The Durability Blueprint: Longevity Lessons from a UFC Trainer

Dr. Heather Linden | UFC

Dr. Kevin Rindal | Vimocity

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What makes someone an athlete, their competition or their preparation? The athlete is someone who is training daily for capacity, preparing physical demand psychological demands, which is exactly the same as what the workforce is doing from the Olympics to UFC. Dr. Heather Linden walks us through what it takes to stay healthy under extreme stress, and how professional fighters and workforce athletes can stay durable over the course of their career.

The grit is great when we need to turn it on, but we also need to turn that off and look at more like longevity. That's where mistakes are made. That's where injuries occur, and all those things are gonna keep you out for longer than just gritting through that one time. This is the WorkReady podcast.

Heather, why don't we just jump in and you can tell us a little bit about how you got into this whole rehab and human performance space. Yeah, so I have been a doctor of physical therapy for, gosh, 21 years now. Never in a million years did I imagine the pathway that I have, taken. I spent close to seven years with the US Olympic team, both summer and winter sports and all like 52 sports.

I went around too. So I got to really understand the uniqueness of, and the individualized approach of each and every sport and the requirements it took to get to the highest level and win those gold medals. And, also the lowest of levels, right? Where they have to conquer, defeat emotion, the mental aspect, the physical aspect.

And I think because I did have the experience of multiple combat sports through the Olympics I was a key, I think, interviewee for the UFC. Not many people at that time had experience in combat sports. Most physical therapists were trying to get in your NFL teams, your NBA teams, things like that. And really, I just, I think I found my niche there.

I really loved the complexity of the athlete in front of me. They're really gritty. They're gonna challenge every concept that, you bring to the table. And with that, I really felt that. We could explore and build this amazing performance facility that really captured the combat athlete. And I'm really lucky to be able to do that from the ground up at UFC.

I had a clean slate walking in here. That's so cool. And go. Going back to the USOC working with Olympic athletes. That was in Colorado Springs primarily. Yep. And so when you're talking about combat sports, you're talking about probably TaeKwonDo, wrestling, wrestling, judo, boxing, men's gym, or men's gymnastics.

Those were the main combat portfolio that were at the Colorado Springs location. Yeah. And then you're also working with ice skaters and swimmers. And so what is it like going from all, that's such a huge array of sports and things that you have to train for, and so what are like some of the similarities and the differences with how you approached each athlete?

I think the bottom line is we try to make things really complex when it's. Pretty simple, like the human body is amazing. So if you can look at the foundations of like where you need to str, build strength, where you need to build endurance capacity those foundational moments are very similar between sports.

But then you have to understand the personality of that sport and then the requirements of that sport. So you had to wear so many hats when you were at the Olympic Training Center, which I think really prepared me for real life, not only personally, but also professionally, right? When you're looking at an athlete that's doing figure skating compared to swimming.

Those needs are very different. But we also know by doing like the foundational stuff of good health, good sleep building, like reversing what you're doing in the sport similar to someone in the workforce, right? So you're doing the same movements over and over to train. We do that every day in the workforce.

So being able to counter those movements to keep prevention and athlete health as a priority, I think is the foundational stuff that, rang out amongst all the sports. Yeah, that's great. Just a personal note too, I first met you when I did my volunteer rotation at the USOC and then in 2016 with the US Olympic swim team, you were really played a critical role in the success of the swim team's success that year.

And so it was an honor to work with you. Just so impressed with just all the innovation that you brought to the table. Oh. Yeah, I'm excited to, to dig in a little bit more. One thing that as I was thinking about this conversation, you really brought some great innovation from a recovery standpoint. And I think there's this tendency with workforce athletes, any, even just professional athletes, it's like train.

But if you don't focus on the recovery, you're gonna hit a moment of breakdown. And so can you maybe dive in a little bit more on the importance of recovery for both elite athletes, but also for workforce athletes? Yeah, I think recovery is so integral and that's a piece that we're, we so quickly throw out, right?

Even in life we know that the body has a certain capacity it can handle, right? Whether it's gonna lead to an injury, whether it's gonna lead to deterioration of, I was listening to a podcast this morning talking about it's not that you get slower, it's that you lose the other things that bring you, make you slower, right?

It's not like all of a sudden you wake up one morning and you're like, I'm slow. It's, the capacity of your muscles don't focus or the neurological component doesn't focus. So recovery is so integral because it allows the body to reset, right? We're always pushing the limits. We do that in the workforce.

We also do that as a professional athlete. Every day. We're asking that body to challenge its systems at the optimal level. And with that, it can't stay at a peak. We know in life, right? You can always be at the top. Once you're at the top you're gonna go down, right? So integrating recovery into not only the day-to-day athlete, but also the workforce is so critical because our body does need a reset.

We know neurologically, the brain needs all those processes to heal. We know physiologically we need those processes to heal because we can't stay at that optimal level. Without breakdown eventually. We're really integral of trying. When I started at UFC, there really was no recovery pathway at all.

And I know with swimming, that was like the first priority, right? Like you're getting outta the water, you're getting soft tissue manual work done. You're getting making sure that you know your body reset, you're getting good sleep, good diet, all of those kind of things that are integral part of recovery.

And then choosing the recovery modality that's perfect for you. We see these fads that come in. Right now it's the cold tubs or it's this, cryo chambers. Were a fad hyperbarics, but really it's understanding what your body needs are. The response that your body has, the purpose that you're trying to achieve during that recovery.

And I think we can, we can't put everyone in one zone. Everyone has a little bit of a uniqueness of how genetically our body functions and understanding that if we don't recover. We're not gonna be able to perform in the workforce or as an athlete. And I love what you said is the purpose of recovery, because for each individual in at different phases, like there are different purposes.

It might be, I'm feeling a little bit sick and so maybe I need to allow my immune system to be able to do its work. Or maybe neurologically I can just tell that I've absolutely pushed to the limits. And so how do, how should people think about recovery and intention related to that? Yeah. So I think you need to understand what your purpose is, right?

We have long days at work where you come home and you can't think of anything, right? Most likely that's going to be a neurological reset. Whether that's gonna be breathing strategies, whether it's gonna be downgrade, regulating the sympathetic nervous system, there's great modalities like shift wave and other things that help regulate.

You can do simple breathing exercises. You could do, maybe it's a hot bath, right? Just down regulating your neurological system. So you gotta figure out what your purpose is, right? If you are someone that is working out and you get a lot of delayed muscle soreness, maybe the cold tub is a great thing for that.

'cause you get that vasoconstriction. If you're someone that you know, you're working hard and grit, like our athletes, when they have a hard grappling session and they feel more bruised, we're gonna do a red light or laser to help with that superficial bruising. So there's definitely. Key components of each part of recovery.

And I think as an individual, learning your body and how to set it up for success. We know diet and hydration and sleep are your main integral, no matter what we do here clinically, if you don't have those three key components, you're already behind the times. So we need to focus on that.

And maybe that's wearable technology. Maybe that's understanding, do you get good quality sleep at night? And I think there's so many factors out there, and that can be overwhelming, that can be confusing for anybody because we see everything on social media now. But I think it's, partnering with people that understand recovery is a crucial part.

And then understanding what your need is at that time period. I love that you said diet, hydration and sleep are the top three components. And I think some people can feel overwhelmed by everything that's on social media of man, I should be doing this, I should be doing that. But really, even if people were to just start with those three things, you're gonna probably hit 80% of Yes.

The things that you probably need to do to maximize recovery. So could we dive deep into each one of those? And so yeah. If people were to take away maybe a couple things related to diet, what are the top things that people can be doing from a diet perspective to aid recovery? Yeah. So I think, getting rid of a lot of those sugary foods, looking at that foundational component of protein, carbs, a really good balanced meal is gonna be critical.

We also know that eating late at night. Will possibly affect your sleep habits. So making sure you're scheduling eating appropriately when you need the fuel, whether it's like you have a hard day in front of you, making sure you're getting food adequately. So not only your brain but also your muscles can work.

And then when it comes to diet, getting rid of those sugary, those sodas, thinking about water, really good quality food really helps our mental capacity as well as our physiological capacity. So I think diet's really pretty easy in things and moderation, everybody wants to go extreme, all of a sudden they go on these fad diets.

But really it's moderation. Moderation in having a meal that's really balanced. It's crazy that we look at what we grew up with as kids, right? Those simple plate diagrams or looking at, the equal amounts. Yeah. And really that still does hold home. I mean our, we have sports dieticians and chefs on staff at UFC and they're fabulous.

They break it down for the athlete, like we actually understand. You know what different heart rates that athlete will burn. Carbs, proteins, fats, because when we're doing that, we wanna understand, people think everyone burns the same, but that's not true either, right? So like we really understand the human body by metabolic efficiencies, DEXAs.

And then we can isolate exactly what that athlete needs are, and then we program that around their training to make sure they're fueled for their training and they're not going in at a depleted session where an injury could occur. Any thoughts on the new food pyramid? It's been inverted in the last week or so.

It has been. I think there, there's a, I feel like we go back and forth with it. Yeah. They continuously swap it, which I think makes everyone a little more confused. Yeah. I just, I still go back to, have your protein, have your vegetables. Have a good sugars of fruit.

And I think keeping it pretty simple is gonna be the less confusing. Moderation. Moderation. Totally. So what you're saying focus on protein is probably the building block. Yep. And then whole fruits and vegetables. It's pretty tough to go wrong if that's. A majority of your diet For sure.

And even with the carbohydrates, you're gonna need that, especially if you have a long standing job. If you're on your feet for 12 to 15 hours, you also have to realize you gotta feed, the brain and everything, and that's gonna be your carbohydrates. Yeah. What are your thoughts on reine supplementation and vitamin D?

If we were to just talk about, about maybe two other nutritional components or durability. Yeah, so especially vitamin D, we see a huge deficiency in that arena, especially in those areas where they, face a long winter, they don't get quite as much sunshine. So we, we do a lot of supplementation there with vitamin D and then creatine as well, especially around the brain health with creatine.

There's a lot of good research with that. So we do supplement creatine in our brain health protocol, and we do use that to counterbalance the training loads and things like that. And some pretty cool research that also shows that Vitamin D deficiency can actually make you more at risk for a musculoskeletal injury.

And so sometimes we don't think about the correlation there. Not the correlation. Yeah. But then when you really look at the population, almost everyone is deficient in vitamin D. And so to me, I've always felt like that's an easy thing that people can do. Easy. Yeah. Yep. Easy supplementation, just getting your multivitamins are so critical and just, staying healthy.

Yeah. 5,000 IUs. What would you recommend? Yeah, that's what I would, yeah. So the second thing that you talked about was hydration. So could you maybe elaborate on, yeah. When you're working with this UFC athletes, like how do you think about hydration and why is it important that they focus on that?

Hydration for us is pretty complex in the sense of, we are a weight cutting sport. So our goal is honestly to almost dehydrate the athlete, to get the water out of them, make the weight, and then successfully replenish it. And we have it down to a science. We study sweat rates and everything like that.

One of the key components that I think the general population doesn't even know is it's not just water, right? When we sweat salts and things like that, which are your electrolytes component. So many people I've also heard say, I hydrate, I'm really good with my water intake. But they don't also consider the electrolyte and how much they're sweating and how much salt and things they're losing.

So that's a critical component too, is, including some electrolytes in that hydration sequence throughout the day. Especially if you're in an environment where you're, sweating and losing a lot of water especially in the summer and things like that. So hydration is really key, and we know it's good for, the skin.

We know it's good for the muscles and all that kind of stuff as well, right? Because if a dehydrated tissue is probably gonna get injured way more rapidly than somebody that's really efficient with hydration and electrolytes and things. Yeah, and I think Gatorade Sports Science Institute did a study and they said that if you're 1% dehydrated, which is about 32 ounces for a 200 pound person, that actually exponentially increases the cognitive dysfunction of people.

Yeah. And then if you're 2%, so that's 64 ounces for 200 pound person that you're at exponentially increased risk for a soft tissue injury. So muscle tendon. And so again, it's one of those things we don't, we just think we need to drink water carpet. Yeah, exactly. But it's pretty quick. When you're working outside in a hundred degree day Oh my gotcha.

To lose that amount of liquid. So what are do you have any guidelines that you might be able to provide people in terms or maybe strategies for how they could monitor their salt and hydration levels or calculate that loss so that they know how to properly incorporate electrolytes? Yeah. And that is not my expertise at all by any means.

Yeah. I just wanna say that. But really what we do here is we will look at like sweat rates. How much they lose in a workout. So weighing yourself beforehand. Yeah. Going your full day and then seeing what you weigh after really trying to look at that water that you're losing throughout your day.

And then making sure we hydrate accordingly to what that sweat rate is. But I think, like simplistically, like I always tell our athletes, yes, drink your, what is it? Eight glasses of water minimum a day for the regular person. It's also, I always say throw a cap full of electrolytes in two of those just to kind of balance things out and like when we work out you can taste or the sweat is salty and things like that.

So we, we have to replenish what we're doing. People also, I find we have had issues in like the south or in Florida with athletes because they drink more water, but they almost overload their body with just water. And then you can also have adverse health effects from that as well. So it is important to get those electrolytes and, little salt on your food.

Isn't a bad thing. People are like scared of that, right? Initially, but that's actually part of our electrolytes and things like that. So replenishing that is critical. But I think really understanding if you are in a long-term job or out in the sun, just taking those few days to look at and understand what your body is actually doing, I think can really help out.

And so when you say drinking too much water, it's because you're diluting, is that what you're saying there? Yeah. You're diluting the electrolytes and you get hypo remic and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Any favorite electrolytes that you. Some people, like everything we use is through Thorn. Really?

Yeah. 'Cause it, we are, we do have to be NSF certified because we are drug tested athletes. So we really use everything that they have. It's such a good quality supplement. We love our partner with Thorn. That's probably the number one supplement that you see a lot of professional athletes use because they're, they are very clean and they're exactly what you're getting.

Where unfortunately, sometimes when we go into these vitamin or wellness stores, it can be a mix of a bunch of stuff that has happened into, in that area. So we usually go with Thorn based products. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. We aren't sponsored by Thorn, but I've used Thorn for 20 years. I've, that's the supplement that I've always used is great product.

So the third thing that you mentioned was sleep. And so can we maybe talk about sleep and some of the, benefits of why you should emphasize that? That's, that is the time of the day where our body gets to repair everything, all the processes, all the damage we've done. That is the integral part.

We also, go into REM sleep where the body recovers and like resets. So it's really important, to get that quality sleep. And everyone's a little bit different, right? Like I actually am someone that. Capitalizes on six to seven hours of sleep. Yes, we've heard the typical eight hours is great, but everyone's a little bit unique on what their circadian rhythms are.

But getting that reset every day is allowing us to start fresh and that body to heal and perform, right? So we see when people don't get the appropriate sleep things break down a lot more quickly. And with that, like even just general population, you can't perform at your mental capacity if you are starting to lack sleep.

It affects so many systems, right? When you are tired, your eyes feel heavy. So we know vision isn't great, your reaction isn't great, your speed. Pretty much every system is affected by sleep if we're not getting it. I love understanding my sleep phases. I love understanding, that I'm getting quality sleep.

So I do use wearables for that. But it's one of those things that I think sleep is. Is the Bible when it comes to recovery, right? If you are not getting that, everything starts to fall and break down. And that's where we see even more susceptible to diseases and other things like that is such an integral part.

It's so simple, right? Yeah. Eat, hydrate, sleep and the body loves to function. Yeah. The body knows how to repair and it knows how to and stuff is how to do all that. We just have to put in the best possible situation so it can do its work. Absolutely. I do wanna double down on the wearables. I've been a whoop wearer for the last probably four years and it really has changed my emphasis on sleep and it's really given me I still train for like Ironman triathlons and so I push hard and there are times where I am like, wow, I am not recovering and I need to sleep an extra hour here this morning Exactly.

To workout. And also scheduling your day around it, right? Like we always tell our athletes, we're trying to really educate the athletes that like, if you have a really bad night, maybe that's not the night, next day to spar. Your body requires so much in s sparring for us. Like maybe you, you substitute a different training session that's gonna use a little less on that day until you've hit that recovery.

Because then otherwise, if you're slow and in training or at work, that's when you know accidents and things can happen. When you and what wearable do you Yeah, so we we've used Aura, we've used ultra Human is a new wearable that we're actually beta testing right now because it's really unique.

I feel like all these platforms have a piece of things. So what ultra humans trying to do is take your blood, pull that in your house environment. It has an O2, a CO2 tracker. It does the ring. They're trying to pull in a female menstrual fertility component. So Ultra human is trying to take all those major systems of the body and actually put it under one platform, which is really unique.

So we are beta testing that right now, and we have absolutely loved how the company is willing to we're gonna do a specific. Blood panel just for a professional athlete. 'cause everyone's a little unique, right? An MMA athlete is different than a swimmer, different than a worker. So understanding that a little bit better.

So that's what we've been playing with right now. We use a lot of Garmin. We use a lot of Garmin data. They're another one that we use wearables for because it's really accurate and stuff like that. In talking about sleep and recovery, a few metrics that I think are helpful to follow our heart rate variability.

Yep. And resting heart rate. Yep. Can you maybe speak to those two components and how that might impact your decision making with an athlete in terms of how hard to push 'em? Yeah. So we know that resting heart rate is something where, like at night everything should be coming down while the body repairs and everything.

So if your heart rate is spiked, there's usually something going on. So that's a number one indicator for us. Okay we have so many data points that we'll look at HRV and heart rate and see, is someone's heart rate raised because they're. Battling an illness, an injury's about to occur, their body's not recovering.

Those are things. HRV is your like, stable altogether number that is gonna say recoverability, right? Are you or are you not? And it's important and it's unique for each person. I hate to say my HRV is horrible. It's horrible. It's a standing joke with my team because they're like, Heather, how are you going?

So it is definitely a number that like we have to be taken to stride, but I also. I'm like a type A I go. So I'm sitting here telling everybody, but I'm guilty as well. Sometimes. Sometimes I need to take a step back and do those recovery tactics that I talk about as well. But I think like both HR and HRV are your two really simplistic numbers that we need to understand and then make our decisions in the morning based on those.

Sure. And so putting that into practical terms for a workforce athlete, they wake up, heart rate has spiked. Maybe it's 30% higher than normal. Yeah. HRV is really low. The quality of the sleep is down. What are some things that someone can take away from that information and, how might that impact their decisions throughout the day?

Yeah, so first and foremost, like with the HRV, we're looking at that like autonomic nervous system, so sympathetic versus parasympathetic system. So when you have a higher HRV, it's actually better. So just getting that. So like when you look at that, you're not looking for that lower number, which I think people tend to look for.

And it's not just like fitness, but it's like the psychological, the physiological recovery signal. So key things on HRV is gonna be sleep, so we know you possibly aren't getting sleep if you're training load or cumulative amount. So maybe you've done too much the day before, so you might need to shorten what you do that next day.

It also symbolizes injury or like inflammation. So maybe, you have a lot of inflammation that day. So eating, having a diet that maybe is reduction of inflammation or cryo or something like that. Pulling in those recovery modalities that we briefly talked on to try to restore that.

HRV. We also know illness is a huge component of HRV. We know dehydration, which we just spoke on, which is so important. Alcohol, nicotine, stimulants, those things are gonna affect your HRV. So I think one thing to keep in mind with HRV is like. You need more recovery installed if that number is getting really low.

And whether that's a combination of dehydration, sleep, nicotine chronic inflammation. So you really wanna like effectively do load management. You can work on breathing, you can work on trying to downregulate your system if you're always type A in high cortisol levels. So that's what we look at from an HRV standpoint.

From a heart rate standpoint, obviously fitness is really critical too. So getting in, going to the gym, people that are on their feet are very similar to our athletes. They put in a full day of work, the last thing they wanna hear is, I need to go to the gym or I need to do extra. But really that's going to improve your heart rate significantly if your fitness level and stuff is critical.

And we don't really always counterbalance that 'cause we do so much and we fill our days up to the top. Yeah, and that's such a good point because a big part of creating durability and cardiovascular health is getting your heart rate into different zones. And you may be on your feet, you may be doing physical work all day, but the likelihood is that you're probably staying in zone one to two.

Why is it important that people may be push into those higher heart rate zones from a overall health and a longevity standpoint? Yeah, so heart rate zones are really important because, that's going to really signify I think, your overall fitness, right? So heart rate zones, if you're staying the same, your body is doing the same thing day in and day out, right?

When we do the same thing, that's also how we break down a little bit, right? And we wanna get into those different sympathetic, parasympathetic and cardiovascular fitness, right? So zone one is gonna be a really easy zone. Zone two goes up more to your aerobic capacity and you keep going on that where all of those zones are gonna affect your body in different, whether it's lactate, aerobic, anaerobic, whether it's a high neural drive with higher heart rates.

So all of those are gonna test different systems in your body. So it's important to go in and out of those to you lose it if you don't do something. Yeah we know that. So like getting each and every one of those zones is going to load your system in different effects, whether it's conditioning, whether it's tissue tolerance, whether it's sympathetic, parasympathetic, all those kind of things.

So with that, it's really important because heart rate zones will also affect tissue, will affect replace strength, power, bone density, like everything across the board when it comes to health. So when we stay in one static zone forever, it's really not benefiting the body to the max capacity. Yeah. And I think that's one of the cool things about the wearables is now you have something that can track that.

And so then you can start to see over the course of a week, how much time are you spending in those zones? And a lot of people like dabbling. Yeah. Testing that system. You don't wanna be complacent. We know that the body doesn't like to do the same thing, the same pathway. We know, like you think about even elderly people right.

Where our deterioration of what the brain does and stuff half the time, that's because we don't train it. We stop training things when we stop doing things, that's when the body breaks down. Yeah. And I always tell people, train for the things that you love. And so if you stay in. Zone one and two, like most of the year.

And then you go on a elk hunting trip and you have to haul out, make four trips to haul out a thousand pound animal. Your heart rate's probably in zones four, maybe even five when you're carrying like 150 pounds over the mountains. And that's when people run into trouble because they haven't been training in those other zones.

And Exactly. So I think it's so important to just think that like you have to train for the things that you enjoy, for the things that you're gonna do in life. And you never know where you're gonna find yourself. And so having that capacity, it makes life agree a lot better. Totally agree. Yep. One final thing before we move on, 'cause I'm sure everyone wants to hear about the UFC and what it's like to work there.

But you mentioned blood results and I think that's one of the things over the last five years that's become much more attainable to the average consumer. I just got my blood drawn yesterday, hit back again today for round two. Love it. But it was like $365 for like complete blood panel for, and I can get that twice a year.

So I'm doing these six months checkups and that's really helped me dial in certain aspects of my personal health. But what would you say about the importance of looking at blood and monitoring that for the average person? So I think it's the number one thing to give us objective insight into the internal physiology of the body, right?

We can capture the HRV and other things outside, but to actually understand like what is going on with all the systems internally in the body, I think is so common. I think we can understand like recovery and fatigue, right? If labs can indicate, if you're always in a inflammatory response, they can look at hormones, right?

We know hormones is a big thing, especially right now, I think it's a pretty big buzz word in understanding like, we're seeing a decline with men and testosterone and things like that, especially in elite athletes, right? So I think labs are such a critical component of. Taking that snapshot of what's going on inside.

And gives us a lot of objective information that we can do something with. We're not guessing when it comes to getting labs done. I know with my ultra human, we just did this like extensive 14 vial panel. And it gives you also like blood markers. It gives you things that, you can understand if there's going to be illness or any kind of disease and you can catch that kind of stuff.

I think now the world, we need to transition from that reactive medicine to more of that proactive by getting, testing done, labs done. This is a sure way to understand what's going on internally in the body. Yeah. And you talked about testosterone and I think, there are so many things stacked against people.

I think the poor nutrition poor sleep on a consistent basis, shift work or the ci circadian rhythm is all over the place. And all those things can contribute to lowering testosterone. So what are some maybe easy things that you've found that people have been able to do from a lifestyle management Yeah.

That have helped them maybe optimize that testosterone level? I think first we start with the labs and then we know that with testosterone that's gonna stimulate muscle protein synthesis, like your collagen turnover, your bone mineral density. It's gonna help you with your strength gains, your recoverability.

So when it comes to testosterone, some of the things like we, we obviously in a sport we have to be very cautious. Some we can't. Yeah, we mess with that as much as the common person can. But if you do have low testosterone, we know you're gonna be energy deficient, you're gonna be under fueled. You could have.

Sleep disruptions, psychological stress, illness, inflammation are all tied to testosterone. So having someone that can manage that in a wellness center or having someone that can, prescribe it independently to you. I know I have a friend that, always struggled with building strength.

I know he went in and got and realized, wow, my testosterone was significantly lower. So now he's back on. He also, injuries were something that they complained of, like tendon or bone injuries. And now that he's on something that's prescribed by a medical provider, he is doing amazing and tolerating load and building muscle and feeling really healthy.

He's he constantly says I'm not as fatigued anymore. And just overall feels so much lighter and better because of it. So it is important to do labs, to understand what's going on with our bodies because, we just, we grind until something happens. And I think now, like you said, because of the accessibility we can actually have a really good internal snapshot of what our body's doing with wearables, with labs, with, and there's a lot of that out there that I think is really great for us to transition health to being more proactive and, when we can manage that, it definitely increases our quality of life.

And so can you maybe briefly talk about health span versus lifespan in biological age versus chronological age? And, we can take those things with a grain of salt, but I think it at least gives us a framework to think about. For my age, where do I sit in terms of quality of quality?

Yeah, we know that, lifespan is the total number of years a person lives, right? And that helps to measure the quantity of life in lifespan where health span is the number of years lived, like in good health, feeling good, right? We look at the aging human and we can see it's funny.

I always say I feel like it's very cyclical, right? As a kid, you need a lot of assistance, you're learning things. And then we live this life and then we get into our elderly years and sometimes it almost reverts back, right? Like it's the cyclical, like you see, I know in my grandma. She passed away recently.

She was 97, lived amazing life. But her last few years, I can't say we're health span, right? Like she was this amazing, brilliant woman that was so independent, traveled the world and here to see her having trouble, like transitioning in and out of bed. And health span is really emphasizing function, cognition, the quality.

And I think that's really where we need to push our focus, right? We know that lifespan is getting longer, we know that people are living longer, so we need to push that health span to meet that lifespan so that people have really good quality of life, right? And I think that's so critical.

And I think everything we just touched on with hydration, sleep, understanding our body's internal, what's going on are all key components to improve the health span rather than just lifespan. We don't wanna live longer if we're in incapacitated, right? That's not how we wanna live. We wanna capitalize on these years.

And you see that. That in professional athletes, right? Like we have athletes now in their forties. In all sporting organizations, that's unheard of. I know even 20 years ago, the lifespan of an athlete, it was their twenties, maybe their thirties, and now we're going twenties, thirties, and into their forties.

So if we can stay healthier longer and maintain that, we can do that in the workforce. We can do that in life in general. Yeah, I a hundred percent agree and I think, like you said, everything we just touched on, I think there's some really good components there for people to start making a playbook for how they can live that high quality of life.

So thank you for all your feedback on that. What is it like to work at the UFC? That's what I wanna know. Honestly, the, by far one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life. Hands down this population is such a fun and unique athlete to work with because they push the limits. They make me take my medical hat off and think outside the box every day.

The amount of things that this athlete population has been able to push through they're really gritty, they're really driven almost to a fault where like for me to pull them out from a medical standpoint, they look at me like I'm absolutely crazy. They just grind, right? So it's being able to understand the complexity of the athlete and, push that to influence them for better choices and better health.

But people, I could go on and on about stories about the human body with this population. My first week on the job, after a fight, I remember getting an athlete in and I'm like, we need seven x-rays, everything is broken. I got the X-rays back, nothing was broken. And I'm like, how does the human body look like that after a fight and five days later with recovery, modalities and treatment look completely normal again?

And it, it's amazing. It has made me understand how critical and how amazing the human body is, even more than we think we're so quick to do the medication or the quick fix, but really the body can do a lot more than we even allow it to do. And that's something that I think is really cool working with this population because like we have probably at least 10 guys in the top 10 without an ACL without like big injuries that.

Athletes don't normally compete through, they're able to, we have so many of our population with labrum tears, which, the common person, someone that's on a workforce really grinding, could have, and normally we would say, oh my gosh, surgically repair this, fix this. Now with this population, I'm like, oh, we could stem cell this, we could use orthobiologics.

We can rehab the muscles. And this person does a professional sport with no problem. So it's made me look at medicine a little bit differently. Yeah. And how has that been different working with UFC athletes versus Olympic athletes? I'm sure there are a lot of similarities, but what are the differences?

Yeah, so one thing that people don't really know is our athletes don't get paid unless they fight, right? So because there is that financial I need to put food on the table. We have to wear that hat of how can I keep that guy healthy? But fighting, right? Where at the U-S-O-P-C, we were very much, it was a plan, it was a four year plan to get to that Olympic games.

And I'm talking, we worked backwards and everything was strategically planned out for this person. That's pretty much why I was met you in swimming is because they partnered me 18 months out with the swimming team. They knew there would be a lot of medals there, and they're like, Heather, we want you to understand their injuries inside out.

So if you are, arriving on the deck of this swim competition, this athlete has this injury, this is what they need. You can fix that in case we need a quick fix. Where with us, it's like, how do I keep them in the octagon? Don't jeopardize their health and safety, but be creative so that they can get a paycheck and feed their families.

So that's one of the biggest differences. It's you construct this amazing plan. And it goes right out the window sometimes. So you have to be really adaptable. You're like, wait, you're not done with your rehab and you took a fight. You, they're like, I can't feed my family. And you're like, okay, how am I gonna get you there?

Yeah. And you have to be very adaptable. Where I feel like at the Olympic Training Center, we are very fortunate to plan every four years we have this massive plan that we try to follow to ensure athletes are peaking at the right time where our athlete might get a fight. I, we had an athlete sitting on a couch getting a massage, get called to come to the stadium and fight because our co-main event fell out because the athlete, they were fighting, got sick, got the flu all of a sudden.

So woke up with the flu. We have a coma event, the one of our biggest events, and we're like, how do we save this call? A guy on a couch, he gets off the couch and getting a massage. Two hours later is at the arena fighting and it was one of the best fights ever. So it's like one of those things where like we just have to be ready to go at all times.

Yeah. And as you're telling that story, there's a lot of correlation with workforce athletes. Their body is their money maker. They have to provide, they don't get paid if they're not showing up. How does that put pressure on people to maybe show up and just try to grit through things?

And what is the impact of that long-term versus, saying, I need to recover this? Yeah, so I was gonna say the body can only handle so much grit, right? So yes, there is gonna be days in the workforce that we have to get up and show up, and it might not be. The perfect scenario, right? That is one thing I also wanna preach.

It's not that we have wearable technologies and things, and they should influence us, but like an athlete of ours, if they wake up and their HRV and their heart rate is bad, they're not gonna say, I'm not competing. So there is that grit component that happens that we can push through. Now, the body can't sustain that at all.

And that's the important quality is, okay, I might need to grit through this day, but then I need to make the time on the opposite side where I can recover and counterbalance the grit that I have. And I think that's important in our workforce significantly because, we are taught so much to grind.

Get in, get your job done, go at your best, and then repeat, repeat. And there's sometimes, where we do need to take that rest and that restoration and take a vacation or take a step back and say, Hey, today I can't do all of this. What can I do? Replace of that to give myself a recovery day or make the time for recovery, right?

It might be getting off that long hour, 12 hour day, okay? I am gonna go maybe even to the gym for 15 minutes and then I'm gonna do get in the cold tub or do contrast baths or take a hot bath when I get home. And we tend to push that aside, everybody, right? That's the one that drops off of consistency and it's so important.

That's probably the most important thing. That recovery and neck and shoulder injuries, I would imagine are probably two of the most common injuries with UFC fighters. Can you share a little bit more about that? Maybe even tell us a few stories? Yeah. Obviously we're an overhead sport, so constantly pushing the shoulders, right?

And the shoulder girdle. We're grappling, we're striking. They're training a lot, they're training loads in that joint as well, are pretty high. And then we go into wrestling and grappling that by far, in juujitsu, which is the most, I'm gonna say this, I shouldn't say this, but most of our juujitsu guys probably have the worst necks you've ever seen.

I don't, and even, it's so funny because a lot of employees or a lot of people will train jiujitsu and all of their next. Get art to shambles because you're just getting pulled on, right? And we already know posture, everyday posture of our necks are pretty poor. We're sitting on phones, we're eating, we're driving everything is that forward.

Flexion posture, we get really tight in the front. Our athletes are then grappling and being snapped down. So necks and shoulders are probably one of the key components when it comes to the injuries here. So trying to counterbalance that. That's where that extra s and c session comes in. That's where a warmup comes in.

Okay. So you might not have time to add another session in, but if you're going to the gym anyway, maybe do those correctives that fix your posture and counterbalance what the day-to-day wear and tear is. And that's really how to manage injuries, right? All of our guys, they're doing three sessions like Heather, I'm not gonna do a four session of correctives.

That seems so boring to them. So instead we've gotten creative and added that into their warmups, right? Hey, you're gonna do some chin tucks, you're gonna do some cervical isometrics, you're gonna do some scapular retraction. And pulling everything back to counterbalance what you're doing before you do your session.

And that seems to really help to mitigate some of the risk of those injuries that we need. Yeah, you alluded to a concept that we call upper cross syndrome, which has a little bit of a neurological component, which means that you're using certain muscles and you talked about that. Forward posture.

Every single worker, everything is flexion based. It's pulling them forward. It's pulling the chest height, and then it starts to impact stuff on. Opposite side of the body and neurologically, some muscles are not firing in the way that they need to create the right stability. Can you maybe expand on that a little bit more and how that might relate to somebody who's also an overhead worker working out in front of them and impact maybe on their shoulder and they don't realize, oh, my posture might actually impacting my shoulder health.

The body is pretty simple in the sense of, I feel like it's a whole pulley system, right? Something's either going one way and the other way has to work to counter that. So like when you say that forward posture, that cross, we see a lot of those shoulders rolled forward. We see the neck forward and then trying to extend to look up.

And what happens in those joints is they're overworking, they're getting so many repetitions. We also have a lot of little muscles in the shoulder that go through a really narrow area and if you're forward, you close down that area and make it smaller. So that's gonna almost like taking a violin and going.

In and out, you're gonna wear that tendon and those muscles down if the shoulder is closed down. And then from the outside, if you think about it, if something is always pulling, trying to make you go the opposite way, it finally fatigues out. And neurologically, it can't handle those stresses, right? So things are all going in one dimension.

So we need to counter. Suit that, which is gonna be a really simple exercises that we can do, but that's gonna help that wear and tear of your neck and your shoulder joints not happen. And we know if you're always reaching overhead and you're doing the same repetitive motion that you are requiring the same muscles to fire in the same pattern.

Just like we said, you don't wanna do the same thing every day. We're doing that. Making sure that we reverse that, whether it's at home afterwards, when we're doing our recovery, or whether it's a warmup or whether it's, Hey, I'm gonna take two or three days during my week to counter move what we've already done.

So if you're always forward, we gotta think about it, the extensors in the back, and we gotta make sure that we're firing those to give us the stability we need, or we're just gonna get injured. Our body's gonna degenerate in a faster pattern than we want. It's really simplistic. I think the whole body's a police system.

So there's one side doing something and the other doing the other. And you've gotta make that in the middle. Yeah. A lot of times when I'm describing this to people, and you did a great job, you're talking about the narrow spots that those tendons have to go, and sometimes we call that impingement syndrome.

If we were to give it A name. A name, yes. Oftentimes we'll have people round their shoulders forward and try to lift their arm up and feel the range of motion, and you can't, and then you just get your shoulder in a better position and you have that full range of motion and it's because. The way things are lined up too.

Can you maybe expand on that? Yeah. And the same thing with the neck, right? If you take your neck and you bring it forward and you try to rotate, you can only rotate so much if you bring it back on top of it and then rotate, it opens up that joint space. We know in the shoulder that rotator cuff muscle has really narrow areas to go through, and those are gonna be your rotational components when you lift your arm up and pick and twist.

So with that, it's really important that the body is a fine tuned machine. It needs the oil change, the daily maintenance, just like your car needs. And I think it's so critical. If things aren't in alignment, they're gonna wear down because you're gonna have bony surfaces that just start to rub and that's where you see the tears in, your muscles of your shoulders, or you see some instability because the shoulder's sitting too far forward, everything should be in its place.

There's a reason the body is fine in a fine tuned machine, but also we need to make sure that fine tuned machine goes in for maintenance. Yeah, absolutely. You and I took a course at the USOC called Postural Restoration Institute, and so PRI and it focused on breathing in the position of the rib cage and.

It seems weird to think about that we can influence our ribcage, but can you maybe briefly talk about how the ribcage actually is the foundation of the shoulder and if the ribcage is not, shaped the way that it should be or were not breathing properly, that can actually impact things all the way up the chain.

Yeah, because people I don't think realize how many components of the ribcage are connected to that shoulder girdle as well as our center of having a strong lumbar spine, right? So we know that with the ribcage obviously, that there is a diaphragm muscle that helps us breathe, that should drop down.

We know ribcage mechanics. If your rib cage is really flared, that's gonna make you weaker. That's also gonna change the posture of your shoulder. So it's really key to understand that the rib cage can be in a neutral position. It can span equally out both outs. Out to the side and also forward and backwards 'cause it needs that expansion as well.

We also know when that rib cage is elevated, let's say someone is high in stress, they're doing a lot of work. We see those upper traps that get really tonic and tight. That pulls the rib cage up, which then elevates your first rib, which then affects also your neck range of motion. The whole thing is connected so people don't realize how critical breathing is.

And really like understanding how to down regulate the system, get this shoulder girdle out from your shoulders and your neck to really free up the joint space in order to be effective and efficient in everything we do. We also know that like breathing is great from a neuro standpoint and a regulatory standpoint, right?

So having really appropriate breathing, working those box breathing, working things to down-regulate your system is gonna be critical. And I think. That's a really easy fix that people can do anywhere. At the end of your night, you can do some box breathing exercises. That is gonna be like more of that inhale hold, exhale hold and all that kind of, that stuff does really well.

It's usually what is it, four by four. Yes. So it's like inhale, hold, exhale, hold four seconds for each of those and you can regulate those and play with those timeframes depending on that. But we know that with that, it really increases your parasympathetic tone, which reduces overactivation, which with overactivation we're also gonna see those muscles really tonic and tight, which is when people are like, oh, my neck really hurts.

Or, I can't raise my shoulder over. But we also see cardiovascular effects with that. We see, reducing blood pressure. We see better HRV with all that kind of stuff. So it's all really connected right when we come full circle there. And better sleep. There's even been research that shows four breaths can help you improve your sleep quality and your time to actually fall asleep.

So yeah it's so many benefits. All right. So if I were a workforce athlete listening to this, and we talked about neck strength and we talked about exercising the muscles on the opposite side. Yep. Opening up our chest. What are maybe like. Top three or four things that people could do that would take less than 10 minutes a day to get that stuff on the backside working.

Yeah. So I really love a really simplistic exercise called a wall angel. Yeah. It's working on getting those posterior muscles. It's going against a wall and it fires not only the shoulder, but it also aligns the neck and stuff. So you can add like a chin tuck into it. So I love a simplistic like wall angel to start.

Then I love like a box breathing, whether it's. A 90 90 position where you're working on box breathing and it's downregulating the, your system as well as releasing your back. So like throwing your legs up on top of the couch, doing a little box breathing would be really great. And then I would say some scapular strengthening on that backside, whether it's, pulling apart doing something for scapular retraction. Those are like my go-to initially is really like at least one or two breathing exercises and then some alignment and posture exercises are gonna be critical. What are your thoughts about exercise bands to add a little bit of resistance to it? I love it.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I think bands are really easy 'cause you can travel with them, you can bring them anywhere you need to, and they give you that extra resistance, which is really gonna be helpful. You're only gonna gain strength as well as that neural input from getting that a little bit of resistance.

Awesome. One final question about UFCI, I love following Dana. I think that he is like just a brilliant businessman in the way that he's brought UFC to the center stage and really replace boxing. Think about, UFC is the prime sport right now when it comes to combat sports. What is it like working with Dana?

Hands down, the best boss I've ever had in my life, he understands his employees. He is that boss that when you've worked a million hours and you're like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. He's the boss that pulls you into the office and says Hey, I had 20 athletes in here and all 20 of them brought up your name.

I just wanna thank you for being a great employee. Yeah. He's the guy that like makes sure each and every employee is taken care of. He really not only is a brilliant business human, but just a brilliant man in general and he's. Always willing to listen and think outside the box. Which I love. I love that he is not a boss that like stifles growth autonomy, right? He's that guy that's keep pushing the envelope and I think that's, it's just, it makes, motivates you to come to work every day. It motivates us to strive to be the best and that's why this sport has evolved so quickly in 30 years.

And I'm excited because we're actually taking on boxing this year as well. We'll have our first boxing event in two weeks, so I'm excited to push the boxing envelope and, just become the integral combat sport ethic combat sports facility right through the UFC. So cool. And it's been just awesome to follow your career and see where you've gone from the Olympic sports to UFC and just the role that you're playing there.

It's tell us a little bit more about the sports performance department at UFC. How many people do you oversee and what does that look like? Yeah, so initially when we started nine years ago, there was six employees hired for the performance staff. And with that now we have close to 80 staff members.

Wow. We have three facilities, one in Las Vegas, one in Mexico City, and one in Shanghai. We're about to have a fourth facility in Abu Dhabi. And with that, the performance staff, any 800 of our athletes can walk in and get medical. They can get strength and conditioning, nutrition, sports science.

Sports psychology for absolutely free at any of these facilities. And to see the growth and the utilization of taking a sport and now taking a science and meshing that sport into a science. Like now we have so many data points that like we know if you're 125 pound division, you're going to need to have a, ESD cardiovascular system of this, a strength number as this to be competitive.

We know you're gonna spend x amount of time grappling striking. So now to take the science of this sport is really amazing. To fully understand the capacity. This is like the most amazing sport. These athletes have to be aerobic, anaerobic, strong, powerful. Like every component of what human optimization is what this athlete population has to do.

And now to start to get the research and pull the numbers and see how exceptional these athletes are, it. It's amazing and it's so fun to have the performance team evolve. We have providers all over the world, so we have providers from China, providers from Australia, providers from Spain. So there's a lot of different voices and a lot of different ways that we've all learned performance.

And to take that and then take the good out of all of it really is a fun environment to everyday test what we do. Yeah. What an incredible team and place to work. It sounds like so much fun and just constantly pushing the limits of performance and yeah it's pretty cool to watch. We go to all the event, my team, so our sports medicine team and our nutrition team go to all the events.

So there's 44 UFC events a year. There's really no off season. And we're at all these events. We're there for a week. We have chefs and dieticians that are working with 'em for weight cut. You have the medical team there. So we're setting up a sports medicine clinic in every hotel. In two weeks I'm in Australia, so Wow.

Can't really complain about life in that sense, for sure. But we're there for the athletes and it's great to be an integral part to see the evolution of how this sport is coming. Heather, are there any final thoughts that you would like to leave our audience with? I just think people put these athletes on a platform, but really take a look.

They're just people like you guys trying to achieve the same goals and the same lifestyles. So I think when you look at those athletes and put them on a pedestal, maybe take a look at yourself as well and do the same stuff that we're doing. Heather, thank you for bringing an Olympic level perspective into a conversation that's often missing it.

And your work is a powerful reminder that durability, safety, and performance aren't about toughness. They're about preparation and investing in our most important tool of the human body. If today's conversation changed how you think about injury recovery, or long-term performance, please subscribe to the WorkReady Podcast on your favorite platform so you don't miss future conversations like this.

We're also gonna continue this conversation inside the WorkReady community where Heather's gonna join us for a short focus bonus discussion with practical insights that you can actually apply. If you're a workforce athlete or someone responsible for keeping people healthy, capable and on the job, this community is built for you, membership is totally free.

And you can check out the show notes to join. We're also gonna have some additional items in the show notes, like some of the exercise that you talked about, box breathing is the wall, angel, some of those different things. So definitely check out the show notes. Thanks again for joining us, and until next time, remember, you are worth investing in.

Work hard, take care of your people and stay work ready.