Ep. #249: Alex Hutchinson on Pushing the Limits of Physical and Mental Performance

Alex Hutchinson: [00:00:00] What’s going on in your brain influences and affects how your brain interprets all these signals coming from the rest of your body, from your muscles, from your heart, from your lungs, so that you’re able to dig deeper into your actual physiological reserve by changing the narrative in your brain. So again, it’s yeah, it’s the slogan on the yoga bag.

But if you’re doing this kind of thing correctly and systematically, it has real and measurable effects.

Mike Matthews: What determines the true limits of our physical performance? Is it mostly hardwired physiological factors that simply can’t be changed? Or is it more malleable? Or is it more nuanced than that? And what about psychological factors? How much does the inner game affect the outer game? And how much of that inner game is under our control?

People have been searching for answers to these types of questions for decades now, [00:01:00] and the newest research on the matter has provided some pretty surprising insights. And that’s why I wanted to talk to Alex Hutchinson, who has been studying all of that. For over a decade now, and in case you don’t know about Alex, he is an award winning science journalist.

He is a former physicist and national class runner. He’s also a regular columnist for publications like Runner’s World, Outside, and the New York Times. In my opinion, he is one of the best fitness writers on the scene. And Alex has a new book out called Endure, which dives deep into the fascinating science of human performance and potential.

And in this interview, Alex is going to share with us some of the key takeaways from the extensive amount of research that he did to write that book, as well as some highly practical strategies and techniques that we can use to increase our capacity for physical and [00:02:00] mental. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in.

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Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let’s get to the show. Hey, Alex. Thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Hey, thanks [00:04:00] Mike. It’s great to be here. So I came across your work. Actually. I read cardio or weightlifting first or something along those lines. I read it years ago and really liked it.

And so now I’m excited to have you on to talk about your newest book, which it looks like at least I see on Amazon’s doing very well. So that’s cool. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a, the first book was which comes first cardio or weights and it was a very practical kind of looking into what does the research tell us about questions about how long it takes to get fit or a lot of the stuff that very similar things to the stuff you’re interested in, of course.

And the second book is I let my curiosity take me a little deeper and just try to understand the nature of endurance and how it relates to strength. And I think there’s some practical lessons in there, but I ended up getting drawn into the. Brain a little more. And so it’s a, it’s a deeper dive into some of the topics that I’ve been interested in for a long time.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So I think we should start probably with just a general overview. Some of the people listening to probably heard of the governor theory where there’s just a question as to what is really the limiting factor. Obviously there is a limiting factor at some point. We [00:05:00] only can do so much physically, but.

But, you hear stories about, for example you have a mom whose kid gets trapped under a car and then she just dead lifts the car off the ground. Basically, I think you’re just went with enough necessity. We’re able to do some pretty extraordinary things. And then with less extreme examples of that, you have.

Obviously, where people are just running faster and faster miles. For example, they are running your average top tier, probably amateur runner. Probably now, it’s putting up times that 20 years ago we thought would be impossible. Yeah. Yeah. It’s 

Alex Hutchinson: definitely been a story of progress for the last century or more.

People keep getting faster. One of the interesting things to think about is you can look at horse racing records, for example, which have been kept for centuries and first up to a certain point, thoroughbred horses were getting faster. But the records stagnate around the 1950s, even though there’s lots of financial incentive for horse trainers to use the latest technology and all the new knowledge and nutrition, really, for the last half century, they haven’t been getting a lot faster.

The record in the Kentucky Derby [00:06:00] is Secretariat from 1973. And so the question is. Why are humans still getting faster and horses aren’t and so that’s where I think you start to realize humans have something that horses don’t, which is the ability to compare themselves with other people with that who aren’t there in the present.

They can use their brains to think about what are my limits. So that’s I think one of the smoking guns to say that the fact that we keep pushing ourselves a little bit farther and getting a little bit stronger and a little bit faster. It isn’t just because we’re learning better training techniques.

It’s also because we’re able to keep pushing our mental limits back in a way that a horse can’t, a horse can only race whoever’s there on that day. 

Mike Matthews: And so is it, cause some people would say, Oh yeah, it’s mostly just in your head in terms of the upper limits of what you can endure.

And I would guess that this would apply not just to like exercise, but probably also to just any form of stress whatsoever. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, I think it’s a very general thing. So I should step back and say, look, my background is a distance runner. I competed internationally for Canada as a [00:07:00] long distance runner.

And so this book started as my attempt to understand, hey why didn’t I get faster? Why didn’t I make the Olympics? What was holding me back? What were the limits? I’ve been working on this for about 10 years. And. The more I try to understand the nature of endurance, the more I realized how general it is.

The definition I end up using in the book is that endurance is the struggle to continue against a mounting desire to stop. And, that’s something that applies whether you’re running a marathon, whether you’re Lifting weights, whether you’re doing your taxes, it’s or writing, writing a book, the ultimate feat of endurance, as far as I’m concerned was writing this book.

And, I had, I have two kids now who are one and four. I had these kids while I was writing the book. And again, that changed my concept of what endurance means. It’s and, you don’t want to talk about pushing past your limits or understanding that you’re capable of more than you originally thought.

At 4 a. m. with a sick kid you discover hidden reserves that you may not have appreciated 

Mike Matthews: On two hours of sleep. And then you still got to go you got to go get to [00:08:00] work. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, exactly. There’s no, you don’t get a vacation just cause you’re just cause your kid was sick. So yeah, I think it’s a really general concept.

And I think just to go back to something you said earlier, is it all in your head? I think we all understand. That neither of the extremes are true. It’s not all in your head. Like I, the winter Olympics are going on right now. I couldn’t fly to South Korea and become the greatest big air snowboarder in the world just because I have a strong brain or anything.

You have to have the physical tools. But similarly, that’s not all about the physical tools. We all know people who are absolutely physically gifted, but crumble when the pressure’s on or aren’t able to push themselves. It’s always a balance between those two things, and I think, for me, it often felt like the physical side was the science side.

That we can learn about the science of Muscles and of endurance and nutrition. And then there’s this sort of right, 

Mike Matthews: like the physiology, right? 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, the physiology of it, whereas the psychology always felt, we all know that the brain matters, but it always felt soft and placebo II to me.

And in researching this book, what I the message I came away with was that actually there’s some real science, [00:09:00] some good, hard, replicable science in the lab that can quantify and can show what’s That the brain really matters that it’s not just your limits really aren’t just about your muscles that you can go into a lab.

Here’s a study that I found really illuminating. They had cyclists do a time to exhaustion test in a lab and they flashed subliminal images on a wall in front of them. So just 16 milliseconds at a time is like a tenth of the time it takes to blink your eye. So the cyclists were totally unaware of these images.

If there was a smiling face in the image, the cyclists were able to pedal for 12 percent longer than if it was a frowning face. That’s not a placebo effect because they’re not even aware that this is happening. And yet there’s lots of examples like this where you realize that subtle things like your mood and your internal dialogue Are affecting what feels like a totally concrete physical limit.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I’ve actually read that paper. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I thought that was very interesting. I remember I was in researching an article and come across that I was writing more about I think it’s visualization and weightlifting actually. So I [00:10:00] was looking into some of that research and you’ll see you find similar things.

Also, even some weightlifting studies or just even visualizing performing. A good set is probably actually going to help you. Get there. And with that specifically, then, obviously, I think it’s fair to say that we all can, we’re all capable of enduring a lot more than we currently are, period.

And I understand I have two kids, six month old daughter and a five year old son. So I know exactly what you’re talking about. And that kind of becomes your true norm, your new normal though, right? Like now it just feels very normal to have the, a new norm. Kind of level of chaos in your life now that you just learned to cope with, but how much do you think is in terms of what we feel is possible or what we feel we can do, how much is determined at like in the given moment versus maybe preconceived ideas of, I’m sure both of these things what do we think we’re capable of when we just sit and abstract about it versus we are in the moment feeling the pain.

You know what I mean? 

Alex Hutchinson: First of all, let me just say about what you’re [00:11:00] saying about getting used to a new normal that people have the misconception that athletes may be great athletes. Maybe they feel less pain than the rest of us. And if anything, that’s it’s the opposite. They feel more pain because there’s lots of research on pain tolerance and athletes.

What you find is there’s pain. Sensitivity is the same as everyone else’s. If you give a sort of series of escalating electric shocks, they’re going to say, Ouch, that hurts at the same point as everyone else. They feel it just like us. But they’re willing to tolerate it for longer. You could say, okay, yeah, you can keep turning that up.

And moreover, that’s something that is trainable. It’s not something they were born with. So even if you track pain tolerance and athletes over the course of a competitive season, they’ll have their lowest pain tolerance in the offseason and their highest right before their key competition. And the thing is, it’s like the process of training.

Is uncomfortable and so day after day, they’re developing psychological coping strategies that allow them to get to deal with discomfort to be comfortable with getting uncomfortable. So what are some of those strategies? Yes. A simple one, but one that’s very effective is distraction. It’s if you start to hurt, [00:12:00] don’t just focus on how much it hurts.

Think about something else. But another powerful thing that I think happens naturally and again with exposure is learning to reframe. The meaning of pain and discomfort again in a running context, because that’s where I’m from, if you take someone who’s sedentary and they say, I want to run a five K in six months and they start running three times a week after six months for sure their body will have changed, they’ll have gotten a stronger heart and stronger muscles and all sorts of other things, but their mind will have changed because they’ll have learned that feeling when they first start running and they’re breathing really heavily and their legs hurt.

That feels like you’re about to die when you’re not familiar with it. You think, oh my god, my heart is going to explode, I’m not going to get enough oxygen, my legs are going to fall off. After a while, you realize that you can make that those inputs to your brain, they become more emotionally neutral.

It’s just information. It’s just your heart beating is just telling you, okay, you can’t sustain this indefinitely. You have to make some adjustments, but it’s not a big deal. You don’t panic. And there’s been some really interesting brain scanning studies at UC San Diego, looking at this sort of thing, understanding [00:13:00] how elite performers, not just athletes, but, elite military service people and from other elite performance areas.

Are able to deal with discomfort and stressful situations, and part of it is they’re aware of it. They’re hyper aware of it, but it’s information. It’s not a panic signal, so I think that’s an important thing to keep in mind when you’re training that you’re training your body, but you’re also training your mind to say it’s okay to be uncomfortable.

This isn’t a disaster. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I came across that in, I believe the book was peak performance, Steve Magnus, and I forget the coauthor Brad, something. Yeah. They spoke by the same thing where it was like one of the, one of the coping strategies was just like a positive, a little self talk monologue that these were endurance athletes that they would go through once it really started hurting and they would just acknowledge.

That, yes, my legs are really starting to hurt right now, but that’s okay. This pain is I can take this. This is not, this is separate to me. This is something I’m just observing that same kind of outside looking in, just looking at it as information. And it doesn’t mean that anything is wrong.

This is what should be [00:14:00] happening kind of thing. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, exactly. And it’s interesting. I was on the subway yesterday and I saw a woman carrying a lululemon yoga bag and they have all these slogans on them. And it’s like setting your goal activates your internal computer and stuff. And I was thinking, Huh, that’s more or less what my book is saying is my book really just a kind of a big extended slogan from a yoga bag?

And it’s talking about motivational self talk, it feels like you’re going all woo. But what’s what was fascinating to me Is again that there’s science that tests this stuff So another example is motivational self talk that’s basically trying to learn to identify The negative responses during a stressful situation.

So if you’re telling yourself, oh this hurts This is terrible And like you were saying you learn to re conceptualize that and replace those thoughts with i’m ready for this I’ve trained for this And so they’ve done studies that showing that this really enhances performance and one of the ones that I found most useful Intriguing was they put cyclists in a heat chamber, so it was a particular form of stress, and had them pedal to exhaustion.

And then they gave half the cyclists two weeks of motivational self talk training, so just [00:15:00] learning to say, instead of saying, Oh my god, this is hot, to say, I’m ready for this, it’s okay, I can do this. Yes, they increased their time to exhaustion from, I think it was eight minutes to eleven minutes.

But you might say it’s all a placebo effect. But they also were able to push their core temperature higher by about half a degree. And so this is an illustration of what’s going on in your brain influences and affects how your brain interprets all these signals coming from the rest of your body, from your muscles, from your heart, from your lungs, so that you’re able to dig deeper into your actual physiological reserve by changing the narrative in your brain.

So again, it’s yeah, it’s the slogan on the yoga bag. But if you’re doing this kind of thing correctly and systematically, it has real and measurable effects. 

Mike Matthews: That reminds me of something an article I read just recently, I think he was an ex SAS, like the British special forces soldier.

I, I’m not sure if this was a study or if it, I think it was just an experiment that was just done for fun. And the guy wrote about it basically, but it was it was a buddy and his friend who’s the ex [00:16:00] SAS guy. And they were hooked up to some monitoring just monitor different I think it was just physiological, like heart rate and blood pressure and stuff.

And then they were exposed to like violently loud noises at random intervals and things that the guy, it actually started to freak him out. Like his heart rate obviously was rising. He started to breathe faster and it was starting to feel a bit of anxiety. Whereas the SES guy.

Actually, the opposite happened. The more the shocking, it’s, it wasn’t very specific, but it was like flashing lights and noises and things. The more it ramped up, the more the special forces soldier, basically the more his body calmed down and how he explained it is that’s what he was taught to do.

He was taught to slow down and observe everything that’s going on. And he was able to just with his mind, completely reverse the normal physiological response. And that again, that was it wasn’t something that it was just something he learned to do because he had to. And so when he’s in a firefight, he doesn’t [00:17:00] panic.

Alex Hutchinson: That’s really fascinating because that lines up exactly with the UC San Diego studies that I was mentioning earlier, which involved Navy seals and things. What they did in those studies was they put people into an MRI machine, which is a very constrictive and claustrophobic kind of tube.

And they had them breathing through this, a special mask. And doing cognitive tests at the same time. So they’re doing tests. They’re in this tube, having their brain’s image. And periodically what they would do is restrict the flow of oxygen through this mask. So all of a sudden it would get really hard to breathe.

They wouldn’t, there’d be some oxygen so they could still breathe, but it would be hard. It would be uncomfortable. It’s quite a stressful situation. And actually some of the non elite performers, the controls, panicked and had to be taken out of the brain scanner. But what they found is exactly what you said.

So the normal pattern is you’re lying in this. Brain scanner, you’re doing these brain tests, you’re chilling out, then all of a sudden you can’t breathe properly, so you panic, the monitoring area in your brain goes haywire, and your performance on the cognitive test goes down. This is what normal people do, it makes sense.[00:18:00] 

For the elite performers, whether they were elite adventure racers, or navy seals, or Olympic athletes, what they found is the monitoring part of the brain was, initially, was a little bit higher. They were always Keeping track of how their body was feeling what the circumstances were until the point where the stressful situation started where they can’t breathe properly and then the absolute opposite pattern happened instead of heightening their monitoring of the sort of how their body was feeling.

They actually lowered it. They said, okay, we’re fully aware of what’s happening. We can’t breathe quite as much. We need to focus more. So they tuned out the extraneous noise and their performance on the cognitive tests actually got better when they were having their breathing restricted because they moved into exactly as you’re saying this stress response of okay, be calm.

Be absolutely focused. Whatever’s happening right now means makes it important that my mind isn’t watering, which is the opposite of the rest of us. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And apparently breathing plays a big role in that, like just slowing down your breaths, longer breaths, holding breaths. That’s the thing that again, you come across.

If you just read about one of the immediate, [00:19:00] that’s one of the first things that SCS guy, but I’ve also read about it with seals that they train to do is when shit Hits the fan, they slow their breathing down ’cause they know that if you start to hyperventilate, you’re fucked. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah. Yeah. And again, I hate to sound like I’m reading off the yoga bag slogan, but in the UCSD studies, what they’ve started to try to do is give people specific tailored forms of mindfulness training, which seems to cultivate exactly that sort of brain activation, where you’re aware in the present moment, but not judgmentally.

So you’re aware of what’s happening, but you’re not freaking out about it. 

Mike Matthews: And, I think also a lot of pride comes from, and this is just in general in the special forces world. So like when they’re planning missions, for example, it’s just, you have the objective and you have the general, okay, this is, here’s how we’re going to get there, but then it’s just contingency planning.

If this happens, then we do this. If that happens, we do this. And probably to the point where it almost is ad nauseum, but it’s also then applied to things like this, I’m sure is approached in the same way. If this [00:20:00] happens, then here’s how I’m going to respond physically and it starts there and then it gets ingrained to where they don’t have to think about it anymore.

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah. And these skills I’m sure they’re useful in a firefight, but I suspect they’re also pretty useful in a, in day to day life. 

Mike Matthews: Also I, I think of. Diving as well. A lot of diver I can’t say a lot, but there are a percentage of divers who die, they still have oxygen left in their tanks and it’s cause they panic and they think they’re out of oxygen and they rip their regulators out of their mouths and that’s it.

Or other, other similar stories. If you ever read the book, shadow divers, some of that stuff is pretty freaky where just because of just panicking, what they think they’re Is happening and they’re not even experiencing reality anymore. They’re experiencing their own kind of hyper sensationalized version of reality.

And that can be the difference of life or death. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, that’s it. That’s really interesting. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, you have free divers who Again, have to exert this sort of incredible mental control on their body [00:21:00] in order to do what they do. And I actually have a section in my book on the limitations of option, whether you’re free diving or holding your breath or going to the top of Mount Everest.

But what really blew my mind and what I think was a really good illustration of this idea of the difference between. Perceived limits and actual limits is just a simple act of holding your breath. And it blew my mind that the record for breath holding without any tricks, without breathing pure oxygen beforehand is 11 minutes and 35 seconds.

And I looked into the physiology of this. I talked to some researchers who actually study extreme breath holding. And most of us, if I hold my breath after two minutes, that’s it, I’m done. And what starts to happen is you get these contractions of your breathing muscles. Your body is trying to force you to breathe it.

So it feels like an absolute true physical limit. That’s triggered by levels of carbon dioxide in your blood, not by oxygen. You’re not out of oxygen. It’s you’re just having your warning signals and even the elite free drivers. They will hit that sort of what’s called involuntary breathing movements within about four minutes 

Mike Matthews: and they can just keep going through them.

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, exactly. So they’re able to ignore that 

Mike Matthews: has to be [00:22:00] scary. 

Alex Hutchinson: Super scary. What stands out to me? So I was talking to Brandon Hendrickson, who’s a guy, he lives in Kansas of all places, but he’s a free diver and he just set the American record for breath holding, which is 8 seconds. Yeah. And he was saying, yeah, the involuntary breathing movements, the struggle phase is what they call it.

It started after about four minutes. So you say four minutes versus eight minutes, your perceived physical limits are there, your actual physical limits twice as far. Now, breath holding is different from other, It doesn’t mean that you can lift twice as much weight as you think you can live, but it’s just an illustration of the fact that what feels like nothing feels like a more absolute limit than the fact that you’re breathing muscles are trying to force you to breathe.

And yet, if you learn to push past that, there’s another like 50 percent available there. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s it makes me think of, the David Goggins story. 

Alex Hutchinson: No, I don’t. 

Mike Matthews: So he’s a, he’s an ex Navy seal and it was the book. Oh, what’s his name? Jesse Itzler. He has that living with a seal book that you may have seen.

I think it, it’s sold very well. The seal that he invited to come live with him and just beat the shit out of him. Basically for [00:23:00] 30 days is this guy, David Goggins and Jesse met him in one of these super marathon. Basically, Jesse came and he was in a long distance Endurance athlete.

And he’s done some pretty extreme things just himself. And so he came with a couple of buddies to run. They would just relay race this super marathon. I don’t remember the exact distance, but it was long enough to where somebody who was an accomplished ultra endurance athlete, needed a couple of his friends to get through it.

And. The guy, David did it by himself. So Jesse came with his friends. He came with masseuses. He came with food. They had a whole thing set up, which I understand. The distance was absurd. And so Jesse saw this guy, David come with a bottle of water, some almonds and a folding chair.

And ran the entire thing and the dude, by the end, he had like kidney damage, multiple broken bones in his feet, but he finished it. And Jesse, that’s that was how that book, that’s how that started. He met, he saw this guy do this and he was like, there’s no [00:24:00] fucking way. What am I actually witnessing?

This is impossible in the end. Basically. So this guy, David is just a hardcore dude. Basically, he was just like, he basically says that, He just is very good at taking pain. And so he’s I can just, I can, I think I can just take a lot more pain than most people. And I just don’t care. I just keep going.

Alex Hutchinson: And yeah, and this sort of raises one of the questions that always comes up when you start talking about pushing through your limits is is there a point where. And it becomes dangerous or counterproductive. 

Mike Matthews: He takes it to that point. That’s his thing though. You know what I mean? But he says, he’s look here’s the lesson you can learn from me.

Whenever you think that you have given everything that you can give, whether it’s in a workout or whether it’s in your work or whether it’s in anything, you’re maybe about 40 percent to your true Limit. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, that’s exactly it. And maybe you don’t want to go to a hundred percent, but maybe you can go to 45.

You’ll be pretty happy with that. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please [00:25:00] help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle4LifeFitness, Twitter at Muscle4Life, and Facebook at Muscle4LifeFitness. Yeah. So let’s take this then to what are some practical takeaways in just in terms of everyday life now in terms of exercise, I think it’s baked into any good exercise program, right?

That’s what progression is. So if we’re talking weightlifting, progressive overload, yes, you need to be, getting stronger over time. There are obviously some other variables, but as a natural weightlifter, if you want to. Get to the closest that you can realistically get to your genetic potential for muscular strength and size.

You’re going to have to just continually get stronger and [00:26:00] stronger. And the same concept of course, applies to endurance exercise. You have to keep pushing yourself, but let’s just talk about things that. Relating it more to, let’s say people they have many different goals and ambitions and things that they would like to do in various, it could be areas of the lives.

It could be health stuff. It could be work stuff, family stuff, friend stuff. I’m sure there were some things that you personally took away from the research that you did for this book, because again, these things are not just, it’s not just about physiology. It’s about the psychology as well. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah. So let me give you two answers to that.

Let me give you the answer of what I’m not going to do and what I am going to do, because when we start talking about the brain’s role in, in limits, There’s a lot of effort now going into trying to directly manipulate that and so even 

Mike Matthews: like through drugs or 

Alex Hutchinson: electrical stimulation is drugs for sure and but electrical stimulation is I think it’s going to be something that sports have to wrestle with really soon because there are athletes at the Olympics right now on the American team who are using electrical brain stimulation to try and Unlock some of that potential if it’s in their body to release the reserves.[00:27:00] 

Mike Matthews: Sure. What can you tell us about that? That’s something I have not read about at all. I’ve just heard about it. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah. So it’s, I gave it a brief try, actually. I’m bald and apparently my scalp is really tough. The, the Canadian winters must be harsh. And so we had a lot of trouble making proper electrical contact.

So it was actually really uncomfortable for me. And I actually, 

Mike Matthews: Borderline like electro shock therapy. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, exactly. If first of all, it wouldn’t make contact. So I had to jam these electrodes into my scalp, which hurt. And then if I, when I turned on the current, it was like burning, which is not supposed to happen.

So if I sound a little dopey, it’s probably because I lost some brain cells there. But no, seriously, like there’s, the research is has been all over the map and it’s been overhyped and all this stuff. But. Slowly, gradually, I think there’s building evidence that you can take a couple of electrodes and a battery, run current through your brain for 10 to 20 minutes, and then for about an hour afterwards, you’ll have these effects, which, depending on where you put the electrodes, one of the effects you can get is it reduces your perception of effort for a given physical task.

And if it feels easier, you can do it for longer or do it a little harder. [00:28:00] And so that can increase your performance. And there’s a couple of guys on the U S Nordic combined team. I know who have been doing that for months. And there’s some triathletes who are at the iron man world championships in Kona, who’ve been.

Using electric brain stimulation and there’s a couple things here. One is what is sport? What does it mean? What do you want to get out of it? Is this where we want high school athletes to be going? So I have some misgivings about the kind of just the ethics and the desirability of going to electric brain stimulation.

Although I totally understand the opposite argument of, hey, if the potential is there, why not use it? I also have some like Safety concerns of when my kids get to be 16 years old. I don’t want them to be like, Hey, dad, we got a volleyball game tonight. Ramp up the current. Let’s 

Mike Matthews: let’s yeah, let’s stem up.

To be fair though, I, when you’re talking about that level of competition to get to the levels that they’re at, you have to be able to just throw your body away. In terms, because we can, take like a documentary like Icarus, which was an interesting documentary, although ironically, actually do agree with a little bit of Putin’s criticism is that it was a political hit piece in that.[00:29:00] 

Everybody’s doing it. That’s what they didn’t talk about in the documentary. Sure. The Russians got caught and it was pretty impressive. The little system they put together, but everybody is doing it. Why do you think that they didn’t win every gold medal in everything? Why do you think people from America were able to beat their athletes who were not just on drugs?

An entire off season, but we’re drugging every single day of every single competition. Oh, but they were still losing. And sometimes by like large margins. Oh, I wonder why that is. Yeah, sure. Oh, they were, they’d be beaten by Natalie. Anybody that knows anything about what these drugs can do realizes that.

They make such a big difference that being a truly natural athlete, you have absolutely no chance against an equally skilled natural athlete. An equally conditioned natural athlete who also has a bunch of drugs. So if you have people, though, of course, if they’re willing to take any drug in any amount of any drug that it takes to do what they need to do, then fuck it.

Yeah, straight. Strap me up. Let’s go. Let’s see what happens. If [00:30:00] it screws up my brain, I guess that’s my problem Later. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, this gets down a whole nother conversation, but I understand what you’re saying. 

Mike Matthews: No, I know. We don’t have to go down that road. I’m just like, I understand if you’re already like, whatever.

I’m already putting all kinds of crazy shit in my body. I’m already doing everything that I possibly can do. And if the risks of this, Are relatively low, whatever, let’s do it. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, for sure. There’s those famous studies where they ask athletes at the U S Olympic training center. If you could take this pill, you’d win the Olympic medal, but you die five years later.

And then I think that study has been a little exaggerated, but the point is for sure motivated athletes. 

Mike Matthews: I actually hadn’t heard of that. That’s funny. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah. It’s a classic, it’s hard to verify. It’s become an urban legend, but it’s like you hear that 60 percent of them were like, yes, sign me up or whatever.

But I guess 

Mike Matthews: it’s possible. It sounds a bit high, but I wouldn’t 20%, I’d believe it. Absolutely. I’d be like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. 

Alex Hutchinson: And realistically it’s, that’s such a hypothetical question that they probably, it’s easy to say that, if they actually had the different, exactly.

Mike Matthews: It’s like those, it’s like those, would you rather that you play with your friends? Yeah. It’s one thing to say, it’s another thing to live it. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, exactly. But still, I can say, [00:31:00] look, I was a very competitive distance runner starting in high school. And if that was legal, And that’s what my perception was that other people were doing.

I would start doing it. So it’s hard to draw a line between let the crazy pros do what they’re going to do. They’re making millions and they don’t care without knowing that it’s also going to bleed down to every other level. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that’s true. What do you think would happen? I don’t know.

I want to hypothetical, but imagine let’s take a sport like football, right? Like professional, American and imagine if you took drugs out of football. People would be like, what is wrong with all, like, why is everybody hurt? Why is everybody so slow? Why? Like this sucks. What happened to football?

And so if they understood it’d be, I think a lot of people that just, they just watch it for, to see super freak athletes do super freak things. If they understood they’d go, Oh, so no, we should be giving them more drugs. What else can we do here? Can we like bionically alter them somehow?

I think I want more entertainment out of this. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, and you know what? We’re going to see bionic alterations before too [00:32:00] long, but it’s probably true as in Canada, hockey is the sport and there’s always a debate. Every time the olympics come around, people watch the women’s game and they’re like, Hey, this game is really good.

It’s like there’s passing and there’s more there’s much more subtle strategic play because it’s not quite as rocket fueled as. The men’s pro game has become. And so our expectations of what’s normal and the way the game should go has definitely been skewed by factors, including drugs. And I think you’re right.

That as far as the audience is concerned, I think people vote with their feet and their tickets. And the truth is for whatever reason in the pro sports, no one gives a damn. Someone gets popped for drugs. It doesn’t hurt their reputation at all. So that’s a bit of a sad thing. 

Mike Matthews: I don’t really, I don’t watch sports.

So maybe that’s why I’m so emotionally divested from it. But when I hear that, I’m just like, yeah, so what? That’s unlucky because 80 percent of his teammates are doing the exact same 80 percent of everybody he competes against is doing the same thing. And if he weren’t, he may not even be able to.

To keep his job, basically. 

Alex Hutchinson: Look, yeah, again, this is a [00:33:00] big debate, but so I, I competed at the world championships as a runner. One year I came at the world cross country championships. I came, I think it was 108, which is not very good. It did not win me a lot of money. The guy who came 107th one spot in front of me, he was from Ireland.

And the next year he made a huge breakthrough. He became the Irish record holder. He went to the Olympics and two years later, he got popped for drugs. And I have friends who are better than me, who did make the Olympics, who I’m virtually positive were clean. So I know there’s a cost to this stuff and that, look, I, that’s my sob story.

I know we don’t really 

Mike Matthews: go to that. Anyways I derailed you back to the, 

Alex Hutchinson: to answer your actual question. So all that stuff is the kind of stuff that I’m ambivalent about, like stuff like brain stimulation. That’s look, there are ways of doing it and people are going to pursue it and it’s worth knowing about it.

What I took away from it most of all is going back to a little bit what we were talking about earlier, like if I had a time machine and could go back and tell my 20 year old self, give some advice on getting the most out of myself, the very first thing I would recommend is digging into motivational self [00:34:00] talk and not just treating it as a sort of advice.

Thing to be aware of, but actually doing it is something that you consciously practice because it has to become second nature that you identify the negative thoughts that you experience when you’re in a stressful situation, and you come up with alternatives and you practice using them so that when you’re in a stressful situation, it’s second nature.

This is not just about workouts. It’s not just about competition. It’s about giving a presentation at work. It’s about social situations. 

Mike Matthews: And how might that look? Like, how might that dialogue actually go? Because I think anybody listening can come up easily with some negative dialogue, take a sales presentation, and then the mind starts racing all the ways it could go wrong.

And what if I mess this up? And then what, then when that, but how might that go to turn that around into something more positive? 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, so either the first thing you need to do is actually tune into that dialogue. You need to become aware. You need to make a list. So being a stressful situation, make a list.

Keep in mind the things that went through your head. And as soon as you’re done, sit down and write them down. Some of them might be telling you something, something might be telling you that, why didn’t I [00:35:00] prepare more? Maybe you actually, maybe part of your negative self talk is because you actually didn’t start preparing for this presentation until last night.

And so that’s something you could fix, not in your head, but by, by making sure you’re taking care of the things you can take care of, like being sufficiently prepared. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, we’re in that sense. It’s like rational. Yeah you probably should feel that way because you didn’t prepare. It’s not that complicated.

Alex Hutchinson: That you can’t fix that in your head by just subduing that thought. If it’s true that you’re unready, then be ready next time. But the other things that are probably not rational, and you need to think of how you can reframe that as if you’re telling yourself, Oh, I’m so dumb. Or, I’m totally unprepared for this.

Is that true? Is there, are there really like 10 other people in the office who are better prepared for this than you are? And if not, Figure out what you can tell yourself. That’s true. That’s the other thing. You can’t just in your head, tell yourself that you’re eight feet tall and you’re going to overcome any obstacle.

The best salesperson 

Mike Matthews: that ever lived ever. Yeah, I agree. I don’t find that kind of stuff. All that helpful. Yeah. Unless you believe it. Hey, if you believe it, then more power to you. [00:36:00] But if you don’t really feel like, and if I would say, if you can’t really. Put up a, at least yourself, make a convincing, maybe I’d say evidence based argument that you are indeed the best salesperson ever.

It’s probably not going to be that helpful to say that you are 

Alex Hutchinson: exactly. I think you need to find things that you can tell yourself that are going to be true. Like that. You’ve prepared for this. You’re ready for this. There’s no one in this office who knows this topic better than you are. You have run this time in practice.

You can run it in this race. You have beaten this guy, like you don’t try and pull the wool over your eyes, but just be positive and make sure you’re not. Torpedoing yourself. It’s not about convincing yourself. You’re the all time. Great. It’s about making sure you live up to your potential rather than that.

You exceed it by 100 percent or whatever. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And in the case of if you are Tiger Woods in 2004, then you just get to say, I’m Tiger Woods and I win and that’s pretty much 

Alex Hutchinson: it. Look in the mirror, baby. It’s it’s it’s all going to happen. That’s right. That’s why I’m 

Mike Matthews: going to win because I’m me.

That’s 

Alex Hutchinson: right. It’s nice. If you can have that, if that turns out to be true for you, but for most of us, yeah, it’s just. It’s not. So first of [00:37:00] all, like you said, like I was saying, identify some realistic but encouraging thoughts and then start using them in whether it’s, in a sports context, you start using them in practice in other contexts, just try a little bit using them and consciously using them in low pressure situations, and it sounds stupid so I’m going to have this mantra or something like that.

It’s back to the, yoga bag slogans, but in stressful situations, your focus narrows and you’re not going to have 50 thoughts in your head. You’re going to have just a couple. And if you have a very simple thought that’s waiting there to be the thing that you can focus on, it’ll help you crowd out the other negative thoughts, because you can only have so many thoughts when your focus is narrowed.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, makes sense. What do you think about training yourself? This is actually, this is something that just resonates with me personally, and something that I just personally believe in. And it’s just served me well, in my career. Career, I guess I could say of being willing to do things that other people are unwilling to do, right?

Being willing to do things that I don’t particularly enjoy, but I have a goal and I have a purpose that I’m working toward. And so [00:38:00] therefore, even going back to the just physical pain kind of point of. Being able to separate from it. And so if we apply that, let’s say to work where, it takes time, it takes effort, it takes energy.

And especially if you’re doing things that you don’t particularly enjoy, you do it enough though. And then you just, you become emotionally neutral about it. And I think that’s a skill that can be As well, and I think that there are probably even little exercises that people could do to just be more willing to experience pain, be more willing to be uncomfortable.

And that could mean. Not just physically, but also psychologically because the obviously the physiology and the psychology are connected. Do you think that you can condition yourself to experience more physical pain and discomfort and that will just naturally spill over to the psychology or at least the psychological side?

You know what I mean? 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, I think there’s no doubt about that. One of there was a study published last year where they compare two different. [00:39:00] cycling training programs, which were designed to produce exactly the same physiological results. They had the same increase in VO2 max and lactate threshold and so on.

But one was a sort of mostly steady, moderate paced cycling and one was short, high intensity training, which was much more uncomfortable for brief periods. And even though the physiological changes were the same, the group that did the high intensity training, the uncomfortable training, They had better improvement in performance and better improvement in pain tolerance in other areas.

So they did pain tolerance by squeezing a tourniquet around their arm and making them clench and unclench their fist until they couldn’t take it anymore. So nothing to do with cycling. So it’s a transferable increase in ability to tolerate discomfort and the secret was just being uncomfortable. So doing it a little bit at a time.

No one workout was going to break them. You don’t need to make yourself miserable, but just always being conscious of opportunities to step outside of your comfort zone and knowing that’s going to have long term effects. And the other thing I would say is that is a really powerful thing to [00:40:00] use in terms of self talk and internal monologue.

You can’t make yourself Eight feet tall. One thing you really can control is how hard you worked and in a running context, one of the sort of classic things people use is like I’m the one who was out running when it was minus 20. I’m the one who was running when it was raining and just above freezing.

I’m the one who did all this, therefore I’m ready for this. And in a work context, the same thing applies. If you’re like, I’m the one who read the whole report, down to the footnotes. I’m the one who did this, and I’ve done all these things that most people aren’t willing to do, so I know that I am ready for this opportunity that’s now coming up.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I think I wrote an article recently on cold showering, right? Because it’s something I’ve been doing for, I don’t know, a year or so now, a little bit over a year. And the long story short is a lot of those purported health benefits seem to be just fake news. Basically my takeaway on based on the research that I did is, okay, if you’re going to be like a winter swimming person, if you’re going to go out in the winter and expose yourself to extreme cold for hours on end, and you’re [00:41:00] going to do that regularly, Yeah, there actually probably are some health benefits.

You’re going to have lower levels of inflammation in your body. It does appear like you’re going to have a stronger immune system and these things make sense. You’re going to have a hardier body now does, three minutes of cold water per day. Eh, wishful thinking, right? But the reason why I actually stuck with it.

Is you know I accepted that I’m probably never going to see a health benefit from it whatsoever. Although I didn’t get sick this winter, but that’s not why I did a better job. Actually, ironically, I think the reason why is because last winter I got hit by the flu and it didn’t destroy me, but it got me pretty good.

And I got sick a couple of times and it was my first Cold winter. I moved from Florida to Virginia. You just have more viruses around, obviously, when it’s cold. And then my son also started going to school. So that’s probably, I just got hit by, the factory and this winter, I’ve probably, I’m assuming that geographically you have certain viruses that just tend to circulate around.

So I’ve probably built some immunity and also did a good job, did a much better job being conscious of my hands, keeping washing my [00:42:00] hands more anyways. I could do. Oh it must’ve been the cold showers right now. Probably not, but they’re actually definitely not. But the reason why I stuck with the cold showers is because it’s just uncomfortable.

And I figured yeah, I feel, I think I’m pretty good in this regard. Ultimately, I don’t know if I would say I’m a very tough person. I haven’t experienced anything that I think. Is good enough evidence for me. If I could go make it through hell week, I would say I’m a tough person that I would be able to accept it.

I haven’t experienced anything that I feel really warrants me saying that I’m a tough person. However, it’s something that I can always get better at. And I am. And I think I’m pretty good at just doing things. For a reason and not really caring about how they make me feel, but that’s why I stuck with cold showers is like this.

They suck, even though now I’m just used to them still when the water and it’s in, I’m in Virginia again and it’s cold and that’s, it’s ice water. This water, it stings actually when it first hits you. And after a couple minutes, you don’t, I don’t even feel temperature anymore.

I’m like my skin is numb at that point. I like it though, as just a reminder [00:43:00] of. To just do things that are uncomfortable and just be comfortable doing things that are uncomfortable. So I’ve made the showers a little bit longer, although I found that doesn’t really work anymore because now after a minute or so, I don’t really feel the water temperature anymore.

So anyways, I’m just bringing that up for random anecdote. And for anybody listening, I think there’s validity. And I think that again, if you can just. Make yourself do that every day. And in my case, I never really got, I never really shiver, which is strange. So I don’t think it necessarily, I don’t have the same physiological response as some people.

Cause there’s a guy in the office who tried it and he actually had to stop because he was hyperventilating and he was shivering uncontrolled, but he just couldn’t do it. I don’t know why, I don’t know what that is, but. But anyways, I think that’s a stupid little exercise that you can go, Hey, if I can force myself to get in freezing cold water first thing in the morning, every day I can make a sales presentation.

I can, put in a little bit of extra time on my on my project, or I can, relate to anything I can do this blind date tonight and just increase again, your, your willingness to [00:44:00] just be uncomfortable and not really have an emotional. Response to it one way or another and just be like, Oh, is that what I have to do?

Then? Yeah. Who cares? I’ll just do it. 

Alex Hutchinson: I totally agree with what you’re saying. Both the fact that the physiology is probably negligible, but the mental benefits are real. And I think it’s also, it can be a transformation of your self identity that I’m the kind of guy who can do this stuff. It just bleeds into other areas of life that it’s not that taking a cold shower is the same as doing other uncomfortable things, but you become a person who’s Oh, yeah, I’m the kind of guy who does this or who’s willing to accept pain and it’s a super powerful form of self identity.

I think 

Mike Matthews: totally and I think that in particular is very important because I think are a lot of what we do a lot of what we think comes from a deeper place of that self identity. And I think that and I’ve actually written about this. There’s a bit of research on this that it seems to be the only reliable way to.

Change the subjective elements to change our thoughts, our attitudes, our feelings [00:45:00] is to change our behaviors. It doesn’t seem to work the other way around. It’s very hard to just try to sit and think the right thoughts and hope that you’ll naturally want to do the right actions. That seems to not work at all, actually, whereas.

The reverse works very well and that has been proven in quite a few studies that if you can just force yourself to do the right actions, how you feel about it, the subjective will naturally conform to it just because that’s how we work. It’s, you have a cognitive dissonance there in a positive way where now you’re doing something that doesn’t conform to your sense of self identity.

If you just keep doing it, you will change your self identity to match what you’re doing. 

Alex Hutchinson: I think that’s a great point, and it’s also a good reminder that for all that I’m talking about, motivational self talk, this shouldn’t be this sort of great philosophical discussion where you spend six months thinking about how you’re going to change your life at a certain point.

Just start being the person you want to be and doing the things you want to do, and to the extent you fall short, then you work on fixing it. But the first thing to do is just start. If you want to start running, get out the door and take the first step. And your mind will [00:46:00] follow, as you say, rather than trying to Wait until you’re in that perfect headspace.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And what are your thoughts on anticipating the pain and just saying yeah, it’s going to hurt. Yeah. It might hurt a lot. And that I’m expecting that I’m not, 

Alex Hutchinson: yeah. I think it’s important. I think it’s a balance. I think you definitely have to be realistic and just be ready for it.

And I’m a funny mix of optimist and pessimist, my defense mechanism. I always think to myself, this is going to be terrible. This is going to be horrible. It’s going to hurt so much. And then usually it’s, It’s not as bad as I expected. 

Mike Matthews: That’s like going to the movies with low expectations.

That’s the secret. 

Alex Hutchinson: I think it’s the secret to life, but I also found that when I was a competitive runner, It’s sometimes got a little out of control before a big race where I knew it was really going to hurt. My expectations of pain would get ramped up so much that I would get debilitatingly nervous.

So I think you want to do that in moderation, expect discomfort, but don’t fixate on how terrible everything’s going to be. Otherwise things can get a little gloomy. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Makes sense. Any other practical. Takeaways that you want to share based on what you’re saying, by the way, just, I like the idea of training to hold your breath is probably [00:47:00] also a similar type of exercise that you could do just because it sucks.

And if you get better at it and you’re like, Oh, I can do sucky things and just get through it. 

Alex Hutchinson: I agree. And there’s a, there’s so many ways you can challenge yourself in, in, in different ways in life. When I finished the book, the kind of message I came away or it was, Going away with is actually similar to what you were just saying is that there are all these ways of tweaking the brain and I think they’re important, but I think like you’re saying action is the first place to start.

So from a physical perspective, it’s just get out there and do it and don’t overthink things. And then. Figure out how you can get better, but don’t wait for the perfect mindset to arrive. The sort of mantra that I always follow is most people overestimate what they’re going to be able to accomplish in the short term, and they underestimate what they’re going to be able to accomplish in the long term.

And it’s easy to get disappointed when you’re like, I want to accomplish X. And you’re all fired up. It’s the classic sort of New Year’s resolution thing. And after a few months, you’re not really appreciably closer to where you want it to be. And you get discouraged. And then, of course, you don’t get it.

Once you’re discouraged, you you’re never going to [00:48:00] get there. Setting long term enough goals and understanding that just keep plugging away inch by inch, both in your physical capacity, but also in your mental capacity, you’re going to be getting stronger and tougher as time goes on. But just don’t expect it to be a miracle.

Don’t look for the electric brain stimulation where you can press a button and it’s going to be there. Cause even if it works, it’s actually, you know what, like it’s satisfying, it’s do it yourself, build the strength yourself rather than trying to just press a button, 

Mike Matthews: right? It’s like compounding get 1 percent better every day type of approach.

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, exactly. 

Mike Matthews: And on the point of goal setting, I think. There’s something to be said for it’s all. I think it’s great to think big and have big goals, but I think it’s a mistake to think big, have big goals and then not stop to make an actual plan on, on, okay what really needs to happen and when am I going to be doing this?

Where am I going to be doing this? What are the, what’s the system that I’m going to use to get there? And then a step further is what, what is that going to require in terms of sacrifice? What am I going to have to, how much pain am I going to have to take? What types of pain am I going to have to take?

Am I willing to do that? I think there’s [00:49:00] nothing wrong. I’d rather myself even, and I’ve done this, actually, I’ve looked at certain, again, coming back to work things, projects where I’m like, Ooh, that’d be cool to do this. But then if I really look at, okay, here’s my life right now, I don’t.

Realistically probably can’t fit much more work in at all. Actually on average I’m maybe around 60 ish hours a week. I have two kids, I have a family. There’s only so much I can do. And I slow down and go, what would it take to do that? Okay. So it’d probably take Six months of like never not seeing my family at all.

Am I willing to do that? I’m not willing to, that’s a pain I’m not willing to experience. Not because I’m afraid of it, but because I think it actually would be a bad decision. I think it would be stupid. It wouldn’t, it just wouldn’t make sense if I had to do that. To continue putting food on the table or something.

Yes, I do it. But if it’s just a matter of Hey this would be personally gratifying if I did this project. And then, my wife wants to leave me maybe not worth it. And, anyways, that’s just something that I think is worth mentioning because take New [00:50:00] Year’s resolutions.

Hey, I’m going to, I’m going to lose, 30 pounds in the, in, in my first month. Okay. Are you willing to eat 500 calories a day and do two hours of exercise a day? Then that’s what it’s going to take. Are you willing to do that? You’re not willing to do that. Then that’s a bad goal. Don’t set that goal.

There’s nothing wrong with setting a accepting a smaller goal that comes with, Less suffering. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah, I think it’s it’s interesting. You said that. And I think it’s clear that we’re both at similar life stages with kids and family. Cause it’s like, of course, I want to be immortal and accomplish a billion things.

And, have massive statues built of me and yada, yada. But it’s yeah, you start to reevaluate and say, okay, like you said that this would be an amazing work thing to pursue. But wouldn’t I rather have a couple of weeks of vacation each year? Wouldn’t I like wouldn’t I rather, go on a canoe trip with my buddies?

Or achieve this goal and it’s I’m all for goal oriented and I’m extremely goal oriented, but I’m conscious these days of, like you said, trying to set good goals, not just trying to be the greatest possible, but actually trying to live a good life and find balance. Yeah, that’s an important point and something [00:51:00] that shouldn’t get lost in the sort of the frenzy to always get better and work harder.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Did you, have you seen any of that Facebook documentary at Tom versus time? No, I haven’t. So I watched one episode of it and it’s all, it’s about Tom Brady. And he said something that is right along these lines that just resonated with me. And he was just talking about his career and that, he said, he’s basically, he’s given up everything for the last 18 years.

Like football has been his life for the last 18 years. And he’s He said that if you want to compete with me, then you’d better be willing to give up your life because that’s what I’m doing. And it comes down to that. Yeah. You want to it’s nice to say that you want to be the best in the world, but are you willing to give up your entire life?

Cause that’s what it takes. Cause you’re up against people who every minute of every waking minute of every day is spent pursuing that goal. And there literally is nothing else in life, but that if you’re willing to do that, maybe And if you’re young enough and you have all the right conditions maybe that you can get to that level.

If you’re not willing to do that, don’t even bother trying. 

Alex Hutchinson: Yeah. And of course, we all face [00:52:00] versions of that dilemma and exactly. It’s just a question of finding the right balance for you. And of course, I think when you’re younger, the making your way in life, I certainly was a much more fire breathing go getter.

When I was younger and it’s not that I can’t do that anymore or that I’m physically incapable. I’m just conscious now of you don’t get two chances to bring your kids up and to make your marriage work and things like that and to get out and see the world. So yeah, balance is a good thing. 

Mike Matthews: I agree. Okay.

So the book is endure. And of course you can find it wherever you buy books, bookstores, find it online. Anything else that you want to share, Alex, like where can people find your other work and what’s your online hub? 

Alex Hutchinson: Best place to find me is probably on Twitter. My handle is. Sweat Science. I have a website, alexhutchinson.

net, too. And Facebook is Sweat Science 1. But yeah, Twitter is where anytime I have a new article because I write for Outside Magazine and a few other places I’ll post it there and that’s where the discussion happens and things like that. So that’s probably the place to go. 

Mike Matthews: Awesome. This was great.

This was a great interview. Great discussion. Thanks again for taking the time. Really appreciate it. 

Alex Hutchinson: [00:53:00] Thanks, Mike. I really really appreciate the opportunity to chat. 

Mike Matthews: Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility, And thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever, too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies.

Lastly, If you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at musclefullife. com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that’s it.

Thanks again for listening to this [00:54:00] episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though. I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger.

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