50% Facts

Is deadlifting bad for your back? w/Squat University’s Dr. Aaron Horshchig  IF you heard this deadlift episode last week under the title “Why do people think squats are bad for your back?” go back and re-download that title and you’ll get the correct episode on squatting. ____ How many times have you heard someone say they don’t want to deadlift because they’re afraid they’ll hurt their back? Too...

Is it an old wives tale that squatting is bad for your knees? Or is there actually data behind it? Here’s what we came up with: Maybe there’s a body type that’s bad for squatting? Is the leg press somehow better? Does it possibly cause tendonitis/tendinopathy? How did this whole thing get started in the first place? Is it bad if your knee get too far over your toes?   Our ideas start about 9:58. E...

So many people are focusing on building personal brands or becoming “influencers”--  often through social media, YouTube, podcasts, etc. – but has the time already passed? Will it still work if you start today? We asked our good friend Omar Isuf for his perspective -- and advice -- relative to this question. Omar is a successful YouTube content creator from Canada, a partner with Silent Mike and B...

We had some fun with this episode by breaking format and having an extended conversation with our good friend, Omar Isuf. Omar is a successful YouTube content creator, a partner with Silent Mike and Bart Kwan on Kizen Training, as well has pursuing other business ventures. He's also a keen observer of media. We talked about a variety of topics, but one central theme was effective storytelling in p...

Can people really just “suck it up” and stay disciplined and motivated? This question was prompted by a recent episode of the Joe Rogan experience.    Some of our thoughts on this question: If you choose a particular diet or workout because it’s easier for you to stick to, are you making a smart move or showing your lack of discipline? How much of a role does your self-created identity play in mai...

Seems like a lot of lifters we know are always complaining about “tendonitis,” so we asked physical therapist (and founder of Squat University) Dr. Aaron Horschig the help us straighten out our understanding of what they’re really talking about – and potentially how to fix it. As a physical therapist, he works with Olympic weightlifters, powerlifters, Cross Fitters, international level soccer play...

For a lot of athletes, physical recovery from injury is only half the battle. How long does it take to learn to trust your body again?  Does the mental aspect affect everyone or are some people just immune? How do you keep the mental in line with the physical? Are you prone to pushing too hard, not hard enough, or some of both? How do you deal with setbacks? What approaches do professional athlete...

Not all exercises are created equal. That much is certain. But are any of them at best a complete waste of time, and at worst, damaging? Some of our questions were: Does anybody need Jawzercize? Do hip thrusts really do anything for powerlifters? Behind the neck presses? Those have to be bad, right? Or is everything useful in the right context? Dr. Jordan Shallow is a chiropractor and competitive...

Dr. Matt Johnson, a Certified Sport Psychology Consultant (and former Notre Dame quarterback), joins us to discuss a fundamental question about performance under pressure. Our thoughts: Are some people just born to be gamers? To perform at a high level in the clutch? Can regular people learn to handle pressure situations better? Is visualization important to improving performance? Do high performe...

We’re committed to having a physical therapist join us in the future, but THIS time we’re talking to a chiropractor. Our questions: What’s different about their education? What’s similar about their approaches? What’s different? Which may fit you best? How can you tell if you’re getting scammed? Dr. Jordan Shallow is a chiropractor and competitive powerlifter. He helps us sort through these questi...

We know that heat and cold shock proteins form in the body in reaction to changes in temperature, but what do they do and should we be trying hard to get them? How much do you need to change your body temperature to get a reaction? What, if anything, are cryo- chambers good for? Is it enough to just get hot or do you need to moving (like doing hot yoga)? When in a training cycle should you use the...

We’ve all heard the old tale about cracking your knuckles and arthritis, but what about your neck, back and all the other parts of you that crack and pop? Is there actually a connection to arthritis? Why do chiropractors and other manual practitioners pop or “adjust” your back or neck? What about shoulders, hips, and knees that pop on their own? Is that good or bad? Does any of this relate to over...

We follow up the episode “Can You Teach Speed?” with a deeper dive into muscle fiber types that we touched on in that episode:  What’s the difference between fast twitch and slow twitch fibers? Does the mix of fibers tend to affect performance? Aesthetics? Is changing your mix of fiber types possible, and if so, is it even helpful. Dr. Andy Galpin joins us again as expert for this discussion. Andy...

Our good friend, Jacob Ross returns as our expert to answer this question. Can you teach speed? Specifically, speed for sports? As we talked through the question, we of course came up with even more thoughts: Is it purely genetics? Are there muscle fiber type differences between men and women? Can strength training really impact speed? How important is “First Step?” Does beginning training at an e...

True to the premise of this show, we don’t do any specific prep before we talk about the question at hand. This time, it bit us in the ass a bit. We had seen the new paper on “intermittent dieting” co-authored by previous guests Eric Helms, PhD, Layne Norton, PhD, and our guest for this episode, Andy Galpin, PhD (among others). We’d assumed the title was just a word choice difference that actually...

Mike’s mom, Maria Farr, is a certified olive oil judge and sensory panelist. With all the recent focus on fats in our diets, we decided to bring her on to help educate us – and you – on a particularly tasty fat. Our questions went something like this: What does “extra virgin” even mean? (It’s not “first pressing.”) Is olive oil better than other oils? What’s up with flavored oils? How can you tell...

Vertical jump has become a test of athleticism, but is it something you can train? Box jumps have come around again in popularity, but are they an important training tool...or just a cool trick? What contributes to being good at either or both? Can you make significant improvement with training?  Our good friend, Jacob Ross -- an athletic performance coach and consultant who currently works with L...

You can call it Blood Flow Restriction (BRF), occlusion, or Kaatsu, but the idea is all the same: Keep some extra blood in the muscles of your arm or leg and get a massive pump. But is this superior to working out the regular way? When should you use it, and does it have any effect on rehab/recovery? We ponder these questions and discus our own experience. Then, we bring in Layne Norton, someone w...

Can activities in the gym that are built around the requirements of a specific sport actually help athletes get better at that sport? Our good friend, Jacob Ross --  an athletic performance coach and consultant who currently works with Luol Deng of Minnesota Timberwolves – joined us as our expert to answer this question. As always, the question spawns more questions: Do better athletes just do bet...

We get started by talking about what’s becoming a pretty uncommon experience for a lot of people: Actually leaving your house to watch a movie. Wrapping up a run of nutrition and diet-related episodes, we talk about a group of substances that are common in a lot of people’s diets at this time of year: Artificial sweeteners (fake sugar). Is fake sugar’s impact on our gut micro-biome a problem? Does...

Our fourth episode takes a look at the final macronutrient: fat. We spend a few minutes discussing the documentary “Transformer” about Janae Marie Kroczaleski…and our small part in it. We also discuss streaming services and how hard it is to get everything we want to watch in one place these days. Then, we jump into fat. We know that fat has the most calories per gram of the three macros, and that...

In our third episode, we take a side step from carbs into the glycemic index – the potential impact of differing amounts of carbs in foods. We kick things off with a quick discussion about the inherent strangeness of making friends with people we’ve never met in person.  Shifting to this week’s question (and some related issues): Is the index accurate for non-diabetics? Does it really have that mu...

Our second episode is a look at a second macronutrient: carbohydrates. After a quick discussion about the fact that we’re probably both HSP (Highly Sensitive People), we talk about some of our goals for the show and ways that you can get involved. We run down some of our basic “knowledge” about carbs, but were left with a few questions: Are some sugars better than others? If all sugars end with “-...

We’re kicking this new show off by asking seemingly basic questions about diet and nutrition. First up, “What is (dietary) protein anyway?" After a quick catch up session, we talk through the “facts” of what we think we know about this question – which, of course raises even more questions like... How much protein do you really need? What’s a complete protein? How many essential amino acids are th...

Introducing 50% Facts! A brand new show from Mike Farr and Jim McDonald Premiering December 5, 2018 Most of us walk around knowing about HALF of what we think we know. On this show, we take a single, granular question on a particular topic (related to health, fitness, nutrition, mental health, sex, etc.) and try to list what we THINK the answer involves. THEN we bring in a subject-matter expert to...