View This Week's Show Notes

Juliet and I are back from a long stretch of travel with a lot to get into. I was inducted into the Best Hour of Their Day Hall of Fame at Affiliate Con in Dallas, but the bigger honor is being in a class that includes our late friend Rob Orlando, who brought strongman training into the modern gym.

Juliet wants everyone to run, not walk, to the theater for the new Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything. She's not wrong.

This week's actual science: we met Rob Leon at The Assembly, whose father is a neurobiologist at UC Irvine, and they're building a product around the connection between smell and brain health. The research on smell loss as a dementia predictor is genuinely surprising.

We also break down the first real study out of California's later school start time law. The results are clear, and the math on what it means for how much sleep kids get is worth knowing.

Plus Weird Longevity Shit, BFR recovery shorts, and some book sequels I've been waiting for.

• Why smell loss may be one of the most undervalued brain health indicators
• What a new study found when they measured California's later school start time law
• The math on how much extra sleep teenagers gained (and why it adds up fast)
• The strongman training legacy of Rob Orlando
• Bryan Johnson's "GLP Brian" and what our crew thinks of it
• How BFR recovery shorts work as a travel-friendly recovery tool

(00:00) Intro + Kelly's Hall of Fame induction

(00:58) RIP Rob Orlando + strongman legacy

(01:55) Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything

(04:23) Caroline at Cal Water Polo + Eszter Varró story

(06:30) Book recommendations: Elder Race sequel + Thricebound Fool

(07:23) Weird Longevity Shit: Bryan Johnson's GLP Brian

(09:09) BFR recovery shorts (HYTRO)

(09:51) The Assembly + Aescape robot massage

(12:28) Memory Air: smell, brain health, and dementia research

(18:43) California later school start times study

(25:30) Upcoming: Eudemonia, Antarctica, Boner Protocol

#BrainHealth #DementiaRisk #TeenSleep #Longevity #RECESS #TheReadyState #SmellLoss

View This Week's Show Notes

Start Your 7-Day Trial to Mobility Coach

Join Our Free Weekly Newsletter: The Ambush

Women have always trained hard. The science surrounding how they fuel, recover, build bone, and respond to training has had a lot of catching up to do.

In this episode of The Ready State Podcast, Kelly and Juliet sit down with Dr. Kate Ackerman, a triple-boarded physician, former elite lightweight rower, and co-founder and president of the Women’s Health, Sports & Performance Institute (WHSP), to explore what changes when female physiology becomes part of the research question from the beginning.

Kate traces her work back to her own experience making weight as an athlete, then unpacks the evolution from the Female Athlete Triad to Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), including how underfueling can affect hormones, bone, cardiovascular health, injury risk, and performance. She explains why bone health begins much earlier than most people realize, how iron status should be evaluated in athletes, and why RED-S deserves attention in postmenopausal women, too.

They also dig into menopause research, strength training, GLP-1s, and WHSP’s mission to answer the questions women themselves say matter to their health and performance.

• How low energy availability and RED-S can affect bone, hormones, cardiovascular health, injury risk, and athletic performance and why RED-S can occur in both men and women.
• Why adolescence represents such an important window for building bone density, with roughly 90% of peak bone mass accrued by age 18.
• What athletes, parents, and coaches should understand about iron and ferritin, including why one lab value rarely tells the whole story.
• Why RED-S can matter after menopause, even when menstrual-cycle changes can no longer serve as a warning sign.
• How WHSP is approaching unanswered questions around female athletes across the lifespan, from adolescent health and pregnancy to menopause, strength training, hormone therapy, and performance.

(00:00) Intro: Dr. Kate Ackerman & the Future of Female Athlete Health

(04:35) Kate’s journey from collegiate rowing to lightweight competition

(06:04) Making weight, underfueling & Crystal Light cereal

(09:30) Extreme weight-cutting tactics in lightweight rowing

(12:05) When losing your menstrual cycle was a “badge of honor”

(12:44) The Female Athlete Triad & Kate’s experience with menstrual loss

(15:43) Kate’s unconventional path into sports medicine

(16:33) Becoming triple-boarded in internal medicine, sports medicine & endocrinology

(20:50) Understanding the Female Athlete Triad & RED-S

(21:10) Why Kate calls osteoporosis a “childhood disease”

(23:01) How low energy availability affects health & performance

(24:49) RED-S warning signs for parents, coaches & athletes

(29:16) Why WHSP was created & the research gap in female athletes

(30:26) Building a one-stop medical model around the female athlete

(33:33) Moving from reactive healthcare toward prevention & performance

(39:06) Iron deficiency, ferritin & what athletes should know about their labs

(41:26) Why ferritin alone doesn’t tell the whole story

(43:53) WHSP’s research across the female lifespan

(44:51) Menopause, hormone therapy & the questions we still need to answer

(47:16) Strength training, bone health & better markers for RED-S recovery

(48:47) What the Boston Marathon study revealed about underfueling & performance

(53:06) What female athletes say they actually want researchers to study

(55:10) RED-S in postmenopausal women

(56:43) What RED-S can look like without a menstrual cycle as a marker

(58:26) GLP-1s, underfueling & muscle loss

(1:01:02) Strength training research for postmenopausal women

(1:02:16) Kate’s vision for the future of female athlete health

(1:05:34) Infinite Shelf: Ted Lasso & The Nightingale

Huge thanks to our sponsors, BEDGEAR, Momentous, and LMNT.

View This Week's Show Notes

Juliet and I just got back from Vancouver and 27 straight days of back-to-back conferences. The shift at the YPO Health Summit from two years ago was striking. The conversation has moved from mitochondrial supplements to something more basic: are you doing the fundamentals? We call this third wave fitness, and it finally feels like we are cresting into it.

Romania's football federation just introduced a Black Card for youth soccer, and it is unlike anything we have seen before. Referees can now permanently end games because of how parents and spectators are behaving. No rematch, no restart, just over. There are also silent game days where adults cannot cheer or coach at all. The whole platform is built around joy, respect, and optimism in youth sports. With Outplay finished and heading to shelves next fall, we are paying close attention.

EC Synkowski's A Good Nutrition Book dropped October 1st. We wrote the foreword to the book because her work and thinking around nutrition have been genuinely transformational for us.

And finally, the University of Liverpool just published the longest randomized trial ever run on diet drinks. The results are going to surprise you, or at least give you permission to enjoy your crispy Diet Coke in peace. We have opinions, a bedazzled can, and an unhinged passion that we can't totally explain.

• Why the YPO Health Summit felt fundamentally different this year and what the return to basics actually looks like in high-level wellness spaces
• What first, second, and third wave fitness means and why the shift matters now
• What's in EC Synkowski's A Good Nutrition Book and why the 800-gram challenge changed how Kelly and Juliet think about nutrition
• How Romania's Black Card system works for youth soccer sidelines and whether something like it could take hold in the US
• What the longest randomized trial on diet drinks found about weight loss and potential harm

(00:00) Intro

(00:24) Empty nesting and an overbooked fall

(01:43) YPO Health Summit Vancouver: the back-to-basics shift

(05:01) First, second, and third wave fitness

(06:32) Rope flow for 100 CEOs, forgotten anniversaries, and 16 years of Mobility WOD

(08:21) Outplay: manuscript submitted

(11:06) EC Synkowski's [A Good Nutrition Book](https://a.co/d/0519vMrI) and the [800-gram challenge](https://thereadystate.com/trs_podcast/ec-synkowski-sustainable-nutrition/)

(13:38) Romania's [Black Card](https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7586821/2026/09/12/football-black-card-referee/) for youth sports sidelines

(19:15) The diet drink study and the Diet Coke debate

(25:21) Wrap