013- Releasing the Gas and Applying the Brake- The Autonomic Nervous System's Effect on HRV, Lifestyle and Performance with Dr. Mike T Nelson
Muscle Intelligence
Ben Pakulski
4.7 • 761 Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2019
⏱️ 94 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We had the amazing opportunity to catch up with the one and only Dr. Mike T. Nelson at the Arnold this year! Dr. Nelson was one of our highest downloaded episodes last year when we talked about metabolic flexibility during our nutrition deep dive. This time we brought him back to dive into another area of passion for Mike, the autonomic nervous system.
Time Stamps
- How did he get into studying HRV, metabolic flexibility and the autonomic nervous system? [3:15]
- What is an example of someone who is starting to lose their heart rate variability? [11:03]
- What are some of the implications, short term, as far as performance and stress? [13:02]
- What are some of the most obvious implications of improved HRV? [17:30]
- Does he have some progressive strategies that he implements to train people to be able to push their sympathetic/parasympathetic nervous system higher? [20:46]
- In his studies, what did he learn about the autonomic nervous system from his subjects? [26:16]
- How does HRV influence someone's training? What training they should be doing? [32:26]
- Tips to balance lifestyle stressors with training. [37:06]
- Why your perception is EVERYTHING on how things impact you. [42:46]
- Does he change nutritional interventions based on their HRV levels? [47:46]
- If someone has high sympathetic stress and low HRV, can we deduce that cortisol will always be high? [53:50]
- Does he have any supplemental interventions to manage cortisol and stress? [56:43]
- How fitness is a culture of extremes. [1:02:55]
- What has he seen fasting do to HRV? [1:09:42]
- Does he think that HRV is correlated with body composition? [1:12:38]
- How much are estrogen and testosterone playing into HRV? [1:13:45]
- What else SHOULD the listener know about the autonomic nervous system? [1:15:46]
- Has he done any digging into the correlation of capnography and the autonomic nervous system? [1:21:42]
Featured Guest
Related Links/Products Mentioned
- Muscle Expert Podcast 126-Metabolic Flexibility, Training Nutrition with Dr. Mike Nelson
- Metabolic Flexibility | T Nation
- What To Do When You're Overtrained - Ben Greenfield Fitness
- Oura Ring: the most accurate sleep and activity tracker
- Cardiovascular and ride time-to-exhaustion effects of an energy drink
- Muscle Expert Podcast 120- Dr. Rick Hanson- Finding Buddha's Brain
- Cold Water Immersion Enhanced Athletes' Wellness and 10-m Short Sprint Performance 24-h After a Simulated Mixed Martial Arts Combat
- Sauna Report - FoundMyFitness
- Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers - Book by Robert Sapolsky
- Muscle Expert Podcast 161- Master Your Sleep Through Tracking with Harpreet Rai of Oura
- Capnography - Wikipedia
- Moxy Monitor - Muscle Oxygen Monitor
- Train Adapt Evolve
- 003- Hands on Nervous System Training with Dr. Mickra Hamilton
People Mentioned
- Rick Hanson (@rickhansonphd) • Instagram
- Dan Pardi (@danielpardi) • Instagram
- Dr. Rhonda Patrick (@foundmyfitness) • Instagram
- Wim Hof (@iceman_hof) • Instagram
- Brian Mackenzie (@_brianmackenzie) • Instagram
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | So if you look at heart rate variability, it's been kind of proposed that you want more of this sort of physiologic headroom. |
| 0:06.9 | If you're going to do the NFL combine test and you're going to try to bench 225 for reps and your max bench press is 400, yeah, I'll train you and I could probably get you to a pretty high level on that test. |
| 0:19.3 | If your max bench press is 245, it's going to be a lot |
| 0:25.2 | harder, right? You don't have that headroom in strength to really go anywhere. Right. So if you have a higher |
| 0:32.0 | HRV at rest, right, so a more fine scale variability, which means you are more parasympathetic at rest, |
| 0:40.4 | you can probably afford to give up, so to speak, some of that sympathetic type activity. |
| 0:47.4 | If you don't have much of that at rest, your body's ability to buffer stress is going to be |
| 0:53.1 | impacted. Hey, what's up, ladies and gentlemen? |
| 1:28.8 | This is the muscle intelligence podcast. |
| 1:31.2 | I'm your host, Benficol. |
| 1:32.2 | Are you ready to have your mind absolutely blown? |
| 1:35.4 | So, for the last 12 to 18 months, I've really been talking a lot about the autonomic |
| 1:40.9 | nervous system. |
| 1:41.7 | We'll hear that and go, man, what the hell are you talking about? |
| 1:44.1 | I don't know what that means. |
| 1:45.0 | They don't understand what it is, they don't understand the implications. |
| 1:48.0 | And this episode may be your best explanation and your best opportunity to understand what's actually |
| 1:56.0 | happening. |
| 1:57.0 | This gentleman actually did his PhD in HRV and the autonomic nervous system. So what is heart rate |
| 2:03.1 | variability? What is the autonomic nervous system? How do we impact it? Ultimately, what is it doing |
| 2:08.7 | to us? How is it controlling our life? How is it controlling our ability to lose body fat or |
| 2:14.3 | conversely gain body fat? How is it impacting our ability to build muscle? |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Ben Pakulski, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Ben Pakulski and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

