September 25, 2025 • 54 mins
Luke Way, founder of Isocapnic Technologies, reveals how respiratory limitations affect athletic performance and how proper breathing training can unlock significant performance gains.
• Approximately 70% of athletes are functionally limited by their respiratory systems, meaning they physically cannot breathe enough air to perform at their true potential
• VO2 max testing provides valuable insights beyond just a number, showing how different body systems contribute to or limit performance
• Many athletes compensate with rapid, shallow breathing (up to 70 breaths per minute) instead of utilizing their full lung capacity
• Breathing deeper rather than faster is more efficient as each breath contains "dead space" air that doesn't participate in gas exchange
• The Isocapnic device allows athletes to train respiratory muscles without hyperventilation, conditioning them for sustained deep breathing
• Nasal breathing is beneficial for low-intensity activities but physically cannot meet ventilation demands during high-intensity exercise
• Proper respiratory training can reduce the energy cost of breathing from 18% to 8% of total energy expenditure during endurance activities
• Blood work several times per year helps athletes monitor important markers like ferritin levels to optimize training and recovery
• Consistency in training, recovery, and injury management is the ultimate differentiator for athletic success
For more information about respiratory training and to connect with Luke Way, visit Isocapnic Technologies online or reach out at Kelowna Hockey Fest.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's up folks?
Welcome back to the 267thepisode of the Athletes Podcast,
today featuring Luke Way.
We're here in Kelowna, britishColumbia, where we just took
part of Kelowna Hockey Fest.
Luke Way took Travis and I fromstarter through a rigorous VO2
test.
You guys are going to see allof the data insights and I'm the
guinea pig that you guys aregoing to be able to review over
the next 45 minutes.
Luke Way is an incrediblefather, someone who I look up to
(00:23):
in the athletic space.
Luke Way is an incrediblefather, someone who I look up to
in the athletic space.
He's the founder of IsocapnicTechnologies.
This is the 267th episode ofthe Athlete's Podcast brought to
you by Perfect SportsSupplements.
We're on the road.
Our diesel protein is the bestin the business.
You guys get it.
Use the code AP15 at checkout.
Let me know what you think.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hope you enjoy the show.
You're the most decoratedracquetball player in US history
, world's strongest man, fromchildhood passion to
professional athlete, eight-timeIronman champion.
So what was it like making yourdebut in the NHL?
What is your biggest piece ofadvice for the next generation
of athletes, from underdogs tonational champions?
This is the Athletes Podcast,where high-performance
individuals share their triumphs, defeats and life lessons to
(01:06):
educate, entertain and inspirethe next generation of athletes.
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
A lot of energy time expended not quite as much
energy expended as we did on thebike for those 20 minutes when
I was dying next to Travis.
Holy, dina, Luke, wait, can youtell us exactly what you put us
through at at colonna hockeyfest before I showed them up for
putting on such an incredibleevent?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
yeah, man.
So you, you did a a prettystandardized vo2 max style test.
So it's an incremental steptest.
It's about three minute longsteps and it slowly gets harder
until you explode at the end ofthe test, which is a kind of fun
and dramatic.
And from that test we're ableto find your zones for training.
But I think, more importantly,we are able to actually see how
(01:49):
your training should change inthe next phase so you can
actually make yourself betterand not just be generically
training and showing up andworking hard.
You're actually putting thathard work to a better end.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Are you calling me out for being just a generically
decent athlete at everythingand not actually good at any one
particular thing?
Luke, Is that what you'resaying?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
right now.
You know your results areexcellent.
Statistically speaking, they'reexcellent.
So I'm going to say you areexcellent.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I had one person comment, Marcus Wong, actually
specifically talking about myrespiratory status being
functionally limited.
Can we comment on that first tomaybe start the conversation
off?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Sure, yeah.
So when we profile athletesespecially in large hockey team
organizations sort of scenarioswe profile the athletes to
better understand, or let thembetter understand, how their
training should be changed andhow they can approach their
respiratory training that istailored to them.
(02:52):
So there's three primaryprofiles.
There's the functionallylimited, so that means that they
are unable to use the volumesthat they have available.
They're structurally limited,meaning that they have less
volumes than we would expect forsomebody their size, or they're
balanced and they have a littlebit of both, or they're limited
(03:12):
in a little bit of both.
And so for you you'refunctionally limited, meaning
you have great lung capacity butyour ability to use it and use
it over the term of a testdwindles over time, if not is
much lower than we would expectfor a well-conditioned system.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Now, luke, we need to give the listeners some context
, because Travis and I took thistest after, we'll say, a
slightly more aggressive eveningthan we would typically do on a
Wednesday.
Coming in on a Thursday morningat 8 am, trav was worried about
having a jammer.
Obviously, trav is representingstarter had to put his wheels
to the test too.
We had a bunch of NHL guysaround us, so I wasn't backing
(03:54):
down.
But can you maybe explain thisprocess?
You've been a coach for 20years, coaching endurance
athletes 20-plus years now, Ishould say.
We met Wednesday night after aphenomenal educational event
thanks to Kelowna HighPerformance Kelowna Hockey Fest.
We got chatting.
Travis thought I looked likeMcDavid.
You started introducingyourself thanks to Brad Thorpe,
(04:16):
who was the keynote at the event, and one thing led to another.
We're testing 12 hours later,slightly recovering from the
night before, and you were ableto provide us with an incredible
data set.
Can you just explain a bit moreabout ISOCAP, who you are, why
you were so gracious with yourtime and how we're going to
continue to progress, track ourdata over the next 60, 90, 120
(04:40):
days and see where we end up.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Awesome, yeah, so I'm .
I'm Luke, I run isocapnic.
Isocapnic is a respiratorytraining company that me and my
my partners have started.
My background is in highperformance endurance sport sort
of Olympic and elite pathway,triathlon, cycling, running,
that sort of thing and we we'vedeveloped a testing protocol for
(05:02):
for endurance athletes over thespan of the last 20 years.
That has really led us downthis pathway of objectively
understanding what systems arestrong, what systems are weak,
so we can really guide trainingobjectively for each of these
athletes.
In doing these tests, it'sbecome this broken record of
telling athletes how weak theirrespiratory systems are really
(05:23):
and how that system is very muchthe limiting system to them
ever getting any faster.
They literally just can'tbreathe enough air to supply
their system enough fuel to goany faster or any harder or
perform any higher.
And so we started this quest oftrying to figure out how to
properly train that system.
(05:44):
We tried all sorts of differenttools on the market.
Nothing was really fitting thebill, and so we decided to make
our own, and that's what we did.
So that's the isocadmic device.
The isocadmic device is just avery simple tool that allows us
to directly train therespiratory muscles in a
duration that's relevant forthose types of muscles.
(06:06):
Quick background on that isyour diaphragm is primarily
endurance muscle, and so evenfor a hockey player, even for,
you know, a strength athlete,it's still primarily endurance
fiber tissue, and so to train itfor you know, a couple of
breath holds, or a couple of,you know, 20 constricted breaths
, is not enough to really get agood training effect out of it,
(06:29):
and so we need to, like, trainit for duration.
Now, the challenge with that is,every time I breathe hard, I'm
breathing off all my CO2.
And so you need to be eitherproducing enough CO2 to keep
yourself in balance or you haveto use our device that keeps you
in balance by virtue of thedevice.
And that's really the secretsauce of our device is it allows
(06:49):
you to maintain what's callednormal capnea.
Your CO2 levels stay stable,and you can then train those
muscles as hard and as fast andas vigorously as you ever want,
for as long as you want, and dothat for, you know, 10, 20, 30
minutes, however long it takesto train them, depending on the
athlete.
Of course.
A hockey player might only needto do it for 10 to 90 seconds,
(07:14):
whereas I have 24-hour racersthat will do 35, 40-minute long
sessions.
So I'm always asked like, okay,what's the protocol to use?
And like, okay, what's theprotocol to use?
And it's like what's theprotocol to use for a kettlebell
?
Like it's just a tool thatallows you to train those
muscles.
So now we, it unlocks those,those muscles to be able to be
(07:36):
trained like any other system,which is kind of fun.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, it's gotta be fascinating for you.
For me, I'm getting chillsright now because I'm thinking
about all the different athletesthat you could run it through
and the different data that youcould obtain from it.
Myself, obviously, sittingthere next to a bunch of pro
hockey players I'm not innecessarily hockey shape as a
goalie different kind of musclesbeing used all the time but I
can imagine you get a 5'5athlete versus a 6'5 athlete.
(08:02):
They got some very differentlung capacities.
Even the difference in Travisand I's data was fascinating to
see how we were performingsimilar but using very different
metrics.
We'll call it.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was really.
It was a great example to haveyou guys testing side by side,
because you guys both made it tolike the same sort of level at
the end of the test.
But the way that you got therewas completely different.
You know, you, having a prettygood structural system up front,
dwindled off throughout thetest and what was the starter
(08:35):
guy, travis yeah, travis, youknow, actually had a little bit
more of a structurally limitedsystem, but he actually, like,
utilized it a little bitdifferently to meet that demand
in the end.
So a really good case, you know, in real time, to show, you
know the differences of howathletes can meet a performance
load and get there in completelydifferent ways, which is fun.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, fortunately we had a former Vancouver Canuck
over our shoulder helping us outa little bit there.
We'll shout him out there inthe incognito mode, but I do
want to review the data herebecause you have it out in front
of us.
I think it's better to showthan tell For those listening.
Head on over to YouTube,subscribe to our YouTube channel
and then you're going to beable to see Luke go through this
data in real time and thenmaybe, if you're fortunate
(09:19):
enough to be in Kelowna orVancouver, you could reach out
to Luke and connect, get yourown data done yourself, and then
you can compare to mine, seehow much better you are than me
potentially.
But, luke, let's go, let's takeit away.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Awesome, yeah.
So first of all, I got to airmy laundry here that when you
are getting VO2 testing done,demand more from your test,
right?
So this is a huge thing.
It is so lazy, in my view, thatthese practitioners and
physiologists will do thesetypes of tests and really just
give you the printout that'sinbuilt in their system.
(09:53):
And it's more important for anathlete to understand how this
information can empower yourtraining and help you make more
intelligent decisions in termsof how you train your system.
To just know your VO2 max numberis like the tip of the tip of
the iceberg.
It really is almost the leastimportant thing that we're
(10:14):
looking at in terms of helpingathletes.
What really is important isunderstanding how you got there
almost the least important thingthat we're looking at in terms
of helping athletes.
What really is important isunderstanding how you got there,
what systems were strong thatshowed no weakness towards the
end, and what systems werestable and then found
instability and eventually fellapart as the test went on.
This is all data that's beingcollected with the tools and it
(10:36):
just needs to be talked aboutand presented in a way that
allows the athlete to like, getbetter and understand that like
yes, you are not perfect, andthat's exactly why we train
right.
We understand these systems arestrong, these systems are weak,
and let's train our weaknesses.
So for you, let's get you up onscreen here I think it's like
(10:57):
it's a tool, like anything right.
Ultimately it's going to tellyou one data point at the end,
but if you're not fixing thestuff in between, you're never
going to change that end resultyeah, yeah and I mean you know
vo2 max is is a really nicesimple number for the masses to
kind of wrap their heads aroundand uh and understand.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
But knowing my score.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, like well, and I mean I would almost say, a BMI
score might be a little, even alittle bit more empowering,
because you have.
You have a little bit more likeday-to-day say on how how your
BMI should be compared and whereyou like should change your
diet to make that better,whereas just knowing that you're
(11:40):
at a VO2 max of 55.2 doesn'treally inform your
decision-making for tomorrow.
That's just like okay, I'm at55.2.
That's cool, but knowing thatyou are breathing 2.5 liters at
your maximum tidal volume and weknow from your spirometry that
you have 8.25 liters available,you have 6.5 liters available in
(12:02):
one second.
So let's back off and let's saylike just 70% of that 6.5
liters is attainable and you'reonly breathing 2.5 liters.
You're so underusing yoursystem.
It's exciting for me becausethere's a huge opportunity for
you to improve that system.
(12:24):
You have this tool that you arejust literally not using and
why is that?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Why would I not be using it?
Is that just from me trainingthat way for so long or being an
athlete?
I'm just like I'm going toadapt and get it done, no matter
what, no matter what it takes,kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah, so a respiratory system is very
interesting in the way that weone of my favorite adages in
exercise physiology is the bodywill always do whatever's
easiest and you were alwaysusing a respiratory system in a
relaxed range of motion and sowe have a pretty
well-conditioned shortened rangeof motion that we use our
diaphragm and our intercostalsand our respiratory structures
(13:01):
in that way.
And so when push comes to shoveand you've never conditioned
range of motion of yourrespiratory system, it's going
to default back to that shorterrange because that's what it's
good at.
So if we've never challenged abig deep breath, you can't hope
to use that big deep breath, youknow, 20 minutes into a test.
(13:22):
It's just it's going to be waytoo fatigued by that point.
So by training the system aheadof time and conditioning it
that it you know it can do 20,30 minutes of breathing deep and
meeting the ventilatory demand,then you know when you get to
the end of your test you're nowbreathing five, six you know
liters towards the end of thetest or maybe even seven liters.
(13:42):
I see people breathing 100%,120% of their FEV1 number
towards the end of the test.
If they've trained that systemand that FEV1 is that force
exhalation volume over onesecond, that's like your ideal
breath.
Second, that's like your idealbreath, and so you know, for the
(14:02):
standard that we try to setwithin our organization for
athletes to achieve is 70% ofthat.
But, like I said, that is justthe beginning.
There's people that exceed that.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
And so, looking at this data right now on the
graded exercise test report, Iwould say that I have, you know,
given my comparison to others,I'm actually doing well.
And then I would say, doubledown on that, considering I'm
only using 20% of or you know,30% of my actual lung capacity.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.
So you're, you're, you're.
You ended the test at 300 Watts, at a VO2 max at around 55.2.
Your maximum heart ratemeasured throughout the test was
192 beats per minute.
So good like functional abilitywith the heart.
Your peak ventilation rate was167 liters per minute, which is
(14:54):
like pretty decent, to give yousort of context of that my you
know five foot nothing.
Mom will breathe, you know 70,80 liters per minute towards the
end of her test, but she'slittle.
You know.
It is pretty normal for me totest like a a tour level cyclist
at you know 230, 240 liters perminute.
(15:16):
So, there's, there's, so there'squite a bit of range there.
And then as we train,especially strength athletes, we
train them up towards that 300liter per minute mark, just so
that system is just never alimitation and that's certainly
something that's trainable.
To meet that demand of 167liters per minute, you're doing
(15:37):
that with 2.5 liters per breathor less.
That means you're breathing 70breaths per minute.
70 breaths per minute more thana breath a second.
That is panting, that is reallyfast breathing right, yeah, you
should have seen the video.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I was doing more than panting there at the end.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
So really important point to drive home for people
is that you have the choice whenyou're breathing, to breathe
Like you have to breathe that167 liters per minute, with
either 2.5 liters per breath at70 breaths per minute, or let's
(16:26):
double it, let's go to fiveliters per breath at 35 breaths
per minute.
Right, and now?
The reason why that's so muchmore efficient for the system is
that every single time youcycle a breath right, every time
you take a breath, you'removing the dead space air
between your mouth and youralveoli.
(16:46):
That is just plumbing.
There's no gas exchangehappening there, and so every
single time you take a breath,that's 250 milliliters of just
dead space air that just has toget recycled.
So we want to cycle thatthrough as few times per minute
as possible so you're getting asfresh of air to the bottom
(17:10):
lobes of your alveoli and yourlungs and getting all that CO2
out of your system every singletime we take a breath, and so
we're really maximizingefficiency Down the road.
You know that changes the waythat oxygen enters into your
bloodstream, that changes theway CO2 gets pulled out of your
system and that also then putsyour muscles in a different
environment to perform in, andso it really trickles down the
(17:31):
entire system on how it createsmuch more control.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Okay.
So I have so many questions.
One of the questions that Iwanted to ask as I was panting
during this test was the nasalbreathing versus mouth breathing
, and I know that device kind ofmaybe I want to say limited my
ability to nasal breathe a tinybit.
But I've read the book breathjames nester, I mouth tape at
night.
I'm very passionate about thissubject.
(17:57):
I'm curious how this impactsperformance.
I know that nasal breathingnitrous oxide like.
Can you maybe provide a bitmore of that insight around how
this is done, whether nasalbreathing is beneficial during
these tests, et cetera?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So, first and foremost, I amnot going to downplay the value
of nasal breathing.
I think nasal breathing is atool that is important and
should be used in certaincontexts.
To think that nasal breathingwill give you your maximum
(18:31):
performance in a marathon or aperformance load on the ice is
just wrong.
For you to breathe 167 litersper minute, there is zero chance
you can do that through yournose.
Your nose is just too small,like physically, it's just not a
big enough orifice.
We need to open our mouth to beable to breathe that much air
(18:52):
and, like I said, 167 liters perminute is okay.
Right, we see people breathingmuch more than that and again,
nasal breathing is just, it justdoesn't touch that.
The maximum I really see peopleable to hold with nasal
breathing alone is around 65 to80 liters per minute.
If they have a larger nose,maybe, but it's really like a
(19:12):
physical limitation that way.
Now, the value of nasalbreathing is that it is a
mechanical limitation.
It makes it harder for you tobreathe, and so it forces you to
breathe smoother.
So you breathe in smooth andout smooth.
So that's the nice thing abouthaving that constriction is that
it forces the muscles throughthis like extruder of breath,
(19:36):
right, and so it just slows downinto a sinusoidal wave pattern.
We need to be able to break outof that when the going gets
tough.
But that doesn't change thefact that it is a good tool for
certain jobs.
So you talked about mouthtaping at night.
There's all sorts of benefitsto breathing through your nose
(19:57):
at night Humidifies the air asit's going into your system.
The ventilation rate is nowherenear 167 liters per minute.
It's, you know, much closer tolike 10, 20, 30 liters per
minute.
So it's like orders ofmagnitude smaller than what is
required during load, and soyour nose can meet that demand
quite easily.
(20:17):
Load, and so your nose can meetthat demand quite easily.
And so what a lot of peoplewill default is to a mouth
breath, which leads some, likeyou know, issues with dental
hygiene and things like this.
And so closing your mouth isjust going to help like keep you
a little bit healthier, andit's going to help with the the
introduction of nitric oxideinto your system.
(20:37):
There's two places in the bodythat nitric oxide are produced.
One is in your nose and one isin the endothelial cells of your
veins and arteries, and so thisgas that's produced inside your
nose gets sucked back into yourlungs as you're breathing in,
and it's a vasodilator, so itopens up your airways, it
relaxes the muscles and it'salso antibacterial, so it helps
(21:01):
to clean and purify the air asit's moving in.
The nitric oxide argument isnot a good argument for high
performance, because justbecause you're breathing 167
liters per minute doesn't meanyou're also increasing the
amount of nitric oxide.
Your nose is just constantlysort of like producing a steady
rate of that.
(21:21):
And when you're diluting youknow that amount of nitric oxide
into 10 liters per minute, itis potent and it has a good
value.
When it's being diluted in 167liters per minute, it's moot at
that point and so it's notreally doing a whole lot for you
.
And so nitric oxide has itspurpose at the low end of the
(21:46):
spectrum in terms of ventilationrates, but towards the top end,
you know it doesn't reallymatter so much.
The other thing is that bybreathing through your nose at
lower intensities, you know itdoes help you engage your
diaphragm a little bit more, andI believe that that's because
of that constriction.
The constriction causes alittle bit of resistance in how
(22:10):
you breathe, and when you feelthat resistance, your body's
going to engage larger musclesand the largest muscle you have
for breathing is your diaphragm.
And that's why nasal breathingis very much linked to
diaphragmatic breathing is thatyou have to pull with that
bigger muscle to pull throughyour nose, especially if you
have, you know, smaller nose.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Okay, this is good to know.
This is great.
This is I'm.
This confirmed everything thatI was thinking, at least, and I
know I wasn't getting to 167liters per minute with my nose,
but I just had to make sure.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.
What else can I tell you aboutnasal breathing I?
Speaker 1 (22:49):
mean, hey, this is great.
I am am more so.
I know you sent over like threeseparate reports.
I was talking with markafterwards.
He was enamored at the factthat you were able to just whip
this up, send it over right away.
Travis and I were reviewing it.
I'm like what him, travis,martel, mark fitzgerald have
built at colonna highperformance and colonna hockey
fest on an annual basis issimply sensational.
(23:10):
You know there was probably 100plus athletes there this year.
There's going to be, we'll say,double that next year.
We got some exciting plans inthe works, hopefully including
some of our CSM females there,but I really think that
incorporating stuff likeISOCAPNIC on an annual basis,
probably quarterly basis, forthose athletes that are local to
you is going to provide so manyinsights for them to be able to
(23:34):
look at.
You know, review, compare,compete, like everyone's
competitive in that environment.
And you know these are datapoints that no one's getting
right now, unless I'm toldotherwise.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
No.
So so I'll kind of show youlike three levels of information
here.
This first page is what youtypically get from a VO2max
report, which gives you yourVO2max number and some of your
stats about your ventilatorythresholds and your zones and
that sort of thing which is allfine and dandy.
You get a little scale here tohelp you like rank yourself
(24:06):
amongst people, your age andsize and that sort of thing.
That's sort of like the basicsof a VO2 max report.
Beyond that, if you're lucky,you might get this graph right
here which shows your VO2 numberas it increases.
So as the load increases youcan see it step up.
Your heart rate increases inred and then blue.
(24:26):
Your VO2 number increases withit too, and so we see a VO2 max
number towards the end andthat's how we like see that peak
VO2 number and that's how weobjectively assess that VO2 max.
If you're much, much luckier,you get the mechanics data and
this I rarely see outside ofpeople using like a VO2 master
(24:47):
device or something like this,where we actually get to see how
your respiratory muscles aremeeting the demand.
So I know there's a lot here,so I'm just going to try to
simplify it.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
The yellow the pieces that you put onto my leg and
arm correct.
So this data?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
that I have on screen right now is your VO2 master
data.
So it's the device that'ssitting on your face, okay, okay
, and so with this one we see inyellow how big your breaths are
for any point during the test.
The light blue is how fastyou're breathing, so we can see
you start it at around 20breaths per minute and you
peaked out here towards that 70breaths per minute.
(25:26):
At the end there right, andthen the green line is your
ventilation rate.
So how many liters per minute?
So the simple way to think aboutthis is that the relationship
between the load, the steps hereand the green line is more or
less unchangeable.
Your body needs to produce thatmuch ATP energy to meet the
demand of the stress load of thetest.
(25:47):
You have the choice to meetthat green line load by pushing
this yellow line up or down,breathing deeper or smaller.
And for you you started out atlike two and a half, three
liters.
A couple of times you scratchedthe surface at three liters per
breath and then it's stabilizedat around 2.5 liters and then,
(26:09):
when the going got really tough,at that last step, when you
failed, you went from 2.3 litersto below 2 liters.
It actually got much smaller.
Your big time compensator wasjust breathing faster, which is,
again, it's not that uncommon.
The body will always dowhatever is easiest and that's
your default is to just breathefast, and we can totally train,
(26:32):
train this to breathe bigger whyis that?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
why, like, is there any reason why?
Like that's my, my go-to?
You said that's common for mostpeople, but that's just like a
I gotta breathe, I gotta get itin somehow, yeah it's.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
it's because that respiratory system fatigued out
right, so it wasn't.
It wasn't capable of meetingthe ventilation demand with deep
breaths anymore.
And for you, deep breaths forthis test was only like two and
a half liters per breath, yeah,not deep.
And we know that you have much,much, much more available in
terms of just structural size.
(27:06):
It's like teaching a bird howto flap its wings If it never
does it before it takes practice.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
I like to think of this in every aspect of my life.
I got a lot of room to grow.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Well, you know what.
That's how I like to categorizethese things.
Right, let's highlight thethings that you're good at.
But also, you can breatheexceptionally fast.
That's a cool thing.
So you can breatheexceptionally fast, that's a
cool thing.
Another thing is that you have areally good range on your
cardiac system.
Your heart starts out around100 beats per minute and it gets
(27:47):
up to almost 200 beats perminute, which is like that's a
good working range for yourheart.
We don't want it to be squishedtowards the top end, where you
start at 150 and you end at 200,or to be stuck low and you
start at 70 and you end at 120.
Right, you have a good workinguh range of your cardiac system.
So your cardiac system is oneof your strong suits and if we
were to keep going down here, wecould get into the moxie data,
and this is the purple line here.
This is your muscular system.
(28:07):
This is the other system, orthe other sensors that I had on
your legs, and this is lookingat how well you're utilizing
your muscular system, and we cansee that it's a pretty steady
flow down.
We start out around that 70%muscle oxygenation.
So for those that don't knowwhat SMO2 or MOXIE.
(28:27):
Muscle oxygenation is is themuscles ability to utilize
oxygen, and so we can justmeasure that directly now, back
in the day old days we would uselike lactate to try to
understand this a little bit,but lactate was limited in how
many data points we got, andwe're pricking fingers or ears
all the time to try to get thatdata, and so we're not really
(28:48):
getting a stream of data.
We're getting sort of like asnapshot on little bits, and
it's a surrogate to what we'reactually interested in is what
the muscles are doing.
This is just a stream of dataof exactly what we want to see,
which is the muscle oxygenationof the muscle.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
And so.
I would have had a slightlyhigher number had I not had a
couple beverages the nightbefore, likely correct.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, your high highs might have gotten up towards
the 80 mark and really whenyou're fatigued and maybe a
little bit more beat up, it justdrops the overall performance
output a little bit.
So you ended the test at around300 watts.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
During this session you might have made it to the
350 mark had you, you know, know, came into it, rested um, but I
used some, some narwhals orlactico right yeah, there, where
are my narwhals?
Back here shout out to evie andariel, yeah, yeah so, yeah, so
this is actually one of yourstrengths.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
you have a reasonably high high with your muscular
system and you got down below 20at the end, which is a
reasonably low low.
So your ability to utilize yourmuscular system is quite good
and this is the reason why yourVO2 number was so great.
Even though your respiratorysystem was limited, your ability
to suck oxygen out of thebloodstream is quite good, and
(30:04):
that adds to the load of the VO2.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
That was just peer pressure of having so many eyes
on me to finish that thing.
There was no way I was gettingoff without finishing.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, and an interesting one here especially
for, like you know, a goalie isyour core temperature.
So we had a rectal thermometershoved up.
No, just joking.
We had a sensor on your ribthat measures your core
temperature, your radiant energy, and so from that we can tell
how hot your body's getting.
So the blue line is your coretemperature, your radiant energy
, and so from that we can tellhow hot your body's, your hot
your body's getting.
So the blue line is your, uh,your core temperature.
(30:36):
The the red line is your, yourskin temperature.
So we can actually see thepoint at which you started
sweating and your skin gotcolder and your core temperature
still went up.
So that's an important thingfor especially endurance
athletes, but really any athleteis that for us to produce that
energy, it has a huge byproductof heat that's generated.
That heat is measurable both atthe skin load and through your
(31:00):
tissues to see your coretemperature.
And what we do want to see isthat your body does get warmer
as the load increases, becausethat shows that you're utilizing
calories're utilizing calorieswell and uh, and it's not
falling apart.
If it starts to drop off atsome point, it's usually
followed up pretty quickly by a,by a metabolic bonk, where your
system loses energy becauseit's just not providing enough
(31:22):
ATP to uh to output.
And then the last couple ofgraphs here are comparables,
where the next time you come infor your test we can look to see
is your wattage is higher forthe given heart rate in this
graph.
And then the next one is yourVO2 higher or lower given the
load.
And what we want to see is thatyour training is progressing
(31:45):
and so the VO2 that it's costingyou to go 200 watts, for
example, is lower.
The vo2 that it's costing youto go 200 watts, for example, is
lower.
You actually are at a lower vo2number for the same output,
meaning it's costing you less.
This is really important forendurance, but it's also very
important for for hockey,because if you can perform at
the same intensity as the otherson the ice but it costs less,
(32:09):
gives you the option to eitherperform higher or make calmer
decisions, be a bit moreaccurate.
And same sort of idea here withyour performance load versus
your heart rate.
We want that heart raterelationship to drop.
We want the heart rate to comedown for a given output.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So how many of these tests have you performed and
where would you rank, kind of Iwant to say, the performance
that Travis and I put up thereand biggest areas for
improvement?
And maybe this will be on theother two data points or PDFs
that you show me moving forward.
But you know, I've been lookingat this.
I'm like I feel like I didpretty good, but I'm like the
(32:49):
type that's always striving formore and I want to get better
Right, and I'm like where are mybig rocks that I got to move to
make big improvements?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yeah, so.
So first of all, I got to handit to you guys that you know I I
was introduced to the group,you know, the night before and
and you guys were like withbells on the next morning to run
through the test, which isawesome, that you're game for
that sort of torture, so tospeak.
So that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I'm a guinea pig man.
This podcast has been six years.
Culmination of being able tomeet cool people like yourself,
train with individuals likeWorld's Strongest man NHL, pwhl,
nfl, nba man, nhl, pwhl, nfl,nba like this is.
The dream for me is getting tobe able to chop it up, learn
about how I can get better andthen go and put up some numbers.
When we got bryce put testingus on veld right yeah, exactly
(33:39):
so.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
So for you, the like, the quite obvious mover for the
next little while for you is,uh is improving your respiratory
system.
Did we get you an isocapnicdevice?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
no, not yet.
Yeah, we're gonna get you anisocapnic device.
No, not yet I'll come grab itnext time.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, we're gonna get you an isocapnic device so you
can actually train this system.
So right now, you're meetingthe demand with with fast, small
breaths, and so we're gonnagive you training that's gonna
teach you to endure bigger,deeper breaths for longer is
that that balloon thing that yougot the video of me using?
Speaker 1 (34:08):
that's right yeah, so .
Speaker 3 (34:10):
So that device allows us to control CO2 output so we
no longer have the risk ofhyperventilation.
And now we can train thatsystem for as long as we want,
and so you're going to be usingit as part of your warm-up
five-minute warm-up before anyworkouts you do Super, super
simple and then you're going tohave like three or four sessions
a week that'll be between fiveand 10 minutes long, where we're
(34:34):
specifically training yourability to endure bigger, deeper
ventilation rates.
So you're breathing deeper,okay.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Luke, we have one question Everyone's dying to
know what's the ideal way toincrease VO2 max and why is it
important.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah, well, that's a.
That's a loaded question.
So I'm I'm working with, with,with Mark out of Kelowna here to
to help maximize you know, theNHL players performance during
VO2 max.
Vo2 max is very much afunctional test, and so it's.
So it's measuring how good youare at the modality that's being
(35:13):
tested.
So if it's an assault bike,then you better be coordinated
and good at it if you thinkyou're going to perform on it.
If you are a marathoner, it'sprobably not wise that you do it
on a bike.
If you're a cyclist, it'sprobably not wise that you do it
on a treadmill.
That's the thing.
Choose the modality that you'remost functional at, because
that's going to truly test howgood you are at it.
(35:36):
Vo2 is a measure of a couplethings your muscular demand, so
how much oxygen your muscles areconsuming, how much oxygen your
circulatory system can movearound.
Your cardiac output is relatedto that.
And then your, your ability toabsorb oxygen through your
respiratory system.
(35:56):
So that's the primary things.
What's the number one thingthat you can do to get better?
Well, 70% of the people that wesee through our lab over the
last 25 years are limited intheir ability to ventilate air.
They literally just can't pushany harder to drive that VO2
number up any higher, becausethey literally can't breathe
(36:18):
enough air.
And so by training therespiratory system to move, more
air allows us to move that setpoint and that limitation on the
top end so you can push alittle bit harder, a little bit
deeper, and that limitation onthe top end so you can push a
little bit harder, a little bitdeeper.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
There you go, folks.
Easy, just put it to the test,hit Luke up, send him a message,
get your data tracked.
No, I mean, for me it's likethis is again.
I said it, this is the dream,because now, every year, I'm
going to come back, I'm going tobe doing vertical test jumps,
I'm going to be doing abductors,abductor testing and like,
hopefully, maybe on a quarterlyor semi-annual basis, whatever
(36:52):
the case may be, but I thinkit's really important.
People are getting their bloodwork done, people are getting
all of these other data pointstaken down, noted, and if you're
not looking at every system inyour body, ie your respiratory
system, then just because youhave big muscles and can bench
press 500 pounds or whatever thecase may be, doesn't
necessarily mean that you'regoing to be able to outrun
(37:13):
someone who grabs your wife'swallet or purse and you need to
go race and catch them right.
Like I look at that as okay,I'm want to be physically fit,
capable of doing anything at anypoint, kind of, like you said,
generally decent at whatever,whereas, you know, professional
athletes need to be very good attheir specific tasks.
I think, general pop, we're allathletes.
We're on the athletes podcasthere today.
(37:34):
Everyone should have theability to run a mile or move
their body to a certain degreeto like bare minimums.
My on the right track there.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, and luke yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
so vo2 is an interesting test that I think is
relevant for for just abouteveryone from the health and
wellness and longevity side ofthings.
The VO2 max number is a reallygood indicator on longevity
factors and lifespan andhealthspan, so it's important
for just anybody to get theirVO2 max done so they're better
understanding their health, oftheir system.
(38:07):
For high performance athletes,it is the understanding of that
1%.
How can you make yourself 1%better?
And showing up every day andworking hard is the easy part.
If you're an elite athlete,that's what you're good at.
You can show up and grind.
Now can we make that grind moreintelligent and make it a little
(38:29):
bit more potent?
That's that's the challengethat we have as as testers and
physiologists and coaches andtrainers is to is to make the
training more potent and andunderstanding where these
systems are strong and weak isreally important.
Like it's really fun for meworking with you know, hockey
players and rugby players andstuff like this, because they've
(38:51):
been working their muscular andcardiac systems for their
entire career, and then we testthem and we show like results
like this that are, like I said,are not surprising to me, but
show a massive limitation andthey're just like oh my God, I
have so much room forimprovement.
This is great.
Now I know exactly what I needto do next to make myself that
(39:14):
much better.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
So did you know that I had run a marathon prior to
this?
And does seeing this data of mehaving run like marathons, like
does it seem shocking, or doyou question like how I got
through that or what?
Like?
What questions come to mind foryou there?
Speaker 3 (39:31):
No, I mean, I could guess how you met the demand of
of running the marathon,assuming assuming you're you're
running, like how fast you arerunning.
So, like, the cool thing aboutendurance sport, especially like
a participation endurancesports like this, like a
marathon, is that you can justrun slower and it just not cost
your body that much.
If you're running as as fast asyou can for a marathon, then
(39:51):
I'm going to predict at thispoint, looking at this data,
that you are meeting the demand,breathing probably, you know,
two steps per breath.
So two steps to breathe in, twosteps to breathe out.
So you're probably breathing 40to 50 breaths per minute
throughout the entire marathon,which is not very efficient for
your system, but it is.
It is also the system that youcurrently have, and so to think
(40:13):
that you're going to change thaton race day is probably not a
good idea.
But it does reveal a limitationthat on your next marathon,
you've trained that system up tobe able to react a little bit
differently and then you'll beable to meet that demand a
little bit better, keeping inmind that, like you know, for
something like a marathon, beable to meet that demand a
little bit better.
Keeping in mind that, like youknow, for something like a
marathon, you know you're,you're, you're functioning at,
(40:33):
you know, 70% of your VO2 maxfor a long period of time,
meaning that your respiratorysystem is using, you know,
between 10 and 18% of your totalenergy, and so if that's
inefficient then that's justbleeding off performance.
So if we can make thatrespiratory system more
(41:00):
efficient, we can push thatnumber from 18% down to like 8%
and we're not using nearly asmuch energy to do the same.
Ventilatory output.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, it makes me question.
Yeah, it makes me a question.
I started running maybeFebruary 2023, 2024, whatever it
was and then did a halfmarathon a few months after that
, four or five months after NewBalance sent me some shoes, did
the full marathon and didn'treally want to pursue it after
that.
I mean, I'm still doing theoccasional run.
But I also just read some studyfrom Gatorade which sounds
(41:25):
super legitimate, about the factthat study reveals men who run
daily have up to 41% lowertestosterone than men who don't
train at all.
Do you see any accuracy to thatstatement?
Or is that just a random socialmedia stat that I shouldn't be
paying attention to?
Luke way.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Yeah, that's a.
That's an interesting one.
So strength training is verymuch more related to the
testosterone markers.
So if they're're, if you'redoing no strength training
whatsoever, it wouldn't surpriseme entirely if, if you're
causing some anemia and causingsome, uh some, some hormonal
imbalance like that, for sureokay.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So to balance, or like, make sure that you're not
completely dropping your tlevels, just make sure you
incorporate some resistancetraining a couple days a week.
Balance out endurance.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, I always recommend doing some
strengthening and conditioningwork just to make sure that that
system is more resilient andwe're able to brave any injuries
down the road.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Okay, We've focused for 45 minutes here on the
hockey Kelowna Hockey Fest,isocapnic.
I want to give you anopportunity to highlight your
athletes, what you've been doinghere over the past few decades,
I will say and what you see inthe future as far as predictions
are concerned, as far as waysthat you see the next generation
(42:42):
of athletes, because here onthe Athletes Podcast our goal is
to entertain, educate andinspire that next gen, and
personally I think there's a lotof value in what you're
providing here today.
Selfishly, I'm getting a littlepersonalized session, but for
those listening and watching,there's an incredible amount of
information here.
You're a resource that peoplecan reach out to.
(43:02):
What are your kind of crystalball goals here for the next few
years and where do you see thespace going?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, I mean, like I said, it's super exciting for me
to be more involved in the teamsports world, like hockey,
football, rugby, for that matter.
It's really cool for me to seeit coming from the endurance
side, how hyper-focused andhyper-aware and really
well-developed the musculartraining modalities are in these
(43:30):
spaces.
But then it really shows likehow what we've been doing in the
endurance world for, for youknow, many decades is really
going to to change the waythings work, especially now that
we're seeing more teams usingthings like VO2 max as as
standards to to issue playersice time, like it.
(43:54):
If.
If these athletes aren'ttraining these systems properly,
then it literally like it, ithurts their career and it'll
hurt their performance output.
So where I really am excited toyou know, to work with these,
these teams in the near futureis to really help maximize how
they're able to execute a VO2max test and affect how well
(44:16):
they can perform on the icethrough shifts.
We have a whole bunch of thingscoming down the line in terms
of research papers that arecoming out on how we are
changing breathing strategiesand how that's changing
effective workloads and accuracyon the ice and rate of
perceived exertion of thoseloads Like.
It's really fascinating stuffhow the breathing is really like
(44:38):
the catalyst for unlocking thatnext step.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
So much we still don't know about the human body
that we're just uncovering.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Eh, yeah Well, and it's really just a collaboration
of like things that you knowthe endurance world have been
playing with for for, like Isaid, a while, and so it's a
matter of like, like leveragingthat in the right way to make
hockey players that much betterAthletes are competitive.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
For decades, people have had everything behind
curtains making sure that theydon't want to give the next
person beside them the edgethat's going to ultimately get
them the spot on the team versusthe other, when in reality, we
should all just be sharinginformation, all getting better,
because ultimately, everyone'sgoing to improve in that way,
and if your guy beside you iscompeting harder, it's going to
make you work harder, get better.
(45:26):
I don't know, to me maybethat's just every.
I want everyone to win space,but I think, hey, let's, let's
get everyone with all theinformation available, with the
best information available,doing everything they possibly
can, and then let the cards fallwhere they do.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Like that's the, the, the even playing field
mentality, where sort ofeverybody has access to these
things, and really that's been.
Our mandate as a company is tomake high-level respiratory
training just available toanybody, and so we've put the
whole company together with thatin mind that it's just removing
of barriers.
Now, that being said, I can'ttell you how many NHL players
(46:05):
are using our device, becausethey don't want me to right,
it's a trade secret for them,because it's an edge for them to
get their competitive advantage, and that's sort of like the
ongoing, you know, saga ofworking with professional level
athletes, is that it kind ofbecomes their secret weapon.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Well, that's why you get to work with me and I just
share it with everyone and thenyou get the rewards.
The NHL players can still keepit, keep it quiet, but no, I
think like the other part that Iwas frustrated with, if I'm
being honest, was that I didn'tthrow on like lactigo because I
heard about how this couldbenefit.
I wasn't using the narwhalsduring that session like from a
curiosity standpoint.
I'm also like our sponsorperfect sports supplements they
(46:45):
provide us with incrediblesupplements.
I use creatine daily.
Are there supplements that yousuggest for athletes to improve
any of their bodily systems?
Do you think that has a realimpact?
Is that just the one percent atthe end of the table like?
Give me your insights there,because you're looking at the
daily, you know yeah, yeah, Imean.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
So we're we're big advocates on doing blood work,
you know, several times a yearwith our athletes, just because,
like you know, hematocrit isvery much a currency that we
have to spend during trainingand during racing, and so being
on top of your ferritin levelsand your vitamin loads is really
important.
So if we can identify earlyanything that's chronically low
(47:28):
or chronically towards the lowend, then we can build a regime
that's going to help top thatoff.
Then there's the basic thingsthat sort of everybody should be
doing, which is like makingsure you're getting enough
protein, making sure you'retaking in your aminos things
like creatine is a great one todo daily that sort of thing and
(47:49):
then just being really aware oneverything that goes into your
system is what your system ismade out of.
So you feed it crap, it's goingto give crap out, and so trying
to eat healthy, trying to eatwhole, trying to eat a variety
of foods and staying away fromany one niche.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
I am hitting a candy store right now.
Now, man, this has been 50minutes where I've just been
soaking up as much as I possiblycan.
I'll be listening to it againto review my data.
I guess I want to know what gotyou into the space 25 years ago
.
What were you doing?
What sports were you playing asa kid?
We got a few minutes left here.
I always like to find out.
You know the backstory, thebackground of these individuals
(48:29):
that we get on the show and like.
What inspired them to get whothose individuals were?
And you know, are youscratching that itch now today?
Is that what gets you up in themorning?
Speaker 3 (48:38):
yeah.
So I started off in well.
My first sport was downhill skiracing.
Instead of growing thicker, Igrew longer, and so, as my my
comrades in arms back then wereupwards of 220 pounds, I was
like working my tail off.
They'd be 145 pounds, and sowhen I started doing endurance
sport, I was like, wow, okay,this is like way better use of
(49:00):
my time.
And so I really set my goalshigh in the endurance world and
I'd raced professionally fortriathlon for a number of years.
And then I got into thecoaching world and started
working with my mentor, drSellers out of Vernon here, and
we started coming up withdifferent testing methodologies
for athletes to betterunderstand how to make better
(49:21):
decisions.
And through that process, it'sjust been this problem-solving
scenario where we identify theselimitations and we find ways of
training those limitations.
The respiratory system has justalways been this primary
limiter for a lot of people andthere just really hasn't been
something on the market.
So it's out of necessity of ustraining our athletes that this
(49:44):
tool exists.
We needed a better tool to fixthat system and stop wasting
training time so we couldactually train the systems that
are weakest, and so that's whywe brought it out is just so my
athletes could benefit.
Turns out that it's beneficialfor people with anxiety, people
that are training to go toaltitude, people that are
dealing with acute mountainsickness, people that are trying
(50:07):
to get bigger lung volumes,people that are trying to get
more functional lungs all sortsof ways of using this tool to
get better.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
I can't wait to get mine.
I'm going to be using it everyday.
I'm going to be freakingtesting my data marks at every
single point that I possibly can.
No, this is awesome.
I really appreciate your time,luke.
Again, you came out within 16hours and we were testing and
got reports back.
It was phenomenal.
From a selfish standpoint, Ialways like to bring up the fact
that we've had on probablyabout a dozen goalies to date.
(50:39):
I personally think they'reprobably the best athletes that
are out on, the best functionalathletes, all-around athletes
out there, and maybe suggestsome sports for that next gen to
pursue in a way to round outtheir athleticism.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Okay.
So the way I want to answerthat question would be the way
the industry was answering thefittest athlete question back in
the early 80s.
They tested marathon runners,cross-country skiers, swimmers,
kayakers, cyclists, all in labto understand what you know.
Finally, you know, objectivelyspeaking, what athlete is the
(51:20):
fittest athlete of all, and whatthey found was that the
marathoners were the bestathletes of all, and all right.
So then we started digging intothe data and what they did for
all of those athletes is theyran them on a treadmill.
So, of course, the ones thatwere functional at using the
treadmill were the most fit,because if you put a kayaker on
(51:42):
a treadmill with their skinnylittle legs and their big heavy
upper body, yeah, they're notgoing to run super well and it's
not going to allow them toshine in the way that their body
has been conditioned.
And so you know they're they'relike I've worked with a like,
like crossfit games athletesthat are just incredibly
phenomenal, but they're just,they're not very good runners,
(52:03):
they're not very good cyclists.
They're pretty good at strength, they're pretty good at
gymnastics, right.
So in terms of like rounded,you know, maybe that's an
argument, but certainly I thinkit's very specific.
I think it's a wonderful howconditionable the human body is
to becoming a chess master or tobecoming the best athlete in
(52:26):
whatever modality you're in, andso, yeah, what that?
Maybe that's like sidesteppingthe question a little bit.
So no, that's great, I think.
I think my bias would betriathlon, because they do three
sports, they, they have a hugetraining load to meet that
demand, that that it's not justlike an all season thing, but
it's an all career thing.
(52:46):
You know, from the momentthey're, they're, they're 12, 13
years old or even younger, tothe end of their careers,
they're, they're, they'retraining, you know, 20 to 40
hours a week, getting in massivetraining loads, and that's,
that's what it takes.
And so I I just don't see verymany other athletes doing that
same sort of thing or for thatlong of a, of a duration.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah, ben Hoffman and Liam Donnelly are two
individuals I've had on the showNice Massive training
capacities, much larger thanmine, and I just get to admire
from afar what they're capableof doing.
Liam Donnelly's got someincredible TikTok content going
out there, if you haven't seenit.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
Big shout out to Liam .
I love Liam.
He's such a great kid.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Yeah, he's the best, well overdue to get him back on
the show, but maybe we'll do aconversation.
The three of us will do sometesting in person and see how
much better his stats arecompared to mine.
No, no, this has been awesome.
Luke, again really appreciatewhat you've been able to do over
the past few weeks.
I'm excited to stay in contact,though our way of wrapping up
(53:52):
every single episode is we askour guest their biggest piece of
advice for the next generationof athletes, and I'd love to
open the floor for you to shareyours.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Okay, if you're an athlete and you want to get
better, the the, the secret pill.
The very important thing thatyou need to do to excel in what
you do is consistency.
Consistency is king.
If you can't show up every day,right, and that means that
(54:18):
doesn't mean that you areignoring injury and you're
ignoring being sick.
That means that you aremanaging those things better
than everybody else on theplanet.
Your ability to be consistentis what gets you to the finish
line before everybody else.
Be consistent.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Consistency is king, folks.
That's it, luke Way.
Thank you so much for coming on.
The Athletes Podcast, 266thepisode.
People are going to love thisone.
Thanks again for coming on, man, really appreciate it.
Excited to do a review nextyear and see where the data
points are at, maybe after notso many bevvies.
What's up folks?
Welcome back to the 267thepisode of the Athletes Podcast,
today featuring Luke Way.
We're here in Kelowna, britishColumbia, where we just took
part of Kelowna Hockey Fest.
Luke Way took Travis and I fromstarter through a rigorous VO2
test.
You guys are going to see allof the data insights and I'm the
guinea pig that you guys aregoing to be able to review over
the next 45 minutes.
Luke Way is an incrediblefather, someone who I look up to
(00:23):
in the athletic space.
Luke Way is an incrediblefather, someone who I look up to
in the athletic space.
He's the founder of IsocapnicTechnologies.
This is the 267th episode ofthe Athlete's Podcast brought to
you by Perfect SportsSupplements.
We're on the road.
Our diesel protein is the bestin the business.
You guys get it.
Use the code AP15 at checkout.
Let me know what you think.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hope you enjoy the show.
You're the most decoratedracquetball player in US history
, world's strongest man, fromchildhood passion to
professional athlete, eight-timeIronman champion.
So what was it like making yourdebut in the NHL?
What is your biggest piece ofadvice for the next generation
of athletes, from underdogs tonational champions?
This is the Athletes Podcast,where high-performance
individuals share their triumphs, defeats and life lessons to
(01:06):
educate, entertain and inspirethe next generation of athletes.
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
A lot of energy time expended not quite as much
energy expended as we did on thebike for those 20 minutes when
I was dying next to Travis.
Holy, dina, Luke, wait, can youtell us exactly what you put us
through at at colonna hockeyfest before I showed them up for
putting on such an incredibleevent?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
yeah, man.
So you, you did a a prettystandardized vo2 max style test.
So it's an incremental steptest.
It's about three minute longsteps and it slowly gets harder
until you explode at the end ofthe test, which is a kind of fun
and dramatic.
And from that test we're ableto find your zones for training.
But I think, more importantly,we are able to actually see how
(01:49):
your training should change inthe next phase so you can
actually make yourself betterand not just be generically
training and showing up andworking hard.
You're actually putting thathard work to a better end.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Are you calling me out for being just a generically
decent athlete at everythingand not actually good at any one
particular thing?
Luke, Is that what you'resaying?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
right now.
You know your results areexcellent.
Statistically speaking, they'reexcellent.
So I'm going to say you areexcellent.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
I had one person comment, Marcus Wong, actually
specifically talking about myrespiratory status being
functionally limited.
Can we comment on that first tomaybe start the conversation
off?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Sure, yeah.
So when we profile athletesespecially in large hockey team
organizations sort of scenarioswe profile the athletes to
better understand, or let thembetter understand, how their
training should be changed andhow they can approach their
respiratory training that istailored to them.
(02:52):
So there's three primaryprofiles.
There's the functionallylimited, so that means that they
are unable to use the volumesthat they have available.
They're structurally limited,meaning that they have less
volumes than we would expect forsomebody their size, or they're
balanced and they have a littlebit of both, or they're limited
(03:12):
in a little bit of both.
And so for you you'refunctionally limited, meaning
you have great lung capacity butyour ability to use it and use
it over the term of a testdwindles over time, if not is
much lower than we would expectfor a well-conditioned system.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Now, luke, we need to give the listeners some context
, because Travis and I took thistest after, we'll say, a
slightly more aggressive eveningthan we would typically do on a
Wednesday.
Coming in on a Thursday morningat 8 am, trav was worried about
having a jammer.
Obviously, trav is representingstarter had to put his wheels
to the test too.
We had a bunch of NHL guysaround us, so I wasn't backing
(03:54):
down.
But can you maybe explain thisprocess?
You've been a coach for 20years, coaching endurance
athletes 20-plus years now, Ishould say.
We met Wednesday night after aphenomenal educational event
thanks to Kelowna HighPerformance Kelowna Hockey Fest.
We got chatting.
Travis thought I looked likeMcDavid.
You started introducingyourself thanks to Brad Thorpe,
(04:16):
who was the keynote at the event, and one thing led to another.
We're testing 12 hours later,slightly recovering from the
night before, and you were ableto provide us with an incredible
data set.
Can you just explain a bit moreabout ISOCAP, who you are, why
you were so gracious with yourtime and how we're going to
continue to progress, track ourdata over the next 60, 90, 120
(04:40):
days and see where we end up.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Awesome, yeah, so I'm .
I'm Luke, I run isocapnic.
Isocapnic is a respiratorytraining company that me and my
my partners have started.
My background is in highperformance endurance sport sort
of Olympic and elite pathway,triathlon, cycling, running,
that sort of thing and we we'vedeveloped a testing protocol for
(05:02):
for endurance athletes over thespan of the last 20 years.
That has really led us downthis pathway of objectively
understanding what systems arestrong, what systems are weak,
so we can really guide trainingobjectively for each of these
athletes.
In doing these tests, it'sbecome this broken record of
telling athletes how weak theirrespiratory systems are really
(05:23):
and how that system is very muchthe limiting system to them
ever getting any faster.
They literally just can'tbreathe enough air to supply
their system enough fuel to goany faster or any harder or
perform any higher.
And so we started this quest oftrying to figure out how to
properly train that system.
(05:44):
We tried all sorts of differenttools on the market.
Nothing was really fitting thebill, and so we decided to make
our own, and that's what we did.
So that's the isocadmic device.
The isocadmic device is just avery simple tool that allows us
to directly train therespiratory muscles in a
duration that's relevant forthose types of muscles.
(06:06):
Quick background on that isyour diaphragm is primarily
endurance muscle, and so evenfor a hockey player, even for,
you know, a strength athlete,it's still primarily endurance
fiber tissue, and so to train itfor you know, a couple of
breath holds, or a couple of,you know, 20 constricted breaths
, is not enough to really get agood training effect out of it,
(06:29):
and so we need to, like, trainit for duration.
Now, the challenge with that is,every time I breathe hard, I'm
breathing off all my CO2.
And so you need to be eitherproducing enough CO2 to keep
yourself in balance or you haveto use our device that keeps you
in balance by virtue of thedevice.
And that's really the secretsauce of our device is it allows
(06:49):
you to maintain what's callednormal capnea.
Your CO2 levels stay stable,and you can then train those
muscles as hard and as fast andas vigorously as you ever want,
for as long as you want, and dothat for, you know, 10, 20, 30
minutes, however long it takesto train them, depending on the
athlete.
Of course.
A hockey player might only needto do it for 10 to 90 seconds,
(07:14):
whereas I have 24-hour racersthat will do 35, 40-minute long
sessions.
So I'm always asked like, okay,what's the protocol to use?
And like, okay, what's theprotocol to use?
And it's like what's theprotocol to use for a kettlebell
?
Like it's just a tool thatallows you to train those
muscles.
So now we, it unlocks those,those muscles to be able to be
(07:36):
trained like any other system,which is kind of fun.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, it's gotta be fascinating for you.
For me, I'm getting chillsright now because I'm thinking
about all the different athletesthat you could run it through
and the different data that youcould obtain from it.
Myself, obviously, sittingthere next to a bunch of pro
hockey players I'm not innecessarily hockey shape as a
goalie different kind of musclesbeing used all the time but I
can imagine you get a 5'5athlete versus a 6'5 athlete.
(08:02):
They got some very differentlung capacities.
Even the difference in Travisand I's data was fascinating to
see how we were performingsimilar but using very different
metrics.
We'll call it.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was really.
It was a great example to haveyou guys testing side by side,
because you guys both made it tolike the same sort of level at
the end of the test.
But the way that you got therewas completely different.
You know, you, having a prettygood structural system up front,
dwindled off throughout thetest and what was the starter
(08:35):
guy, travis yeah, travis, youknow, actually had a little bit
more of a structurally limitedsystem, but he actually, like,
utilized it a little bitdifferently to meet that demand
in the end.
So a really good case, you know, in real time, to show, you
know the differences of howathletes can meet a performance
load and get there in completelydifferent ways, which is fun.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, fortunately we had a former Vancouver Canuck
over our shoulder helping us outa little bit there.
We'll shout him out there inthe incognito mode, but I do
want to review the data herebecause you have it out in front
of us.
I think it's better to showthan tell For those listening.
Head on over to YouTube,subscribe to our YouTube channel
and then you're going to beable to see Luke go through this
data in real time and thenmaybe, if you're fortunate
(09:19):
enough to be in Kelowna orVancouver, you could reach out
to Luke and connect, get yourown data done yourself, and then
you can compare to mine, seehow much better you are than me
potentially.
But, luke, let's go, let's takeit away.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Awesome, yeah.
So first of all, I got to airmy laundry here that when you
are getting VO2 testing done,demand more from your test,
right?
So this is a huge thing.
It is so lazy, in my view, thatthese practitioners and
physiologists will do thesetypes of tests and really just
give you the printout that'sinbuilt in their system.
(09:53):
And it's more important for anathlete to understand how this
information can empower yourtraining and help you make more
intelligent decisions in termsof how you train your system.
To just know your VO2 max numberis like the tip of the tip of
the iceberg.
It really is almost the leastimportant thing that we're
(10:14):
looking at in terms of helpingathletes.
What really is important isunderstanding how you got there
almost the least important thingthat we're looking at in terms
of helping athletes.
What really is important isunderstanding how you got there,
what systems were strong thatshowed no weakness towards the
end, and what systems werestable and then found
instability and eventually fellapart as the test went on.
This is all data that's beingcollected with the tools and it
(10:36):
just needs to be talked aboutand presented in a way that
allows the athlete to like, getbetter and understand that like
yes, you are not perfect, andthat's exactly why we train
right.
We understand these systems arestrong, these systems are weak,
and let's train our weaknesses.
So for you, let's get you up onscreen here I think it's like
(10:57):
it's a tool, like anything right.
Ultimately it's going to tellyou one data point at the end,
but if you're not fixing thestuff in between, you're never
going to change that end resultyeah, yeah and I mean you know
vo2 max is is a really nicesimple number for the masses to
kind of wrap their heads aroundand uh and understand.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
But knowing my score.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, like well, and I mean I would almost say, a BMI
score might be a little, even alittle bit more empowering,
because you have.
You have a little bit more likeday-to-day say on how how your
BMI should be compared and whereyou like should change your
diet to make that better,whereas just knowing that you're
(11:40):
at a VO2 max of 55.2 doesn'treally inform your
decision-making for tomorrow.
That's just like okay, I'm at55.2.
That's cool, but knowing thatyou are breathing 2.5 liters at
your maximum tidal volume and weknow from your spirometry that
you have 8.25 liters available,you have 6.5 liters available in
(12:02):
one second.
So let's back off and let's saylike just 70% of that 6.5
liters is attainable and you'reonly breathing 2.5 liters.
You're so underusing yoursystem.
It's exciting for me becausethere's a huge opportunity for
you to improve that system.
(12:24):
You have this tool that you arejust literally not using and
why is that?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Why would I not be using it?
Is that just from me trainingthat way for so long or being an
athlete?
I'm just like I'm going toadapt and get it done, no matter
what, no matter what it takes,kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Yeah, so a respiratory system is very
interesting in the way that weone of my favorite adages in
exercise physiology is the bodywill always do whatever's
easiest and you were alwaysusing a respiratory system in a
relaxed range of motion and sowe have a pretty
well-conditioned shortened rangeof motion that we use our
diaphragm and our intercostalsand our respiratory structures
(13:01):
in that way.
And so when push comes to shoveand you've never conditioned
range of motion of yourrespiratory system, it's going
to default back to that shorterrange because that's what it's
good at.
So if we've never challenged abig deep breath, you can't hope
to use that big deep breath, youknow, 20 minutes into a test.
(13:22):
It's just it's going to be waytoo fatigued by that point.
So by training the system aheadof time and conditioning it
that it you know it can do 20,30 minutes of breathing deep and
meeting the ventilatory demand,then you know when you get to
the end of your test you're nowbreathing five, six you know
liters towards the end of thetest or maybe even seven liters.
(13:42):
I see people breathing 100%,120% of their FEV1 number
towards the end of the test.
If they've trained that systemand that FEV1 is that force
exhalation volume over onesecond, that's like your ideal
breath.
Second, that's like your idealbreath, and so you know, for the
(14:02):
standard that we try to setwithin our organization for
athletes to achieve is 70% ofthat.
But, like I said, that is justthe beginning.
There's people that exceed that.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
And so, looking at this data right now on the
graded exercise test report, Iwould say that I have, you know,
given my comparison to others,I'm actually doing well.
And then I would say, doubledown on that, considering I'm
only using 20% of or you know,30% of my actual lung capacity.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.
So you're, you're, you're.
You ended the test at 300 Watts, at a VO2 max at around 55.2.
Your maximum heart ratemeasured throughout the test was
192 beats per minute.
So good like functional abilitywith the heart.
Your peak ventilation rate was167 liters per minute, which is
(14:54):
like pretty decent, to give yousort of context of that my you
know five foot nothing.
Mom will breathe, you know 70,80 liters per minute towards the
end of her test, but she'slittle.
You know.
It is pretty normal for me totest like a a tour level cyclist
at you know 230, 240 liters perminute.
(15:16):
So, there's, there's, so there'squite a bit of range there.
And then as we train,especially strength athletes, we
train them up towards that 300liter per minute mark, just so
that system is just never alimitation and that's certainly
something that's trainable.
To meet that demand of 167liters per minute, you're doing
(15:37):
that with 2.5 liters per breathor less.
That means you're breathing 70breaths per minute.
70 breaths per minute more thana breath a second.
That is panting, that is reallyfast breathing right, yeah, you
should have seen the video.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I was doing more than panting there at the end.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
So really important point to drive home for people
is that you have the choice whenyou're breathing, to breathe
Like you have to breathe that167 liters per minute, with
either 2.5 liters per breath at70 breaths per minute, or let's
(16:26):
double it, let's go to fiveliters per breath at 35 breaths
per minute.
Right, and now?
The reason why that's so muchmore efficient for the system is
that every single time youcycle a breath right, every time
you take a breath, you'removing the dead space air
between your mouth and youralveoli.
(16:46):
That is just plumbing.
There's no gas exchangehappening there, and so every
single time you take a breath,that's 250 milliliters of just
dead space air that just has toget recycled.
So we want to cycle thatthrough as few times per minute
as possible so you're getting asfresh of air to the bottom
(17:10):
lobes of your alveoli and yourlungs and getting all that CO2
out of your system every singletime we take a breath, and so
we're really maximizingefficiency Down the road.
You know that changes the waythat oxygen enters into your
bloodstream, that changes theway CO2 gets pulled out of your
system and that also then putsyour muscles in a different
environment to perform in, andso it really trickles down the
(17:31):
entire system on how it createsmuch more control.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Okay.
So I have so many questions.
One of the questions that Iwanted to ask as I was panting
during this test was the nasalbreathing versus mouth breathing
, and I know that device kind ofmaybe I want to say limited my
ability to nasal breathe a tinybit.
But I've read the book breathjames nester, I mouth tape at
night.
I'm very passionate about thissubject.
(17:57):
I'm curious how this impactsperformance.
I know that nasal breathingnitrous oxide like.
Can you maybe provide a bitmore of that insight around how
this is done, whether nasalbreathing is beneficial during
these tests, et cetera?
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So, first and foremost, I amnot going to downplay the value
of nasal breathing.
I think nasal breathing is atool that is important and
should be used in certaincontexts.
To think that nasal breathingwill give you your maximum
(18:31):
performance in a marathon or aperformance load on the ice is
just wrong.
For you to breathe 167 litersper minute, there is zero chance
you can do that through yournose.
Your nose is just too small,like physically, it's just not a
big enough orifice.
We need to open our mouth to beable to breathe that much air
(18:52):
and, like I said, 167 liters perminute is okay.
Right, we see people breathingmuch more than that and again,
nasal breathing is just, it justdoesn't touch that.
The maximum I really see peopleable to hold with nasal
breathing alone is around 65 to80 liters per minute.
If they have a larger nose,maybe, but it's really like a
(19:12):
physical limitation that way.
Now, the value of nasalbreathing is that it is a
mechanical limitation.
It makes it harder for you tobreathe, and so it forces you to
breathe smoother.
So you breathe in smooth andout smooth.
So that's the nice thing abouthaving that constriction is that
it forces the muscles throughthis like extruder of breath,
(19:36):
right, and so it just slows downinto a sinusoidal wave pattern.
We need to be able to break outof that when the going gets
tough.
But that doesn't change thefact that it is a good tool for
certain jobs.
So you talked about mouthtaping at night.
There's all sorts of benefitsto breathing through your nose
(19:57):
at night Humidifies the air asit's going into your system.
The ventilation rate is nowherenear 167 liters per minute.
It's, you know, much closer tolike 10, 20, 30 liters per
minute.
So it's like orders ofmagnitude smaller than what is
required during load, and soyour nose can meet that demand
quite easily.
(20:17):
Load, and so your nose can meetthat demand quite easily.
And so what a lot of peoplewill default is to a mouth
breath, which leads some, likeyou know, issues with dental
hygiene and things like this.
And so closing your mouth isjust going to help like keep you
a little bit healthier, andit's going to help with the the
introduction of nitric oxideinto your system.
(20:37):
There's two places in the bodythat nitric oxide are produced.
One is in your nose and one isin the endothelial cells of your
veins and arteries, and so thisgas that's produced inside your
nose gets sucked back into yourlungs as you're breathing in,
and it's a vasodilator, so itopens up your airways, it
relaxes the muscles and it'salso antibacterial, so it helps
(21:01):
to clean and purify the air asit's moving in.
The nitric oxide argument isnot a good argument for high
performance, because justbecause you're breathing 167
liters per minute doesn't meanyou're also increasing the
amount of nitric oxide.
Your nose is just constantlysort of like producing a steady
rate of that.
(21:21):
And when you're diluting youknow that amount of nitric oxide
into 10 liters per minute, itis potent and it has a good
value.
When it's being diluted in 167liters per minute, it's moot at
that point and so it's notreally doing a whole lot for you
.
And so nitric oxide has itspurpose at the low end of the
(21:46):
spectrum in terms of ventilationrates, but towards the top end,
you know it doesn't reallymatter so much.
The other thing is that bybreathing through your nose at
lower intensities, you know itdoes help you engage your
diaphragm a little bit more, andI believe that that's because
of that constriction.
The constriction causes alittle bit of resistance in how
(22:10):
you breathe, and when you feelthat resistance, your body's
going to engage larger musclesand the largest muscle you have
for breathing is your diaphragm.
And that's why nasal breathingis very much linked to
diaphragmatic breathing is thatyou have to pull with that
bigger muscle to pull throughyour nose, especially if you
have, you know, smaller nose.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Okay, this is good to know.
This is great.
This is I'm.
This confirmed everything thatI was thinking, at least, and I
know I wasn't getting to 167liters per minute with my nose,
but I just had to make sure.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.
What else can I tell you aboutnasal breathing I?
Speaker 1 (22:49):
mean, hey, this is great.
I am am more so.
I know you sent over like threeseparate reports.
I was talking with markafterwards.
He was enamored at the factthat you were able to just whip
this up, send it over right away.
Travis and I were reviewing it.
I'm like what him, travis,martel, mark fitzgerald have
built at colonna highperformance and colonna hockey
fest on an annual basis issimply sensational.
(23:10):
You know there was probably 100plus athletes there this year.
There's going to be, we'll say,double that next year.
We got some exciting plans inthe works, hopefully including
some of our CSM females there,but I really think that
incorporating stuff likeISOCAPNIC on an annual basis,
probably quarterly basis, forthose athletes that are local to
you is going to provide so manyinsights for them to be able to
(23:34):
look at.
You know, review, compare,compete, like everyone's
competitive in that environment.
And you know these are datapoints that no one's getting
right now, unless I'm toldotherwise.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
No.
So so I'll kind of show youlike three levels of information
here.
This first page is what youtypically get from a VO2max
report, which gives you yourVO2max number and some of your
stats about your ventilatorythresholds and your zones and
that sort of thing which is allfine and dandy.
You get a little scale here tohelp you like rank yourself
(24:06):
amongst people, your age andsize and that sort of thing.
That's sort of like the basicsof a VO2 max report.
Beyond that, if you're lucky,you might get this graph right
here which shows your VO2 numberas it increases.
So as the load increases youcan see it step up.
Your heart rate increases inred and then blue.
(24:26):
Your VO2 number increases withit too, and so we see a VO2 max
number towards the end andthat's how we like see that peak
VO2 number and that's how weobjectively assess that VO2 max.
If you're much, much luckier,you get the mechanics data and
this I rarely see outside ofpeople using like a VO2 master
(24:47):
device or something like this,where we actually get to see how
your respiratory muscles aremeeting the demand.
So I know there's a lot here,so I'm just going to try to
simplify it.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
The yellow the pieces that you put onto my leg and
arm correct.
So this data?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
that I have on screen right now is your VO2 master
data.
So it's the device that'ssitting on your face, okay, okay
, and so with this one we see inyellow how big your breaths are
for any point during the test.
The light blue is how fastyou're breathing, so we can see
you start it at around 20breaths per minute and you
peaked out here towards that 70breaths per minute.
(25:26):
At the end there right, andthen the green line is your
ventilation rate.
So how many liters per minute?
So the simple way to think aboutthis is that the relationship
between the load, the steps hereand the green line is more or
less unchangeable.
Your body needs to produce thatmuch ATP energy to meet the
demand of the stress load of thetest.
(25:47):
You have the choice to meetthat green line load by pushing
this yellow line up or down,breathing deeper or smaller.
And for you you started out atlike two and a half, three
liters.
A couple of times you scratchedthe surface at three liters per
breath and then it's stabilizedat around 2.5 liters and then,
(26:09):
when the going got really tough,at that last step, when you
failed, you went from 2.3 litersto below 2 liters.
It actually got much smaller.
Your big time compensator wasjust breathing faster, which is,
again, it's not that uncommon.
The body will always dowhatever is easiest and that's
your default is to just breathefast, and we can totally train,
(26:32):
train this to breathe bigger whyis that?
Speaker 1 (26:35):
why, like, is there any reason why?
Like that's my, my go-to?
You said that's common for mostpeople, but that's just like a
I gotta breathe, I gotta get itin somehow, yeah it's.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
it's because that respiratory system fatigued out
right, so it wasn't.
It wasn't capable of meetingthe ventilation demand with deep
breaths anymore.
And for you, deep breaths forthis test was only like two and
a half liters per breath, yeah,not deep.
And we know that you have much,much, much more available in
terms of just structural size.
(27:06):
It's like teaching a bird howto flap its wings If it never
does it before it takes practice.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
I like to think of this in every aspect of my life.
I got a lot of room to grow.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Well, you know what.
That's how I like to categorizethese things.
Right, let's highlight thethings that you're good at.
But also, you can breatheexceptionally fast.
That's a cool thing.
So you can breatheexceptionally fast, that's a
cool thing.
Another thing is that you have areally good range on your
cardiac system.
Your heart starts out around100 beats per minute and it gets
(27:47):
up to almost 200 beats perminute, which is like that's a
good working range for yourheart.
We don't want it to be squishedtowards the top end, where you
start at 150 and you end at 200,or to be stuck low and you
start at 70 and you end at 120.
Right, you have a good workinguh range of your cardiac system.
So your cardiac system is oneof your strong suits and if we
were to keep going down here, wecould get into the moxie data,
and this is the purple line here.
This is your muscular system.
(28:07):
This is the other system, orthe other sensors that I had on
your legs, and this is lookingat how well you're utilizing
your muscular system, and we cansee that it's a pretty steady
flow down.
We start out around that 70%muscle oxygenation.
So for those that don't knowwhat SMO2 or MOXIE.
(28:27):
Muscle oxygenation is is themuscles ability to utilize
oxygen, and so we can justmeasure that directly now, back
in the day old days we would uselike lactate to try to
understand this a little bit,but lactate was limited in how
many data points we got, andwe're pricking fingers or ears
all the time to try to get thatdata, and so we're not really
(28:48):
getting a stream of data.
We're getting sort of like asnapshot on little bits, and
it's a surrogate to what we'reactually interested in is what
the muscles are doing.
This is just a stream of dataof exactly what we want to see,
which is the muscle oxygenationof the muscle.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
And so.
I would have had a slightlyhigher number had I not had a
couple beverages the nightbefore, likely correct.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, your high highs might have gotten up towards
the 80 mark and really whenyou're fatigued and maybe a
little bit more beat up, it justdrops the overall performance
output a little bit.
So you ended the test at around300 watts.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
During this session you might have made it to the
350 mark had you, you know, know, came into it, rested um, but I
used some, some narwhals orlactico right yeah, there, where
are my narwhals?
Back here shout out to evie andariel, yeah, yeah so, yeah, so
this is actually one of yourstrengths.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
you have a reasonably high high with your muscular
system and you got down below 20at the end, which is a
reasonably low low.
So your ability to utilize yourmuscular system is quite good
and this is the reason why yourVO2 number was so great.
Even though your respiratorysystem was limited, your ability
to suck oxygen out of thebloodstream is quite good, and
(30:04):
that adds to the load of the VO2.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
That was just peer pressure of having so many eyes
on me to finish that thing.
There was no way I was gettingoff without finishing.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, and an interesting one here especially
for, like you know, a goalie isyour core temperature.
So we had a rectal thermometershoved up.
No, just joking.
We had a sensor on your ribthat measures your core
temperature, your radiant energy, and so from that we can tell
how hot your body's getting.
So the blue line is your coretemperature, your radiant energy
, and so from that we can tellhow hot your body's, your hot
your body's getting.
So the blue line is your, uh,your core temperature.
(30:36):
The the red line is your, yourskin temperature.
So we can actually see thepoint at which you started
sweating and your skin gotcolder and your core temperature
still went up.
So that's an important thingfor especially endurance
athletes, but really any athleteis that for us to produce that
energy, it has a huge byproductof heat that's generated.
That heat is measurable both atthe skin load and through your
(31:00):
tissues to see your coretemperature.
And what we do want to see isthat your body does get warmer
as the load increases, becausethat shows that you're utilizing
calories're utilizing calorieswell and uh, and it's not
falling apart.
If it starts to drop off atsome point, it's usually
followed up pretty quickly by a,by a metabolic bonk, where your
system loses energy becauseit's just not providing enough
(31:22):
ATP to uh to output.
And then the last couple ofgraphs here are comparables,
where the next time you come infor your test we can look to see
is your wattage is higher forthe given heart rate in this
graph.
And then the next one is yourVO2 higher or lower given the
load.
And what we want to see is thatyour training is progressing
(31:45):
and so the VO2 that it's costingyou to go 200 watts, for
example, is lower.
The vo2 that it's costing youto go 200 watts, for example, is
lower.
You actually are at a lower vo2number for the same output,
meaning it's costing you less.
This is really important forendurance, but it's also very
important for for hockey,because if you can perform at
the same intensity as the otherson the ice but it costs less,
(32:09):
gives you the option to eitherperform higher or make calmer
decisions, be a bit moreaccurate.
And same sort of idea here withyour performance load versus
your heart rate.
We want that heart raterelationship to drop.
We want the heart rate to comedown for a given output.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So how many of these tests have you performed and
where would you rank, kind of Iwant to say, the performance
that Travis and I put up thereand biggest areas for
improvement?
And maybe this will be on theother two data points or PDFs
that you show me moving forward.
But you know, I've been lookingat this.
I'm like I feel like I didpretty good, but I'm like the
(32:49):
type that's always striving formore and I want to get better
Right, and I'm like where are mybig rocks that I got to move to
make big improvements?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yeah, so.
So first of all, I got to handit to you guys that you know I I
was introduced to the group,you know, the night before and
and you guys were like withbells on the next morning to run
through the test, which isawesome, that you're game for
that sort of torture, so tospeak.
So that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
I'm a guinea pig man.
This podcast has been six years.
Culmination of being able tomeet cool people like yourself,
train with individuals likeWorld's Strongest man NHL, pwhl,
nfl, nba man, nhl, pwhl, nfl,nba like this is.
The dream for me is getting tobe able to chop it up, learn
about how I can get better andthen go and put up some numbers.
When we got bryce put testingus on veld right yeah, exactly
(33:39):
so.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
So for you, the like, the quite obvious mover for the
next little while for you is,uh is improving your respiratory
system.
Did we get you an isocapnicdevice?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
no, not yet.
Yeah, we're gonna get you anisocapnic device.
No, not yet I'll come grab itnext time.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, we're gonna get you an isocapnic device so you
can actually train this system.
So right now, you're meetingthe demand with with fast, small
breaths, and so we're gonnagive you training that's gonna
teach you to endure bigger,deeper breaths for longer is
that that balloon thing that yougot the video of me using?
Speaker 1 (34:08):
that's right yeah, so .
Speaker 3 (34:10):
So that device allows us to control CO2 output so we
no longer have the risk ofhyperventilation.
And now we can train thatsystem for as long as we want,
and so you're going to be usingit as part of your warm-up
five-minute warm-up before anyworkouts you do Super, super
simple and then you're going tohave like three or four sessions
a week that'll be between fiveand 10 minutes long, where we're
(34:34):
specifically training yourability to endure bigger, deeper
ventilation rates.
So you're breathing deeper,okay.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Luke, we have one question Everyone's dying to
know what's the ideal way toincrease VO2 max and why is it
important.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Yeah, well, that's a.
That's a loaded question.
So I'm I'm working with, with,with Mark out of Kelowna here to
to help maximize you know, theNHL players performance during
VO2 max.
Vo2 max is very much afunctional test, and so it's.
So it's measuring how good youare at the modality that's being
(35:13):
tested.
So if it's an assault bike,then you better be coordinated
and good at it if you thinkyou're going to perform on it.
If you are a marathoner, it'sprobably not wise that you do it
on a bike.
If you're a cyclist, it'sprobably not wise that you do it
on a treadmill.
That's the thing.
Choose the modality that you'remost functional at, because
that's going to truly test howgood you are at it.
(35:36):
Vo2 is a measure of a couplethings your muscular demand, so
how much oxygen your muscles areconsuming, how much oxygen your
circulatory system can movearound.
Your cardiac output is relatedto that.
And then your, your ability toabsorb oxygen through your
respiratory system.
(35:56):
So that's the primary things.
What's the number one thingthat you can do to get better?
Well, 70% of the people that wesee through our lab over the
last 25 years are limited intheir ability to ventilate air.
They literally just can't pushany harder to drive that VO2
number up any higher, becausethey literally can't breathe
(36:18):
enough air.
And so by training therespiratory system to move, more
air allows us to move that setpoint and that limitation on the
top end so you can push alittle bit harder, a little bit
deeper, and that limitation onthe top end so you can push a
little bit harder, a little bitdeeper.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
There you go, folks.
Easy, just put it to the test,hit Luke up, send him a message,
get your data tracked.
No, I mean, for me it's likethis is again.
I said it, this is the dream,because now, every year, I'm
going to come back, I'm going tobe doing vertical test jumps,
I'm going to be doing abductors,abductor testing and like,
hopefully, maybe on a quarterlyor semi-annual basis, whatever
(36:52):
the case may be, but I thinkit's really important.
People are getting their bloodwork done, people are getting
all of these other data pointstaken down, noted, and if you're
not looking at every system inyour body, ie your respiratory
system, then just because youhave big muscles and can bench
press 500 pounds or whatever thecase may be, doesn't
necessarily mean that you'regoing to be able to outrun
(37:13):
someone who grabs your wife'swallet or purse and you need to
go race and catch them right.
Like I look at that as okay,I'm want to be physically fit,
capable of doing anything at anypoint, kind of, like you said,
generally decent at whatever,whereas, you know, professional
athletes need to be very good attheir specific tasks.
I think, general pop, we're allathletes.
We're on the athletes podcasthere today.
(37:34):
Everyone should have theability to run a mile or move
their body to a certain degreeto like bare minimums.
My on the right track there.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, and luke yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
so vo2 is an interesting test that I think is
relevant for for just abouteveryone from the health and
wellness and longevity side ofthings.
The VO2 max number is a reallygood indicator on longevity
factors and lifespan andhealthspan, so it's important
for just anybody to get theirVO2 max done so they're better
understanding their health, oftheir system.
(38:07):
For high performance athletes,it is the understanding of that
1%.
How can you make yourself 1%better?
And showing up every day andworking hard is the easy part.
If you're an elite athlete,that's what you're good at.
You can show up and grind.
Now can we make that grind moreintelligent and make it a little
(38:29):
bit more potent?
That's that's the challengethat we have as as testers and
physiologists and coaches andtrainers is to is to make the
training more potent and andunderstanding where these
systems are strong and weak isreally important.
Like it's really fun for meworking with you know, hockey
players and rugby players andstuff like this, because they've
(38:51):
been working their muscular andcardiac systems for their
entire career, and then we testthem and we show like results
like this that are, like I said,are not surprising to me, but
show a massive limitation andthey're just like oh my God, I
have so much room forimprovement.
This is great.
Now I know exactly what I needto do next to make myself that
(39:14):
much better.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
So did you know that I had run a marathon prior to
this?
And does seeing this data of mehaving run like marathons, like
does it seem shocking, or doyou question like how I got
through that or what?
Like?
What questions come to mind foryou there?
Speaker 3 (39:31):
No, I mean, I could guess how you met the demand of
of running the marathon,assuming assuming you're you're
running, like how fast you arerunning.
So, like, the cool thing aboutendurance sport, especially like
a participation endurancesports like this, like a
marathon, is that you can justrun slower and it just not cost
your body that much.
If you're running as as fast asyou can for a marathon, then
(39:51):
I'm going to predict at thispoint, looking at this data,
that you are meeting the demand,breathing probably, you know,
two steps per breath.
So two steps to breathe in, twosteps to breathe out.
So you're probably breathing 40to 50 breaths per minute
throughout the entire marathon,which is not very efficient for
your system, but it is.
It is also the system that youcurrently have, and so to think
(40:13):
that you're going to change thaton race day is probably not a
good idea.
But it does reveal a limitationthat on your next marathon,
you've trained that system up tobe able to react a little bit
differently and then you'll beable to meet that demand a
little bit better, keeping inmind that, like you know, for
something like a marathon, beable to meet that demand a
little bit better.
Keeping in mind that, like youknow, for something like a
marathon, you know you're,you're, you're functioning at,
(40:33):
you know, 70% of your VO2 maxfor a long period of time,
meaning that your respiratorysystem is using, you know,
between 10 and 18% of your totalenergy, and so if that's
inefficient then that's justbleeding off performance.
So if we can make thatrespiratory system more
(41:00):
efficient, we can push thatnumber from 18% down to like 8%
and we're not using nearly asmuch energy to do the same.
Ventilatory output.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, it makes me question.
Yeah, it makes me a question.
I started running maybeFebruary 2023, 2024, whatever it
was and then did a halfmarathon a few months after that
, four or five months after NewBalance sent me some shoes, did
the full marathon and didn'treally want to pursue it after
that.
I mean, I'm still doing theoccasional run.
But I also just read some studyfrom Gatorade which sounds
(41:25):
super legitimate, about the factthat study reveals men who run
daily have up to 41% lowertestosterone than men who don't
train at all.
Do you see any accuracy to thatstatement?
Or is that just a random socialmedia stat that I shouldn't be
paying attention to?
Luke way.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Yeah, that's a.
That's an interesting one.
So strength training is verymuch more related to the
testosterone markers.
So if they're're, if you'redoing no strength training
whatsoever, it wouldn't surpriseme entirely if, if you're
causing some anemia and causingsome, uh some, some hormonal
imbalance like that, for sureokay.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
So to balance, or like, make sure that you're not
completely dropping your tlevels, just make sure you
incorporate some resistancetraining a couple days a week.
Balance out endurance.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
Yeah, I always recommend doing some
strengthening and conditioningwork just to make sure that that
system is more resilient andwe're able to brave any injuries
down the road.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Okay, We've focused for 45 minutes here on the
hockey Kelowna Hockey Fest,isocapnic.
I want to give you anopportunity to highlight your
athletes, what you've been doinghere over the past few decades,
I will say and what you see inthe future as far as predictions
are concerned, as far as waysthat you see the next generation
(42:42):
of athletes, because here onthe Athletes Podcast our goal is
to entertain, educate andinspire that next gen, and
personally I think there's a lotof value in what you're
providing here today.
Selfishly, I'm getting a littlepersonalized session, but for
those listening and watching,there's an incredible amount of
information here.
You're a resource that peoplecan reach out to.
(43:02):
What are your kind of crystalball goals here for the next few
years and where do you see thespace going?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
Yeah, I mean, like I said, it's super exciting for me
to be more involved in the teamsports world, like hockey,
football, rugby, for that matter.
It's really cool for me to seeit coming from the endurance
side, how hyper-focused andhyper-aware and really
well-developed the musculartraining modalities are in these
(43:30):
spaces.
But then it really shows likehow what we've been doing in the
endurance world for, for youknow, many decades is really
going to to change the waythings work, especially now that
we're seeing more teams usingthings like VO2 max as as
standards to to issue playersice time, like it.
(43:54):
If.
If these athletes aren'ttraining these systems properly,
then it literally like it, ithurts their career and it'll
hurt their performance output.
So where I really am excited toyou know, to work with these,
these teams in the near futureis to really help maximize how
they're able to execute a VO2max test and affect how well
(44:16):
they can perform on the icethrough shifts.
We have a whole bunch of thingscoming down the line in terms
of research papers that arecoming out on how we are
changing breathing strategiesand how that's changing
effective workloads and accuracyon the ice and rate of
perceived exertion of thoseloads Like.
It's really fascinating stuffhow the breathing is really like
(44:38):
the catalyst for unlocking thatnext step.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
So much we still don't know about the human body
that we're just uncovering.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Eh, yeah Well, and it's really just a collaboration
of like things that you knowthe endurance world have been
playing with for for, like Isaid, a while, and so it's a
matter of like, like leveragingthat in the right way to make
hockey players that much betterAthletes are competitive.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
For decades, people have had everything behind
curtains making sure that theydon't want to give the next
person beside them the edgethat's going to ultimately get
them the spot on the team versusthe other, when in reality, we
should all just be sharinginformation, all getting better,
because ultimately, everyone'sgoing to improve in that way,
and if your guy beside you iscompeting harder, it's going to
make you work harder, get better.
(45:26):
I don't know, to me maybethat's just every.
I want everyone to win space,but I think, hey, let's, let's
get everyone with all theinformation available, with the
best information available,doing everything they possibly
can, and then let the cards fallwhere they do.
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Like that's the, the, the even playing field
mentality, where sort ofeverybody has access to these
things, and really that's been.
Our mandate as a company is tomake high-level respiratory
training just available toanybody, and so we've put the
whole company together with thatin mind that it's just removing
of barriers.
Now, that being said, I can'ttell you how many NHL players
(46:05):
are using our device, becausethey don't want me to right,
it's a trade secret for them,because it's an edge for them to
get their competitive advantage, and that's sort of like the
ongoing, you know, saga ofworking with professional level
athletes, is that it kind ofbecomes their secret weapon.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Well, that's why you get to work with me and I just
share it with everyone and thenyou get the rewards.
The NHL players can still keepit, keep it quiet, but no, I
think like the other part that Iwas frustrated with, if I'm
being honest, was that I didn'tthrow on like lactigo because I
heard about how this couldbenefit.
I wasn't using the narwhalsduring that session like from a
curiosity standpoint.
I'm also like our sponsorperfect sports supplements they
(46:45):
provide us with incrediblesupplements.
I use creatine daily.
Are there supplements that yousuggest for athletes to improve
any of their bodily systems?
Do you think that has a realimpact?
Is that just the one percent atthe end of the table like?
Give me your insights there,because you're looking at the
daily, you know yeah, yeah, Imean.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
So we're we're big advocates on doing blood work,
you know, several times a yearwith our athletes, just because,
like you know, hematocrit isvery much a currency that we
have to spend during trainingand during racing, and so being
on top of your ferritin levelsand your vitamin loads is really
important.
So if we can identify earlyanything that's chronically low
(47:28):
or chronically towards the lowend, then we can build a regime
that's going to help top thatoff.
Then there's the basic thingsthat sort of everybody should be
doing, which is like makingsure you're getting enough
protein, making sure you'retaking in your aminos things
like creatine is a great one todo daily that sort of thing and
(47:49):
then just being really aware oneverything that goes into your
system is what your system ismade out of.
So you feed it crap, it's goingto give crap out, and so trying
to eat healthy, trying to eatwhole, trying to eat a variety
of foods and staying away fromany one niche.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
I am hitting a candy store right now.
Now, man, this has been 50minutes where I've just been
soaking up as much as I possiblycan.
I'll be listening to it againto review my data.
I guess I want to know what gotyou into the space 25 years ago
.
What were you doing?
What sports were you playing asa kid?
We got a few minutes left here.
I always like to find out.
You know the backstory, thebackground of these individuals
(48:29):
that we get on the show and like.
What inspired them to get whothose individuals were?
And you know, are youscratching that itch now today?
Is that what gets you up in themorning?
Speaker 3 (48:38):
yeah.
So I started off in well.
My first sport was downhill skiracing.
Instead of growing thicker, Igrew longer, and so, as my my
comrades in arms back then wereupwards of 220 pounds, I was
like working my tail off.
They'd be 145 pounds, and sowhen I started doing endurance
sport, I was like, wow, okay,this is like way better use of
(49:00):
my time.
And so I really set my goalshigh in the endurance world and
I'd raced professionally fortriathlon for a number of years.
And then I got into thecoaching world and started
working with my mentor, drSellers out of Vernon here, and
we started coming up withdifferent testing methodologies
for athletes to betterunderstand how to make better
(49:21):
decisions.
And through that process, it'sjust been this problem-solving
scenario where we identify theselimitations and we find ways of
training those limitations.
The respiratory system has justalways been this primary
limiter for a lot of people andthere just really hasn't been
something on the market.
So it's out of necessity of ustraining our athletes that this
(49:44):
tool exists.
We needed a better tool to fixthat system and stop wasting
training time so we couldactually train the systems that
are weakest, and so that's whywe brought it out is just so my
athletes could benefit.
Turns out that it's beneficialfor people with anxiety, people
that are training to go toaltitude, people that are
dealing with acute mountainsickness, people that are trying
(50:07):
to get bigger lung volumes,people that are trying to get
more functional lungs all sortsof ways of using this tool to
get better.
Speaker 1 (50:17):
I can't wait to get mine.
I'm going to be using it everyday.
I'm going to be freakingtesting my data marks at every
single point that I possibly can.
No, this is awesome.
I really appreciate your time,luke.
Again, you came out within 16hours and we were testing and
got reports back.
It was phenomenal.
From a selfish standpoint, Ialways like to bring up the fact
that we've had on probablyabout a dozen goalies to date.
(50:39):
I personally think they'reprobably the best athletes that
are out on, the best functionalathletes, all-around athletes
out there, and maybe suggestsome sports for that next gen to
pursue in a way to round outtheir athleticism.
Speaker 3 (50:58):
Okay.
So the way I want to answerthat question would be the way
the industry was answering thefittest athlete question back in
the early 80s.
They tested marathon runners,cross-country skiers, swimmers,
kayakers, cyclists, all in labto understand what you know.
Finally, you know, objectivelyspeaking, what athlete is the
(51:20):
fittest athlete of all, and whatthey found was that the
marathoners were the bestathletes of all, and all right.
So then we started digging intothe data and what they did for
all of those athletes is theyran them on a treadmill.
So, of course, the ones thatwere functional at using the
treadmill were the most fit,because if you put a kayaker on
(51:42):
a treadmill with their skinnylittle legs and their big heavy
upper body, yeah, they're notgoing to run super well and it's
not going to allow them toshine in the way that their body
has been conditioned.
And so you know they're they'relike I've worked with a like,
like crossfit games athletesthat are just incredibly
phenomenal, but they're just,they're not very good runners,
(52:03):
they're not very good cyclists.
They're pretty good at strength, they're pretty good at
gymnastics, right.
So in terms of like rounded,you know, maybe that's an
argument, but certainly I thinkit's very specific.
I think it's a wonderful howconditionable the human body is
to becoming a chess master or tobecoming the best athlete in
(52:26):
whatever modality you're in, andso, yeah, what that?
Maybe that's like sidesteppingthe question a little bit.
So no, that's great, I think.
I think my bias would betriathlon, because they do three
sports, they, they have a hugetraining load to meet that
demand, that that it's not justlike an all season thing, but
it's an all career thing.
(52:46):
You know, from the momentthey're, they're, they're 12, 13
years old or even younger, tothe end of their careers,
they're, they're, they'retraining, you know, 20 to 40
hours a week, getting in massivetraining loads, and that's,
that's what it takes.
And so I I just don't see verymany other athletes doing that
same sort of thing or for thatlong of a, of a duration.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Yeah, ben Hoffman and Liam Donnelly are two
individuals I've had on the showNice Massive training
capacities, much larger thanmine, and I just get to admire
from afar what they're capableof doing.
Liam Donnelly's got someincredible TikTok content going
out there, if you haven't seenit.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
Big shout out to Liam .
I love Liam.
He's such a great kid.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Yeah, he's the best, well overdue to get him back on
the show, but maybe we'll do aconversation.
The three of us will do sometesting in person and see how
much better his stats arecompared to mine.
No, no, this has been awesome.
Luke, again really appreciatewhat you've been able to do over
the past few weeks.
I'm excited to stay in contact,though our way of wrapping up
(53:52):
every single episode is we askour guest their biggest piece of
advice for the next generationof athletes, and I'd love to
open the floor for you to shareyours.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
Okay, if you're an athlete and you want to get
better, the the, the secret pill.
The very important thing thatyou need to do to excel in what
you do is consistency.
Consistency is king.
If you can't show up every day,right, and that means that
(54:18):
doesn't mean that you areignoring injury and you're
ignoring being sick.
That means that you aremanaging those things better
than everybody else on theplanet.
Your ability to be consistentis what gets you to the finish
line before everybody else.
Be consistent.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Consistency is king, folks.
That's it, luke Way.
Thank you so much for coming on.
The Athletes Podcast, 266thepisode.
People are going to love thisone.
Thanks again for coming on, man, really appreciate it.
Excited to do a review nextyear and see where the data
points are at, maybe after notso many bevvies.
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