and other amazing exercises that people really need to test out for themselves. 

CB: It’s great to hear that you’re reading that stuff, Mike.  Getting a little more serious now, reading your blog, I noticed how you explained recently that you are stereoblind, i.e. you can’t see properly in 3D.  I can’t imagine what that is like but I understand you are working on improving it.  I hope that you make progress with that.  I also know you love kiteboarding.  Has problem impacted negatively on that sport for you?

MTN:  I am currently stereoblind – I don’t see in 3D.  I suppress the image from my right eye.  You have two eyes that your brain uses to construct a 3D view of the world since each eye is off just a bit from the other one, so it sees things just a bit differently.  Your brain uses this to allow you to see in 3D.  I can “see” from both eyes, but when I am given specific tests to analyze 3D vision, I fail them outright.  My right eye is set out and up a bit since I had a “lazy eye” as a kid.

Through help from Dr. Cobb of Z-Health at the time several years ago, I found that my scar seemed to be linked to my ability to turn on and off (unsupress) my right eye.   I have a large midline scar from open heart surgery to repair an atrial septal defect when I was 4.5 year old.  An atrial septal defect is literally a hole in your heart, so they cracked my chest and sewed it up.  This left me with a scar about 1 foot long in the middle of my chest.

Back to my eyes, I found that the movement of my right eye was related to my chest scar.  This goes to show that the WHOLE body is all connected in weird and wonderful ways.  Fast forward through a few more years of working to improve my movement, and my vision started to get much better.   Right now I need a few more “cool toys” that behavioral optometrists have to get my eyes synched up again.

In the US, this is not recognized as an “issue” insurance will pay for, so the cost will be all out of pocket.  I am in the process of saving some money (and releasing a great product for all of you, more on that soon) to offset the cost of more intensive visual therapy as my structure seems to have stabilized.   So far two doctors have told me it is impossible for me to ever see in full 3D.  I don’t believe them. 

“Don’t tell me it’s impossible,” he says, “tell me you can’t do it.” “Tell me it’s never been done.” – Dean Kaman, inventor of the Segway 

We know through many studies that the plasticity of the brain is huge.  It has the ability to change throughout our life.  The eyes are controlled by muscles, and muscles can be trained; so it is as “simple” as retraining my eye muscles and getting my brain to accept the new 3D image.  

For kiteboarding, it makes getting air a real trip!  If you have not seen kiteboarding, image attaching yourself to a small surf-like board and four 100 feet long razor sharp lines that lead up to an upside down parachute looking thing.  These are not your Charlie Brown kites and create enough power to pull you straight up off the water and if you do it correctly, and you can land feather soft too.

If you screw up, you get dropped out of the sky like a stone.  The first time I really sent the kite up, it picked me up off the water and I had no idea how high up I was since I can’t look down and tell how far away the water is!  Yikes!  I ended up cannonballing back into the water butt first and realized I need to do a bit of work on that! Ha!

It is still an absolute blast and I am getting better at timing my jumps now too.  Most people can tell when they are in the air about how high up they are.  For me, I have to “guess” based on how hard I was cutting the board, wind speed and angle, line tension, kite speed, etc without many visual cues.  It is still a blast though! 

CB: I’m glad to hear you have a plan, Mike, and it’s great to hear you describe kiteboarding – makes me want to go and try it.  Plus, that is a great quote from Dean Kaman!  And finally, before we finish part one of the interview, let me confess to you that I really appreciate using my foam roller after a training session but I know you are sceptical.  I don’t want to put you on the spot but can you sell me your alternative approach one more time?

MTN: Ha!  I wrote a post called Get Off the Foam Roller back in early 2008 and it was like taking a stick to a hornet’s nest.  My whole point is that creating pain to get out of pain is a very stupid idea.  A 4 year old would tell you that.  I don’t mind if people use a foam roller on occasion and it is a tool just like many other things.  I do have an issue of people using it to CREATE pain.

They look to get a stiffer foam roller, then a PVC pipe since that is really stiff, next they are using rolling pins, and sharp pointy things to really get in their and “release” tissue, but also causing lots of pain.  If you come to me and say that your right shoulder hurts really bad, I can take my trusty cow brander and brand “XHP” (Extreme Human Performance of course!) on your LEFT shoulder and I can guarantee your other shoulder will not hurt any more.

Did I fix your other shoulder?  Nope.  Did I make the pain go away in THAT shoulder?  Yes.  Are you leaving my place not in pain?  Nope, just DIFFERENT pain.  Don’t confuse different pain with absence of pain.  While I will get tons of hate mail on this, the same theory applies to all soft tissue work too.  Enough with people posting picture of how bruised and beat up they look after “soft” tissue work.    Stupid idea that has got to end.  There is a much better way.

CB: OK, I didn’t appreciate that people were performing self-torture with these devices.  I guess sometimes I don’t let my imagination run riot when considering just how daft some people can be.

Stay tuned for part two of Mike’s interview, next week, where he talks about metabolic flexibility, and check out Mike at his site, Extreme Human Performance