Keep Your Genes On: The 30/60 Rule Live Seminar and Q&A Transcript

Note: This tutorial video was recorded as a live Facebook event. The text below is an edited transcript of the tutorial intended to provide members with a convenient means of referring to and further researching the topics and content detailed in the video.

Transcript

A study performed by researchers in Australia, and published in the Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, illustrated a surprising fact: When it comes to optimal, overall health, exercising regularly isn’t enough. What researchers found was that those who watched more than 40 minutes of TV a day, despite exercising, had higher blood pressure, bigger waist—they had more body fat—and higher blood glucose, which you know what that means: Type 2 diabetes eventually, metabolic disorder. But they're exercising two and a half hours a week. Why is that? It's the uninterrupted sitting. It's literally killing us.

Quit the Sit – the 30/60 Rule Explained

What we find is that when we sit for about 30 minutes or longer we start shutting down those metabolic genes that are controlling the fat-burning and glucose metabolism. When those things start shutting down, turning off, stop creating those proteins that we need for metabolism, that's when those metabolic disorders happen. Also, LPL activity; I talked about that before. Triglyceride uptake—that decreases as well. We call this the "active couch potato" phenomenon. People who exercise are still unhealthy.

It's due, like I said, to the uninterrupted sitting—being sedentary. And so, based on that research, I have a 30/60 rule, and that's simply every 30 minutes of inactivity you need to get up and do at least 60 seconds of something. It could be stretching, it could be simply walking to the water cooler, could be doing push-ups—just get down and do some push-ups. Bring a kettlebell into your office, right? Anything. Do something.

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy—That’s the Point

But the most important thing I want to leave you guys with is the fact that you cannot hang your hat on your workout. Just because you work out—doesn't matter how long, how intense—you have to stay active the rest of the day. It's tough, right? It's hard to do that. We have jobs, right? That report has to get in, and you've got to sit there and do it on your computer. You have to commute to work—whether it's your car, on the train, on the bus—you have to sit there. I had to fly here in a plane—three hours on a plane, then three hours in a car to get here. But I make sure I get up at those breaks.

Even if you're drivers—you know, a lot of people do LYFT and Uber now to make some extra money—you've got to stop the car and get out. Seriously, if there's one thing you do it's increase your physical activity, and that doesn't mean exercising more. It doesn't mean an organized workout. It's the everyday stuff that we're no longer doing. Can't take the escalator. Why take the escalator? You're missing a free workout, a free opportunity to turn on genes. Everything we do. Put your weights away at the gym, right? It's a workout. It's another workout. You're moving stuff, it's physical activity.

It kills me when I'm with someone who's driving and they're circling the parking lot trying to get the closest spot. First of all, if we just parked there we'd be in the store by now. And secondly, we've got a workout: Park the furthest away that you can and walk to the store. It's those little things, you have to be cognizant of that and you literally have to try to do it. You have to. You have to be cognizant of this, all day long, that we're not being active enough.

We're not. It's just too easy. I get frustrated when parents tell their kids, "Oh, you have to sit. Sit still. Sit, we're in a restaurant." Sure, but we're taking society's norms and damaging our own health because of it, right? We're supposed to be "proper". We're adults now. We don't play, we don't get on the floor anymore. That's how we lose our flexibility and our mobility—because we just stop doing it. Society plays a role in that.

As we get older, we have to be “The Distinguished Professor”. He wouldn't get down on the floor and do push-ups. He wouldn't roll around on the floor, right? Why not? That's physical activity, and we need to do more of it all day long. I'm going to keep repeating that to you guys: All day long. We're so sedentary, and you know what's so nice is that we're finally starting to see research that's really getting to the crux of the problem.

Why Exercise Alone Isn’t Enough

We used to think "Exercise more!" Right? What's the American College of Sports Medicine's recommendation, at least 30 minutes of exercise, right? That's the recommendation. It doesn't end there—that's just the beginning. Sure, the workout is good, but there's more to the day that we have to be active.

When you really think about the way that our bodies are designed to work and survive, and the way that we live today, it's really no wonder that we see so many health issues, metabolic disorders, inflammatory issues—they're all related, and it really comes down to not lack of exercise, just lack of activity: Too much sitting.

You know what else kills me is I give talks at these fitness expos all over the world, and every time they ask me if I want a stool. "Do you want a stool or a chair?" To sit? No, that's the last—that's the thing I'm going to talk against, is about sitting. And I've often asked at these fitness expos if I could not have any seats, so that no one could sit. It causes too much of an issue because other people want seating, so—I would have you guys standing here, and then we'd be running in place the whole time, doing some jumping jacks.

As a matter of fact, I think we should all get up—it's been about 30 minutes, right? So what do we have room to do here? Stretch it out. So, frog jump? Just run in place, it's the easiest thing to do.

You must feel better, right? Anybody want to do some tabatas? Alright, guys. Trust me, it's the most important thing you can do for yourself, is—like I said, don't worry about your workout. Yeah, have a great workout, but the workout is not replacing the activity that we're supposed to be doing. Your workout—you have to think of your workout as if you're an athlete.

Your workout is taking your performance to another level, it's taking your physique to another level. It's not really taking your health—it is, to some degree, but only if you continue staying active the rest of the day. Like I said, it's finding those tricks that you can: Park the furthest away; don't take an escalator; don't take—try to find the stairs. I always try to find the stairs in any building I'm in. They make it difficult, but it's often the fastest way.

I often laugh at Cedar Sinai in L.A. There's an elevator where literally the people are all backed up, and they're all standing there waiting and waiting...and waiting. I go right up the stairs, and as I'm sitting in the waiting room I see people who were down waiting and waiting to take the elevator up. I not only beat them, but I also did my health some service. Find those ways to stay active all day long. Remember, the only time you're supposed to be sedentary is really at night.

I'll open it up to questions so that we can get a lot of questions out of the way.

Full-Body Training and Frequency

Question: "This is actually in reference to the previous talk."

Yeah, no—you can ask a question about anything. You can even ask me questions about tattoos.

"Excellent. We were talking about traditional body part split against the full-body training. Now, say the volume's the same as you typically try to plan it out that way. Do you see any issues from an overuse standpoint? Granted, volume's the same, but with the frequency do you see any issues?"

Yeah, I do, in some older people, they sometimes—you know, with the heavy stuff. That's why I try to mix up the techniques that I use with my full-body training, so that it's not as stressful on the joints all the time, because I do find that you can, particularly forearm tendonitis and whatnot, from the overuse. So I do. I recommend a lot of “prehab” stuff. Have you ever seen the Hand X Bands to keep forearm tendonitis—I recommend toe raises, you know, muscle balance—lower trap work, rotator cuff work as well. That helps, but obviously it can come down to being an issue.

How Important is Sleep?

Question: "Could you address your topic a little bit more about sleeping, the importance of sleep? Because we are all actively involved in projects that lots of student come to class very sleepy. Could you just bear some focus on that?"

Sure. Well, I mean sleep is a very confusing area. The only thing we really know is if we don't have, it we'll die. That's almost all we know right now. When I was at Yale there was actually a sleep lab in the building, and I've had some very interesting conversations about sleep. But it's so interesting because, like I said, we know so little about it other than the fact that we need it so badly. Clearly, sleep is absolutely critical.

Everyone has sort of their different sleep number: Some people can get away with fewer hours of sleep than others; some people need more. I think it's about finding your proper number—kind of like the bed—your number of hours that you need to be really at your best, because for not only physical but also mental capacity, it's very critical. Obviously, sleep is important.

Training for Men vs Training for Women

Question: "Have you seen any difference between strength training when it comes to men versus women? Because the research you suggested and showed was just based off of men."

Actually, the Norwegian study was in male and females as well, and they actually—they actually had more female powerlifters in the group than males, in the Norwegian study. As far as the full-body training goes, very applicable to both males and females.

When you really think about full-body training and the way that the body works, it sort of makes sense from the practical application—it's rare that the body is, you know, only one major muscle group is being sort of taxed. I think the way that the body works—and like I said, with the research on being sedentary, that targeting the majority of muscle groups in each of those workouts just works better as a whole organism, if you will.

Is Whole-Body Training Ideal for Athletes?

Question: "With the research on the whole-body split versus the muscle group split, are you saying that, like is it enhancing anything for athletes who play a sport, any type of on-field performance doing the whole-body split?"

Well, generally speaking, in strength and conditioning most athletes will train with a whole-body program versus a training split. When you're training athletes, you're typically—at least, I'm sure that there are obviously exceptions, but most strength coaches tend to train the whole body. And again, it makes sense from the organism as a whole, in the way the athlete performs in the field.

You're never really just using one muscle group. I would believe it would be far superior for an athlete to use whole-body training rather than split training for that reason, other than certain periods during their periodization.

How JYM Supplement Science Came to Be

Question: "I noticed that you are also a businessman. How did you start your own business? Is it that you have a connection, or how did you start? I have my own business. How did you get to where you are?"

My business—I really didn't plan on starting my own business. When I was at Muscle & Fitness, I really just saw myself as a writer, and wanted to hold that role. Then the internet sort of took off, and I saw a better way to educate people was through video. I started doing video series and people started getting results from the videos that I was doing, and it sort of built a following.

I built recognition as not just a training expert but as a supplement expert, and so my first business venture was really just my website. So I started a training website, and I got with my business partner—who's not here—but he ran Muscle & Fitness, the online website. We got together and created my own website where you can go get my workouts, and have your app. And really that was all that we had planned on doing.

However, because of my recognition as a supplement expert, people started asking me to come up with my own line. What I was doing was recommending supplement stacks for people to take—ingredients to take together, like, "This much creatine, this much branched-chain amino acids, this much citrulline," and people were just mixing what you can now buy in a tub, but making their own.

So, so many people just wanted me to make it so that it would taste better, because when you mix a bunch of different—it doesn't taste good—and they would trust it if it came from me, since I'd been giving them the advice all along, and so it really sort of just developed, really.

The supplement industry—the quality of the products that were being produced at the time was, in my opinion, drastically dropping, and there was nothing that I was really willing to take myself that I knew was being manufactured. I was making my own as it was, and so I just sort of increased the production and, obviously, I have connections with Bodybuilding.com, and so that allowed me to have a distributor.

That's sort of how that started. But it was really the social media, just answering people's questions. Just helping people, you know? And that's why the business is successful, because people get results and because they continue getting them. They trust me to continue giving them the results.

The JYM Army

Question: "Can you explain the JYM Army that you're referencing?"

The JYM Army is just sort of what I call my followers. The way that it started is, if you turn the JYM logo upside-down it spells "War". That's just by chance—it wasn't designed. One of our products came in a box, and one day we were looking at the way the box was and somebody said, "That looks like it says War." And so we started this sort of "Wage War" campaign.

It was just like a fun thing, like I'm about—my supplements are about transparency and telling everybody what's in them, and at the time when I launched a lot of people were having what they call "proprietary formulas", where they wouldn't tell you how much creatine or even caffeine was in there, and so I like "wage war on proprietary blends", that sort of thing. It just—the "war" thing, and the "army" thing, it just started this "JYM Army" kind of name and then just built from there.

So now, on Facebook, there is a JYM Army group page that's independent of me, that has I believe almost 70,000 members. It's one of the largest independent group pages on Facebook, so that's the JYM Army. Raise your hands JYM Army—thank you guys for coming.

Full-Body Training – It’s Not Just for Beginners

Question: "Regarding the full-body training, I've been lifting for many years and I always thought it was a beginner type of workout. Then I've been doing it for the past three or four months and I just feel way better, more energy, and I've actually seen the fat dropping way faster than doing opposing muscle group splits and stuff like that."

Again, the results don't lie, as I say. Studies are very important, but when you have thousands and thousands of people who are seeing results when they switch over to a different style of training—and this is someone who follows a very standard diet, right? You probably know what you eat—it's fairly controlled. Obviously, not peer reviewed or publishable, but you see trends—they're there. You can see it in the real world.

The Benefits of Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Question: "One of the supplements that's real common are the omega fatty acids. Do you want to address that a little bit from a health perspective, also from your competitive athlete/bodybuilder perspective? What's the importance of the omega fatty acids?"

So, the omega-3 fatty acids—mainly from fish oil—there are three types. We used to think there were only two: DHA and EPA. Now we know that there's a third, which is sort of a cross between the DHA and EPA, that's called DPA. Now, what we think is going on with the three different types of omega-3s is that the DHA tends to have better muscle-building properties and better muscle recovery; EPA seems to have better brain-boosting capabilities; and the DPA tends to have more of the inflammatory benefits, where we used to think EPA had more of the anti-inflammatory benefits from the omega-3s. It now seems to be a third one called DPA.

It's an exciting area of research right now with omega-3s, and what they're finding is the omega-3s actually have direct impact on certain genes—and particularly genes involved with things like Parkinson's and depression—and also the omega-3s help reduce the damage from fructose. Now, fructose—for those of you who don't know—fructose has a different structure than glucose, and when our bodies consume fructose we have to convert it into glucose.

However, not all fructose gets converted into glucose. Some of it gets converted into fat. Some of it doesn't get converted at all, and fructose that doesn't get converted—this is why high-fructose corn syrup is such a big problem—some of the fructose that doesn't get converted actually will get into cells—muscle cells and also nerve cells—and what they find is that the omega-3 helps to prevent some of the damage that fructose can have on those brain tissues, as well as other brain injuries, they're finding—can't remember the researchers name, but they're finding some very incredible properties with the omega-3s helping to prevent some brain damage. Much to learn about the omega-3s

Question: "Speaking on the omega-3, are you recommending a balance between omega-3 and omega-6?"

It's really hard for most people to get enough that, let alone worry about how much omega-3 versus omega-6 that they're getting. For most people who don't have a nutrition processor to analyze what they're eating, to try to hit that ratio of a 1:1 of omega-6 to -3 is pretty hard, so I tell them to focus more on the omega-3s. I really recommend a balance of saturated, mono-, and polyunsaturated. Again, trying to hit those exact fat macros is fairly difficult.

Some Tips for Reluctant Beginners

Question: "I have a friend who wants to exercise, and she wants me to help her, but she just won't do it."

The important thing that I try to remind people is that it's not about doing—you don't have to do a specific activity. It’s about finding what you like to do, something that's going to keep you consistent. So if you can find her something that she would be consistent, stay active doing—I don't know if it would be swimming, or something that's going to keep her active, but keep her wanting to do it. Also, it's important also to have a peer group. You know, if she had a group of friends as well that would do it with her, that would help as well. I don't know if that's a possibility, but that often helps a lot.

Related Articles

• 
  8 Weeks to Boulder Shoulders

  Having well defined shoulders isnt easy...Having Boulder Sized Shoulders is difficult.

• 
  Top Triceps

  Keep your Triceps in TOP condition with this routine

• 
  Resting Results

  More reps burns more calories? Maybe. The Doc Answers this and much More!!

• 
  Alpha-GPC

  Whats the Benefit of A-GPC? Find out exactly what it is.