The Coach U Podcast

This podcast is about being curious and learning from others. Tune in for insightful conversations with some of the brightest professionals in their field. It's my hope that you walk away from this podcast with something learned that can help you evolve in your life. Along with great conversations, I will be releasing episodes about life. We all deal with a lot and we don't often talk about things that need to be talked about. I am hoping through my explanation of experiences, you can relate. My goal is to connect with other human beings so they know they are not alone in this thing called life. I will always encourage people to create a better environment for themselves and to constantly come back to U. That's where your superpowers are. U just have to learn how to use them :) Remember, always Own U, Love U and Be U. My name is Coach U, and I welcome U to our podcast!

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The Coach U Podcast

Seamus Sullivan - Optimal Health For Longevity

June 16, 2025 • Coach U

In this episode of the Coach U Podcast, Coach U sits down with Seamus Sullivan—Performance Health Coach, co-host of The Macro Perspective, and leader at Cenegenics Beverly Hills. Together, they dive deep into what optimal health really means and how to simplify your wellness journey.

💡 What You'll Learn:

What biomarkers are and why blood panels matter

How to actually use your Oura Ring, Garmin, or Apple Watch for better training

The importance of muscle mass and VO2 max as you age

How to track progress without obsessing over numbers

Why recovery is more than rest—and how to make it work for U

📈 Whether you're just getting started or already deep in your training journey, there’s something here to help U push the needle forward—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
02:27 Meet Seamus Sullivan - Performance Health Coach
03:57 Understanding Cenegenics and Precision Medicine
05:38 Benefits of Holistic Healthcare
08:01 Biomarkers and Lab Testing
09:38 Importance of Hormone Balance
13:36 VO2 Max and Cardiovascular Health
16:00 Starting Your Fitness Journey
27:18 Recovery and Lifestyle Balance
36:39 Understanding HRV (Heart Rate Variability)
41:09 Identity Shifts and Personal Growth

Seamus Sullivan Contact Info:

Instagram: Seamus Matthew Sullivan -> https://www.instagram.com/seamusmatthewsullivan/
Podcast: The Macro Perspective --> https://www.instagram.com/themacropod/
Cenegenics Beverly Hills: For longevity and healthspan support, contact the Cenegenics Beverly Hills flagship --> https://cenegenics.com/beverly-hills/

Coach U: 0:03

Hey everybody. This is the Coach U Podcast, and I'm your host, coach you. This podcast is about being curious, learning from others, and using what we've learned to evolve every single day. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Coach U Podcast. Today's episode, we are talking to Seamus Sullivan. What you can expect from this episode is a conversation about optimal health and exactly what it is. So Seamus has a lot of certifications. He's very intelligent, and he understands the science of what goes into training. So we talk about what the benefits are from tracking your data. To understanding what's important and what's not so important. If you have an ora ring, if you have a Garmin, if you have an Apple watch, whatever you use. These are things that are gonna give you ideas and we want to learn how to use them and how we can best utilize them, We're also gonna cover things like what are biomarkers? Why do we do blood panels? vO two max. We've heard it a lot. It's a hot term, what does it mean to you and how can you improve it? Why are these numbers so important for us to understand for our own health and also for our future family and their health Overall, what I hope you get from this episode is that you can do something to push the needle forward to help yourself out. Health is really big. It's a vast topic, especially when it comes to training and going to the gym and getting your right diet and all of these things that you have to think about when it comes to training. But in all reality, we make things way more complex than they need to be. We need to simplify this and we need to find what works for you. So whatever it is to push that needle forward just a little bit, just a little bit at a time, because it's not gonna all happen overnight. Even for trainers who are experienced, I've had my own bouts of it. I've gone through it for months. Almost a year at times. Injuries can come into play, depression comes into play. These are real life things that we don't think about and need to be talked about, especially when it comes to training and understanding your body, your process, and where you are and where you're trying to get to. So make sure you're walking away with one thing that you can focus on to help push the needle forward to help you live a healthier, longer, and funner. Yes, I said funner life. If you want to hear more conversations like this, get video tips, exercise movements, and other things that are gonna help you explore different realms of health and wellness, make sure to hit that subscribe button. All right, everybody. Here's my conversation with Seamus Sullivan. Seamus, thank you so much for joining us, man.

Seamus Sullivan: 2:30

Thank you so much, honored and thank you for the privilege of having me on the podcast today.

Coach U: 2:34

Let's dive in to learn about who you are. and then I want to know what you do, where you work, and the clientele and the population you work with.

Seamus Sullivan: 2:43

I appreciate, a platform to spread the message of what I wanted to do. I'm a performance health coach. My background's in exercise science multiple nutrition certifications and strength and conditioning coach, CSCS, and I am also board certified in health and wellness. Truly my mission on this planet is to serve people in their health and wellness and optimize their health. Right now my day-to-day work, I work and run the flagship of the Cenegenics in Beverly Hills. We work in longevity, healthspan, lifespan, brains, span, all these things, optimizing all those. Outside of my work, I still do some online performance and nutrition coaching as well. Give free content out in terms of my own podcast called The Macro Perspective, which you've been an esteemed guest on where me and my co-host shout out to Marcos. Talk about health and wellness topics, have amazing guests on such as yourself, bringing in nuance perspectives The rest of the population is pretty privy to, and we wanna keep that conversation moving forward. Part of my conversation today is bringing more awareness on some of the things that we wanna talk about and giving nuance to it, examples and helping move whoever listens here today. Make a decision about their health to get a little bit better. I.

Coach U: 3:45

Love it, man. Definitely. Check out the podcast after this episode. You guys like what you listen to here. You're gonna love what you guys hear on their podcast as well. So check it out after we finish up our episode here. Tell me what you guys do at Cenegenics over. A, the span of a time with a client from they walk in and then what's the plan for them ongoing.

Seamus Sullivan: 4:04

That's a great question. Genics is overall encompassing, precision medicine plan, executive wellness plan if you think about it. An extensive amount of. Diagnostic data on them from their labs before they even come in. We look at their labs, we look at data from their brain health. We utilize EEG testing on their brain. So I get to look at brains all the time. You have for you performance metrics around power vertical jump, things this at correlate to longevity and health span grip strength, balance. Exercise VO2. We look at DEXA scans. We look at a bunch of things that are correlative to overall looking at their health span and lifespan. And we test those and we spend a good amount of time with the person looking at all those diagnostics and, collaborate with them. So I'm the performance health coach. We look at the exercise and nutritional lifestyle components. And then the physician looks at more of the, nutraceutical, pharmacological and me, more medical interventions that are needed to optimize health and wellness and, we spent a lot of time with our patients as opposed to your basic healthcare system right now. You spend eight to 15 minutes with a doc and they're like, Hey, you got this, take this pill and leave. I was talking with some prospective patients today and, you know what makes you guys a lot different? And what we love about it is, we went through all the testing, the labs, the genetics, and we were able to pinpoint. Things from our lifestyle and exhaustive lifestyle, the exercise and nutrition, as opposed to doing a drug deal with the physician and walking outta that hospital. Going what I'm gonna take these for the rest of my life. No, I think what Genics does a great job of is holistically looking at the person and being very integrative. We integrate everything to make sure that they're getting the best care across the board.

Coach U: 5:41

It's interesting too, talking about the medical field and I'm not gonna say why one's better than the other necessarily. I don't need to get into that. But I do want to ask you what you see the benefit of going through that style of a healthcare routine versus what is traditional right now?

Seamus Sullivan: 5:57

that's a really great question. What we look at a lot of folks think about is lifespan, and that's how long you live. What Cenegenics motto is age gracefully. We're not necessarily those folks that are Hey, let's live to forever. What we want you to do is we want you to age gracefully. So let's just say you get to a hundred years old. When you get to a hundred, how does that a hundred years old look do you have your physical components? Do you have your. Health span, you have your brain span. Can you get to that a hundred years and have all the physical things you'd like still, the autonomy you're looking for and have your wits about you. And I think what our program delivers and really helps with our patient base is we look at everything and we exhaust all that testing, and we make sure that you're not in categories that are outside of a disease state. Or normal, we really try to push you to higher states of testing and we. Ask and collaborate with you to push you to these higher levels because you think about this as an investment account. Yes, you can go to your bank, you can make withdrawals and deposits, but an investment account, you accur a lot of interest. You put a lot there and you know that investment account can get so big and you might lose a little here and there, but you're not totally upset by it because you've accrued so much return on interest for yourself, whether that be in your exercise, your nutrition, your lifestyle, that when you get to a hundred years old, compared to someone else that didn't decide to be on a program this or didn't really care about their health and wellness at that deeper level, they're gonna get to that age, as opposed to living well.

Coach U: 7:30

Yeah I went to a seminar a few months back and that was one of the. Big takeaways was, yes, longevity in life is happening, we're living longer, but what are those quality of years like? And I love that you guys attack that because it's so true. It's what's the point of living? If I'm gonna be in pain having to take medication, I have to be on all these different kinds of routines and regimens, and some people are gonna have to go through these things. It's just inevitable in life. No matter how much health you, how good your health is. It is one of those things that we can think about. So it's gotta be those two components together.

Seamus Sullivan: 8:00

Yeah.

Coach U: 8:01

what are the biggest numbers, the biggest biomarkers that you guys are looking at? And let's even clear up what are biomarkers and what are the big things that people probably should be looking for, either when they're going to the doctor or seeing you guys?

Seamus Sullivan: 8:15

Biomarkers, basic component of looking at your labs, what components whether it be a chem screen, your home panel, your lipid panel, things like this. Those are basic biomarkers that you're getting. We look at over a hundred plus biomarkers when it comes to our lab testing. A chem screen is important, which looks at your basic, red blood cell to white blood cell count to urine to creatinine, to all these different things. But on top of that, having a lipid profile, having your hormone profile, having your thyroid looked at having all these different components be looked at so that you can help optimize them. And it's important, when you have those and when you work with a physician to optimize them, and we can do a lot of those things for you and I and for men and women. And we're seeing a lot more data, especially with women too, to optimize these things because whether that's protective of hormones in their older ages as they age well. Also protective of other disease states that are more privy for women. For example, osteopenia, osteoporosis which is bone breaking and things like this. When we get to look at the hormones and look at that, we have a better chance of measuring. Once it's measured, we can manage it a little bit better with exercise and nutrition, lifestyle and even pharmacological interventions as deemed and collaborated with the doctor and a physician.

Coach U: 9:26

Hormones are a really big deal, and I don't think we talk about them enough. I don't understand, and I won't pretend to understand them in depth, but I did study them in school and I understand on the basic level what they are, but why?

Seamus Sullivan: 9:37

Yeah.

Coach U: 9:38

It's the endocrine system. Why is that system and our hormone balance so important and what is hormone balance?

Seamus Sullivan: 9:46

this is a great question. I'm not trying to get outta my depth here either. Hormone balance is. I would say it's very an end of one. It's very specific to the person, and when you come through a cenegenics model as well, we really work with you to. Optimize where you're at. We don't try to put you against the playing field. As a general, and I'm putting quote unquote here, general recommendations, and I'll use testosterone for example. I think this is an easy one to make an example of. Two 70 to 800 nanograms for deciliter basically is you're good. But if you're 22 years old and you're at two 80, technically you're good, but you're 22 years old.

Coach U: 10:26

Yeah, say anywhere 22 to 27 is the prime.

Seamus Sullivan: 10:29

Yeah. And you're at the lowest end. You have to think about that. Why is that? And you have to look at this person's lifestyle, their nutrition, their exercise, their sleep if they're doing any behaviors that's stopping them from producing the hormone that they should probably be producing. And if it's clinically indicated that they, need to change something. When you think of hormone balance, is it what does that mean as a balance as to how it's helping with your life? For, again, back to testosterone, is it helping with muscle mass? Is it helping with energy? Is it helping with libido? Is it helping with mood? hormone regulation, and also this is for women too. It's important when we regulate to balance that we can have. The life that we're looking for, the effectiveness of life that we're looking for. Whether that be, again the spring in our step the mood, the energy, the focus and then helping us out. So that's why when we look at those numbers, when we look at hormones, when we look at the system, the endocrine system, and all these things, we. Again, make that very tailored to the person and want them to be in a place, not just balance, but also optimize too, so that they can, live essentially the best version of themselves.

Coach U: 11:34

Yeah. And I think that's at the basis of helping clients. What would you say in working with all the patients clients, patients, whoever you call them, what is the common factor? What do you see the most when it comes to the shift that they see? Is it, Hey, I saw these numbers and I really need to improve them. Is it, Hey, I really wanted to lose five pounds and this is helping me do it. Like what, where do you see the shift happen in that kind of the things start to click and they're like, this makes sense. I need, I can make these changes.

Seamus Sullivan: 12:00

Honestly, it's a combination of a bunch of things. I think, when you're coming to an age group that Genics really serves well, it's probably in that 40 plus category, 55 plus category men and women. These men and women are looking for all of. That right? They're not looking for, Hey, I want my weight to be in a certain place. I don't wanna be dealing with pain as much as I'm dealing with, whether it be from inflammation or injuries. From what hearing from them and exhaustive, coaching sessions, when they get to that age, everything is turned on. They feel everything. They wake up the next day, they're feeling how that sleep messed them up their back, their neck as opposed to years before. And their energy's off and they're so sensitive to it now. Or they ate something and it's I used to eat this thing and now. It's really messing with me. All these components are really turning on and they're so sensitive to it. And at that age, they are so faced with the consequences of our human frailty

Coach U: 12:56

What have you seen being the most important thing for older adults? Because. The pain's gonna be there. You are growing older, as you said, phase. I love that because there's different phases of training as well, right? We're not, I'm not training the same way now that I was training when I was playing college football. It's not the same. Nor is my body I find the other things that I really love to do, and I also still obviously strength train, but what have you seen in that older clientele to be that the thing that makes them go, wow, this is. I see how this is helping me now, or whether it be cardiovascular work, whether it be doing more strength training work, more flexibility work. How is that formulated? Have you seen that shape up?

Seamus Sullivan: 13:36

When you think of training and you think of these phases and all these things, the biggest things I've really seen that have categorically been some of the most amazing things, and I'll go into them, is muscle mass. And VO2 max. And to break that down, that's your cardiovascular efficiency, how well you utilize oxygen. But lemme start with muscle mass first. We utilize something called the DEXA scan, dual X-ray imaging. We scan you. When we look at those components and look at that tissue, muscle has been such a. Big component of how well you live. It really is how much autonomy you could have as you age, doing functional movements, having the strength to do that and having just the ability and the fervor to move, muscle mass now. Again, going back to your football days, I don't think you need to train like that, but somebody needs to incorporate resistance training or weight training or weightbearing exercises in a way that is supportive of their muscle mass. At least maintaining or increasing as they age. Joint and connective tissue support and that's safe. Good technique. Having that in a schedule that is supportive of that person is gonna be great. Plus lots of new research on muscle mass being an amazing glucose disposal sink, quote unquote, you can utilize carbohydrates better. It's better fueling strategies there. And it's really good for overall health. So muscle mass there. As we age standpoint, not only we thinking about weightbearing exercise, how can we move in space? You move back and forth and you dodge and you zig and you zagged and all that. But in the sport of life, we still have moments like that. And weightbearing exercises, if you incorporate some of these functional things, what I'm thinking of is most injuries don't happen because you want to go for a run, what happened was you have to break and that's where you get hurt, and that's weightbearing exercise. That's what we call the eccentric loading or the slow loading of a movement. And it's not going up the stairs that's gonna hurt you, it's going down the stairs and falling down. That's gonna hurt you. So we wanna make sure we can. Manage our weight, have our balance, have our strength beneath us. That's important. That's why muscle mass is there and again, very much important for a lot more scientific stuff, but the basics. Having some strength, having some functional movement capacity is gonna be super helpful. Someone

Coach U: 15:49

to get into it and get themselves off the couch and start into a routine. How do you suggest someone starts? What are some minimums they should be hitting every week, let's say I.

Seamus Sullivan: 16:01

Honestly, it depends on the person. It really does. First and foremost you could have the right answer, but if they're not gonna come get it,

Coach U: 16:07

Yeah.

Seamus Sullivan: 16:08

they're not gonna do it. So you gotta find something that they're willing to at least enjoy work with. And I always say work with someone like coach U here who's a professional that can check out your form and really be there and coach you through sessions and help you out. I think that's always great, support technique, things like this. But on a minimum, there's some science that says minimum effective dose minimum effective volume training. These landmarks a few sets per week. I think it was like between seven and 20 sets or something like that on muscles like compound movements. You're, you're getting everything stimulated and you're done. And if, I think if I was looking at a full training program that was within 30 to 45 minutes, two to three days of resistance training, if it were full body, you get everything you're in, you're out of the gym or you're in, you're out of your home gym or in and out of your, little home gym center. That's the commitment, that's not really asking for much,

Coach U: 16:56

all. It's tough, because our, the training world is filled with modalities, different theories ideas of how things should look people selling things left and right. So it's tough for people to sift through everything, having those basic, easy standards to hit, I think it really makes it easy for people to say, Hey, I can go, I can go do this. And if you put it down on paper, it's not that much time and it's building. Your life forever. And you're building like we as taking it back to what you said earlier, taking it back to that ability to have a more fulfilled, productive, pain-free life if we're gonna live longer too, so really filling it and making those years, something that we can really enjoy.

Seamus Sullivan: 17:38

100%. And I think, when it comes to minimum effective dose, I wanna go back to the thing of enjoyment. I think if you can enjoy the process, you're more willing and likely to stick with it. Just go to the thing that works for you, because if you're gonna find a form of movement training and you feel that you're resistant to it and you're just not liking it, who's gonna show up? For that, so make sure it's enjoyable. The next point I wanted to get into was VO2. I think that's really important. So there's a lot of science on this and there's a lot of speakers about VO2, but VO2 max, again back to the basics here, is how much oxygen you can utilize at maximum exercise. And if you go from a certain percentile or a quintile you basically increase your lifespan or. Health span with life, three to five, times, people that live longer when they have this. I wanna give a visual in people's minds, but think of let's say zero to 50, and numbered all the way up. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, all the way to 50. And on that left side of that graph, it's zero to 50 going up. Then on the right side of it, you have these different layers of movement. So you know, around three VO2 is sleeping, hanging out, sitting down five, eight, maybe walking around a little bit, 10 to 15 laundry, little gardening, a little squatting up and down, sitting up and down. Getting up to 15 and 20 is you're running up the stairs. So that's a quick visual for the person to understand. Daily activities of daily living is between five to 20 VO2. So when we do your VO2 max test, which is a constant graded test on a treadmill, on a bike, we have a mask on you. We're checking out your CO2, your VO2, all these things. We're gonna push you as hard as you can. What's your max heart rate, max breathing, max respiratory rate. All these things, we're gonna find out a lot about your heart your lungs your blood work, all this stuff. We push you to your max. You get to your max. Wherever you're at in life, let's say your max is 25. I told you that activities of daily living are between eight and 15, five and 15. You running up the stairs is 20, so imagine that. You're running up the stairs and you're already gassed'cause you're five points away from your max. So what we'd like for you to do is bring that up, closer to that 50 or more. 50 plus truly is I to tell people 50 and my professor's around 50 is where people that are really well trained or pros. Of in high endurance sports, pretty much start.

Coach U: 19:59

Yep.

Seamus Sullivan: 19:59

what we like to tell people is, look, if you can get your cardiovascular system up. We're doing a really good job. We're gonna move you into a percentile or quintile of living. You can live longer and live better, and you have more energy to you. Doing daily activities of living aren't gonna fatigue you so much. Going up the stairs, doing some laundry aren't gonna fatigue you as much. I. This is what it means day to day. This is where you live in this zone day to day. And if your max is pretty close to that zone, you're tapping out. But if your max is double, triple that you've got so much to do in your day-to-day activities,

Coach U: 20:33

and something as simple as adding more walks and maybe at a higher pace walk, because they don't have to be a runner or a jog necessarily. You can go on an incline, a small incline treadmill, even the. You got some hills wherever you live. It doesn't have to be that big, but elevating that heart rate up a little bit. What are some tactics that you use with your clients? I.

Seamus Sullivan: 20:51

I'm gonna put a little caveat there too. There's been some new studies talking about only half the population gets. The stress from what we call zone two or brisk cardio, which is if you were gonna go for a jog or run for an hour, you can talk, but it's uncomfortable to talk. But you can hold the pace for an hour or something that. Only about half the amount of people, get a stressed or VO2 adaptation from that. I definitely recommend zone two. On top of some higher intensity thresholds, what you said, increasing that heart rate, trying to get it to that heart rate max, right? A quick calculation is two 20 minus your age or you could look at your Apple Watch or Fitbit or something that and whatever your max has been, it knows you a little bit better than me. But you do that a few sessions per week, you know you have high intensity interval sessions. There's been a few that's been popularized, the Norwegian four by four, which is four minutes on, four minutes recovery. The way we do it here at cenegenics is we bring you to your max heart rate and then you get to that max heart rate, and then you re, you hold it for 20 seconds, so you hit that max heart rate. You don't touch it, you hold it. That is brutal.

Coach U: 21:59

20 seconds might sound quick to a lot of people, but at your max heart rate, you are, you have to think about every little piece of energy you can hold onto for 20 seconds. That's great you guys. Mean.

Seamus Sullivan: 22:10

seconds. Then we bring you down and then you rest about 90 seconds or back to your heart rate recovery zone. And then you bring it back up to that max heart rate. You touch the max heart rate. Then you hold it. We do that for four rounds, and you can do that a few times per week. But I'll tell you this, it is very taxing on the nervous system. this is tough. But it's because we're truly getting you to your top end. Now we don't live there and we don't do workouts there all the time. We really gotta manage your weekly volume because, what did I say earlier, right? You have to also. Want you increase. I would say the best though, my recommendations personally is I don't like to do those high intensity interval stuff with impact type of training, sprint work or running, because I want you to focus on getting your heart rate up and repetitive. Some of the best ways I personally like the air bike, the assault bike, or the elliptical'cause inefficient. Both the upper and the lower body, the heart is just pumping away. I like that. I like the rower, I like the skier. Non-impact stuff, because you could put your phone down, look at a heart rate monitor, and lock in as best as you can, as opposed to running, rolling an ankle or something.

Coach U: 23:09

And No I love it. I think that's I'm way on board too with the low impact for interval training and when you sprint. We're trying to work on my BO two Maxs. I'm trying to work on my speed and

Seamus Sullivan: 23:18

Speed. Yeah.

Coach U: 23:19

can. And doing repeats is not necessarily, and that's even going back, I'm sure when you wrestled and football and growing up playing sports in the nineties and the early two thousands, it was still a little more old school in the sense of punishment was the sprinting, punishment was the running. Whereas now, coaching as long as I have now, it's no. Sprinting is the gold. That's the thing you get to do. And you, it's probably the most athletic and the most, the biggest form of athletic expression a human body can put

Seamus Sullivan: 23:44

100%. It's funny you say that because people did sprints before where they're that's the punishment. And then they're realizing exercise scientists, you're actually running down your athletes.

Coach U: 23:53

You mentioned Apple watches, Fitbits, all that stuff. I use the Garmin. It's, it tells you the VO2. What is that actually telling me though,

Seamus Sullivan: 24:00

I think they're getting a little bit better with the VO2, but I still see about a up to over 8% error rate with that meaning up or down. Let's say I get someone on here and they got a 50 I. And then they could be 8% down or 8% higher. I have a lot of runners that I work with and a lot of people I work with. And I do wanna let you know that the VO2 that I do is a slightly variation. We do it on a bike'cause it's safer, more repeatable as opposed to a maximal VO two on the. Treadmill, most people we're working with are not conditioned to run their maximum run, so we do it on a bike. Almost a 20% differentiator, but it's a good proxy. I think the technology is great. I think it gives you a number to look at. So what I tell people is, this is how I look at it. We're gonna do your VO2 today. Whatever your VO2 on your Garin says, or your Apple Watch says. We'll also take that as well. And then all we want it to do is from this test on, we want it to trend up. So we wanna make sure that your training I is making sure that guy is also training up too.'cause most likely it'll trend up on hours. And we test that and we've seen that too. So people will go through our protocols for three months, six months, and then, it goes up slightly. Also remember, too, VO2, part of VO2 is there's a calculation. Part of it is your weight. So if you drop your body fat, for example, and you did the same test right now, you dropped 10 pounds of body fat right now. Your VO2 got better because. Part of that is divided by your weight. So you got better. And if you lost 10 pounds of fat, think about that. All the veins and the capillaries and all the blood going through 10 extra pounds of body fat as opposed to not needing to go through 10 pounds of non metabolically active organ tissue. It's super helpful. Yeah, there's a weight component too, so when people come back on our program annually, what's crazy is not only has our VO2 gotten better because they lost weight alone, but yes, it got better because they were tracking it through their wearables and also utilizing some of the training protocols we recommended on top of the zone two and the hit.

Coach U: 25:45

H how much should we pay attention to the numbers?'cause it can be a little daunting for people, right? Where it's this is overwhelming. Oh, I got this to think about. I got 70 other things to think about. I got my kids, whatever. People got life as well. How do you handle that?

Seamus Sullivan: 25:57

That's a great question and that's what a coach really does well for you is let your mind get off of that. That's what we do with your annual program here at cenegenix. Or what we do with our performance health assessment is we take all that data. We handle it. We have years and years of physicians and. Performance health teams and wisdom. There's a difference about knowledge as opposed to experience and wisdom. And when you can offset some of that data to somebody else, your mind can relax. At the end of the day, the metrics that matter are the ones that you really want to measure the most. And for most people right now in our current. Day and age we really care about is what does my weight look like? What does my body fat percentage look like? How good is my cardio what's my sleep look like? Maybe a few metrics and try not to, get lost in it too much and be emotionally involved in it too much. It's a data point, you know what I'm saying?'Cause a lot of the folks I deal with if they wanna lose weight, they're so identified with that weight that it's frustrating for them to even say that with a grain of salt to say, Hey, let us help you make some decisions. We'll handle the data. But if you were to look at data, it's really the ones you need to measure the most. And most people that I work with it's likely around, their weight, body fat may be around some food metrics, calories, maybe around some sleep. But try to keep it as simple as possible, to get back to the basics and go to bed by 9:00 PM Call it a day.

Coach U: 27:18

Man, that if that's not the best plan just to get to bed by 9:00 PM that sounds fantastic. It's funny, when you're a kid, you fight it and then you get older, you're dude, I need it. I need, so I get it, man. As a health practitioner and someone who also lives a healthy lifestyle. An active lifestyle. You partake in many different events. Partaking in the hyrox you've, have you run marathons too, or am I going crazy?

Seamus Sullivan: 27:44

I've run one and I'm running a half one day, one week from this recording?

Coach U: 27:47

So you do that, you are active. What are some of the principles that you live by?

Seamus Sullivan: 27:52

The data is great, but learning to listen to yourself more and knowing when to pull back and knowing when to push and knowing that takes wisdom though. You will need some data at first, you really do. For example, I was talking about the absence of you do need to learn how to track your weights and sets. You do need to learn how to track your runs. You do need to learn how to track your macros or calories because. That level of trackability at some point will help you create a level of clarity in yourself that you'll be okay. I know what this looks like day in, day out so that when things get on and off of the plan, I know how to zig and zag, but you have to earn that. And I've had to earn that right through 20 plus years of trials and tribulations from being an athlete in wrestling to collegiate wrestling, to now being more of a endurance athlete and a weekend warrior type, and what I learned through all that, was I. Sometimes didn't listen to the numbers and was too gung-ho and wanted to get after it, always wanted to PR and all this and relating it back to longevity and health span stuff. You don't need to die on that hill. As much as I do all this optimization this quantified self tracking apps, sleep trackers, all this stuff, at the end of the day, I think. need to create a level of wisdom within yourself and knowing when you need to push and when you need to. So that's what I've learned. And I've really leaned on recovery more than pushing now, and I've gotten a lot more out of it as opposed to, I made that new pr, but I had an ankle injury on top of it, to make that PR happen, right? It's learning the trade-offs and I think that takes a lot of wisdom and it does take a little bit of utilizing some of that trackability. For example, there's an app I'll shout'em out we have a partnership with them. On the macro perspective, hybrid, H-Y-B-R-D, their new app came out this week and. It was telling me I was over training, I got this plan that I need to do. And then four days of doing this plan that I needed to stick to Sunday, one Sunday I was supposed to run nine miles. I fell flat. My nervous system was off. Everything was I was irritated, I was irritable. I was waking up grumpy, woke on the wrong side of the bed and I realized oh wow, as much as I'm listening to myself, I do also need to listen to this data too. And tell me, Hey, you need to manage that and you need to be a little bit more adaptable, as opposed to, Hey, Seamus, you have this plan here. You're supposed to hit these checklists. I've realized I don't need to hit that checklist anymore. You get your minimum effective dose. You don't need to run the exact plan. You need to learn how to call audibles, especially as you age, what were you looking for in that training? Oh, that training plan was asking for me to get a little faster, a little bit stronger, a little bit more endured. Did I need to do the exact plan to make that happen? No. Maybe I needed this component and then I can move on. And I'll be honest with you, that was probably one of the biggest things that I've learned, and I keep learning and relearning as I've gone deeper into my athletic pursuits.

Coach U: 30:46

Having those tools, having the numbers, it's so important. Having the plan is important. What I have learned to go off of what you're saying is that out as you have it, and your brain knows what sets are, how many miles you need to run, how much time you need to put in here, you know that. At the same time, your body will tell you what it needs if you can learn how to listen to it. So in that moment, you said, the minimal effective dose, maybe you had four sets of 15 that you had to get done, but your body's three sets of 12 is actually really good today. I don't need to go above that and. We get married to the idea that it has to look this way. It's very rigid in thinking, but you're saying, we need to audible, we need to be more fluid in how we're moving through our programming, through the numbers that we're seeing. Maybe our wearables are saying, Hey, you had a stressful period, we should probably back off a little bit. You do need to push and, adaptation doesn't happen unless there's intensity at the same time. Adaptation will diminish big time if there's no recovery. I want you to talk a little bit more about recovery because it's, again, it's a big word. It's HRV, VO2, it's all the, what do you define recovery as, and how does somebody regulate that?

Seamus Sullivan: 32:00

Recovery is any motor activity that will allow the adaptation you're looking for without reaching into overreaching or over training. And what that means is. Recovery doesn't flat out mean, Hey, veg out and watch TV all day. It may mean some active recovery, it may mean some other things, but recovery also tunes into what you're already doing. Yes, maybe a smarter training plan, the audible, but also some key other life self factors. Are you getting your nourish nourishment in your nutrition and things that. Most people don't think about the recovery in that way because they think. Those are different segments, and that's what recovery is. It's actually the whole thing you're looking at. And making sure that the food is in there, the calories are in there, the nutrients are in there, making sure the sleep and the sleep quality is there. But another part of it, that most people don't forget is remember the rest of your life is stress, eustress and distress. It's still stress under the. Umbrella of it, even if it's good stress. Knowing your activities that you do day to day Hey look, yeah, I've got this long run today, but I also have multiple back to back meetings, different personalities. Or I have a big project that I need to do. I'm gonna go late night into. Knowing that, that has also the athletics of life, there's a lot of mental capacity there. There's a lot. So I think looking at that as well and going oh wow. The training isn't just off the field anymore or out of the gym or out of my run. It's oh, I need to make sure that this training is good to support the rest of my day. So that's what I work with people is life, lifestyle. Look at their calendars a lot, actually. Now they're traveling, they're doing this and it's oh, okay. So we need to make sure that the training, the nutrition, and then the lifestyle is indicative of recovery because you can get the quote unquote recovery because you went to go get a massage or you did some, sauna, or you did some, cold plunge or something like this, but the rest of your life is stress the F out. And you're not managing that stress appropriately. You don't have any other effective tools to manage that stress. You're not necessarily getting to bed on time, you're not doing these things. So I think recovery is a big nebulous term. And also at the same time, it is nebulous in that it's overcompensating your whole life, not just. Workout, not workout, foam roll, not foam roll. Stretch, not stretch. It's it's the whole thing. And I think you have to look at it bigger time. Spans.

Coach U: 34:15

I love that. No, I love that answer.'cause it is vast and I think it's, again it's everything else with weight loss, with muscle gain, with improving your VO two, very simple. It's very simple. And I think, you said, keeping it simple and keeping it basic is gonna help you get to that, whatever next level you, you want to, something you also said about recovery that I loved is you need to be active. And I don't think you necessarily need to be, going and jogging all the time, or getting on a bike and riding 10 miles. But it's, I think you have to find your recovery levels and getting blood. To me it's just blood flow. Blood flow is

Seamus Sullivan: 34:52

That's what I

Coach U: 34:53

the best thing you can do for recovery. Right.

Seamus Sullivan: 34:55

There's multiple ways. Modalities of recovery, whether it be passive or active. On this active chart, is it self my fascial release, or is it a walk, or is it a easy zone to, or is it this other thing, or passive is massage, infrared, active passive, and it's a matter of playing with all of those. And some of those recovery things are more peripheral nervous system as opposed to central nervous system, right? Central nervous system might be meditation, you're trying to calm yourself down innerly, but a peripheral nervous system is like someone massaging you. You're getting some soft tissue stuff, the peripheral stuff is getting there, and that might calm you down too. So I think it's a combination of that. I don't know what the I don't know what the perfect, ratio is. And I wouldn't know because it's gonna be different for everyone. For me, this week, I need a lot of body work. My ankles, my calves, I'm getting into this race next week. I need to be fresh. My nervous system is not as fried centrally because my workload's been good. Everything's been okay. I've been gonna sleep on time, things are that. That's a quick example of it.

Coach U: 35:50

No, I love it because I think it. People think it's one thing, it's one specific plan that you follow. This is how you recover this. You said, a cold plunge or a sauna or a meditation, or I gotta stretch. I got a foam roll. It's all of these things are absolutely tools that you can use. It's how do you use them? When do you use them? At what level are you using them? It's, it can be confusing. Even for me as a trainer you're, and I know you're busy, we're all busy, right? We all have a lot of things that we have going on. Managing the ability to be able to take a step back and say Hey, I need to give myself a little bit of love here. I do want to talk a little bit about HRV because it is a. A hot term, if you will. My watch tells me where I'm at. I still don't know what it means. So please enlighten us a little bit on

Seamus Sullivan: 36:36

Yeah.

Coach U: 36:37

and, why do we care about it?

Seamus Sullivan: 36:39

So first off, I'm no HRV expert as well. Some data scientists in exercise i've written about this and I've read everything. I could get my hands on it. I believe HRV was primarily studied with astronauts in Russia and America 50 years ago. But it was trying to get into the sports performance space because we were trying to correlate recovery as well. And heart rate variability, that's what it is in milliseconds in between each heartbeat, what the quickness on that was. And a higher HRV correlated with, a higher vagal tone, meaning Hey, you better adaptation, better recoverability. And, what I've read too and heard as well is it's actually just like your day-to-day, your week to week average for yourself. You don't necessarily need to max out your HRV. It's more like where does it respond to as a posterior baseline? Did it go high? Did it go low? So if it's low, are you under recovered or un training? Or if it's high, it's you're good. You can go today. You can do some hard stuff. And there's a lot of wearables on that talk about watches. Whoop is probably the big one aura is probably a big one. From my understanding too from these big exercise science folks, that is actually just a derivative of a different algorithmic. Proprietary thing as opposed to a true HRV.'cause a true HRV, you need a heart rate monitor to really check that on the day to day. Sounds more convenient, sounds more realistic as opposed to waking up and trying to figure out my pulse and my blood pressure and all this stuff. Have utilized a whoop an aura, and I think data for some reason when you can see it. You act on it, right? Hey, your aura said you got a bad sleep. I gotta make sure I do my sleep. But I've also seen people just buy tech and literally have bad sleep scores and they're not doing anything about it. So it's what's the point of wearing that thing? Don't you buy something to change behavior? So if it's not helping you change behavior, what was the point? I think it's cool science. I love the HRVI I nerd out about it, but at the end of the day, if you're not changing your behavior based on any of it or changing your training plan or all this, and for the people that we're talking to and dealing with our day-to-day cenegenics or my coaching, I don't think they need to get into this stuff. even me, even though I do athletic stuff and all that, because here's what's gonna happen. I got game day. I'm still gonna show up game day, whether I know my HRV or not,

Coach U: 38:39

yep. No, and it's also one of those things too. You don't need to get involved in that unless you're a professional athlete and have a team of people doing this for you and can do it all for you, you don't really need it., Do you have a tip for people on how to maybe not necessarily track that, but to check in? What are some things that they can do to check in with themselves? What are things that you do? Maybe you help your clients,'cause you also coach clients online. So what are some things and tactics that you have them? Hey, let's keep you on pace. I know you're not necessarily hitting the numbers that you want to, but you are moving the needle forward.

Seamus Sullivan: 39:10

So that's a really good question. I'll say first off, a quick check-in. I think a body scan is great. Middle of the day, end of the day, body scanning, we use this technique when we're coaching, before we start, let's check in. We're in the body, you're feeling some tension. Where do you usually feel tension? Do you feel any pain, discomfort? And check in and be like, I wonder what's going on there? And then breathe through that and go, okay, let's try to ease some of this tension, if that can be dealt with. The other thing, working with clients and stuff like that, when you're talking about there about progress and stuff like that. Another thing I to talk about with people is how many more ways can you win? Being in this space of fitness and nutrition coaching online and being in the fitness field for a long time and even being in the medical field, a lot of it's around weight. That's America's issue, weight. And I tell people, there are so many different ways to win, and we could talk about not your weight, how about your energy today? How about how your clothes fit, or how about your sleep? And that's why a little bit of tracking is cool because you can be yeah, I know your weight didn't move, but look at your body fat percentage. It went down and your muscle mass went up. So that's called a recomposition, right? Or, hey, yes, you're. Weight didn't move, but look at how well you tracked your food this week. Oh yeah. The weight didn't move, but look at how much sleep did you got this week. Like when was the last time you, so I try to find ways to remind the person in front of me look at all these different ways you're winning as opposed to where you were before creating these mindful behavioral changes.

Coach U: 40:34

Yeah. Stack the Ws man. Stack the Ws little by little. I think it builds such inner confidence and. It's it gives people that peace of mind knowing Hey, I am doing something. Even if it's not the specific thing that's the key word that we're all looking at. But it is very true because it does build up people's confidence to, to say yeah, I'm doing this right. I accomplished something. And I think that to me is what you're saying. It's Hey, you pay attention to the things that are improving. And if something is slipping, we will pay more attention to that. But, give yourself some credit. I think people don't do that enough.

Seamus Sullivan: 41:09

Yeah, and I'll end with this I think the biggest thing that helped me move into this field more and I love coaching people, I love coaching them on nutrition, but the reason I got higher education wanna do more was at the end of the day, I think we're helping people shift their identity. Into becoming who they wanna become. And sometimes people don't necessarily need to learn more things. Maybe there's some education part of it. That's great. We are educators at the same time. That's why we're doing this podcast. But part of it too is reminding them look at all the. W's your stack and look at all this stuff, your stack. And I think what happens with people's identity, especially if they are a certain weight, for example, or at a certain disadvantage or advantage in wherever they're at in their life, they identify with it so much. They believe that they are this. So much that they don't allow themselves to move another way or they have this goal and that goal is the thing. So let's say, let's go back to the weight. I'm 200 pounds. I have to be 150 pounds. And if it doesn't move and progress every single day to that, I am hurting my identity, I'm hurting myself. And they go into the self-loathing and I'd like. No, we need to work on that identity. We need to work on the things we can win with, and I think when you can help someone shift their identity and not be so attached to it, and then also at the same time be more fluid and be able to move into progress, I think that's where I felt I was winning finally, as a coach.

Coach U: 42:25

I love that. That was one of the last things I wanted to talk to you about too, is how why you coach, what you get out of it. And I love that. You're helping people find that other piece of themselves because I think we tend to. We lose it in life when the world's telling you what you should be doing or the world's telling you, how things need to be done. Hey, be you baby, that's it. Be yourself. Go out there every day and try to improve yourself, seamus, I know you gotta go, man. You're full of valuable information and we've always had good conversations about this. I wanna make sure you get your shout outs of the macro podcast. We got Seamus Sullivan, who's also a coach, and then at cenergenics. So go ahead and plug yourself.

Seamus Sullivan: 42:56

thank you so much again. The field is growing every single day. What I love about it, for those that are listening, if you really need support with Longevity Health Span, cenergenics is where we're at. Beverly Hills flagship. I run that, but world worldwide. So if you're in a major metropolitan city, new York, Miami, wherever it is, hit us up. We'll be there. If you are in need of support of online coaching, you're like, Hey, I need to transform something within myself, whether that be weight or athletic performance. I'm there as well, athletic coaching online. You can set me up on Instagram, Shamus Matthew Sullivan. We'll link it here. And then lastly, look. If you don't even wanna sign up, you wanna vibe out and hang out. Marcos and I also have content over 150 plus episodes where Top 15% podcast as well, which I really appreciate. Being able to give people good nuance, explorative conversation about health and wellness and have amazing guests on. So you can find us there too and you can listen to those things and check us out at the macro perspective. We're on all platforms, coach U appreciate you. That's right. Be U guys. I appreciate you. Thanks so much for the time, man.

Coach U: 43:53

Appreciate you savings. We'll talk soon, man.