-[Geek Climber] I know a lot of you can't wait
for my front lever video to drop
and frankly me too,
but the perfect form front lever
is way, way harder than the muscle-up.
I've been wondering what else I can do
to speed up the progress besides putting in the work.
I came across a post where my friend John,
who's a personal trainer and health coach,
designs a personalized training plan
for his clients based on their genetics.
That piqued my interest because I'm a science guy
and I love to try new things.
Therefore I reached out to John
and asked him to explain to me how this works.
-[John] Today we're basically looking at your genetics
and your SNPs and the SNP stands for
single nucleotide polymorphism.
Basically, within our DNA, we all have these polymorphisms.
There these genetic anomalies
that we can now observe today.
Back in the day, this might've been 10 to 15 years ago.
I think it cost up to a million dollars
to have your genome fully sequenced.
And then when companies like 23andMe came out,
you could get your entire genome sequenced
once they figured this out for about $200.
There are these technologies and the one that we use for you
is based off of Dr. Rhonda Patrick's website
called foundmyfitness.com.
And it's very thorough rundown of certain SNPs you have,
which might dictate what you need to do
as far as supplementing how you eat
and how you train to make sure that your body
is aging as it should
and you're not beating yourself up
or causing too much injury.
-[Geek Climber] I did have a 23andMe report,
not so long time ago
and I had run the online fitness test
and I showed it to John,
and obviously John is the expert here.
So, can John give me some summary on the report?
-[John] On the first finding that I saw
with your vitamin D binding protein,
you actually had three different SNPs
that dictate that you have a genetic risk
for vitamin D deficiency.
And I've actually run into this a lot with my clients,
simply by supplementing vitamin D
and trying to get outside in the sun every day.
You notice a huge surge in energy on a day-to-day basis.
Sleep gets better, and generally you recover better.
So, vitamin D might not sound that important
for athletic performance, but it absolutely is
because if your hormones are working better
and you have more testosterone.
-[Geek Climber] You mentioned about going out
and walking under the sun to get vitamin D.
Is there a particular length that you will recommend?
Is it like 10 minutes, 30 minutes?
-[John] I would recommend getting a blood test first
before I give you a recommendation.
Let me tell you what I did
because I actually have the three SNPs
that I looked at on your report are also on my report.
So, what I started doing was supplementing
about 5,000 IUs of vitamin D with the cofactor K2,
and I'll do that every single day.
And I do find that my energy is very much improved.
The time between my heavy workouts,
I'm able to recover faster.
I want to talk about one called ACTN3.
It's basically you have this C;T variant.
Someone like you is recommended to choose high-load,
low-repetition resistance training to build muscle
and high intensity interval training
to improve your VO2 max during endurance exercise.
So, basically saying you lifting heavy weights
for kind of that one to five repetition range,
along with your skill work on the bouldering wall
is what you need to stay healthy.
If someone came along and said,
"No. You need to be able to run a half marathon."
And you tried to do that.
That might increase your time that it takes
for you to recover before the next workout.
It might actually cause you to lose too much muscle mass
that would make you worse at your other events.
So, someone like you instead might want to be doing
some sort of plyometric training
to get your cardio right, to get your heart rate up.
That'd be something like doing three sets of five box jumps,
really really low volume, but high, high intensity.
-[Geek Climber] So, I do found higher-load, low-rep training scheme
worked better for me.
I progressed faster that way.
I always thought that was for everyone.
I had no idea that's actually related to my genetics.
So, I was accidentally doing it right
for the past few years. That was good to know.
-[John] We typically gravitate toward things that we're good at.
That's why you see the elite athletes.
They're almost genetically made for it.
This one is new to me. It's called PGC-1 alpha.
And this says you have reduced cardio respiratory fitness.
It has some recommendations for you.
You could do something like cold exposure,
which would be like taking a cold shower.
It can help with the conversion of brown fat.
Brown fat is metabolically active
and all babies have brown fat,
but adults typically lose it,
but you can actually maintain it by doing cold exposure.
You can be out in the cold where you used to be shivering,
but through breathing exercises,
you can maintain your body heat.
And what this brown fat will do,
it will help your metabolism to kick up.
So, you start burning body fat when you get cold.
-[Geek Climber] The cold shower idea,
yeah, maybe I should try that out
and see how I feel about it.
-[John] The cold showers are good for you in general.
Well, let's move on to another one.
Now, it's called COL5A1.
This SNP dictates that you are at increased risk
for Achilles tendinopathy.
So, basically saying that over time
you may have some problems with the Achilles tendon
and it recommends that you consult a physical therapist
or trainer to incorporate prehabilitation exercises
to determine the optimal training load
to achieve goals while minimizing the risk of injury.
I would just make sure that the muscles in your lower legs
stay supple enough that they aren't feeling
like they're gonna be pulled or they're overly tight.
Just warm up a little bit more.
It can be something like jumping rope,
doing some ankle mobility exercises.
It doesn't have to be complicated.
-[Geek Climber] I barely use my lower legs
because if you do, say calisthenics, that's all arms.
And then if you're talking about climbing, some legs,
but it's not super intense.
I guess I never have a chance to push my legs to a point
that there could be a potential injury.
-[John] I see a new challenge coming for you,
the maintenance and growth of power.
What we're trying to do with this power production
is work our entire nervous system.
You're doing dynamic movements on the wall.
This could really benefit from some power training.
It can be like a kettlebell swing, a kettlebell snatch,
a box jump, and seriously,
you could probably implement it one or two days a week.
You would probably see an improvement in your overall height
that you can jump off the ground,
which would be great for training the Achilles tendon
and the lower legs that you might not be touching as much.
Let's move on to the last one that I pulled up for you,
the CLTCL1. You're the T;T allele.
And this means that you have the hunter-gatherer phenotype.
You may be less tolerant to carbohydrates in the diet.
During modern times when carbohydrates are abundant,
the T allele may result in raised blood sugars
and possibly worsen insulin resistance.
And the recommendation for someone with the T allele,
you may benefit from limiting processed carbohydrate intake
and avoiding added sugars.
-[Geek Climber] I definitely do avoid food with added sugar.
That's a big thing for me.
I don't have a strict diet,
but I definitely more gravitates towards
like the paleo diet, where it's mostly meat and vegetables.
And because the issue about carbs for me
is that when I eat it,
especially when I have to work, I'll get food coma.
And then I won't be able to focus
for one or two hours during work.
So, I tend to avoid taking too much carbs,
but you know, on the weekends,
if we're going to a restaurant or having a treat,
I still take carbs. I'm not strictly avoiding carbs.
-[John] A+ for you, you've been doing a lot of this stuff right
just even without knowing.
I would say for someone like you,
because you are training so hard,
you can have a starchy carbohydrate every day.
But the time when you do that
would either need to be directly post-workout
or you could save all of that for nighttime
because those carbohydrates can actually help
with serotonin production.
And the serotonin is the precursor to melatonin.
So, when you eat the carbohydrates at night,
you typically sleep a lot better because of that melatonin
and blood sugar stays regulated throughout the night.
Some people, when their blood sugar drops during sleep,
they'll wake up around 2:00 or 3:00 AM,
and they can't get back to sleep.
It's because it's driving cortisol too high at night
when your cortisol shouldn't be rising
until right when you wake up in the morning.
For someone like you, I would recommend
playing with the carbohydrates a little bit,
playing with the plyometric
and high intensity exercise a little bit.
Let's see if we can get you outside
walking in the sun a little bit more,
or maybe even supplementing some vitamin D with K2
and just analyze how you feel.
I would postulate that you would improve your gains
on the bouldering wall,
and you'd have a lot more energy and even sleep better.
I would advise all of the audience
to check out a report like this.
You have to know that you can't look at one specific thing
and then try and push a protocol.
It's all about the holistic lifestyle.
Again, we need to make sure that diet's on point,
rest is on point, exercise, stress reduction,
and maybe some supplementation on top of that.
-[Geek Climber] That's amazing, John. I love it.
-[John] I super appreciate talking to you, Geek Climber.
If anyone wants to check out more about me,
I have a podcast where we get into the details,
a lot of this stuff,
and that's called Vital Metabolic,
the Art and Science of Strength.
And we're on Instagram @vitalmetabolic.
-[Geek Climber] Check it out, guys.
I listened to the podcast. It's super awesome.
Check it out.