YouSaid · the spoken record

Martin Gibala

lines on the record: 87
first: 2017-01-23
most recent: 2017-01-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's a great question. We can get into some of the details there, and it's certainly something that keeps me interested as a scientist, trying to figure out the mechanisms at play here. Your question also raises another point that's important, I think, to note, and that's that interval training is almost infinitely variable. And so people have this idea in their head of what interval training looks like. But for some individuals, interval training is just If you're only exercises walking around a block, picking up the pace for a couple of light posts and then backing off. And that's gentle interval training or just interval walking as you alluded to. And I would often give that example for more deconditioned individuals. That's what interval training looks like for them. But there is certainly scientific evidence to suggest that that type of training. So just figuring up the pace a little bit is going to be more beneficial than continuous steady state walking. Just to cite one quick example.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exercise, and then we'll take biopsies in recovery and we'll say, okay, is the Synthesis pathways are these activated and we'll measure certain proteins that are representative of that. Other times we'll do training studies and that's where we would commonly measure citrate synthase and some of these other markers to show that these enzymes had in fact either the maximal activity or the content had increased owing to the training protocol.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We almost always measure citrate synthase because, again, it's a fairly robust and commonly accepted marker of mitochondrial content. Ideally, though, we'll include other measurements as well, either performed in my laboratory or through collaborations with some other scientists, both at McMaster and elsewhere. So typically we'll measure a suite of enzymes, so not just citric synthase, we'll measure a couple of other ones as well. Sometimes we'll measure what's known as mitochondrial respiration. So this is just another way to demonstrate how much oxygen the mitochondria is using. And you can see, for example, an increase in mitochondrial respiration rate after training. And sometimes we'll measure molecular compounds that are our signals that mitochondrial biogenesis is taking place or in the process of taking place. So some of our studies, for example, are acute exercise studies. We'll have someone do a single bout of it.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Compartment or network, and that enzyme is involved in oxidative phosphorylation. And so the measurement of the content of that enzyme provides a pretty good index or marker of the overall mitochondrial network capacity.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The muscle cell. So they're very impressive structures. And so when you have mitochondrial biogenesis or an increase in mitochondria, it's a bit like an expansion of this intracellular network. So if you imagine a garden hose, it would be a bit like the garden hose growing more tentacles in this network expanding throughout the muscle cell. Mitochondria contain many different enzymes that are involved in this process called oxidative phosphorylation, which is that just another name for that process of producing cellular energy. And so a common enzyme that's relatively convenient to measure, because if you're going to try and assess mitochondria, you need some different markers. And some of these markers are better than others. But citrate synthase is a specific enzyme located inside the mitochondria.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. So mitochondria are often termed the powerhouse of the cell. They're these specialized organelles or a component of a cell where fuel is converted into energy using oxygen. So obviously the internal processes there are quite complex, but essentially mitochondria suck in fuels like glucose and fats and use oxygen to combust to burn those fuels in order to produce cellular energy in the form of ATP. If people might be, you know, they may have taken a biology course or read a textbook and you often see mitochondria presented as these bean shaped organelles in a two-dimensional image on the page. And certainly what we know now are they're much more like complex networks that run throughout in this case.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And so most athletic events are you need to cover a set distance as fast as possible. And that's why certainly more recently, but often in our studies, we'll use time trials as well, where subjects will have to complete a set amount of work. And we'll say, think of this as a 10 kilometer bicycle race. And as they go through, they're able to see elapsed distance or work done so they can work towards a goal and again it more closely simulates normal athletic competition”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As there are RPMs falling below 40 because that's where the manufacturers will guarantee the workload setting on the bike. But what you find is they tend to hit exhaustion pretty quickly. So it's not very hard to figure out when they have to literally stop. And sometimes we'll use time to exhaustion tests. But as a colleague Mark Hargraves will say, there's no Olympic events in time to exhaustion. Typically”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we would measure for defined fatigue as a point at which subjects are unable to maintain the power output. So if we're going to have you ride at 200 watts, you could ride at 200 watts for a certain period of time. And then literally you get to the point where you're unable to turn the pedals. And so what typically happens is you'll see cadence fall. So if someone's maintaining 90 revolutions per minute, obviously the force per revolution or the load per revolution will seem a little bit lighter than if they're only riding at 50 rpm. So we use bikes that are electrically braked cyclometers so that we know regardless of how fast the subject is turning the pedals, the workload is the same at 200 watts. And so as people approach fatigue or exhaustion, they literally can't turn the pedals. And for us, it's usually defined.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they markedly increased the amount of this enzyme in their muscle. And that's where I really sat back and went, wow, maybe we're on to something here. And as a cautious scientist, the first thing to do is you tell your grad students, make all those measurements again. Show me that the data are reproducible. Because when we first published that study, I don't want to say there was opposition, but there was skepticism to be sure. And certainly we were happy as more research studies were conducted, both in our own lab and around the world, verifying some of these initial findings.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an enzyme called citrate synthase. It's arguably the most commonly measured enzyme in exercise physiology. It's a marker of the Krebs cycle or the TCA cycle. And it correlates quite well with the overall amount of mitochondria that a subject has in their legs. So again, people have a pretty good sense of cardio health and what that means, the ability of your heart to pump blood and deliver oxygen. Citrate synthase or mitochondrial content is a pretty good marker of muscle health, how well your body can utilize the oxygen that gets delivered to produce energy. It's also important for things like predicting your risk for diabetes if you have a higher citrate synthase content in your muscles, your risk for developing type 2 diabetes tends to be lower. But the short answer is that when people did these six sessions of intervals over two weeks, they doubled their endurance capacity.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You could double endurance capacity with six sessions of interval exercise. And we're talking this short, hard sprint type exercise. So the type of intervals that people were doing only required them to do two to three minutes of very heavy exercise every couple of days. And we back that up with some physiological markers. We took biopsies from the subject's legs and we measured an important enzyme that relates to how well the body uses oxygen to burn fuels to produce energy. And we saw that that enzyme increased by about 35% of I recall.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up. But the performance was only better in the group that got recovery days. And I'm sure your audience is listening going, well, duh, that sort of makes sense, but it hammered home for me this idea that recovery was important. And so our first question was, well, what if we had people only do two weeks of interval training or the period of measurement is only over two weeks, but we give them those recovery days. And so that led to our initial study where we had people do six sessions of interval training over 14 days. And what we measured in that study, the two major outcomes were endurance performance. So basically time to fatigue on an exercise bike. How long can you ride a bike until you're exhausted? And the amazing thing was that subjects endurance capacity increased by 100% on average.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, our first study actually was one of our most impactful. And I was influenced by a number of scientific papers, of course, but one of the most interesting for me was this group in Europe had taken two groups of subjects and they applied the same training stimulus to both groups. And the training stimulus involved 14 consecutive days of hard workouts. One group did them every day consecutively for two weeks and one group did them every couple of days over a period of six weeks. So the training stimulus is the same and really all that was different was obviously one group was getting recovery days. At the end of the study period, the physiological adaptations between the groups were virtually identical. So measuring specific changes in their muscles or how much an enzyme level”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Will that benefit me? So there's sometimes an inherent tension there between the scientific and impact of a work and really the translatability of a work and answering questions that people actually want to know about.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You make a really good point. People ask us all the time why is most of our research done on the bike and how does it translate to other types of activity? And the main reason is, as you say, we can quantify things like work and power very accurately. And so that enhances the scientific rigor of the study in terms of our ability to control the stimulus. And then we're obviously often looking at very specific physiological markers that require us to perform invasive measurements whereas if you're just doing a set of burpees, for example, it's a little bit more challenging to precisely control the stimulus. And so that sometimes can go to the impact of the study, if you will. And there I'm talking the scientific impact because I have to worry about things like where I publish my papers and journal impact factors and things like that. But ironically, a lot of the public doesn't care about an impact factor. They just want to know if I do this type of training.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In your muscles, I think there has been some overstatement in the fact that Tabata is viewed with almost these magical properties. When it comes to Tabata style training that I think most people think of, and that's body weight style intervals, there's surprisingly less scientific evidence that speaks directly to that. There's really only a handful of studies that have looked at tabata style body weights and the effect on strength and maximal aerobic capacity. That being said, those studies have shown that it's a very efficient way to train. And so I think of it as a very good middle ground, the benefit in aerobic capacity that you'll see might not be as great as it. They provide a lot of bang for your buck.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think it's particularly magical. I think Tabata is an example and obviously a well-known example of the concept that we were talking about and that's this idea that short hard bursts of exercise can be extremely effective. And so the original Tabata protocol, the main outcome measure, was maximal aerobic capacity or VO2 max. And so Tabata showed that short, hard intervals on the bike, as we've described, could be effective for boosting VO2 max. They didn't perform muscle biapses, for example. There wasn't a lot of underlying physiological measurements performed. And I think that's one of the additions to the scientific literature of our work, as well as other researchers, that they've looked more mechanistically at what's happening. So, for example, we've been very interested in short, hard bursts of exercise, improving muscle health, and boosting things like mitochondrial content.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over time, it's probably more well known to most of your listeners for more calisthenic type style training, burpees, mountain climbers, air squats, things like that, although the original protocol was described for a bicycle.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the classic Tabata protocol is eight repeats of a cycle that involves 20 seconds of effort and 10 seconds of rest. So you repeat that eight times and so start to finish the workout is four minutes in duration. The original classic study that was described was done on a bicycle. So bicycle exercise at an intensity of around 170% of VO2 max. And people might say, well, if VO2 max is max, how can you go at 170% of that? But it goes to the workload setting that you would have on the bike. So you might have a workload, for example, of 300 watts, and that's sufficient to elicit your VO2 max, but you could work at above that value or 170% of that value for very short periods of time. But that's the classic Tebata protocol. And as I say, it was described on a bike, although”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had done a scientific study where they were looking at just two bursts of interval training lasting only 15 to 20 seconds and showing that if subjects did that a couple of times a week for six weeks, they could boost their VO2 max. And so that was influential in terms of our research that led the design of what we call the quote-unquote one-minute protocol or the one-minute workout, which of course is a teaser headline. It's not really a minute. Start to finish when you build in recovery and a short warm up and cool down, but it's all variations on this theme that short, hard bursts of exercise can be extremely effective and extremely time efficient in order to boost performance and boost health.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, of course. And a point I would make is that we don't know what we don't know. And so when I first got into this field, obviously we're very interested in the topic, but over time, I've definitely developed an appreciation both for the scientific history of interval training, which goes back to at least the late 1950s and probably before that and the athletic history, which certainly dates to the turn of the century. But we were influenced, of course, by some of the work that Tabata had done. He's a classic paper from the mid-1990s that led to Tabata style training. And there were, of course, we're not working in a vacuum. We've been influenced by other researchers as well. You mentioned Richard Metcalf and there's some other researchers working with him in the UK who have had this similar type question. And that's this idea of how low can you go. And so Richard and some others”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hour at lunch to train, and he would repeat short intervals around the track at a very high tempo. So that led to my initial interest in the topic, and then that led to some very simple early designs around some studies around either how low can you go. So, you know, a theme through my research has been time efficiency of exercise and definitely this idea of how low can you go, both in terms of boosting performance if you're an athlete, but increasingly in terms of boosting health if you're an average individual or someone with metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes, for example.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be around 2003, 2004, and believe it or not, it stemmed in large part from that course that we mentioned at the outset of the interview. So I've taught this course integrative physiology of human performance for quite a while now. I think this is the 16th or 17th version of it. And it does go back to that idea of students were interested in the training programs of elite athletes. And they were often surprised by the fact that elite insurance athletes through the course of history surprisingly used interval training, either because they were quite time limited or because they really wanted to push their overall training volumes, but often it related to the notion of time efficiency. One of the classic examples would be Roger Bannister when he was training for the assault on the four-minute mile. He was a very busy medical student who had about a half”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Agreed that's an excellent point. If you're looking at something like bioelectrical impedance, for example, to measure body fat percentage, there's some concerns around the absolute validity of that test, but I think when you use the same test repeatedly over time, it gives you a good sense, as you say.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For your VO2 max would be higher. But that's what it's based on. But as you say, having a VO2 max test measured directly is the gold standard, but there's also some reasonable ways to estimate it based on running speed over a set distance or heart rate response to submaximal exercise. So I think it's fairly easy and maybe we can leave folks with some tips on the online aspect of this interview with ways that they can get a sense of their fitness on their own.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've just seen this recently, and actually put my own data in to see how well or how accurate I thought it was. And it was reasonable. It asked things like your age, your sex, your things like that, some activities on or your type of activity that you habitually do. And it does ask for a measure of resting heart rate. And so I assume on some parameters that relate to your habitual fitness level and also your resting heart rate, those are probably two of the main drivers. Obviously, I don't know everything that goes into the algorithm, but that's typically what it's based on. And I think probably these online calculators, the greatest benefit, even if there's an absolute error in the number, you would hope that it's a fairly reproducible number. So if you do some training and you're resting heart rate is lower presumably the value that would predict.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The problem, of course, is that it takes some time to properly measure VO2 max accurately, and obviously that's not feasible in a lot of physicians' offices, but there are now some very good online calculators that can give individuals a sense of what their value is.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we know, if you look at, for example, mortality risk of risk of dying from all causes, if individuals, there's a concept called a met or a metabolic equivalent, which I'm sure you're familiar with, some of your listeners may be familiar with that, but it's essentially a unit of measurement for VO2 max. And individuals who have a higher, a one met higher value that translates into about a 13% lower risk of dying from all causes. Obviously, that's correlational data, but it's based on fairly strong epidemiological evidence. You might also be familiar just a couple of weeks ago. There was a paper in JAMA which was calling for VO2 Max or Fitness Cardio Spiritory Fitness to be a vital sign. So it's something that we should measure in the doctor's office just like we measure weight and height and things like blood sugar.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's causative for sure, and there's a lot of data out there, I think, that would support that. Obviously, it's tough to do a proper randomized clinical trial to look at something.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because in some ways it's a bit like a mortgage. There's a fixed element and there's a variable element. And so the fixed element is determined by things like the genetic capacity for your heart size, for example. But there's definitely a highly variable element. And we know that because it can respond to training as well as detraining. So a typical or average person, if they do traditional endurance training for a couple of months, they might be able to boost their VO2 max by 20%. But it's a highly individual value or parameter as well. And we know some people, their value doesn't change very much, even though they do highly structured training, whereas other people, they can change it by up to 100%. People would be familiar with the term hard gainers. There's some hard gainers when it comes to VO2 max as well. But fortunately, it's a real...”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's definitely something that can be meaningfully improved. Again, we talk about this in my class. If you want to be an elite endurance athlete, we hear the phrase pick your parents properly. And that's true”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. So VO2 max or maximal oxygen uptake, also known as maximal aerobic capacity, is the highest rate at which the body can take up and use oxygen. And that's typically during heavy exercise. So how we would test it, have an individual do progressively higher workloads, that could be on a bike, that could be on a treadmill. And at some point, your body's going to reach its maximal capacity to use oxygen. That's important if you're an athlete. but it's equally important for health. And so when people talk about cardio fitness, what you're really talking about is your VO2 max. And it reflects the underlying ability of the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system. So your heart, your lungs, your blood vessels to deliver oxygen to working muscles.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To feel what it is like to do a VO2 max test. So when we talk about an athlete pushing out a thousand watts, for example, or 1,500 watts or holding 400 watts as a pace on a bike, they know what it's like to either come close to that for a couple of seconds. And I think it really helps to put it in context a little bit. But bottom line is they have an appreciation for elite athletes. And then we talk about the underlying physiology.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of the main things they like is what regulates the performance of elite athletes or simply put what makes elite athletes great? And so a lot of students who come into kinesiology, not all of them, but a lot have a background in exercise. They're interested in sport. And so what I try to do in that course is, if you will, trick them a little bit or cajole them into learning a bit more about how the body's regulated so we talk a little biochemistry, we talk a little physiology so that they have a really good understanding of how the body works. And we often present that using elite athletes as an example because it's a prism that can often ground them. Another thing that I'll try to do in that class is all of the students have to perform a VO2 max test on each other.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, physiology is basically how the body works, so how the systems act in an integrative manner. And so one of the fascinating things about exercise is it stresses the body in unique in different ways. And so it makes it a really, for me, an interesting topic to study. So this morning before I spoke with you, I teach a fourth year course called the Integrative Physiology of Human Performance. And so in that course, we talk about how the body's systems come together to meet the demand of exercise. So the cardiovascular system, the muscle system. And for me, that's what makes it a really interesting topic.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, I'm at my desk in my office at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and again, we were chatting offline. There's been a watermain breakout front. So in Fahrenheit, it's about 50 degrees in my office today, which is pretty chilly.”
2017-01-23 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT