Hey guys, welcome to today's episode of the live train performed podcast. I'm your host, Sean Cobra during today's episode, we are going through a rapid fire Q and a session? Now I can go down the rabbit hole with some of these answers and I get into a fair bit of detail. Okay, But the whole point of these episodes is to try and keep everything short and sharp and give a brief overview with as much detail as possible on the answers that people have asked questions too. Now you can ask me questions by commenting on my social media posts, either my memes or send me a DM. The primary way is through instagram, I'm at coach underscore codes K O B E s uh and my facebook page is performance, functional training. All right. So a number of questions today, the first one is what's the difference between cardio and conditioning? Uh I'm also going to be answering a question on the difference between training males and females. I'm also going to be answering who the most influential people that I've met are?

I've got another question that's fairly deep that I will answer on its own. Um giving someone some advice basically on how to deal with life and when life kicks you in the balls and then I'll be answering a couple of fun questions as well. So let's get this episode started. The first question I'll answer comes in from baku underscore the rider underscore mega, who is one of our professional fighters at Tiger Muay thai and his question is what's the difference between cardio and conditioning Or are they the same thing? Excellent question. Uh In my opinion, most people use them interchangeably but incorrectly. So for the most part, people say them to mean basically the same thing. Okay. But conditioning and cardio are both different for me. And the reason I say that is because when I look at cardio, I'm looking at the cardiovascular system and I'm looking at the respiratory system.

Okay. And both of these combined is the cardio respiratory system. And I'll give an example of what both of these systems do. Um and how they work interchangeably to basically exchange gasses to provide our body with the oxygen that it needs to be pumped around the body by the blood. Um and then I'll talk about what conditioning is, in my opinion. All right. So the cardiovascular system consists of the heart, blood vessels and approximately five liters of blood that the blood vessels transport around the body. Now, when this blood is transported, this blood also contains oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and cellular waste. Now, the heart is what pumps this blood around the body. Okay, So this is what's referred to as the cardiovascular system. The respiratory system, on the other hand consists of the airways, the lungs and the blood vessels, and it is responsible for drawing air into the lungs. And then exchanging gasses between oxygen and carbon dioxide to utilize the oxygen, which is used in many of the metabolic and physiological processes within the body and expelling the leftover carbon dioxide.

Now the cardio respiratory system is the two systems working interchangeably together to extract that oxygen from the air that we breathe to then oxygenate the blood to be carried to every cell in the body to fuel the many biological processes and to remove the waste by products that are left over being primarily um cellular waste and carbon dioxide. All right. So, uh that is cardio in a nutshell, it's referring to those two systems. Okay. And when we're training, yes, we do use the cardiovascular System and the respiratory system or the cardio respiratory system. But that's only one piece of the puzzle. Okay. We've got 11 different systems of the body, and all 11 systems of the body are interrelated. They are all interconnected and they all affect one another. All right. So, if I'm talking about conditioning, however, I'm referring to creating a specific stimulus to drive a desired adaptation.

All right, So, you can condition yourself to anything. Alright, conditioning does not refer to the just the cardiovascular and respiratory system. Alright, So, I can condition myself to get up at a certain time. I can condition myself to eating high quality foods. I can condition myself to building mental resilience and toughness. I can condition myself to um building strength, building speed, building power. I can condition myself to many many things. All right. So, I've got a rugby tournament coming up next weekend. So, um I'm conditioning myself to sprinting. I'm conditioning myself to power based work. I'm conditioning my body to be able to produce force and absorb force and be stable and be strong and be fast and be powerful. Be explosive. Be able to maintain um those high quality efforts, high intensity efforts for long periods of time. All right, so there's many many different aspects to conditioning.

Okay, and most people just refer to conditioning as cardio. Okay. That is not the case if I'm doing um some high intensity um sprint based work for example, I'm primarily going to be working through my anaerobic energy system, which means without oxygen, it is using these um chemical processes to break down extract and utilize energy to be used for my high intensity work. Okay, this is my short, sharp, high intensity jet fuel based efforts. So, in a nutshell is cardio and conditioning the same thing. No, But are they related? Yes. Okay. Can you condition your cardiovascular system to be able to pump blood more efficiently around the body? Yes. Can you train your respiratory system to be able to uptake and utilize oxygen and exchange those gasses more efficiently? Yes. Can you work through strengthened up regulating the nervous system to be able to produce more force?

Yes. Alright, so, conditioning means many, many things. Okay, and we can literally condition ourselves to many, many different aspects of training and also With life as well. So, again, think about those 11 systems of the body. If I'm just focusing on my cardio respiratory system, I'm just focusing on the heart and the lungs. Okay. I'm not really paying too much attention to my nervous system, my skeletal system, my muscular system, my hormonal system, my digestive system, etcetera, etcetera. Alright, so conditioning is literally focusing on, um, each one of those systems directly, um, and targeting specific adaptations by driving or creating a specific stimulus to give you the results that you want. The next question comes in from at the other jess o'Reilly on instagram. Her question is when it comes to your female clients, both pro athletes and general population, do you approach anything differently due to the biological differences between men and women to answer the question?

Absolutely. Okay, definitely a lot more. So now as my knowledge and experience expands and, you know, the more females that I work with particularly high level athletes that I work with, the more that I realize how much of an impact these hormonal fluctuations have throughout the month on a month to month basis due to the menstrual cycle. And this was not always the case. Um, you know, as I learned more as I expand my knowledge and experience then, um, I'm always asking more and more questions and how I can refine my skills, refine my knowledge, refine my experience and learn, grow develop. So, um, you know, I didn't really pay too much attention to this when I was a younger trainer, but definitely now as I start learning more and more about the differences between um the hormonal fluctuations and that's the thing, I didn't really get into the differences between training men and women um differently.

It was more so as I started learning about gut health and I started learning about hormones and um all that type of stuff that I actually went down this path and started investing a lot more time, energy and effort into um creating an understanding or creating um you know an ideology that made sense to me. Um So but what I have noticed is that um females and males tend to be able to handle um different amounts of intensity, um different amounts of duration of work, volume, volume of work and also their ability to recover, so I'll speak a little bit more from my experience, I'm not professional in this manner by um or a specialist in this um topic by any means, but what I have noticed is that for the most part females are not able to maintain as high intensity as blokes, okay? Um simply because males typically have much more testosterone so can produce a lot more force a lot more rapidly and typically have a stronger neurological connection to be able to create high amounts of force output.

Okay, and to do that rapidly, so that's basically strength and power. Okay um now what I have noticed is that females can typically deal with a lot more density. So the volume of work that we're going to be able to do is typically much higher. And I've read a heap of articles and done some study on this. And um for the most part I believe this is linked to um the difference in muscle fiber makeup between men and women and men typically have a higher amount of um fast twitch muscle fibers, meaning that you know these are the these are the muscle fibers that are basically Um very adaptable. Okay. Very good for producing four. So good for strength speed. Power. Okay. But females typically have a higher ratio of slow twitch muscle fibers which are our endurance based fibers. Okay. Which is also linked to our aerobic energy system. So I find that females typically can deal with a lot more volume um and a lot more density of work and they also typically recover faster.

Okay. Um And that's likely due to these fast twitch muscle fibers being linked to the anaerobic energy system and being a lot more neurologically dominant. Whereas the slow twitch muscle fibers are linked to the aerobic energy system and they're a lot more endurance dominant. So another thing to consider here is the structural makeup between or the difference between the structural makeup between men and women. So when women go through puberty, for example, obviously their hips widened to facilitate the birth canal. And basically what happens here is the angle of the hips change. So they, you know, let's say they go through puberty at 10 years old. So for 10 years they've learned to walk a certain way. Okay. And then all of a sudden they go through puberty, the hips widen and the angle of their fema changes, which then has a flow on effect up and down the chain. So this is definitely something that I see quite regularly with females is they have these um internally rotated femurs and the arches collapse and you know, they're lacking a little bit of strength and stability within the hips.

Okay. Um this is obviously not for every single female that I work with, but it is quite common. So that's something that I work on a lot with my female clients is creating stability and strength through the feet and then right up through the chain into the hips. All right. So, um, I've listened to some really good podcasts on the hormonal differences between men and women and how um, the contraceptive pill can cause some massive fluctuations in these hormones and um which has a flow on effect to all of these other systems of the body. So, one of my favorite podcast episodes is mine pump with Jolene brighten and the episode I'm referring to is beyond the pill. That is an amazing episode which gave me a lot of insight into, you know, what females had to deal with when they are taking the contraceptive pill and they've done another episode with her, I can't remember what it's called, but if you go on to the mind pump podcast and you type in dr Jolene brighten, you'll have a couple of episodes come up there that I highly recommend.

And you know, I've got a lot of benefit from those episodes and I've actually sent those to some of my female um friends, my female clients and I've sent them to a couple of my male mates as well just to give them a little bit of an understanding of what females are going through. It was very interesting actually, when I was in Byron Bay at the start of this year, I was down there for my yoga course and I was on this yoga course with a heap of veterans. There was 10 veterans there that the Australian government had provided a partial grant for two get us qualified to teach a certain style of yoga. So we could take back to our network and, you know, teach people how to deal with their mind and um use it as uh an alternate therapy for dealing with, you know, anxiety, pTSd depression, et cetera. But we were learning about the menstrual cycle in one of the modules and one of the boys was like, what the funk. We learning about this stuff for like this is irrelevant, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, hang on a second mate, think about what happens when guys take their own lives, like what's the catalyst for this for the most part, it's guys losing their jobs, it's guys that fucking lose their misses, its guys that lose their kids, you know, it's something big that's happened in their life, that, you know, makes them not want to be there and want to punch out of life early.

So if you can understand what phase of the menstrual cycle your partner is in, then it's going to give you a much better idea of when you can communicate certain things and when you should be trying to um resolve conflict and things like that, and, you know, it'll just give you a much better understanding of how to deal with your partner, all right? And it's it's this can literally save relationships. Um So, I think this is important for not only females to understand, but also for blokes to understand as well. Now, for the blokes listening, consider this okay, these hormone fluctuations are going to create havoc. They're going to wreak havoc on everything. So there's going to be certain times of the month when your partner wants to be intimate, her sex drives high, there's going to be certain times in the month when the sex drives low, there's gonna be certain times in the month where, you know, they're going to be dealing with pain and cramps and things like that, which affects sleep, which then leave them in a bad mood or, you know, very irritable.

Um They're going to be having cravings, there's so many hormonal fluctuations that literally affect everything. Um mood libido, attitude, energy levels, um ability to perform, recover etcetera, etcetera. So having an understanding of these different fluctuations and knowing when, you know, it might be a good time to maybe not talk about something that that causes problems that is a conflict, okay? Because your partner's irritable and she's just gonna be sucking annoyed at you. There's no point bringing something up. Then you might be better off waiting for a different time in the month when, you know, her hormones have balanced out a little bit and you know, it's going to be much easier to be able to communicate at that time of the month. So Both important for males and four females and what I recommend doing is uh if you're a female and you haven't tracked your menstrual cycle, just track your menstrual cycle, see where you're at, see what's happening with your energy levels, See how you're sleeping, see how you're performing. Um you know, see where those cravings are at certain times of the month, etcetera.

Okay. Track for a month, c or a couple of months, see where you're at and then as I do with all progress tracking okay, then slowly make some adjustments, slowly make adjustments to your lifestyle, slowly make adjustments to how you're eating at certain times of the month, slowly make adjustments to how you're training, how you're recovering, you know certain times a month you might need a little bit more sleep. Other times of the month you can push your training a little bit harder, you know? So keeping track of these things and these hormonal fluctuations is very important, but nobody's going to do that for you. You need to do it yourself. I'm trying to keep these episodes short and sharp and at Roughly 20-25 minutes and I've already spoken for about 17 minutes now, so unfortunately I don't seem to be able to keep my answers to short. Um so I will continue the Q and a episode in the next episode of the live transformed podcast. But what I will do is finish off with a little bit of a fun question as I did in the last episode. Um this question comes in from matt solace on facebook, where did you learn to run?

And was it in a little street in east timor? So there's a really funny story behind this question which I'm going to tell to round out the episode. So um Maddie solace and I were in the same platoon together in East timor where we're doing a peacekeeping mission and we're both in the recon sniper platoon And we were tasked with going down to a village down the south of timor um called Suai which had been overrun and basically burned to the ground by um the Indonesians about 10 years earlier. And we were attached to um intelligence officer that was tasked to go down there and gather intelligence and talk to the local people and you know, gain their hearts and minds and all that type of stuff. So we were attached to this guy and we were basically his close protection personnel. Um so we went down to Suai and there was a kiwi platoon down there that um were housed up, they had a platoon house in basically a house that they took over um from, you know, the local population and they were housed up there and we ended up staying with them, so that was our base and we're working out of that location and it was just maddie and I and this intelligence sergeant, and It was about a 10-hour drive down in a um land rover was, it was, it was a pain in the past, it was a bumpy ist funk ride.

Um it was really uncomfortable um Anyway, we got down to this place, so I we bunkered down with this kiwi platoon and we ended up playing cards with these guys um and I'm I'm not sure if anyone's played, you ca I can't remember what the rules are, but the kiwi lads, like you have, you guys played, you could before, and we're like, No teach us how to play, and they basically gave us the rules and then they were like, if you lose 11 mill, it's like pool, you have to do a nudie run. Well, whatever, that's not going to happen. So anyway it happened. And Maddie and I got nude, ran down the street, this was like 10 o'clock at night. Um nobody saw anything, Nothing happened. You know, there was, there was no evidence, there was nothing. So basically that happened, we didn't think anything of it. The next night we heard this commotion outside and we're like, what the fund is going on? And um we heard the kiwi platoon commander was like what is going on here, blah blah blah. And the boys were like, we heard these voices, these kiwi voices say, oh the Aussie boys did it last night and we heard these footsteps coming towards us and Maddie and I looked at each other, we're like, fuck, what are we gonna do here?

We're gonna tell him the truth or and we're like, yeah, we'll tell him the truth. So anyway, he wanders in, he goes a jew boys do a nudie run last night, and I'm like, yeah, we did. So, so he's straight on the blower, he's straight up to our chain of command and basically adopt us in. Um even though nobody saw us or did anything or anything like that. But um anyway, we went outside to see what was going on, see what the commotion was and there was this dude across the road, this Timorese dude that was like fucking hanging off the rafters and doing these like Bruce lee cross kicks and ship like that. And he was going nuts. And we're like, whoa, what happened here? The padre was there trying to deal with that situation as well. But basically what had happened was um the kiwi lads were playing Yuka and one of them or two of them lost and basically ran across the road nude, knocked on this dude's door and bailed back across the road to this platoon house and the guy's wife came out and saw these guys running naked across the road and just fucking told her husband, he went nuts. Like understandably um definitely do not blame him.

But Um yeah, basically we ended up getting back to our base, I think we're down there for about a week and we have that 10 hour ride to get back to our base in dili and the whole time we're sitting getting thrown around in this land rover, we're gonna, we're fucked. So anyway, we got back to Dili and uh if anyone knows barry tully, he comes wandering over to us and was like, what the fund did you boys do? And um anyway, he's like your story, right? The R. S. M. And the Ceo wants to see you guys. So we went and spoke to the R. S. M. The ceo and they were trying to figure out how to charge us and asking us questions if we're drinking, if we're doing drugs or anything like that matter. And I was like no you know we were just bored, we're playing cards. We lost we played by the rules, nobody saw us, nobody did anything like we didn't cause any harm to anyone. Um So anyway we got sent away and then brought back about an hour later and they ended up charging us with breaking or sorry not adhering to a general lawful command. So we basically got charged for not wearing long sleeves between six p.m. And six a.m. And that was to deal with the mosquitoes that were out at night.

So good times we had a little bit of a laugh about that. Um I think we got off pretty lightly considering um you know we lost a couple of days pay um We got restriction of privileges, we got put on guard for a few days as well but other than that there was not really too much to come out of that. Uh And that was the first time I got charged as a soldier for the second time I got charged as a soldier. Another story completely which I'm not going to get into in this episode but stay tuned. That might be something that I bring up in a future episode. That is it from me today for today's episode guys please bear with me on the structure of these episodes because I'm new to this and I'm still figuring out um you know, the right time length for each episode. I'm still trying to figure out how much detail I need to go in with answers and things like that. Final point here is that each one of these episodes, that each one of these questions that I'm answering in these rapid fire Q and A sessions are actually up on my Youtube channel and I've broken the videos down into their individual questions so you can go on to my Youtube channel, performance, functional training and you can see the individual questions along with my individual answers for this episode and the previous episode and that will continue moving forward peace.