#816: Nsima Inyang, Mutant and Movement Coach — True Athleticism at Any Age, Microdosing Movement, “Rope Flow” as a Key Unlock, Why Sleds and Sandbags Matter, and Much More

0:00 Hello, hello, hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show, where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world class performers from all different domains, entertainment, military, sports. business investing. We've done eight hundred of these conversations and everyone is different. Everyone is intended to be tactical for you, the listener. to give you things that you can take away and apply. And this episode is dense. We have a lot that you can apply. I just finished a very short 10 minute workout. We might call it micro dosing movement that's going to come up in this episode, designed by none other than today's guest, and it is amazing. It is so fantastic. You get so much from so little. And

0:48 Who is today's guest? Encima. Yeah. That is Nigerian folks, although he's American, of course, but his uh background is Nigerian, and that is the spelling that I will emphasize because you are gonna want to check this guy out everywhere you can. NSIMA N S I M A and then last name I N Y A N G. And NSEM is a strength athlete, but he's a lot more than that. He's a movement coach and co-host of Mark Bell's Power Project. Hello, Mark Bell. Been a while. Lovely to hear your name and to see your name and to read your name.

1:21 And that has become one of the top fitness podcasts in the world for very good reasons. And see him himself. Is also one of the most freakishly athletic humans I have ever met in my life. And that is saying a lot. I have met a lot of mutants, but what he's done. Is incredible. And let me give you an example. He's a black belt and Brazilian jujitsu, he's been to masters world championships multiple times, won twice at Brown Belt, a professional natural bodybuilder, he plays top five in the world, and an elite level powerlifter, which includes things like 750 plus pound deadlifts. But what really sets him apart

1:58 is how he blends these things together, these different worlds with unconventional training tools. including things like rope flow, which is actually how I was introduced to him. And my goal with Inviting him. this podcast was to help myself to be pain free and to also really regain my athletic footing. I'm not just interested in having big arms or a six pack. I don't really care that much about those things. I want to be an athlete. I want to be able to move not just now, but for decades and decades and decades. And after 20 years or so of lifting in martial arts, and Sima has developed a very unique approach to helping people build muscle, move better, and stay pain free for life.

2:41 He is the founder of The Stronger Human, a growing online community focused on strength, movement, and resilience. With hundreds of thousands of people following his YouTube content, which I highly, highly recommend. His mission is simple, help people feel powerful in their bodies again without relying solely on machines, cookie cutter workouts, or the fitness industry's outdated rules. And he does turn a lot upside down in this conversation, and there are a lot of recommendations. We have links to everything. Of course. So you can find the stronger human community, which I am gonna be a part of the at school.com, that's s k.com slash the stronger human. You can find all the various products and so on that we're refer to in this conversation at thestronhuman.store and certainly on YouTube, Instagram, and so on, you can find him at NSEMA.

3:30 E Yang, but that is spelled once again. N S I M A I N Y A N G, and one last thing. If you want visuals of all the exercises and so on that we discuss in this conversation, you can find them as B roll. It's been added to this interview at youth.com slash Tim Ferris. Okay, that's quite an intro. I'm gonna leave it at that. This is very dense. I am using what I learned. I am benefiting from what I learned from NSEM. So Just a few words.

4:01 from the people who make this podcast possible. And then we'll get right into the meat and potatoes. Please enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Peak. It's P I Q U E. I have Had so much tea in my life. I've been to China. I've lived in China and Japan. I've done tea tours. I drink a lot of tea. I've been drinking fermented Pooh Air tea specifically pretty much every day for years now. The problem with good Poair is that it's hard to source. It's hard to find Real poer.

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7:34 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And I'll answer you a personal question. No sea. a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal metal cellar. Sure.

7:57 And Steve, nice to see you. Thanks for being here in Austin. Yeah. Thank you. And I thought we would start With a little setting of the table. Defining of terms. What on earth

8:09 is powerlifting. You are an elite level powerlifter. What does that mean? What is the sport of powerlifting? And What are your totals and what does that even mean? So the sport of powerlifting is concentrating above

8:20 The three big lifts, the squat, bench, and deadlift. The holy grail of traditional lifts. In a meet, you have three attempts at a squat, three attempts at a bench, three attempts at a deadlift in that order. Ideally you're aiming for a nine out of nine. There's Geared powerlifting where you have suits, but that's not as popular nowadays. I did raw powerlifting. Mark Bell, who's the host of the Mark Bell's Power Project, he was a big geared lifter. And then he did some raw at the end of his career. For what I managed to get, I think I got eight out of nine at my last meet. I got a 622 squat. A 396 bench. I wasn't crack at four oh five, and I never got four oh five, and a seven hundred and fifty five pound deadlift. So my total was 1758.

8:58 Not on record, but what I've my gym lifts for powerlifting. Still never got the four oh five bench, but I managed to squat six forty five a little bit after that meet. And I believe I deadlift seven seventy five after that meet. All right. Yeah. See lift. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I lift and I still like lifting contrary to popular belief and some of the things that I've put out. People think I don't think lifting is good for you when I don't like lifting. Lifting is good for you. You just be surprised how much jazz or size you do.

9:24 And how many celery sticks you ate at lunch. I'm kidding. All right. So you have some bona fides. And actually I was joking earlier. That's not so much joking, reminiscing that the first time I went to super training gym With Mark Bell. Who's an old friend I've known Mark for a long time. Amazing character. Yes. In Sacramento, I saw you doing deadlift workout.

9:46 And I was just like, what? the hell is happening on this For people who may have gone to a gym before, they maybe even have put on forty five pound plates. Like what are we talking in terms of numbers of plates? What does it look like when you're deadlifting the your Yeah. Current personal best.

10:03 At that time, you know, I was probably deadlifting in the seven hundred type of realm. So working sets would be maybe five, six plates. So that's four ninety five, five eighty five above for sets of Triples, doubles, some singles here and there. It's a lot of weight. Right. Not weight I'm working with right now, but it's a lot of weight you're working with when you're focused on powerlifting. You're focused on like moving as much weight as possible on a barbell. So

10:28 Yeah, it's Malo. Yes. Uh. Now. The way that

10:33 I found you. was through a video on YouTube. You have an excellent channel. And very thought provoking. Content. And that's what grabbed me. So what was the headline of this video? The lie of traditional training, why I moved on.

10:50 Alright. live traditional training why I moved on. I was like, Well That guy looks pretty jacked. I wish I had those abs. And I wish I could tan as easily.

10:58 But Boy can dream. Let me at least find out what the lies are. And click through is actually sent to me by my friend Kevin Rose. Yeah. And I certainly owe him a debt of gratitude for that. And

11:12 Maybe you can describe for listeners a video that grab my attention. And it was Video of a man, I believe it was. With no arms and legs? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, what is this video?

11:26 So Serge Grakovetsky is the guy who wrote The Spinal Engine, which is a book that I referenced in that video. It's a video that he showed of a man that's moving through space with no arms and no legs. And when most people think about typical human locomotion, it's Thought that the arms and legs are the drivers' locomotion. You swing your arms, you swing your legs forward, you move forward through space. Well, this Pretty much torso. Is

11:49 rotating through space without arms and legs. And you can see the rotation. The he's sort of quote unquote walking, right? I mean he's moving forward in space. Yes, yes. But you see that natural figure eight rotation of the spine that's moving him through space. So in that book, The Spinal Engine and the Surges' theory of Locomotion is that the spine is the driver of movement and locomotion. The rotation of the spine helps swing the arms and swing the legs through space and for efficient human movement. You want to maintain access to that spinal engine. And what I was getting at at that video

12:21 Wasn't that we shouldn't train with barbells or we shouldn't train in a neutral spine. But With The focus of traditional lifting being in the sagittal plane, usually forward and backwards, or within that one plane, we are always training the neutral spine and maintaining that neutral spine through everything we do. So when you're doing that all the time in the gym and

12:42 There's also a lack of breathing, which we'll probably get into later, but you train this system. When you want to potentially go and transfer it into something else. you might not have as much access to that spinal engine as you used to. Over time that can potentially degrade if you Actually, maybe you never really had that.

13:00 And it gets worse. My training in the gym. And the examples I gave in that video is examples from sports that you see this type of training a lot in. It's Power lifting, bodybuilding, Olympic lifting. You're talking about sagittal plants. Sagittarius. Help people visualize what that means.

13:18 Sagittal be like let's just say you're standing in a very narrow hallway. With walls on either side. And you're bending forward, you can extend backwards. Divide your body in half here from the nose, right? Okay. So you got a line going from your forehead down your nose, splitting your body in half. That is a sagittal plane. Got it. So when we think of a squat.

13:36 When we think of a deadlift, when we think of A forward lunge is also still in the satural plane, even though it's a unilateral movement. These are all done in a sagittal plane with a neutral spine. And these are most of the movements you think about doing a pull up, a push up. The frontal plane divides the body And

13:53 halves from front and back. So we would imagine from the head to the toe on the side of the body. That would be something like a Cossack squat. Lunching to the side. A lateral lunch. Those would be the frontal plane. And the transverse plane of movement. Would divide the body in half from our torso, our legs down.

14:09 Torso up. So that would have This rotation of the spine. Those would be those three planes, but then we can get into Other ideas of rotation, which is the things you get into with rope, et cetera, but

14:19 Gym movements. Are primarily done when people are training in the satural plane with a neutral spine. There isn't much flexion or rotation of the spine. You're strengthening this neutral. Spine which is good. But overdoing that.

14:33 can degrade the ways that you want to be able to move as a human being. And the way that can show up, I mean, this is very personal for me and part of the reason it was very Attention grabbing. Is as we've discussed earlier today.

14:48 If people want to get a good laugh, you can watch me trying rope flow and throwing around a pink kettlebell in a giant sombrero. I wish they made the pink kettlebell another color, because I I was like, Man, like This doesn't Yeah.

15:03 It was kinda perfect. It was kinda perfect. So if people want a good laugh, we'll link to that as well, our earlier movement practice. But The story that I shared with you is three years of chronic

15:15 Back then. And uh pretty localized to low back. Who knows? I'm sure there's some referral. happening, but By and large. Lumbar.

15:25 This sort of grand central station of musculature called the quadratus lumborum, the QL. and external obliques and all this stuff. I basically get locked and spasmed in the low back, and that can be triggered in any number of ways. Now on top of that When I watched this video, it made me think back to when I was much younger and actually ran cross country.

15:46 And you have that. Contralateral movement. you walk it's like okay your left shoulder moves forward as your sort of right leg and I guess probably hip move forward at the same time, that contralateral movement. And

16:00 To emphasize that you had video Footage in your video showing What everyone has seen. Which is someone who's done a lot of lifting, who is walking down the street and they have no contralateral movement what's or they I shouldn't say they have no contralateral movement, but it looks like their upper bodies are frozen. It's a block. It's a block. And

16:20 You could potentially say, Well, that person is muscle bound, but that's not totally accurate. Right, in the sense that Correct me if I'm oversimplify this, but it seems like They are plane bound. Because their movement patterns are so limited.

16:34 that of course, like what you train for, you're gonna get more of. So they have Done one piece that is maybe let's call it necessary, but not sufficient, if you want athletic movement. And you talked about also. Resurrecting or Improving your own running.

16:52 And just seeing the difference, not having the expectation that I'm gonna become a competitive cross country runner. But for a very, very long time. And this goes back to even like two thousand Or two thousand five when I was in Argentina doing tango. Trust me, there's a tie in here. And A bunch of people would laugh at me and they would be like

17:11 You have cintura depoy. Cintura de pollo, which or cinta de pollo, which would be like you have the waist of a chicken, which like if you try to think of a chicken, doesn't rotate. Doesn't rotate. And in tango, they want you to dissociate the upper and lower body. And I had a lot of trouble with that. So they were like, You have the waste of a chicken.

17:29 Now I would like to overcome this waste of a chicken situation. And watch the video. One of the exercises you have in that video is rope flow, which I want you to talk about, but I'll I'll give people just a teaser, which is Saw the video, I was like

17:47 Logically, this makes a lot of sense to me. I biomechanically makes a lot of sense. It's addressing a deficit that I have. But it's a scary deficit because When I have tried to really embrace rotation before and the sheer forces involved. Very often I either overdo it, even with very low dosing.

18:06 And in some cases, like the back spasms, I'm out of commission for a week or two. Like I really can't sleep. And so I've really stayed away from it. But You showed this rope, Flow, and I was actually visiting Jake Mus, who's been on this podcast. He's the CEO of Now we've had a sense. And we went to this outdoor gym.

18:24 In Hawaii. that they'd put together for the team over there. And there's a rope. I was like Hm.

18:29 Look at that. Okay. Let me try it. And I felt so Good. after training.

18:36 I mean training's a bit of an exaggeration after playing around with the rope. And I was like, okay, I want to pay attention to this. 'Cause when I was really young It's like okay, let's do like some metabolic conditioning. Like if I'm not puking into a bucket, I didn't train properly or hard enough. But then I started training with people like Jersey Gregorick, who he spoke about. Amazing.

18:55 world record holder in Olympic weightlifting, at least he was masters and other folks where you actually can feel better after the workout than you did beforehand. So what is this rope flow? As an example, and how does it Demonstrate or develop the kind of stuff.

19:11 Yeah. We're alluding to. I'm really happy that David Weck, he's the guy who started, invented Roplow. He has the progenitor. The progenitor of Ropeflow. That's an air, David. Go ahead and clip that, David. He's gonna love that. He's the one who developed, popularized, got the moves going. I mean I he he came onto our show and that he showed these videos back in like These two thousand six, two thousand five style videos, right? Of him doing rope flow on like a roof in, I don't know, San Jose or something or San Diego. And he came and he showed it to us maybe a roof. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I'll bookmark that for later. I gotta send it to you.

19:47 David's a character. He's great. And I've learned so much of him, by the way. I I love that guy. Continuing to learn from him too. But Back to Ropeflow. He came and showed it to us maybe four years ago.

19:56 And when he mentioned it initially. I think sometimes when you have a certain amount of experience in training or whatever, you hear something new and you're like, Okay, trendy, or what's swing a rope through space really gonna do for you. But through having so many people and talking to and learning from so many people that have changed the way I move and have affected me positively. Pause for one second. Yeah, don't use your train of thought. Because you do a lot outside of the gym. Or I should say outside of the weight training gym. Mm-hmm. Right.

20:24 Mm-hmm. Like very, very serious dedicated jujitsu practitioner. Yeah. Yeah. Which is not purely In Sagittarian, right? Yeah. A lot more going on. Okay. The Jujitsu for me is was really fun to start. We can talk about that later, but That's the sport I started doing because

20:39 I realized that all the lifting I was doing had me feeling very stiff and unathletic. So I got into jujitsu about nine or ten almost ten years back to Try to see if I could combat the way my body was feeling. Which had its own issues, but Rope flow.

20:53 When David told me about it initially, I was apprehensive. I got a rope, I started doing it, got frustrated, dropped it. Kind of like the girl in the park that we met today. Yeah. You get a rope, you do it for a little bit, you don't know what to do, you drop it. How did he sell it to you? Do you remember kind of what the pitch was? He talked about all the benefits and he showed it. He even like showed me some in the gym, him and his head coach Chris Chamberlain. But it didn't necessarily stick because I didn't have kind of like a structure to it. So what I ended up doing was I ended up just like looking at a bunch of people that I could see on YouTube. I went through some of the videos that David sent me and I just tried to practice it a little bit each day. Frustration would set in though because the flow wasn't happening.

21:32 You know it's called rope flow because Are there sets, reps, et cetera? No, you just go, you rotate, you move, you put the rope away, you go do what you do. It's not like a workout. It's a it's play. Yeah, it's closer to like slacklining.

21:46 Exactly. It's play. It's a flow practice. But once things started clicking, I started seeing how it was like affecting my jujitsu. And in my jujitsu. It's inherently an asymmetrical practice, the martial art. You have a dominant side and a non dominant side.

22:01 So you'll tend to do things, whether it's sweeps, whether it's takedowns, etc. Guard passing. You go that one direction, you grease that dominant groove. And your non-dominant side ends up being just this goofy mess, right? But I started realizing that Oh, that's just your non dominant side? No, I'm kidding. I'm I've said that about myself. I'm not gonna spar you. No. No, but seriously, but but what slowly started happening was I started noticing like A scissor sweep I'd really do to my right side. I'm now Ooh wow that left side rotation felt pretty

22:31 Powerfully. I don't usually. What happened there? passes to my left side started feeling better. And the reason that was happening was because When doing rope flow.

22:41 It's a symmetrical practice. You learn to rotate using your spine on your dominant side, but you get that rotation on your other side. And what happens is as you do this back and forth, naturally you want to make your non-dominant side feel as good. as your dominant. So now your rotation. With your spine to the left side of your body or your non dominant side starts to feel just as good.

23:03 as you're dominant and you're moving with more symmetry through everything that you do. Yeah. And let me add something just with Kind of beginners' eyes. Now that I have a PhD in rope flow after I work at this go. Well I'll just say that one of the Benefits. Uh

23:20 Something like rope flow. From a development of like symmetrical abilities perspective is that you get a lot of reps. Because you could do something in the gym.

23:31 that's aimed at symmetry, but like how many reps and how many sets are you actually gonna do? If you're programming properly. And At what point is your technique gonna degrade where you might be doing more harm than good? Whereas with the rope flow, it's like if it doesn't feel good, you're gonna know because it's gonna be janky. You might whack yourself in the ankle, whack yourself in the back of the head, like I did. Whereas if it feels

23:51 Fluid. you're gonna know it feels fluid and you get a lot of reps. So you have The benefit of volume on your side in developing that water feel.

24:02 So there's that benefit of volume. But At its most basic level. You learn to Navigate that rope, move it through space while using your spine as the the main mover. You learn to do that. Initially it's a very handsy thing as you're using your hands a lot, but then you learn to follow the weight of the rope and use your spine.

24:19 Both sides. You notice if you walk after you now have this natural swagger that starts to happen when you're walking. You're moving through space with that spinal engine. Yeah, I'm gonna try to just paint a visual for people when they're imagining road flow, because some people, I imagine, are not gonna really have a video in their mind as we're talking. This is gonna age me, but I'll I'll try it anyway. So if you imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Barbarian, iconic scene with the sword. With the sword. Yeah. Swinging it on either side. Okay. You got it. You got a sword in front. Now he's swinging it to either side. Okay. Now imagine instead of the sword.

24:53 You have a rope that is whatever this is, and I don't know, inch. Inch and a half, two inches thick, something like that. Like a heavyish rope. Right. And so now imagine you're you're swinging this rope around. But instead of just using your hands. Let's just say you bring your hands in closer to your chest and now you're Creating that figure eight with your shoulders.

25:13 And that is then Swinging the blade, aka the rope. It's a Just imagine that kind of movement, is that Yes, that's fair. That's fair. And along with that, it's not just the spine, it's the weight shift of the feet.

25:28 Because now you're shifting from one side to the other, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, right? And the one of the reasons why I believe it's helped so much with my jujitsu because jujitsu are very it's a very rotational practice when you're trying to leverage an opponent from one side or the other. Weight shift on both sides of my body has improved from my feet.

25:45 So this is one reason why. When you start to like Do more rope flow. And you start to get more of the underhand side of the underhand practice. You've hit a boxing bag before, right? You you've done that type of work.

25:57 Go do that type of work again. And do some uppercuts. Do some hooks. But remember the things that you've learned. You're learning how to generate power and rotation from the ground through your fists.

26:08 There's so many people that I've seen now that have literally said It's improved my punching or I actually know how to throw a punch. Because I've learned how to swing this roof through space. Also, like you were explaining, and the underhand. Like okay, so guys, we're talking about the cone and the barbarian thing. Uh-huh. We won't belabor this. We'll obviously have some video linked if you're listening to audio, but imagine that you have The rope. It is behind you, right? You're dragging a rope.

26:32 Let's just say with two hands on one side, it's thick rope. And then you pull it. Up. And the rope is taking this sort of upward trajectory like a diagonal. That would be sort of And it's not the best description, but that would be like the underhand. Whereas if you're like bringing it over your shoulder, like a whip or something. Yep.

26:49 That would be the overhand. What's it whip again to him? What was that? You went to the whip again, Tim. You know? You know, it's yeah, you know. This is why you don't go to your BDSM dungeon the night before your podcast. It just bleeds over, guys. I'm sorry. All right, guilty as charged. So what appeals to me, and I mean I'm this is like my enthusiasm is outstripping my experience. That's probably the story of my life. But what the little that I've seen of say Ropeflow as one tool in the toolkit, part of what appeals to me about it. Is that

27:19 like my experience early on with Pavel and Kettlebells. There's this weird like what the fuck transfer. where people who let's say do a bunch of kettlebell work suddenly have better running times and they're like What? What do you mean? What the hell's going on? Right? Or because of the thicker diameter after

27:37 over time, they don't even realize it, but suddenly the eliminat, which was their grip on the deadlift. has been not entirely removed, but improved dramatically. And when I looked at the Rogue flow and I'm like, okay.

27:51 Forget about the rope. It's tool. for engaging these other planes of movement. And if done. And

27:59 We were talking about this earlier today as well. Not necessarily as an hour long workout where you're just like Dying inside, but rather like flossing your teeth. Or getting up and taking a shower. It's like, okay, you take a shower once a day, like rope flow once a day. And over time, the adaptations that would take place. And one thing I didn't tell you because I did confess that this is very self serving as a meeting because I was like, I really want to dial in my programming.

28:22 recognizing there are things I want to do in the future, which are not breaking powerlifting records. Ain't gonna happen. It's definitely not beating you and jujitsu because I'll get my own All of my appendages snapped off. Don't need that. But I would never do that to you. In less. Dot dot dot. Uh I appreciate that. It wouldn't take very much, but there are things I would really like to do. I would like to compete in more sports, even if it's just in a club capacity. I would love to get back on the tennis courts and get back to playing tennis.

28:48 And this might require some elbow surgery, but get back to rock climbing. And Also, one thing I didn't mention, but probably is the thing that I would tie most directly to the Rope flow. I love working on pads in Muay Thai.

29:03 And it is such a good workout. I'm not gonna get yet another goddamn concussion. I don't need any more of those. And I would really like to get The point again where I can train on pads.

29:17 Hard. for lots of rounds with a really, really skilled trainer. I just love that experience. And I'm so bored of stationary biking for my endurance work. So bored. I mean, God bless these tools, but still it's it's pretty boring. So

29:34 Where should we go? There are lots of tools in the toolkit. Let me ask you this. For people who might be wondering. And guys, I'm not getting like an affiliate commission on rope sales here. Like I have no dog in this fight, but It seems to be a very versatile. Tool.

29:50 And there are lots of versatile tools, but it is also a tool That is very hard to injure yourself with. And for me, it's like weightlifting and a lot of training, number one, unless it's a sport, right? Is about Injury minimization first and foremost. So if I add in strength training, that increases the likelihood or endurance training, that increases the likelihood of me getting injured. Scratch it. It's out.

30:13 And then I'll take my risks where I need and want to take my risk, like skiing, but I don't want to take it in the way room. How long does it take for people to see some benefits from something like Ropeflow and like what have you seen in students? Yeah, people who try this and stick with it for Couple weeks.

30:31 Literally. I've had people that are in the strong human community that literally after day one, they're finding that they have better balance walking up the steps. And these were s people in their fifties and sixties. They're like I'm walking upstairs and I feel more balanced. Why? Because you're shifting your weight from one side to the other in a more efficient manner. Because the rope has taught you how to do that. You'll feel better. Rather immediately.

30:53 Now the question is like how deep do you want to take? How many of these movements do you want to learn? I've seen Kelly Stret start posting more about rope flow and he's been talking about it in the form is just being a warm up before you do any of your lifting movements as a good rotational warm-up. And that's great. So it can just be used for that. Yeah. But I think there is a power that comes with the practice. When like today we linked around four movements together, the Overhand, the propeller and the dragon and the underhand. What was it called when I donkey punch myself in the back of the head with the rope. We should we should give that one a yeah. That's the fairest. That's what you call the fairest. The one thing I want to mention about this too is this.

31:29 Honestly, I look at Ropeflow as kind of like its own internal martial art. You do you know that you know internal martial arts then? So w when it comes to internal martial arts, like I think Tai Chi would be considered one. Bagwa would be considered an internal martial art. When it comes to these martial arts

31:44 They're not necessarily like extra martial arts like Jiu Jitsu, boxing, kickboxing, muy Thai, that's Based on the output, based on the damage you're gonna give to an opponent. It's The focus is more so on breathing. Mastering the movement.

31:58 Linking the movements together. You're more focused on what's going on internally and what your body is doing through space. Now There are forms of like aspects of Tai Chi that can be applied to combat, but when you see a lot of older people doing Tai Chi, It's this flowy movement practice that gets the body feeling better afterwards than when it began. In a lot of ways, just having spent a good amount of time in like early mornings in China and so on. It's kinda like

32:21 People are gonna crucify me for this. But it's kinda like Chinese Yoga. In a sense. Like they are moving through all these different planes of movement. They're doing it every day. Even the kind of rotational Kidney slapping stuff.

32:34 There are some similarities. Absolutely. When you look at rope flow and then you look at what these like eighty, ninety year olds are doing in China in the park every morning. And they're 80 and 90, dude. That's the thing that's so amazing to me. Like. You're still moving like that at 80 and 90. You're independent. You know, like I would even assume that a lot of these people probably feel minimal amounts of pain. They feel a level of freedom in their bodies at that age. Yeah. That's kind of how I look at rope flow when you learn to link things together. So we learned a few movements today, but there are so many more movements that you learn. And the cool thing is that

33:04 You do some of this stuff this week, Tim. You're gonna wake up and it's just gonna be there. You don't have to think about the movement now. You just go outside, you do it, it's no thought. It turns into a flow. It turns into a flow state practice. That's where I think the strength is. Because that feels like play. It no longer feels like

33:20 you know, frustrating rope flow practice. Although when you start learning new moves, there's a level of frustration. I still hit myself. That I hit you did today where you knocked your eye, I do that all the time when I'm learning new shit. The rope will still do that to me. Because the rope teaches you how to rotate. Yeah. You learn how to follow its weight. It'll teach you how to rotate better by hitting you.

33:41 By not rotating cleanly. When you clean that up. Then it rotates cleanly to the left and cleanly to the right. And then again. When you link all this stuff together, it's play. It's a flow state play that always feels better afterwards.

33:55 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. About three weeks ago, I found myself between 10 and 12,000 feet going over the continental divide, carrying tons of weight, and I needed all the help I could get. And in those circumstances, I relied on momentous products every single day and every single night. Now regular listeners Probably no. I've been taking Momentus products consistently and testing them, the entire spectrum of their products for a long while now. But you may not know that I recently collaborated with them. To put together my top picks, I always aim for a strong body and sharp mind. Of course you need both. And neither is possible without quality sleep. So I designed my performance stack to check all three boxes, creape your creatine for muscular and cognitive support.

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35:18 Now for people listening and for me. Oftentimes when I say for people listening, it's just'cause I want to ask. I am the type person I know myself well enough at this point.

35:31 I am Almost certainly. Not going to become the Muhammad Ali of Ropsaw. Or the Fred of Stare of Roadflow. It's just not gonna happen.

35:40 What are like the bread and butter minimum effective dose maybe people Can find this you can point them to the where they can find these things. But like are there two or three movements where you're like Okay. If you're just gonna do

35:53 Five minutes a day, or ten minutes a day. Maybe it's two Times five. So like Start your day and to end your day. What are like the bread and butter moves where it's like if you only did this There would be a lot of upside. Yeah.

36:07 What are those? That would be first off I have a full Foundations rowflow course, that is free. It's like fifty plus videos of it. It's at school.com slash the stronger human. It is free.

36:17 Okay. Now. Overhand. Race and Chase. Underhand race and chase.

36:23 Propeller or dragon, which is what we did today. Yeah. Did I do race and chase or did yeah, that's what you did. You're the overhand race and chase? You did the underhand race and chase. Race and chase is walking while you're doing that's it's not walking, it's just you can just stand there, but you added walking into it. You added a gate pattern into it, right? So overhand race and chase, underhand race and chase, propeller, link those three together, you have a flow from side to side. Right. And those are like that's the basics. Right. You learn to link those together, you you'll feel better. Yeah. Okay.

36:47 Again. I think that You mentioned you're not gonna become the mom and a lead of rope floor or whatever. But One thing that I think is good to understand is like

36:56 We got decades for this, bro. You know what I mean? Like what is three to five or ten minutes a day for a few years, how good are you gonna be at this a year from now, just for five minutes? Like you're gonna look pretty fucking good. And then oh my mom's probably listening. She didn't want me to curse. But sorry, Mom, I'm gonna forget and I'm gonna curse myself. So Can blame it on my bad influence.

37:16 But five years from now doing it. five minutes or you'll probably do it longer because you're gonna naturally just get better at it. You get him. just be moving really well with this from this minimal input. Yeah. It can be a practice that beats you up, especially if because you can get a workout from it. It doesn't have to be that. It doesn't have to be something that beats you up, but if you want to

37:35 go intense with it, use a heavier rope. How much do ropes cost for people listening? Cause I haven't even asked that. I should have asked that. Yeah. How like to get something you can use for this? Because I do find a little bit of heft to be helpful. Right. We start with a very lightweight. light rope, which was almost like a Lariat, like a lasso. I mean it was very small. In diameter. How much does it cost to get the Magna XL? The Magnum. The Magnum. How much does one of those cost? I think the Magma XL is. Oh, it's Magma. Magma. Not Magnum.

38:07 No, it's magma. Your mind went to Magma. Oh, I know, I know, I know. But it's a magma shift. It's red. Some people can't be saved. I got it. Magma. Okay, God, I screwed that up twice. Okay. Magma XL. And this probably we were kind of bouncing around. Probably the rope itself probably weighs like two pounds, two, three pounds. Yeah. Maybe maybe maybe less. Yeah, yeah, like how much does that cost? That one's like Eighty dollars, I think. Eighty dollars. This is the thing though. If you want to just get yourself a rope from Home Depot and cut it and make a rope. That's fine. You can work that. You can even work with an exercise band you might have at home. You can mess with some of this using a belt if you don't want to get anything. If you just want to like

38:47 Do the bare bones stuff. But Certain ropes like the Magma XL, the R M T rope, which I think is like Forty or forty five dollars. There's a feedback that you get from the rope because it's very smooth when you're rotating. But

38:59 Kind of feels better than a home depot rope. Doesn't mean you can't use a home deeper rope or a rope from a boating store. Boating store ropes are actually pretty good quality. Boating stores are really good quality rope. So you could get something from there. Cut it up. Make your rope. You're good.

39:12 Right. So That's the thing. It's like it's a practice that if you don't want to spend anything on it, you don't have to. Or if you want to spend nothing or very minimal amounts of money, you can do that. But Then all you need is

39:25 Your rope? Some sunlight or you can do it indoors if you want to. And you're gonna feel better. One thing I want to stress is this. Do you know who Bill Maeta is out of Hawaii?

39:36 I've seen it seen his videos. Yeah. Those man, man. Yeah. I love Bill. And we had him on a show a few years back. People probably been saying this forever, but it when he told me and when he started speaking this way, it really resonated with me.

39:48 Where he calls his work out each day. He calls it a practice. It's his practice. How for people who don't know who this is, how would you describe Bill. He's a lifting samurai.

39:58 That's how I would personally describe. How old is Bill? Fifty five or fifty six. Unbelievably shredded. And strong. Strong, shredded. Bill has a level of also curiosity that I admire because Bill has had so much fitness experience through the years. He's done so much. He's had a lot of positive and negative experiences. But

40:18 He's also someone that as much as he knows, he's continuously open to learning more and refining his knowledge and what he teaches his clients, the people he works with. And that's one thing I really admire about him because He's fifty something years old. He looks amazing. He does well, but like He's also a sponge, and that's something that I want to ideally, I hope when I'm fifty five or fifty six, I want to remain a sponge. Yeah. I don't want to lose that. But he calls his movement his workouts a practice because he changes it up each day. He does like five, 10, 15 minutes of movement, and that's his daily practice. And that's kind of the way I look at my

40:50 movement practice. There are Like when I go into a gym I have in my notes app I have just certain things that I might be doing during that day. I'll know what I did last week, so I'll be okay, let's maybe add this in or do something else.

41:04 But I keep things around so that I get a general daily minimum amount of movement in no matter what. Mm-hmm. So I have like certain flow movement that I'll get in. I have a club by my desk.

41:15 I have a sandbag by my workstation. I have a sandbag in my garage. I have rings in my kitchen. I have things spent throughout the house and throughout my space. So that when I go by them, I'm encouraged to lift them. I'm encouraged to lift the bag. I'm encouraged to swing the rope. I'm encouraged to swing the club. I do all these things on a daily basis. That has my body feeling better and better as I continue to progress at the meat and potatoes of what I'm really trying to push forward. So I have these daily minimums, which is just my practice. These are just the things I do. And I'll have certain things that are might be the workout, whether it's the jujitsu or the thing I do in the gym or my garage, or maybe I go out to the field and I do some stuff, some extra work. But I have those daily minimums that are just part of my practice that just makes sure that

41:56 I'm always making progress. So that The only time that I do something isn't just in my workout. Yeah. Right. I want my body to be able to. Do these things. Yeah. Any time.

42:08 And I mean that underscores also some of the stuff that I saw and you explained in the video. You have a lot of videos. It just happens to be the one that initially caught my attention, but If someone let's just say is training the big three lifts or whatever they happen to do, and they're hitting them once a week, or who knows? And then they're not getting really any movement practice.

42:30 Between those. It's like of course they're gonna be very constrained. Plane of movement. certain types of movements. Well let me bring this

42:40 Back to me. I've been watching Conan O'Brien Must Go. If people haven't seen that travel show, you should you should watch it because that's basically Conan's move. So I'll copy Conan here. We were talking about this back issue that's been plaguing me and how I am actually back to a point now. As of just a few days ago.

42:59 where I'm loading more in terms of let's just say back squat, which is like a a very open question as to whether to include it or not, and other things. making a lot of progress ever since really Surgically trying to focus on Blue exercises, which seems self evident, but I could give people a long list of stories about why that's been a challenge over the last three years. But

43:22 H made progress. And want to get back to let's just say Doing. Yeah. five rounds of heavy work on tie pads. Mm-hmm.

43:33 And who knows, maybe even doing some jujitsu, although I have a lot of PTSD from my joint injuries. So What are some of the things you would potentially suggest? Like if you were getting me started with programming And I'm sure you'd have to do an assessment and so on. There are some of the things we talked about over lunch. We don't have to talk about these, but like sandbag Box squad.

43:56 Recognizing that I'm very apprehensive about the low back. If I have to sit, for instance, on like a hard wood bench. for thirty minutes and I don't have any padding, my back could be seized up for A week, which means basically no sleep. So I'm scared of having that experience. And I recognize that if I don't load

44:14 and work on my body, not just the low back in isolation, it's never gonna be fixed or improve. So how would you think about Training. With respect to this.

44:26 I'd have to rewind it. We talked a little bit about this earlier, but I'd have to rewind things back to first off the way someone breathes through the way that they move. Yeah. Every single day. When you injure something initially.

44:38 You injure a lower back, which has happened to me many a time in the past. when something happens that aggravates the area. You tend to hold your breath. So when you bend to grab something, you'll And then when you feel safe enough, you'll exhale and start breathing again. Some people do this without even realizing. They'll go down to tie their shoes and they have breath holds without realizing they have breath holds. It's now it's just an ingrained movement pattern that they bend.

45:04 Hold their breath, come up. Boom, they get out of the car, they're holding their breath. Many people have instances through their day that the breath is being held. And the problem with that, the reason why that's a really big issue. Is because When you hold your breath

45:17 your tissues will kind of sees up to keep everything in place. That's the Valsalve maneuver when lifters lift Heavy loads and sometimes not heavy loads is meant to Increase that intraabdominal pressure so that there is no movement of the spine when you're dealing with the load. That's what it's meant to do. But also there's limited movement.

45:37 Yeah. When you're holding your breath. So The thing that I would want to get you doing. Is First.

45:44 to Make sure. That you learn. How to breathe while doing Everything.

45:51 That doesn't mean just like breathe when you're doing everything through the house, et cetera. Like even when you're gonna go pick something up and you find, okay, I'm I'm gonna hold my breath when I do this. Can you Slow that movement down. In a way that you can try to breathe while doing it. So that you're not

46:07 ingraining that pathway of Hold breath and do the thing. How can we do the thing? And breathe.

46:14 Because when we're breathing. The body feels safe. Like when you if you're breathing and doing stretching or breathing or doing anything when it comes to movement, you move more freely. Once you hold your breath. Your body goes into this I'm trying to stay safe. Same thing in Jiu Jitsu.

46:28 When a new person starts jujitsu. The first thing that you have to tell them to do is breathe. You remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? You're you're on bottom side control or you're in some type of position and immediately like

46:41 Like you're you're you're trying to produce force and you're holding your breath while doing so. Because you don't feel safe enough to produce that force while breathing. What this is gonna do is it's gonna help us to

46:53 kind of get those tissues moving in the way that they should. The body's gonna feel safe. So those tissues are gonna start moving well, and we won't have excess tension throughout the whole system. Mm-hmm. And this is why I would Tell somebody with whatever lifting that they're doing right now.

47:08 Yeah, Tommy. Let's lower the loads that we're working with. and learn how to use the breath while lifting, pushing, pulling, hinging. Let's learn to use the breath while doing all of it. What this means is when we are

47:22 In our concentric phase of the lift, whether it's a push When lifting, whether it's a pull when pulling. Whether it's Hinging or coming up from a squat. We're exhaling.

47:33 Let's just use the squat as an example rather than a bunch of things. The squat. Inhale when you're going down to the hole. Exhale when you're coming out of the. Let's learn how to do that. Because

47:42 In life, if we're gonna squat down to the ground We wouldn't we shouldn't. hold our breath when going down to the ground. But many people do. We should Just kinda like

47:51 Whether it's inhale when getting down there. And then breathe normally. We should be able to do that. And what I want to try to help you do. is I want you to make this a global phenomenon. You're having very minimal or no

48:02 Unless they're purposeful breath holds. You're not holding your breath during the day. Yeah. Right. There's other benefits outside of this where you're not gonna feel as stressed because a lot of people when they are looking at their phone where they're they start thinking of something that brings a level of anxiety. Inherently they'll start to hold their breath and they don't realize it.

48:19 This is something that's gonna help you get rid of global tension outside of what you're doing in the gym, which is gonna help you just feel better overall. And this isn't something you deal with in just a day. This is a habit change, right? If you want to change the way you do this when you're lifting, you must lower your loads. You don't do this with maximal loads. You don't do this with heavy squats, heavy deadlifts. You don't do this when lifting heavy sandbags or even kettlebells, right? If you're not used to this. You work on doing this with light load, and just like you'd progressed before with heavier loads, you progressively overload your ability to lift while breathing. over time you can progressively work with heavier and heavier load.

48:53 So assuming I'm working on this. Yes. I'm working on the breathing. Tim Braze. Mm-hmm. All right. My garage.

49:01 Is a gem. I may not have all the requisite tools at the moment. It's got All the basics. What are whether it is me or others, but what are some of the non negotiable

49:14 Exercises. That you might prescribe. for someone in in my position where it's like, Okay, I remember back in the day I like to consider myself pretty athletic. Mm-hmm. My enthusiasm outstrips my structural integrity on some regular

49:27 And I would like to Train for the long game. But also like I would like to be very strong.

49:35 I would like to be for me, I would like to be very strong. I still know I can develop that. capacity. It's just a matter of Strengthening or

49:45 Catering to the low back so that I'm not terrified every time I set foot in the gym of having some spasm that cost me two weeks of sleep. So Let me ask you a question. So Back squat or no back squat.

49:59 For you? Yeah. Or depends on the type of backs while we're talking. All right. Because like we had box squats come up and I had some questions and concerns around that. Talked about sandbags like how would you Think about

50:11 Lower body. I mean I guess it could be full body, but like lower body loading for someone like me. I would want you to focus a little bit more on unilateral before we do more bilateral axial spine back squat loading. So something like Different forms of lunges. The ATG split squat is a really good money movement. Do you know what the ATG split squat is? I do not know what that is. A T G split squat is something popularized by Ben Patrick.

50:36 deep knee flexion of the front knee. The back foot has a large amount of uh Hip extension So you're getting hip extension of the back leg, deep knee flexion of the front leg. So you're building a level of strength.

50:47 through long ranges of motion with that movement. So Those AT split squats, different types of lunches. I would have you focus on That

50:56 Instead of The traditional actual loaded back squad for a while. I'd also say that Not that bilateral squatting is bad, but if you do, maybe you start learning how to do that with a sandbag. So use a kettlebell or a sandbag with that.

51:10 First you need to learn how to lift a sandbag because When you lift a sandbag, the load is in front of you. your spine is gonna be in a fairly neutral position, but you're gonna have a little bit More slight maybe. Flexion in that spine and you're going to learn

51:23 how to breathe against that load while squatting down with it in front of you. So that could be a fifty, hundred pound sandbag. You'll probably start there and you'll probably move forward with that over time. But the thing is is you're not directly loading that spine right now as you're doing, you're not causing all of that compression. Not that compression is bad. But it seems as if you're a bit compression sensitive.

51:45 When it comes to squatting patterns because of what's going on with your back. Yeah. Now. If you did want to work on some bilateral squatting, which I don't think is a Horrible idea. I would probably say if you wanted to work with the barbell.

51:58 Don't squat. Full Deep knee flexion depth. Let's stay away from that for a while. So let's do barb back squats to a box, making sure you're maintaining tension as you go down to the box and coming up. So you're not just

52:10 Plopping down to the box, sitting back, losing that tension, and then coming out. Maintaining that tension. While breathing. You're working maybe Forty, fifty percent, fifty, maybe sixty percent of your one rep max.

52:21 Where it's like you can actually master the movement without stressing about the load, but over time you can inch that load up in a safe manner. And is the reason for that just because This might help other people. So I injured myself three years ago doing a workout that did not feel like an injury at the time. It's back squatting. But I was basically going like ass to heels.

52:42 And I suspect in retrospect that I was doing like a little butt wink where I was Starting to to make it simple, just kinda like round the lower back in the bottom rang. Yeah. And I think it was that kind of bending of the paperclip.

52:58 That causes That initial acute problem. That was a real squat, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you're supposed to be. That's a real squat, bro. Like That's what has to craft. So the box. Would Let's just say would it be just above parallel? Something like that. Above party ninety degrees. Yeah.

53:16 basically helps to mitigate the risk of that. Would you do something similar with the sandbag or would you do that from the floor? Like what is the range of motion? Squat down to a box or you could squat. All the way down with a light load if you feel comfortable. I would suggest that your situation You inch that down over time.

53:33 Like what you could do is if you have multiple sandbags, you could squat down to the other sandbag, or you could squat down to a box and then over time lower that height. Where you feel comfortable. Just make sure as you're squatting down. When you hit depth. You're maintaining tension. When I say maintaining tension, by the way, I mean you're not Totally just sitting down the box, limping out and then coming back up. You're

53:51 Inhaling as you go down to the box. You're still maintaining that position and then you drive up. You're not losing that tension that you've created in your legs, your feet, especially as you go down. You're maintaining it. The reason why people do the valva maneuver

54:04 is so when they hold their breath, they can maintain structural integrity of the spine, rib cage over hips, et cetera. When you're bracing, you can't move? What's keeping that integrity is the air that you've stored. in your uh abdomen when you're squatting down. when you're breathing while doing this.

54:20 whether you're inhaling while you're going down, exhaling when coming up. The structur integrity is you're maintaining it, like you're maintaining it while you're breathing. So When you're breathing, you do have more room for that to happen. But

54:32 you should be able to maintain that structure. Without the breath. When I deadlift it seven fifty five, I didn't use a belt. Main reason I didn't use a belt. is I want to make sure that my structure

54:43 Could that lift this weight? without the need of outside assistance. The weight belt when you're using it is supposed to When you push against it. increase the amount of intraabdomin pressure you're able to create and help you maintain that. But I when I did that.

54:56 The reason why I didn't use a belt is because it didn't make sense to me. to develop all this strength. If I couldn't do it on my own. So When now we're breathing while doing this. Very Constantine Constantinos. I think back in the day. A lot of Russians did that, though.

55:11 A lot of Russians would do that, you know? But I think that there's a knowledge there because like You want to be able to do all of this stuff on your own. Yes, it can add some, but like having to need to use a belt to do everything to maintain your structure. I don't think it's the best idea.

55:27 Now when we're using the breath We're not getting that extra pressure that it helps create. But we're training ourselves to always be able to maintain the right structure. and maintain the right amount of tension while breathing when lifting weights. And the reason why we're doing that is because life wants us to do that. When we're going through life.

55:45 When we're fighting We're not holding our breath. And I know that some people will say, Well, this isn't the gym. The gym is supposed to help you do this stuff better. The reason why I started doing this is because I wanted to make sure that the strength I was building the gym would be Something that

56:00 Wood. Yeah, transferable. Transfer really well to the fighting that I was doing and the the stuff that I was trying to do. And in all of that, breath holding's never part of it. Unless Swimming. There's breath holding. I think even for me now when lifting something really heavy It's an exhale. Like I I will

56:18 I will I will use like when when people see me using sandbags This is an aside. But I was always somebody who like When I lifted, I purposefully wanted to stay quiet. I don't like emoting. I don't like it. It's not in my nature to be the person the elsewhere when doing stuff. But when you learn to breathe while lifting, what ends up happening is when you're creating that force, when you're lifting that sandbag off the ground, when you're pushing.

56:42 C That happens. Right? You're lifting. That happened. It's not because I'm trying to Sound hard or tough or whatever. It's because the TIE fighter's kicking. Same thing. It's what my body needs to do to produce the force efficiently and I I can stay safe through it.

56:57 As that started to happen, I started to feel stronger. And it Transfers. You know what I mean? So that's why something that actually I think would help people kind of understand this. Especially the exhaling to create tension.

57:09 Is Let's do this right now. I think you already understand, but I think it's served. Growl. Grow. Growl.

57:18 I'll do it first. Grow. What do you feel? Do it just. Breath and then.

57:27 Uh I feel I mean there's a sort of shielding. There's like abdominal contraction. There's a level of tension that's created. But now when you're excelling, when you see a fighter

57:41 Yeah. That tension is created to keep this structure in place so it's safe when producing force. So this is why when I'm lifting a Heavy sandbag or when I'm coming out of the hole of a squat.

57:54 Or when I'm deadlifting, sometimes this is Will come out. Because It's my breath. helping me create a strong enough structure to not buckle under the load I'm lifting. Rather than me

58:05 Holding the breath. And not that again, not that this is bad. If you're a lifter and you're doing this for your maximal lifts, I'm not telling you to just desert. The valve maneuver. But I do believe that if you learn to breathe while lifting, this is one of the fundamental things. That will keep you safe while lifting, that will help you progress well and will help you decrease the amount of stress that it has on your body over time. Yeah.

58:27 Okay. Cool. And lastly, the biggest thing I think is it'll help you get rid of excess tension that you're holding in your body when you don't need to have that tension. A lot of people deal with that. Let's say I'm working on that.

58:38 Let's say I decide the box squat. Can give that a go. Safety squat yoke or something. Mm-hmm. Sandbag. All right.

58:47 Probably do some isolated stuff. So ATG split squat. For somebody who's listening, let's say maybe they're in a similar boat. Or maybe their back is fine, but they want to get stronger using these movements. What type of Set rep

59:03 programming do you give to someone who's not an elite powerlifter? There's no need. To do Anything. Under

59:12 Five or six reps. And in if that's the case. You don't have to do that because over time, as you work with sets of five, six, eights, tens, right. Over time you'll naturally be able to get stronger. with those in those rep schemes with those loads.

59:26 And I'm not saying that heavy lifting isn't good. I do things that are three, four, five reps when I'm working with everyone's. I still do that. But the problem that happens with a lot of people when they get into a program that's focused on the load and the heaviness of the load. They start doing things they shouldn't do to lift that love. Yeah. So if we're trying to focus on maintaining our breath. There's gonna come a point where you're working with a load that you're gonna find you won't be able to breathe well. You won't be able to inhale and exhale at the faces of the lift that you should be.

59:53 But you're s also You manage to lift it and you're like, Okay, I'm strong enough for this. No, you'll you so you'll add on more. And then you'll get to a place where you're holding your breath. And then you'll get to the place where All the times that anything's really happened for me.

1:00:05 Creating a little bit. too much tension. I was holding my breath and something happens. Right, not when I was breathing with it. So that's why I don't necessarily if you're not someone who's powerlifting

1:00:16 And if you're in the gym, you just want to lift and get stronger. I don't want you to focus on the weight on the bar. Yeah. I want you to focus on the quality of the movement. I'm by myself in my garage, so I definitely have no one to impress. So what would you suggest then? Would it be Two, three sets of blank with like X number of minutes in between, because like we were chatting a little bit and this is nothing. Obviously compared to what You do, but when I was my strongest, like back in the day, which is like probably ninety six when I was in China of all places. Yeah.

1:00:45 I was doing sets of let's just call it Six to ten. But closer to six in pretty much all movements with like five to ten minute rests, right? I was taking really long rest intervals. And generally hitting It was split push pull legs and it was

1:01:05 I was hitting each of those workouts once a week, roughly. What would you prescribe as a starting point, like for me with Sets and reps and rest intervals and things like that. Any thoughts on how to make it? I like people doing things for sets of well not sets.

1:01:23 Reps. Six, ten, twelve. I would say doing that kind of rep scheme. So what I would do is On certain days, if you're doing two times a week in the gym One of those days. Have your movements doing maybe

1:01:34 Sets of six or so. And I would also split it up like this too. When I lift I kinda do upper and lower body. I don't just break it up into like a push pull, whatever, I do kind of full body stuff, right? So if you're doing upper and lower on a certain day.

1:01:47 For one day for your upper body movements, if you're doing sets of Six or so. Two sets of ten on your lower body. Eight to ten. Higher up. Okay. So this day, let's just say it's Monday. Yeah. Upper body would be six. Rep sets. Six. Lower body would be ten. Higher rep ten. Yeah.

1:02:03 twelve reps per set. On another day, if you're doing a full body day again. I would say for the upper body, that would now be higher repetitions and your lower body would be lower repetitions. If you're doing two full body days. Now, I think you said you're doing push, pull Like legs, right? And I'm not married to that. It's just

1:02:22 Easy for me to remember. There's so many ways to set things up. But For minimum effective dose, if you can do Each body part.

1:02:31 twice per week. Which you can probably do. in two to three training days. It doesn't have to be a five minute week split. Literally you can do All this Two or three days in the gym.

1:02:40 For two days, that's how I would split it up. For three days. You get a little bit more leeway with volume, and three days is nice because If you, for example Um

1:02:49 Your first day if you Find that you do better having slightly lower amounts of movements. then you can split that volume into three separate days rather than having that volume in two days instead. Does that make sense? Can you give me an example? So

1:03:02 If you did. five upper body movements and five lower body movements on one day. And then Day two you did. Five lower and five up. If you're finding that you that's too much for you to do in a two day period, you could take some of that from me. I for whatever reason handle volume very poorly.

1:03:19 Instead of Totally taking down that workload. Split that workload into three days. So then you're doing what is it? We just mentioned twenty total sets.

1:03:29 Do six sets, six sets, and then On another day it's gonna be eight sets of that movement. You split that volume to three days. You're good.

1:03:38 But you can still do that rep scheme where You hit the each body part twice a week. You manage to do Some slightly lower repetition, some slightly higher repetition. You're good.

1:03:47 Mm-hmm. And then what about rest between sets? That's variable because some people like to have actual rest between sets, but then you can also If you're doing on a certain day, let's say for your upper body movements that you do some push and some pull. you could superset those. Yeah. So when I say antagonistic, you do

1:04:06 Instead of resting, you would do a pushing movement. Then you could literally just let's say you do a push. Then you do a row. You could do that back to back because the recovery of each movement doesn't necessarily get too much in the way of each other. There will be some stress from the weight you did in that specific first set. But the muscles being worked when you're doing that push movement do not get as much in the way as the muscles you're doing work in the pull movement.

1:04:28 So You could rest if you wanted to. but you could also super set it. And one thing that I think A concept that I want people to take from this'cause I I know how people love

1:04:38 To have that specific program that they do, which is good. But Learn to add an element of Way into this. Learn to have an element of freedom into this. So

1:04:50 If you feel like you want to rest for like a minute or two in between a set, rest. Do you feel like you want a super set? Super sad. I think that

1:04:58 You can get very specific with it. But when you start making too many stringent rules within it. It can for some people become quite daunting and monotonous. So Something that I do is like

1:05:08 When I'm doing like a squat, I'll sometimes do some rope flow in between. Just to get some rotation that I can do. Just just to stand in for the audience here. Yeah. Do you think you could have gotten away with that? earlier in your training, right? Have you laid such an incredible foundation of strict, maybe monotonous Training that now You're like, Okay, like this body's not really going anywhere. So if I wanna do some

1:05:32 Sudoku in between my overhead presses. Do some rope flow over here. Maybe a little pantomiming in between this set and that set that you can get away with it. in a way that might not serve a beginner or intermediate. Or is that am I off base there? So the reason let me tell mention the reason why I do road flow in between. It's not because it's part of work out, it's because it helps me feel better. Yeah. When I put so much compression on myself, there's level of like

1:05:59 For me. stiffness that I feel from that set. Mm-hmm. The reason why I do the rope flow is to help me kind of undo that stiffness before my next set. That's the reason why I do it. I don't do it because it's like a super efficient part of the workout, but I do it because it helps me feel better for the next set I'm about to do. When I do a lot like And other people notice this too, but when you do a lot of compressive things back to back. You start to kinda feel this lower back tension and stiffness and this

1:06:24 Overall stiffness that you're creating for the workout. Yeah. The stiffness isn't necessarily a bad thing if you have something, especially like you don't have to do rope flow in between sets, too. You do that post workout or later. That will be something that really will help you feel better. But the thing is is like When you Only do that.

1:06:40 you then walk around with that stiffness that you've created and you have nothing to undo it. This is one of the reasons why a lot of people We'll work out. Then after their workout they'll do dead hangs. Because they feel like oh I'm getting this decompression in my spine from everything and that can feel better, but The thing is is like you can get that same decompression.

1:06:58 From the rope. you could get the same type of decompression from swimming. Swimming does the same thing. But The reason why I was saying all this is like Have a structure to what you do, but allow yourself to kind of

1:07:09 add things to it or subtract things to it. when you want. The only thing that's gonna help you get bigger and stronger is progressive overload over a long period of time. Yeah. It's not going to be the magic set and ret scheme that you're doing right now. It's going to be what you're doing being progressed over years. Yeah. And for people listening, because I think

1:07:29 One criticism that I get a lot is like, you didn't get this big from rope flow. Nah, I didn't get this big for real, well. But at the same time, I could have gotten this big. While feeling better for years. Yeah.

1:07:42 If I had. the other practices that I do, like the rope, the clubs, the kettlebells, if I had had those practices included, it's not about getting big. It's about Getting Strength and muscle but

1:07:53 moving well throughout the whole process. Yeah. Not Focusing on the way you look. but moving like a fridge and feeling like you're old. Yeah. That's not the goal.

1:08:04 Right. I mean I don't think anyone Sets out to gain muscle and strength. With also the goal of feeling like they're eighty years old. No one wants that, but that's where a lot of people are. And a lot of people

1:08:16 They'll assume that that's just part of the process. Yeah. And Doesn't need to be. Doesn't really it doesn't need to be at all. Yeah, you definitely need to hang out with Jersey. You'll enjoy hanging out with Jersey and Yala. They're fine. I'm excited. No, for what you told me about them. I'm gonna like them. Yeah, you guys you guys will get a kick out of each other because for instance, like Jersey, he also does decompression, but usually hanging upside down and like And like boots? boots, but he does some like really heavy weights. Like he'll hold on to like a hundred pounds in addition to hanging upside down. Anyway, he's got his own like

1:08:48 approach to things for very, very short duration, like five to ten seconds. But I think you'll find a lot of his stuff thought provoking, but he is All about movement. And he tracks everything meticulously with his trainees, but he'll also look at their gate and he's like I want to get you to the point where you walk like a dancer.

1:09:05 He's like that. definitely one of his explicit goals is to like watch gate and movement in that way. And when I told them that I was doing and I think there's a place for this, I'm gonna continue to do it, but You know, is doing biking for exercise and like what his thoughts were and he's like and he was like terrible. He's like He's like, That's stupid. So stupid. And Jersey, I know.

1:09:25 paraphrasing here, but he was like, If you want to ride a bike because it's fun to ride from point A to point B, he's like, Great. He's like, If you want to ride for fifty miles because you enjoy it, great. He's like if you're doing it though as this like monotonous punishment and training, he's like terrible. It's like don't do that. Yeah. I think that but you know, I want to mention Don't lose your train of thought, but I think that's the what he's mentioning there in terms of relation to Gate. It's a very smart way to try to think about some of your training. Because When a lot of people think about the squat.

1:09:52 When a lot of people get their feet set. They usually have their feet out at an angle. Slightly pointed out. Slightly pointed out, right? Slightly point out toes. You're creating this. Force upward. with that barbell so you're learning how to have force

1:10:04 coming from the ground through, but you're just going straight up and down. Now The thing to think about. And the reason why I mentioned this is when you do watch a lot of People that develop those capacities won't and a lot of them walk through space.

1:10:18 It's almost like they're walking in a squat position. With their feet. They're walking with their feet out like this. Yeah, they got a Charlie Chaplin Now. Yeah. The thing is is like you'll see some pro NBA players walking like this. You you you see a lot of that.

1:10:32 I'm not gonna necessarily say that that's Bad? What I'm gonna say is Over time. I used to kind of walk like that.

1:10:39 But as I started thinking about what my feet were doing during everything I was doing, and I started thinking about doing certain exercises that would potentially improve my gate. Over time now my feet face forward when I walk, and I'm not intentionally doing this just My directionality through space is now forward. I'm not fighting

1:10:57 Myself trying to navigate forward with feet that are outwards. That's not efficient. I'm not saying everybody needs to walk with their toes forward, but I'm saying when you start thinking about ways to Adjust your gait with your movement. So this could be the bilateral movements like the ATG split squat. That could be using a sled. I think sleds are super powerful and the unfortunate thing is like

1:11:17 Not everyone has access to a sled, but that is literal. Forward. And backward force production. When you're pushing a sled There's this force that you're learning how to push forward, but you need to have your feet moving you forward too. So you're learning.

1:11:31 Over time how to push a weight forward through space. I think they're super powerful, not just for developing structural strength. but also improving one's gate over time. The way you walk will change. And The rope will help with that too, but that's something to think about, like I don't think most people should be walking with their feet ducked out. And I used to walk like that.

1:11:50 Because Sumo deadlifting? the feet are here on producing force from a foot position like this. Squatting. I'm producing four from a foot position like this. Now when I go and do other things.

1:12:01 That's the way I move through space and that's not efficient. So just because I'm curious and at least long ago found a lot of dividends from doing sumo deadlifts. They're not bad, by the way. Sumo deadlas.

1:12:17 Any thoughts on Common mistakes. sort of uh principles that you've Refined over time, or like okay.

1:12:27 Here's some of my pre-flight checklists that might be helpful to people. And can you just describe well so it's called sumo deadlift because It's a deadlift. You're pulling a barbell loaded with plates off the ground. But your legs are wide. Your hands are in between your legs going down to grab the barbell.

1:12:43 So you look like a yokozuna, like squatting down and getting ready to do the whole suma thing, hence the name. What recommendations might you have for people who are hoping to improve their sumo deadlift? There's this funny thing within the powerlifting community where there are powerlifters who are like they look at the CO deadlift and they say, That's not a real deadlift. Yeah. That's not a conventional deadlift. Conventional deadlift would be like knees inside the arms. Yeah. And

1:13:07 It's it's just so funny to me. We had a And aside, called me Ungleich. He has the highest total ever in powerlifting of around Think I'm gonna butcher this, but I think it's like twenty six fifty. At

1:13:19 Two, I think he was two seventy five when he did this. So he wasn't even like at the heaviest weight class, he was two seventy five. Twenty two years old. This is for the three. Alright, so he squatted. Four seventy kilograms, two sixty kilogram bench. four seventy kilogram deadlift.

1:13:35 on an eight or nine days. That's So he squatted and deadlift at the thousand and thirty six pounds in the same meet. OH Twentyful age of twenty two years old.

1:13:46 So good Lord. The reason why I'm mentioning this is yet another reason you never start your street fights people. I mean, I doubt you'd pick on this guy, but like people are you just never know. So much stronger, so much younger. It's insane. But The reason why I'm mentioning Colton is because Colton does the sumo deadlift. And Some people roast them for that and they're like it's not conventional. It's like whatever. But when we had him on the show I was like, Colton, why do you see more deadlift? And he was like It feels more natural.

1:14:12 Yeah. And I was like, Yeah, it does. It feels weird to bend down and pick up a barbell implement. In the conventional way for for at least for my body type. Some people with very long arms, a certain like length of their femur, some people feel better with conventional, but the sumo. For me is just Made more sense. because you're getting down in this hip position, you're driving with your legs, it just makes more sense, in my opinion.

1:14:36 So nothing against conventional, nothing against any other deadlift, but The sumo. Now, when doing the sumo deadlift, I think one thing that people really need to focus on is like what their feet are doing. And I think this should be how it should be with every single lift. But When doing the sumo especially, there's a cue that people get, and people get this cue in squatting too, where you'll hear knees push your knees outward. For the squat, you push your knees out so you can have space to get in between your hips when you're squatting. Sometimes when your knees are too far forward.

1:15:01 Some people with their limb lengths don't have the ability to get down to depth. So when you Push your knees out, you provide room. The sumo deadlift, when people say push your knees out, when you push your knees out, you provide room for the barbell to ride up your body. But

1:15:16 The other cube of rooting the feet into the ground. And I learned this cue from Kelly Strett's book Becoming a Supple Leopard back in twenty thirteen. Matt Kelly, yeah. We had we've had him on the show a few times. I I I always mention where I've learned these things because Kelly's awesome. But I learned that from his book. Also learned And the reason why I

1:15:35 Keep my face relaxed when lifting and stuff. I also learned that from his book Supple Leopard, because when he talks about my fast release. shouldn't have a pain face. Real if you relax, it's gonna allow yourself to relax through these movements. But anyway, that's an aside. Rooting your feet into the ground will allow you to have external rotation of the hips.

1:15:52 I mean, we did a little bit of this earlier today, but just describe for people what that actually means. You're in a gym doing a sumo deadlift. You have shoes on. Presumably. What are you doing with your feet and legs. I think something that can help somebody understand this. Is using the hands. Putting your aunt on the table.

1:16:09 And Trying you could actually do this with both hands. Keep your fingers planted in the table and And try to see if you can rip the table apart.

1:16:19 while keeping your fingers where they are like rip the table apart. Now What do you feel when you do that? So in this case you're sort of Externally rotating your hands, even though they're not moving. Yeah. Ripping that table apart. But what do you feel when you do that with your hands? That's actually What do you feel?

1:16:33 I mean I feel a lot of tension in my My arms. I feel a lot of tension in your arms. What do you feel on your shoulder? Shoulders go have gone down. And my lats are engaged. So I mean there's a lot going on. So The shoulder can be compared to the hip, where the hip externally rotates as you're grabbing the ground. The shoulders will have this downward rotation. Right. Like as I do this, I guess.

1:16:54 Depends on if we were doing like a push up, it might even be better right now. If we're doing a push up, what I would expect. Is that this eye of the elbow The inside of of the elbow that let's just call it the eye kind of When you bend your arm it would be in that Crook. Mm-hmm.

1:17:11 would almost certainly rotate. I would imagine there would be some rotation in a push up position. Exactly. Which would then mimic Uh, I guess femur. Exactly. So the reason why I wanted you to do that with your hands is I think that can help some people understand what they should be doing with their feet. Because some meaty hands, my friend. But not want to get slapped with those things. Jesus. Tim? I'm just saying.

1:17:31 Let me let me let me say this. You don't know how happy that makes me feel. Do you know why? Because you've won. No no no no. Over the past, uh jujitsu like and we're gonna come back to the foot thing, but the jujitsu is a martial art that has a lot to do with the hands, the grip. And I've noticed that my hands have gotten bigger because I've purposely started doing more hand type of work this past year. Like the rice bucket. Like the rice bucket. I've been doing a lot of hand work because I started because of all the gripping in the martial art, I started to feel pain. In my fingers. And one thing you you notice with a lot of high level black belt grapplers is their fingers are kind of mangled because of everything that happens over the years. So

1:18:09 I started doing rice back work and a bunch of other things, but my hands, I'm happy you say that because my hands didn't used to be this meaty. Yeah. So thank you. You're welcome. It's working. You're welcome. Okay. Yeah, if this jujitsu or YouTube thing doesn't work out, you know, you could go into one of those Russian slapping competitions. I would never. Yeah, I would never. Not worth not worth the TVI. They would mess me up for sure. I'm not strong enough for that. But I the reason why I wanted people to do that on the table and feel that is because when a lot of people try to do this with the feet. They just grab the ground like this. And like what you were doing in the park initially. They kind of just curl their toes. Like pinch. Yeah. Like pinch. Instead of Pinching slightly and then ripping apart to create. Ripping apart, just to be clear.

1:18:48 Is not straight out to the sides. It's really like Yes. Right. And that rotation's gonna allow the knees to come out and for the sumo deadlift. The knees will pull out because you're getting external rotation of the hips, which will allow you room to drive the hips forward. Let me ask you this, with the Summa Deadlift when you place your feet

1:19:06 Let's just say straight ahead is twelve o'clock. Mm-hmm. And then your toes are getting pointed out. How externally rotated are your feet? to begin with. Are they As far out as you can get them.

1:19:17 And really close to the plates are they That's ten o'clock and two o'clock and then you get That type of Tearing apart.

1:19:28 External rotation. Nowadays my feet would probably be at eleven and one. Okay. The reason why they're at eleven and one is because I have better mobility than I had. So when I do create that torsion, I have more hip mobility to even to to create when I'm moving outward. Some people who don't have that hip mobility.

1:19:46 have to have their feet in a wider position so that they can create enough width. Yeah. To have their knees not be in the way of the bar. Yeah. Right. So that's that's totally dependent on one's hip mobility. But when you get more hip mobility when you're creating that torsion, your your feet angle will change slightly for how comfortable you are in the position. So Whatever position you have right now, there's not like There's a golden position for the level of mobility you currently have. And as that mobility improves and as your ability to create more force improves, that position will adjust. How close to the plates are your toes?

1:20:17 My toes? Oh no, yeah, my toes aren't Like how wide is your status would be another way to put it. It's like ninety degrees. So so when I say ninety degrees I mean my legs are out and my feet are like Or my knees are right below my femurs. So I'm not like I don't have this

1:20:32 You see a lot of people were there. They almost have like this triangle angle with their feet. Yeah, yeah. I have like a box. That's the structure I'm going to do. In the bottom position. You're saying. In the bottom position. Yeah. Yeah. In the bottom position it's like

1:20:44 Boom, boom. From knee to ankle is perpendicular to knee ankle is perpendicular. Yeah. Interestingly enough, you notice like an Ed Cone, he had this this outward, like you'll notice he kind of like. his feet were closer together in his sumo deadlift. Yeah. And he was a a crazy sumo deadlifter, but that's where he found he was able to create the most force. What was his crazy record setting? Deadlifts. Some insane number. What was it like nine nine seventy to two twenty or something? Yeah, it's put it on the screen. Ed Ed Cone's had a lot of records. Yeah, he's had a lot of records. Yeah, I remember getting this book, I'm blanking on the author's name, but it was like

1:21:18 Ed Cohn, the man, the myth, the method. Which was a great book. And there was a photo. You want to talk about people who are well built for their sport. Like you look at Michael Phelps, you're like, Okay, I could swim my whole life. Like My body doesn't look like that guy. Like his ankles are funny and like he is just perfectly built for the sport, right? And there was photo, I don't know if it was Walt Chamberlain or some NBA player who's like Ten foot ten, right? And he's next to Ed Cohen, who's not ten foot ten. He's like five foot five. And they put their hands together and they were the same size.

1:21:48 And I was like, Man, oh man, you could not Design from scratch a better Body for This exact lift. Have you ever met Edco? I don't think I have met Ed. We've had um conversations before. Yeah. But no, I don't think I've met him in person, actually. Okay.

1:22:05 And Is A literal mutant to this day. The last time I I I saw him in person was a few years ago and I mean is it fair to say I mean one of the greatest powerlifters, if not the greatest of all time. I think he He popularized the sport so much, he got so many people into powerlifting. He inspired so many of the greatest minds in powerlifting to this day that like

1:22:28 I don't think no matter what anybody else does in powerlifting, I think Ed Cone is probably still the greatest. And then from there it's like, Well, who has the highest total in that? Like yeah, you know what I mean. And going back to Ed structure. First off, his hands are huge. Like I shook his hand and his hand engulfed my hand. Right. Me being so much taller. It's like he ate my hand with his and made me feel so small. The second thing is the the length of his arms. Yeah. Ed has these his ape index must be off the charts.

1:22:57 He has these orangutan arms, bro. Where it's like. When you look at his sumo deadlift form. It kinda makes some sense with like how how easy. He doesn't. He doesn't, right? So one of the things about the sumo and one of the things about lifting in general. It's finding the best position for your anatomical leverages. Like some people, like for example, a Kelly Stirret.

1:23:17 Lot of time he was squatting with his feet pointed straight forward. creating that torsion, but you look at his lim limb lengths. You could be really good for that. Some people But they have a longer torso. Sometimes that position doesn't do well for them because as they head down into the hole, their body folds. So they need some of them need to have a much wider stance so that when they head down into the hole, they don't have this massive folding of their torso. So it's

1:23:38 Well that's one of the cool things with lifting where You'll see someone like an Olympic lifter with beautiful Mechanics. But then you also really have to pay attention to the way this person is built, and you have to find the best way to move that way through space. With your leverages. Yeah, totally. Makes me think of one of my buddies amazing striker.

1:23:56 used to compete at a very high level and I mean He is like gangly as fuck. That's part of the problem because he would be like a foot taller or he would have like eight inches of additional reach on people. So he would just pummel the hell out of people in the same weight class. But there's certain movements. Like you want that guy to like do bench press.

1:24:14 you're gonna come away with the misperception that he is weak. It's like, no, maybe with that particular movement, sure, it's not very well built for his dimensions. But let him throw like a power jab at your face, like yeah, he's well built for that. Yeah. Just different body types. Let me add this in because I think this is something that can maybe Give me a some people something to explore when it comes to their deadlift movement. When it comes to deadlifting, the things that we think about is like the conventional deadlift.

1:24:45 Well You could also attempt doing like a staggered stand step. So a stagger stance deadlift would mean There's One foot ahead.

1:24:52 One foot behind. The foot behind has the heel elevated slightly. Like a kickstand. Kickstand, it could be called kickstand, stagger stand, steadlift. Now look in that way. You could use either a straight bar, you could use a trap bar. The concepts still hold true. But the reason why I have enjoyed progressing that staggered stance deadlift, and I use a trap bar when I do that.

1:25:12 Is just because for me it feels as if it relates To gate a little bit better than the standard deadlifts do. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do the standard sumo or conventional. But when I'm thinking about creating upward force. How would I jump off of the ground? When I think about that and then I think about Okay, transferring that to a barbell. I wouldn't necessarily jump off of the ground.

1:25:35 in the stance that I'm using in Sumura Conventional. I would do it in this kind of staggered kickstand stance and then pop off. If I were trying to actually create force upwards, that's how I would do it. And I think that that would be Worth one's time to progress. You're not gonna lift as much weight initially.

1:25:51 But over time you can build up some I don't even like saying this because I don't want people to think of it in terms of numbers. I want people to think about the movement, but you can get very strong doing that. And then you're also strong in this stance that can relate to how you'll actually move yourself through space, but now you're creating force with it. Mm-hmm. What are some uh Exercises that you think and a such a

1:26:14 Maybe trite question, but just really incredible bang for the buck exercises. And for instance, for me, and I'm not saying I mean, Paragon of

1:26:26 Exercise expertise, but The Two handed kettlebell swing is just it seems like you get so much from that exercise performed consistently with progressive resistance. Whether that's in terms of loading through a higher volume or increasing the weight. I mean It is just remarkable how much I get out of that exercise, even once or twice a week. It's just astonishing to me continually.

1:26:51 Anything else that you would throw into that type of category. That come to mind. With the condition that You can get somebody to the point where they can perform them safely.

1:27:06 reasonably quickly. I think everyone should own a sandbag. Because Picking up a sandbag off of the ground. Starting light, so you get yourself

1:27:15 Let's say you get a 75 pound bag, you fill it up to 50 pounds, you get yourself to lifting that without any type of discomfort. And one of the reasons why I think that is so beneficial and so useful. Is the way that one will bend down to pick up a sandbag. Because

1:27:31 When you bend down to pick up a barbell, it's this Implement. That's Perfectly symmetrical. Only way that the hands are involved or when they're gripping like this.

1:27:40 You have to get yourself in this neutral position to hinge forward. It it teaches you how to be a a perfect hinge, a perfect lever. But whenever you lift a sandbag. Every sandbag lift has its own It's never the same. because of the nature of the implement. It's this shapely thing that you have to

1:27:59 First off, you have this open palm grip, you have to grip around it. And then you have to Organize your body to lift it safely. Anybody can lift a light sandbag safely. While breathing.

1:28:09 Over time you increase the weight. But I think that's If people learn to to lift sandbags well, That will be something that will actually prepare you to lift well for life because

1:28:18 Your spine isn't in this perfect neutral position as you're doing it. There's slight curvature, and you learn that it is safe. to lift something with some slight rounding of the spine. course with a barbell, you don't do that often unless you're doing something like a Jefferson curl, which I think they're pretty solid, especially if you don't load them. to a crazy extent as you're progressing it, because some people get focused on the load.

1:28:39 By the way, what a Jefferson curl is is it's it's a purposeful rounding of the spine. To lift a barbell off the ground. It's actually the antithesis of I think I'm using the word anti correct, but it's the opposite of what you're taught to do when you deadlift to create a neutral spine. You're literally rounding your back to lift the barbell off the ground. It sounds like a joke, but it's to

1:28:58 Ingrain in your body that My spine is okay getting to this position. Lifting something. But I think a sandbag would be money for people. Just for clarity, are the are you picking it up?

1:29:09 And then dropping it and then picking it up. So a base thing that you could do? Is literally pick it up. So around your stomach? Bring it back down to the ground, you can either drop it or you can lower it back down to the ground. Then there are progressions where now you pick it up.

1:29:23 Launch it up to your shoulder. bring it down to the back to the ground. So you could drop it or you can bring it slowly back down to the ground. And then You good. Pick it up.

1:29:31 Throw it over your shoulder. Pick it up, throw it over the opposite shoulder. It's inherently a rotational throw when you become adept with it. So there are progressions, but the base progression would be literally just

1:29:41 The first thing you would do is you would just do a Sandbag deadlift. Then you would do a lift to the stomach, then you would do a lift to the shoulder, then you would do a throw. And then there's a bunch of things you could do squats, you could do Split squats, you could do Cossack squats, you could do lunges.

1:29:54 Cossacks squats is another one. Typically I've just done that with like a kind of a goblet squat type pole on a kettlebell, but just remarkable how much you get out of that exercise. As you slowly and you know, it was what was wild about it to me. What a funny name, number one.

1:30:08 is I was using it as a warm up for some acrobatic stuff that I was doing way back in the day. I was just using it as a warm up, but I noticed I was getting stronger. Yeah. And so I started adding a little bit of weight. Yeah. A little bit of weight. And I got to the point where I was doing gossip squads. And it's not like this isn't a ton of weight, but it's like with a I don't know, 70 or 80 pound kettlebell. And again the transfer, I was just like Wow, I wasn't even treating this as part of my workout. Yeah. Just over time because I was doing the acrobatic stuff. very regularly. So I was like never doing it to exhaustion. Just that greasing the groove. Yeah. And I was like

1:30:43 What the hell is going on here? How much it transferred. It's a money movement. So I mentioned all those movements because these are all things that you could do throughout the day with a sandbag that you keep by your desk. You could do squats, you could do Some quick lunges, you could bring it up to your shoulder. You could do some quick caustic squats. You could do a reverse lunge. You could literally do all these movements with a sandwich. Bear hugging the Cossack when you're doing the Cossack squat. Yeah. Yeah. And then you go into a Cossack squat position. Yes, absolutely. And with the Cossack Squad specifically.

1:31:14 It's particularly powerful because most people When it comes to Training the adductors. They mainly do that with like the machine in the gym. Yeah. So add actors, guys inside of your thighs. I mean, that's very super like Suzanne Summers.

1:31:28 Thigh master. That's adapters. Right. So if if you're trying to like if you're trying to pop a ball between your knees. Using your adductors. There's a very shady side of the internet of um women popping watermelons with But they're addicts. Oh wow. Yeah, that's I thought I've seen it all. You haven't until you see that. This is gonna be the headline for your episode. Yeah. Yeah. But if you want the straight to do that, right? Cossack SWATs are gonna be great. There are more specific adductor movements like the Copenhagen plant. You're saying most people who train their adductors are usually one of those machines.

1:32:03 If they ever use that machine, sparsely. They use that sparsely typically. And that ends up being a very weak link. Just for people who might wonder, because those machines are very popular and they're usually monopolized by any Not to pay with a broad brush. Like a few women who are just sitting on there for like Hours, it seems, working this stuff, right? Why is that a weak link compared to doing something like a Cossack squad or something else? You do get some tension on those tissues when you're doing a typical squat, but not an insane amount. When you're doing a sumo deadlift, you also get some tension on that area, but not as much.

1:32:36 As when you're Isolating it in a bilateral fashion with the Cossack squad. Along with that in the Cossack Squat, you get more length of those tissues when you get to depth of the Cossack squat than you would. I'll give another bad visual for people. So people are like, What the hell are they talking about? Cossack squat. So imagine the most stereotypical Thank you Russian.

1:32:57 Arms folded. Like like kicking out from side to side. And then freeze frame. On the on the ground. Where like one leg is fully extended to one side.

1:33:06 And he or she is basically squatting Like ass to the other heel on the other side. Okay. Cossack squad. Yeah. Yeah. And

1:33:15 One thing I find interesting about that is For a long time I was really trying to get good at causing squats, and it wasn't until I was allowing myself to breathe when I got down into that position that I actually got there safely and came out. What have you found most effective for improving ank mobility, right? Cause for a lot of people, if they try to do a Cossack squat, well, do you have heel up or heel down? Heel down. Heel down. Okay. So for a lot of folks, if they try to do that, they're gonna fall backwards if they don't have the ankle mobility, right? If the knee can't travel kind of over the toes. Yeah. Any thoughts on Developing that?

1:33:50 A great conversation for you would be Ben Patrick, too. Okay. Because because what I'm gonna tell you is this is why I find that I I've been so lucky to learn from so many people because the only reason why I'm able to first had the level of mobility I do is because of a lot of things that I've learned from these different people. So for example, the ankle mobility you're talking about right there, some things that helped with that were the ATG split squat that I was telling you about, which is a movement that again, he popularized. But That front leg, I hope that when this podcast comes out, maybe there's an image of an ATG split squat that can be pulled up so people can see for sure. That the front leg that's doing the split squat. Over time, there are regressions to that movement, by the way. So everything we've talked about, if you find that you're not getting there,

1:34:33 Regress the movement. Regress the range of motion. Tell me if I'm getting it roughly right. I don't and also I have his ATG device that is like plate loading for Wrist work, extensor work, grip work, which is fantastic. What does ATG stand for? ATG, his company, stands for Athletic Truth Group. You think it starts down for Astrograss. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I didn't see it coming. Okay, got it. Athletic truth group. Athletic truth group. All right, got it. Yeah. Uh and and Ben is a guy. One of the reasons why I appreciate Ben so much is because he's a very open minded individual. Like

1:35:09 You'll run across so many people in these different fitness spaces and they're so dogmatic gung ho about their system. And if you do this system, this is what's gonna happen when you do this. It's not good. And this is what's gonna happen when you do this. It's like everything is their system. But the people that I tend to really appreciate are the people that They may have some things that they do. but they can also see the strength in many other things, right? And Ben is that type of person where he he's also someone who continues to learn, you know, he he has these this what he's done, but Ben is continuously learning and applying new things to the people that he works with and himself and finds benefit. And it's one of those things where he's in the constant Growth rather than

1:35:47 Finding the negatives of everything that everyone's doing. Right. To protect his predefined fiefdom. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So look at Let me throw out something. Tell me how close this is. So there is an exercise of all places, it was actually given to me by a Physio in Sweden. Who I chanced upon. It was like because my back has been Bothering me for so long. And Everybody meets like oh.

1:36:10 You gotta try my friend's blah, right? Or this person can do this. Or you have to try my friend the acupuncturist. Like everybody's got a suggestion. God bless them. But it ends up after a while, you become a little tone deaf to it. Cause I'm like, all right, look. I can talk to your tarot car reader and I can talk to your Qigong person. I'm just not sure it's gonna do anything. But this physio ended up working with a lot of professional fighters. That's not me. And Professional soccer players and he really knew his stuff. I just lucked out because this drunk guy had a party was like, You should meet my physio. I'm like, Yeah, sure I should meet your physio. And then I just had to wide open the day the next day and I was like, Fuck it. All right, sure, I'll meet your physio. And uh Sebastian's his name ended up being excellent in Stockholm.

1:36:49 And he gave me some very basic exercises. Again, with the intention of remediating some of the back pain and strengthening. And one of them was Elevated front foot split squats. Very lightly loaded. Going to

1:37:04 Fully down to the bottom position where the front knee is way over the front foot toes. And basically ass is on the heel. Three second pause at the bottom. back up and doing like sets of Six to eight. That's a regression for the ATG split squad. That's a regression for the flat ground ATG split squat. And

1:37:23 To go back to what you're asking about the ankles. Why is that really good for the ankles? Do you know the the position that the ankle gets into is this deep? position that you can when you own that position. You lower it to the ground.

1:37:34 And now when you own that position of the ankles. you apply that to a Cossack squat, you're able to get to full depth of a Cossack because of where the knee the knee is over the tone. You're in deep ankle dorsiflexion. That's how these things work, where dorsiflexion just Pull your toes towards your nose. Exactly. Or yeah. Toes towards your knees. That's dorsal flexion. The thing is like when you find that you don't have the mobility for a specific movement, there are so many ways to regress it. With a Cossack squat. You could do a classic squat with a wall behind. So the wall can help guide you down.

1:38:05 Unloaded, wall behind, Cossack Squat, you can even angle the foot outwards a little bit to allow yourself a little bit more give with that knee. Can also add some heel. You can also put it on a box if you need to, and then slowly regress it down. And I want to mention. The concept of regression is what got me out of knee pain. is what got me out of like pretty much all pain. But specifically I want to mention these because

1:38:28 When I was in my ear twenties, I had a menasectomy. Partial meniscus removal, I can't remember which knee now, I think it was my left. It's something that happened in Jiu Jitsu. I also when I was younger had Oshkad Slaughter. And I was a soccer player. So when I got into my ear twenties, like I couldn't sprint.

1:38:43 I felt like I was probably gonna have trash knees for the rest of my life. I couldn't run without pain. At all. So let alone run, absolutely couldn't sprint. Couldn't jump. I was doing squats and stuff and there was some pain I was having, so I was using knee sleeves. So I was pretty certain that

1:38:58 At this point, I just need to make sure to keep him pretty strong, but like sprinting, et cetera, it's not gonna be part of the system for me. That's when I came across some of Ben stuff back in like Twenty nineteen or twenty eighteen, I think. Came across some of his stuff on Instagram.

1:39:12 Start regressing it, doing like the simplest regression. So a an ATG split squad on a box. There's this uh pulse movement that you do where you just have this very small range of motion with the knee where you're just putting yourself in slight knee flexion, coming out, pulsing it, driving a lot of blood to the knee area. And I would progress these things over time. After four or so months I was able to get into full deep knee positions that I was never able to get into without pain before.

1:39:37 And then when I started doing things like running, I was able to run without pain. And then I started sprinting without pain, but it started with Regression. Mm-hmm.

1:39:48 Wait. So the reason why I'm saying that is very princess like Sneezer Man. I didn't want to let it out. If I let it out, it would be disgusting. So when you hold it in, it turns into this mousey squeal. Let's keep that in there. That that's Let's keep that in there. If I have to sneeze again, I'll show you what the big one looks like just so I can save myself. My gosh. But I say this. Because Regressions are the name of the game for all this. If you have pain doing something

1:40:15 There is a way to regress it and you need to own the regression before you progress. I just wanna This chronic back pain has been one of the biggest challenges of my life. 'cause I've always seen myself as athletic. I've always been able to like take a kicking

1:40:30 And then get back on the horse and get back to athleticism and this experience where this pain at such a pivotal cornerstone piece of your body is tied into like every movement. When you sleep. Like there's no escaping it.

1:40:48 psychologically, physically Emotionally it has been such a difficult experience and giving me so much sympathy for people in chronic pain. It's like if you have not been in Serious chronic pain. Like It is impossible to understand what it's like.

1:41:04 Until you're there. And I would say the one mantra of sorts that'll has allowed me to start digging out of that hole. And I use d a different term for myself. I don't remember where I got it. But it was just like scale it down. And it's the same idea.

1:41:21 It's just like okay. Let's just say hypothetically, okay, I'm I might need this surgery in the elbow. Okay, great. I can't do X number of push ups, okay, fine. Do one tenth of X number of pushups. Okay, you can't do

1:41:33 Whatever it might be. Well, Barbell puts too much torque in the elbow. Okay, fine. Let's use dumbbells. But the rule is like you can't do nothing. You have to scale it down. And maybe you omit exercises, sure. But it's like train around it, train around it, train around it. It's like

1:41:48 For instance, the box squad, great example. Jersey is like the alt Jersey Gregor echo I keep mentioning. is like the ultimate master of Regressions. To use your word, because he he'll have someone, like they'll do a squat and like they'll go down eight inches and he's like, That's it. And they're like, No, but I do like below parallel in the gym and he's like, You shouldn't. Yeah, you should've. Exactly. And he's just like, Okay, like your max depth is whatever I'm making this number uh this number up, but is like thirty six inches off the ground. And they're like, That's a joke. And he's like, That's your assignment.

1:42:16 He's really funny too,'cause I'm at one point I was like, So you're suggesting and he's like, No, I'm not suggesting. I am telling you And it feels like a waste of time. to start off in where he would start people, but as They develop the right mechanics. And then pain free.

1:42:36 Progress. And it takes like weeks, maybe even months to get back to where they think they should be. And then lo and behold, they're so much stronger. They own the position, all these eggs and pains. Go away. So the this like You can't do nothing, but you can scale it down or like regress it, right? Yes. And the other thing I'll mention just for people who may be in a similar position to myself, where they have a lot of low back stuff, the other reason that Sebastian

1:43:03 prescribed the front foot elevated split squat was to avoid hyperloridosis, right? Like overarching of the low back. Yeah. I have a lot of thoracic mobility issues, so I tend to flare out. And arch and he was like, Okay, let's mitigate that by elevating the front foot. Yeah.

1:43:24 All right. Cool. Dig it. I wanna mention I Ben he has an app And on that app.

1:43:30 He puts all his stuff there for monthly payment for people. So if you guys are in Ben mentions that people can do this, so I'm I'm gonna mention this too. You could go on there. You could screenshot the movements. You could cancel.

1:43:42 Literally. I have a program there too in this martial arts section. And you can literally go there and you can just Take it all. If you want to. But the reason why I mentioned that is because All their regressions are right there.

1:43:52 If you're looking for a way to regress all these movements. That's all there. There's also in that school community, but Just Take the regressions and be patient with those regressions. Cause one of the reasons that I was held back for so long was because I thought I was better than I was.

1:44:08 I've been playing soccer for like sixteen years. I've always seen myself as an athlete, so going to do some of these things in these simple regressions. I was just like, no, I can move on to the last chapter. No, I should be able to. And then I'd always find myself in pain. I'd always find myself moving backwards. And it wasn't until I just Realized hey

1:44:27 Be a beginner with this. start with the regressions, own those, and then slowly progress upward. But then I was able to make all the progress to where I am now. So It's a big shift.

1:44:37 And I think This is the last thing I'll mention. I think one of the reasons why this is hard for some people that lift or that have already been training for a bit. Is because Traditional lifting

1:44:47 It's kinda easy. In the sense that if you get strong with the shoulder press, you just increase that weight week by week. Bicep curl, increase that weight a little bit, you get this big payoff very, very quickly when you see that weight going up. But when it comes to Halistic movement.

1:45:02 In some of these ranges. you'll realize that you have some weak links that you have to work on with potentially no weight. And that's not as fun as just doing the heavy shoulder press. You know what I mean? Getting the payoff. Yeah, yeah. And I I mean I would also say it's like you can get away, at least I'll personalize it. I think this is true for a lot of people, but like Just because you can lift more weight than your friends? Does not mean your form is good.

1:45:26 I don't think my form was the worst in the world, but we were talking about like ninety six when I was probably my biggest and strongest and arguably fattest, but wasn't that fat but where I was doing like four hundred pound ish back squats for like a set of ten. Now In retrospect, should I have been doing that? Probably not. And

1:45:46 when I, you know, mentioned earlier, I was like, Oh yeah, probably three, four years ago, whenever it wasn't that back squat workout when I hurt myself, I was probably going too low. And having that change in the Spinal position with like a butt wink. And I think that probably contributed to it. And I'm sure there are people out there who are like Tim Ferris can't even do a goddamn squat. I knew it, that guy's an idiot.

1:46:06 What I would say is You could be right. Number one. Number two is Get video.

1:46:14 Of your technique and have somebody who actually knows what they're doing, like a very high level competitor, look at that technique. And chan it's not as good as you think it is. Do you know what I mean? And then there comes a point where it's like all right, I've bent the paper clip so many times. Boom, I have an injury. And now it's a just a wake up call. It's like all right, let's start from scaling it back.

1:46:35 From the fundamentals swallow my pride Take my ego down a notch. and like work it back up, which is very hard to do psychologically. Really tough. And it's like there's so many parallels that I see here. It's like with Jersey, it's like, man, you have to check your ego at the door because You might walk in. He doesn't care. Like he really does. He's so salty. He just like you could be world champion in X Y and Z and he'll be like, Okay, you're gonna start with twenty pound doubles and you're like

1:47:02 What'd you say? Yeah. It's like twenty pound dumbbells. Yeah. Because yeah, you shouldn't be doing this with more than twenty pound dumbbells. And people are just like What? Yeah, he doesn't even compute. But then with these micro progressions.

1:47:16 as he would call them. It's it is incredible, like I was saying to you, uh He had this Vietnam vet with a number of fused vertebra who had been walking around on body brace, could not bend in any direction. Got him to the point where he's doing stiff legged deadlifts with three fifteen. Off an elevated platform and continued doing that for decades. I mean it's unreal.

1:47:37 And similarly And I haven't seen this because I haven't really been doing this term, you know, in your in the notes that I had for this conversation, it's not my term, but I like the term, which is micro dosing movement. Mm-hmm. I've only played with that with a few things like slacklining.

1:47:55 And it is incredible what your body can end up doing. with like three to five minutes a day. of Slack line. You do not need in fact one could argue you shouldn't do really long sessions. What are some other examples of microdosing movement because As I get older more and more, yes, you want to be strong.

1:48:18 Yes, I agree with Pavel, like strength is kind of the mother attribute in a lot of ways. Yes, you want to have muscle mass because of sarcopenia and all this stuff as you get older. That's all true. And Fundamentally, we are evolved as bodies to move in space. Like our brains are evolved to manage that interface. And

1:48:38 I find myself hungering for more and more athletic movement. So what are some other ways to to microdose movement that might kind of produce benefits and you can take that however you want to take it. That are surprising to folks. I think one of the simplest things one can do is Start

1:48:57 Introducing different shapes of your spine. Primarily a shape that I think many of us are scared about, which is like Spinal flexion. Spinal flexion, reaching over, touching your toes with a rounded back. Exactly. But let me actually just rewind real quick because

1:49:13 I want to mention, you know. Pavel talks about greasing the groove. I got introduced to micro dosing by a friend of mine, Corey Slechinger. I think he's like Just to be clear, microdosing movement. Microdosing movement. Not not micro not micro dosing psilocybin, although that's fun, but microdosing movement. Corey is I don't know if he's working with the Phoenix Suns now, but he was like the director of performance, I think, for the Suns recently. So I know he's working with an NBA team. But He when he talked to us about it, you know, he was having a lot of his NBA athletes

1:49:43 he would have them do a little bit of movement before games, a little bit of movement after games, and he would figure out ways for them to have movement sprinkled into their day so that they always felt good. Because what happens with some athletes is like, They have to have this extensive warm up routine. Get their bodies ready. And these are athletes, by the way. So if an athlete needs this extensive warm up routine to get ready for game day. somebody who's like sitting at a desk or just working or whatever, like The amount of prep you might need to get ready to move is

1:50:10 Far too much. The goal of microdosing movement, or greasing the group, as Paul puts it. Is to make it so These different movements just become a part of who you are and what you do. You don't need to prepare. to bend your spine down into a flex pattern and pick something off the ground because you're just healthy and safe. You feel healthy and safe doing it.

1:50:29 Now The thing I'll also mention here is that there are many really smart people who are against some of the things like Jefferson curls, like Stew McGill. Doesn't like it. Stu doesn't like it.

1:50:40 And I would agree. to the sense of People who haven't regressed the movement. Enough.

1:50:47 If you just rush into something like a Jefferson curl that we were just talking about. Were you have deep spinal flexion, you pick up a barbell or something off the ground. That's gonna Cause you some issue, especially if you don't feel safe doing it. You're gonna hold your breath, you're gonna force yourself into that position, and then you'll tweak something, and then you'll say, This is a bad position or a bad movement.

1:51:07 But when you learn to breathe through movement with no weight. Like I was talking about like Let's say you just You decide that I'm going to Pick that ball off the ground.

1:51:16 A few times a day. Flexing my back and going out to the ground. I'm going to Inhale when I go down and exhale when I go up. I'm gonna make this myself own this movement. Doing that with no weight initially for most people is gonna feel fine.

1:51:28 And then as you Improve that. You're like, okay. Can I do that with a Six pound kettlebell? Can I do that with a

1:51:36 twenty pound kettlebell? Can I do that with a thirty pound kettlebell? Like Can I organize my body to lift this safely in this position? And then you own that position because it's no longer foreign to you. Now you're no longer flexion intolerant. But when you're someone who has avoided these different ranges of motion with the spine, whether it's

1:51:53 Deep flexion, extension, etc. And then you go into a workout or you try doing some weighted movement and then you tweak something. You think that these are bad movements or bad ranges, but the thing is that you just Didn't regress it enough. And you didn't spend time with the most basic forms of those movements.

1:52:10 So When it comes to microdosing, one of the ways to make micro dosing easy for you is to make your environment serve you. This is why. And people will just some people might just think I'm some fitness, not furthest. But I keep equipment around my area, around my desk.

1:52:25 I have a kettlebell sitting there. I have a club sitting there. I have a 100-pound sandbag by my desk, by my work desk. I also have a gripper on the table so that if I'm doing something on my my laptop to one side, I can hit that gripper up a little bit. I have these things just sitting around to encourage me to touch them. Because if they're not in front of me, I am not going to do them. All this hand stuff, you give me that compliment on my hands, bro, it's because I have grip equipment. Everywhere. I cannot. I have it in my car. I have it on my podcast desk. I have it on my work desk. I have it in the kitchen. I have it everywhere. I can't wait for you to I think you already saw the video, but to take another look at the Abrahangs of Amy Abrahansons. Yeah. Because then you could just have I mean you could do it off the back of like a

1:53:12 set of stairs. I could I do at home. But if you get like a hangboard and don't overdo the hangboard, people, that is the perfect way to blow apart your tendons and ligaments. Take it easy. But That's something you can sprinkle in so easily. I sprinkled that in. My rice bucket sits in front of my TV. So That's the thing.

1:53:31 And just for people who are wondering what the hell we're talking about the rice bucket, imagine like old badly dubbed Chinese Kung Fu movies. Where they like shoot their like they make their hands into spears, like shoot it into a bucket of rice and like turn their hands into different movements to toughen up their hands and their grip and so on. It would be a version of that. A lot of baseball players do that too. They knew what they were talking about. Yeah, exactly. They knew what they were doing. A lot the a lot of the stuff isn't new. I'm not making this stuff up. People have known this stuff for centuries because it works. Yeah. But Would I do the rice bucket if I had to like pull out the bucket of rice from my garage every single time? Of course not. No, I'd have to keep it. in the vicinity of something that I already do stuff. So that when I go by it I'm like

1:54:11 I can do this for a quick minute as we're watching something and then go back. I have For example, there's this stool called a Hunkerin stool. By the way, you don't need a Hunkerin stool. You could just have a low seat. Hunkering stool. Hunkering H U N K E R I N stool. It was a mate. This guy's name is Casey. He owns this company Hunker and Stool. It's a low springy seat. People will see if they ever watch any of my videos, you'll see me sitting on a Hunkeran store. I saw one of those in your videos. It's a low springy seat. So now you sit down. You just sit down in a squat position. You sit down in a low squat position. Okay, right. So I notice you have these low mats here that like maybe people might sit on for meditation. But you have these things that will encourage you to get lower to the ground.

1:54:49 So the sandbag, I also sit down on the sandbag as it's low to the ground. And that encourages me to get down in this low position, this low squatted position to become comfortable there. So now I'm not uncomfortable getting down to the ground, which is an essential thing that we need. You know, like Some of us only get down to the ground when we're doing martial arts. Some of us probably can't remember the last time we purposefully went to underground On our own volition.

1:55:12 Maybe you fell. But Can you become comfortable going down and coming up? Because now if like maybe you do fall. It's not as much of a struggle for you to figure out the puzzle of getting off the ground. It's actually not even a puzzle. You just can't. Well, Kelly, you mentioned Kelly Starret, who Yeah. You know, I go go way, way back. And we actually were

1:55:31 in Japan together at the same time and went on this amazing trip with a with a group of guys, but On that trip. I mean both of us it's kind of obvious when it's pointed out. But In Japan, if you're going

1:55:45 to traditional in spending time in those types of environments, you are getting up and down all the time. and you are sitting cross legged and you are getting up and you're basically doing like Turkish get up light. All the time.

1:56:01 You are constantly getting from that. Sitting on the floor position to fully standing. And every once in a while though these are harder and harder to find, like you've got a squat toilet. It's like That's it. And I remember asking One of my friends when I was fifteen,'cause I'd never seen a squat toilet. It was my first time out of the US. I'm like, what the hell is this?

1:56:21 And I went to like a baseball game and all they had was squat toilets. And I remember asking my buddy, like fifteen also, I'm like What do your old people do? And he's he just started laughing. He's like, They've been doing it forever. They have no problem. And I was like wow. Can you imagine what would happen? Like how many ER visits and ambulances you need if suddenly that were put in like a US stadium? Like, forget about it. But the fact of that. greasing the groove, right? It's not like these eighty year old Japanese people are doing

1:56:47 tons of Jefferson curls and Turkish get ups, but they are Sitting down, getting up, sitting down, getting up many, many times a day in a lot of cases. And even just that aspect of sitting on the ground, think about the position that the back gets in, the deep knee flexion that you're getting. And many of these people can like just comfortably sit in the Sesa position without a problem. The position of the ankles, the position of the knees, all these areas when getting up and down off the ground, how healthy that is for your joints and your movement. That's why it's like instead of thinking about all of this as like Exercise

1:57:17 How can we build our environment? the the places where we go, even if you're at a cubicle at work. Can you put certain things in there that can help you Encourage you to move a little bit more. If you do that, that will make a lot of this stuff so much easier because it's less about

1:57:33 How do we program this? And more about Let's just touch this a few times a day. After you become more comfortable sitting down in that low position a little bit more. Picking up with that with the rounded back. Just

1:57:45 Casually picking up that sandbag. You're not doing these things while warming up. You're just doing them. They're what you do. Then When you want to go progress it, it's even easier because this is just how you move. Yeah. It wasn't until I truly set my environment up to serve my movement ability that I started making

1:58:03 bigger and like just bigger leaps my progress. Because it became less of again. the structured workout that I have to go to the gym and do all the time. Suggest This is just what I do.

1:58:14 I can just pick stuff up. I purposefully hung up gymnastics rings so I can develop my skill of hanging once again. So I have those just hanging the TV's right there. So I'll just do some quick pull ups and hang on it. I set up this environment and so it's almost like an environment of play. I have Fun here. I think if more of us did that.

1:58:31 It wouldn't. aid in our movement progression. much faster than always having to go to a gym with four walls for less for lesser lights and Get this work out in. I'll bring up another person you would have a blast with if you haven't met'em.

1:58:45 I remember I got so much shit. It was funny. I got so much shit. A lot of people were interested off the bat, but I also got a lot of shit when I did an episode on gymnastics strength training with a guy named Chris Summer, Coach Chris Summer, former coach of the national men's team. Yeah, GST. Yeah. And I remember like there are a bunch of folks in various communities. I'm not gonna name them, but they're be pretty obvious. Uh pretty belligerent online weightlifting communities. There's a fair number. And there's like Bah, you know, like now to embarrass into Pilates. Good luck with that, you know, good luck developing strength. And I'm like

1:59:22 Let me see you do. An Iron Cross. All right. Let me see you do a planch. With your feet off the ground. And then tell me. that those guys or gals aren't strong. Like let me see you do that. But the point that I was just going to

1:59:38 Make is It doesn't have to be with a bunch of like ferns and chrome. inside four walls. Like you can get so unbelievably strong and this is gonna be Old news to a lot of people, but with calisthenics.

1:59:54 And doing if I mean you want to try here, I'll give people something, they'll be like, Oh, this is so stupid. I'm like, Okay, try it. do something called pike pulses. So there are a lot of ways you can strengthen your core. And abdominals and so on. This one, sit down on the floor. Legs out in front of you. You're sitting up, that is a pike.

2:00:13 And so your feet are straight. Now what you're gonna do. Is Put some strength into the toes. Point them. And now what you're gonna do is reach forward on either side of your legs, not as far as you can go, but pretty far. You're probably gonna be on your fingertips on either side of your legs. Now it's very simple. All you need to do is lift your legs off the ground. And just pulse up.

2:00:33 Keeping your legs completely straight. Quad's locked. And just Bring your legs off the ground, bringing your kind of knees to your chest. Good luck with that.

2:00:41 Do a couple of sets of like ten or fifteen of those. And if it's too easy on the first one, like bring your f your hands forward, like Four or five inches? If you can do it, do it again. Most people will just be murdered by that. And that is like you do not need a lot of space. You could do that in the smallest apartment right next to your bed. Oh, there's so many good exercises. This is like really

2:01:00 Inspire me also to get back. I really feel like my new chapter, I have to be careful not to be too enthusiastic and hurt myself, but it's gonna be like Couple of fundamentals. Like I will probably continue to do Summa deadlift in the way that I described it, kinda a Barry Scott, who who trained Allison Felix way back in the day. That was in the four hour body stuff, but like the suma deadlifts.

2:01:25 with no eccentric, I just find it just transfers to so much. Kettlebell swings for sure. And I was very interested people can probably find video of you doing this, but kind of pendulum. Yeah, the pendulum swing with some catterbell juggling. Yeah, yeah. Haven't gotten to the juggling yet, but different types of swinging. Rope flow?

2:01:43 get into some new planes of movement. And then I think I'm gonna re-explore some of the GST stuff because I recall doing some like basic, basic ring stuff. It's like look. I'm not gonna win any awards here. And then doing this is all bodyweight stuff. And

2:02:00 I got so Big. God, like how much heavy lifting you've been doing. And I was like Zero. Most of this is from also 'Cause my upper arms, like my biceps are the biggest they've been in probably a decade. And people are just like

2:02:15 Bro. You on gear? Like what's going on? I was like, no, I'm just literally doing straight arm tension. Like I'm not even doing any Any flexion. I'm not bending my arms. This is all ring work with Fully locked arms. Mm-hmm.

2:02:28 That's it. It's great that you mentioned this because Over the years. One thing that I try to do is I try to like Find stuff I'm interested in that I really suck at.

2:02:38 to improve at I'm two hundred and fifty pounds. So For me, you are a lot bigger in person than you are. I mean, you're big on camera. And then I was just like I was like, How am I gonna find this guy? And I was like, Oh, he's not hard to find Those quads are the size of my office. Jesus. But yo, man, like Calisthenics was something that

2:03:00 I For me, I think is like a place that I'm not the strong it's I'm not very, very strong at. Some of that can be attributed to my body weight. And I've been so excited at just Really?

2:03:12 nailing down all these calisthenic basics to continue to improve so that I can do more complex movements. Because you know, one of the things that I think that frustrated me with calisthenics Years ago was like These muscle ups, like, oh, I was always making excuses of my weight, but it's just I was not strong enough with my body weight to do these things. So one of the things with calisthenics is also. Owning those basics. Push ups. Dips.

2:03:35 Pull ups. Regressing the pull ups if pull ups are tough. Also like regressing like ring turnout. Push ups. Incredible. Like I have all sorts of sho I I've had shoulder surgeries and stuff. The degree to which that has helped my shoulders. Mm-hmm. Just ring turn out pushups.

2:03:51 Scapular pull ups. Like the like the strength of the scapula, I think is something that a lot of people as they're doing calisthenics, they don't realize is so important. And there are ways to Isolate the scap. And strengthen that with these movements, right? Oh my God. I realized how weak my scapula was compared to a lot of other things. Like when I would be doing pull ups. Yes, the scapula is involved, but like I wasn't Focusing on it, which is why a lot of progressions were

2:04:16 elusive to me because my scapula wasn't as strong. Right. So I'm very excited progressing calisthenics and I'm I'm more so excited for the next five years. I think that. In five years, six years from now. I can be pretty elite at calisthenics, and it's gonna take me that long, and I'm okay with that. But that's a ways away. But I know that.

2:04:36 Chipping away at that skill. is gonna be one of those things that for me when I'm sixty, seventy, eighty has those big maybe forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty has those big dividends because One thing is when you see people who are very adept with their body weight. They just have control of everything.

2:04:53 They have their very adept with their body weight strength. You can lift weights, but just because you're strong with a barbell or strong with weights does not mean you're strong with body weight. You know, I know many heavy people that can deadlift hundreds of pounds that struggle doing 10 pull ups. is they don't have good control of their body weight. Yeah, or Just because you can lift a lot of weight and a few movements does not mean that you've bulletproofed yourself against injury. Nope. Either, right? Exactly.

2:05:16 Exactly. And calisthenics is something That Will show you those weak linkes with your control of your body. And we'll help you improve it out over time and your practice of wanting to

2:05:27 Rock climbing. Inherently. adds the skill of all aesthetics into it. So it's a two for one. I would love to do rock climbing. And I the thing is just like I do so much jujitsu right now that it's like I gotta pick between rock climbing and calisthenics. Like I'll focus on the calisthenics bit and maybe do rock climbing here and there, but that's a very good practice to develop that level of strength because rock climbers, man, elite ones and even non-elite rock climbers. Just the way they can contort their bodies and have the strength through their grip through their whole body.

2:05:55 My gosh, it's another amazing practice that's awesome for longevity that If you're struggling to find something Well, that was part of side and knee injury this past ski season. I was super bummed and I was in a great location, but You know, I'm up in the mountains and the climbers are world class. So I started going to a climbing gym with My ski instructor, who is also a very good climber. Like he sets roots and he's he's very good. Super technical. And

2:06:21 In that gym. 'Cause we would go when I would typically want to go skiing. So let's just say in the morning. These are work days. So the gym was not empty because this is a popular, like competitive gym. So like national team was there, silver medalists from the Olympics was there when we would go train. So it's amazing to watch those people, number one. But Secondly What really motivated me was

2:06:45 Yes, sure. I just love rock climbing.'Cause it's along with Jujitsu. It's human chess. It really like those two are actually Very similar in a lot of ways. But what I noticed in this gym in particular

2:06:58 was these groups of mostly women, but not always, mostly women who are like in their sixties and seventies. who were doing stuff that I could not conceive of doing.

2:07:10 And They do this week in, week out. I saw a guy in my buddy was complaining that he couldn't go climbing because of a hip issue. And I saw this seventy year old guy with a leg brace on. Climbing and I took a photo of Yeah, yeah.

2:07:27 with a full leg brace could like twisted his knee and he's like, I'll just use one leg and two arms. And like flag with one leg. And I sent a photo to my buddy, who's younger than I am, right? And I was like, uh Bro, I got some bad news for you. And I was so inspired. To see these people who are decades older than I am.

2:07:45 Who were doing things that I could not even approach doing right now. And I was like I was like, okay. This is a good sport. Mm-hmm. This is a really good sport. Yeah. Jiu Jitsu too, like if you play it smart, just like gymnastics, like if

2:07:58 I can't recall. Coach Summer had a quote something like There are aggressive gymnasts and they're old gymnasts, there are no aggressive old gymnasts. It's something like that. And it was just like Yeah.

2:08:12 Let's not get too ahead of ourselves because you know, the candle that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast kind of situation. What are the non negotiable Lifts. Like if we're talking about just For lack of a better modifier like traditional lifts.

2:08:29 The stuff that you could do that people could do if they walk down to a good neighborhood gym. Are there any things for you that you're like, all right, this is kind of These are the some of the ingredients in my multivitamin. It's just like I take the multivitamin every week. That's how it works. Couple of movements. The first one would be a sled.

2:08:49 The reason why I say Sled. is because it is something that grandma can do and it's something that the NFL linebacker can do. And it can be progressed or regressed to either level while causing probably most likely no issue to either. The reason why I mentioned the sled before I mentioned something like a barbell back squat or a barbell deadlift. Is because

2:09:09 Some people when it comes to direct actual spinal compression, where the barbell's right here. They just can't handle forms of that compression when moving through space yet. I mean, I probably shouldn't handle it. Frankly, right. Like I've been doing back squats, but there's definitely part of it's like Oh me, this is not a good idea. And th this is the thing though, I think

2:09:28 There are many forms of squatting one can do. Like we talked about sandbag squats. That's not actual loaded. That actually feels really good, right? Cause the weights from front of you are holding it, they feel safe, they feel good, they can be progressed. But the sled. Is something that You can load that thing up. And If it doesn't move, you just don't have the ability to produce the force to push.

2:09:48 Or pull it. Through space. I wish Everyone would be able to work with a sled because of just if it's so safe. And has such a huge ability to

2:09:57 Be progressed. or regressed to any level. Safely for literally everyone. That's why I'm starting there. Louis Simmons. was someone who he was the owner of West Side Bar Valley Pass. Legendary. Louis is the one who got Mark

2:10:10 And Mark Introduce the sled to me. And it's just like the sled is Power. So Unfortunately, it's hard for some people to have that at home. I have a I have a torque sled at my house. It's this tank sled that you can wheel around.

2:10:26 So the torque sled is not On skids. It's on wheels with a mechanical resistance. Yes. Yeah. They came out with a new one that I have. I forgot that it's model, but it's one that you can literally swivel around. So you've seen the tanks where you have to push it, then you have to get to the other side and push. This one you can push. swivel and turn and push. It looks like a little batmobile, which is pretty cool.

2:10:48 Does that allow you to pull as well or only push? Allows you to pull as well. You can hook a cable to it and then you could also push and pull it. It has magnetic resistance, so you can increase the resistance so that the harder you push, the more resistance it gives you. So It can build to any level of resistance. I have my mom who's 67, I have her come to my place so that she can do the sled multiple times a week. That's why I have her come because it's something she can do and progress without pain. If people can just get themselves to a place that has a sled. It's a full body movement from the feet to the hands. What does a sled workout look like? Or where does it integrate into a workout?

2:11:24 A sled can be a very meaty part of your workout if you If you learn to like it. The reason why I say learn to life that Excel says so much. I do like swallowing broken glass.

2:11:37 I have a piece of equipment for you. This thing this slide could be a good first two, three minutes to get the knees warm when you're moving forward and backwards. Or could be A very metabolically taxing strength building workout that you can do for

2:11:52 20 minutes to get your heart rate up while also increasing your ability to produce force. So that's why I say like, When you're pushing a sled Your heart rate will spike, your whole body will go on fire because You're starting from your feet to produce force forward. and pulling backwards. So it'll spike the heart rate. But

2:12:09 everything will start to get sore. Your feet. Your glutes, especially when you're learning how to stack your body against that weight. Like you'll see it in people who are new on the sled. Some of them aren't familiar with getting their body in the right position to produce force forward. They're too upright. The system's very open, like so upright. You you mentioned, right? So some people they'll start pushing a sled. Their ribs will be in this flared forward position. Their pelps won't be in a neutral position. It'll be like tilted back and they'll try pushing. They can't produce much force.

2:12:37 Just to paint a picture for folks. If you imagine a sled all right, so it's this It's just like a toboggan with weights on top of it. But where you're holding on to, imagine you have like two subway poles in front of you that are like Yeah, I don't know. Eighteen inches apart, twenty four inches apart. Those are vertical. You're holding on to those.

2:12:56 One with your left hand, one with your right hand, and then you're pushing that. Yeah. And so we're talking about like the body position,'cause this is gonna be one of my follow up questions is like What is your preferred position for pushing a slut? Yeah. Like are you bent ninety degrees at the hips, staring at the ground with your head in line with your arms as if you were doing like an overhead press? Is it I don't know, like twenty degrees off of parallel to the ground with the upper body, like what does it look like? Because I've wondered about this because I l I got a sled based on actually, I think it's Mark Bell, who I owe thanks for this.

2:13:26 A very early, early, early, like Stone Age version. Of something like the Torque Sled. Was it from Twerk or was it another comp I think it was another company. It was like Ex Pro X PRO or something like that. I can't recall. Sorry guys that I'm butchering it. But

2:13:44 The challenge with that for me always was like, God, I love this like hip extension and like gluengagement. And if I'm not careful, I feel on my low back. So that's what I need to account for. Like I would love to get back into Sled, but I would love to hear your thoughts on just like avoiding probably too much.

2:14:04 flaring and like pointing my titties at the ceiling. an exaggeration. We get the idea, guys. If you're like Kind of arching your back unnecessarily and it's simplification. So what would your Prescription B.

2:14:16 Level one for the sled would be learning how to create a neutral system when pushing the sled through space. So you're inherently gonna come forward a little bit. You're not going to be vertical when pushing. You're going to be leaning forward a little bit, but you need to make sure that your rib cage is over your hips. So it's like two bowls pouring into each other. When we were mentioning this open system flared, I know some people aren't watching the podcast. Imagine if you had a foam roller. You put a foam roller right below your shoulder blades and then you basically bent your upper back.

2:14:45 So like bring your head closer to the ground. Yes. Like that would be flaring. Mm-hmm. Right. So you cannot produce a lot of force when you have this flared system. It's super common, by the way. People who think they don't do this take videos of yourself doing very varied exercises. It is so common. Yes, it's extremely common. Another issue is maybe having this is a little bit less common, but too much flexion. Right. So too much bending when trying to push. Right. You want to be in a neutral position, a strong neutral position where your ribcage is right above your hips. So can you explain that to me? Cause ribcage over my hips makes me think that I need to be upright. All you want to think about is like, for example, the neutral position that we think about when we're squatting down.

2:15:24 Mm-hmm. That rib position. Let's now angle the body forward while maintaining that rib position and pushing the side. Got it. That's that's all it is. Okay. Right. That's gonna be the the position that allows us to be able to. produce the most force while moving forward. Let me also mention this.

2:15:40 This is The Level one. pushing and pulling position that we want our rib cage in. Because For me, when I want people to progress what they do with the sled, it's a very powerful tool to allow you to push and pull in different spinal positions.

2:15:57 So you start off by pushing and pulling the sled with a neutral spine. Then You can start to Hush.

2:16:03 And pull the sled. Laterally. So like Sled is here. You're here, you're pushing the sled laterally, you're pulling the sled laterally. while maintaining a fairly neutral spine. But then over time.

2:16:16 The strength that you can get the sled is that. When you Push the sled. you can push with more spinal flexion when you become more comfortable. So you can learn to produce force.

2:16:26 with spinal flexion. And then you can learn so when you're pulling the sled. you can learn to almost Jefferson curl pull the sled in deep spinal flexion. You don't start here, but when you become comfortable and you've been doing this with very lightweight initially. You can be comfortable. Pulling this load. With a deep spinal flexion.

2:16:45 That's later on. And that's for me where the sled has become super powerful because What my goal is for myself and what I've done. Is I became very strong pushing and pulling aside with the usual spine.

2:16:57 Then I Pushed and pulled with spinal extension, purposefully putting myself in this position while pulling and pushing. I pushed and pulled in deep spinal flexion. Yeah. Right. So that I could become very strong in the spinal position.

2:17:12 I push and pull. in deep lateral flexion. So I'll literally push the sled here with lateral flexion of the spine. So scary for the thing. Pull the sled here with deep lateral flexion on the other side. So that I can strengthen All of the positions of my spine. with the simplement.

2:17:29 This isn't something you're able to do with the barbell. You could do spinal flexion Jefferson curl stuff. You could do some lateral stuff, but the sled allows you to produce force on an object forward, backward, and to the side with that intent of movement. When you are pulling How are you pulling? That sounds dumb, but do you have ropes attached to the sled? Like with the Torque sled. Yeah. How are you pulling it? So the torque sled, there's two ways that I'm I'm pulling. When I want to get into deep flexion, I have this thing, it's something that Mark made. It's called a shake strap. So it's this strap that you're able to, it's kind of like a cable attachment that you you can put on a machine, but you can also put the sled. I loop my hands through it.

2:18:09 Right. So my hands are here and then I'll Let my back bend. And then I'll start walking backwards. Deep spinal flexion with that pulling. There's video of this. I can imagine like you reach through a hole and then grab it and it's sort of

2:18:23 Yeah, it's right there, wrapped around the wrist. And literally when I'm going backwards. I'm in this position while moving backwards. Yeah. I'm in this deep spinal flex. What about like off the rack? White belt version. Right. Neutral's fine.

2:18:38 Right, but are you using the You can use either the sled attachment that whatever sled you're using, or you can you most sleds have a something that you can hook onto. And then you can place that attachment and then you can still push and pull with a neutral spine. Oh I got it. What is that? What does Mark call that? It's it's called a shake strap. Shake strap. Yeah. It's called a shake strap. And he sells the house somewhere. Presumably. Yeah. Everything everything that I've talked about, I put it all in a place called the strongerhuman dot store. It's a website, so all this equipment is there. But You can also find this at his website, which I believe is Mark Bellslingshot.com. So for the sandbags and everything and mentioned ropes, it's at the stronger human house. I was in the middle of nowhere, Italy, and I went to this gym, this tiny gym, and there was a slingshot there. And I took a photo and I sent it to Mark. Those things are everywhere.

2:19:27 They're everywhere. Like that's that's one of the cool things about that. Like you'll see them in the most random gyms. But When it comes to that. The basic version of the sled. that mom and dad can do, older people, younger pe everyone can do. Push and pull with a neutral spine and learn how to produce force. Slowly increase the load.

2:19:44 When you feel comfortable. start introducing a little bit of play in your spine. But when you introduce this play in your spine, don't move the spine out of that position when pushing and pulling. Yeah and probably drop the load. And drop the lo absolutely drop the load. It needs to be light. But Let's say, for example, you start exploring with a little bit of spinal flexion when pulling the sled. You get into that spinal flexion, the sled is really light, you start pulling backwards, you're breathing, you're not holding your breath. Your body learns, hey.

2:20:13 This is actually a good position for us to produce a little bit of force in. We're strong here, right? Versus when most people get in that position, there's a breath hold, it feels unsafe, something gets pulled. So for me now, the only reason I was able to progress this was because I worked on those regressions. And when a lot of trainers maybe see some of this, they're like, That's unsafe. You can't be just wait a few years. You're gonna blow your back out. Like, no, I'm not gonna hurt myself. Because My body knows that this is a good resilient position to be in. I'm not afraid of this position.

2:20:44 So that is definitely key to keep in mind. If you've slowly conditioned yourself to be safe in those positions, there's also just a lot of dogmatic, like never do this. nonsense that has no backing. It's like I had the number of classes I've been in where they're like, don't lock your knees, don't lock your arms. There are these posters that coach Chris Summer pointed me to. It's a photo of This Chinese gymnasts. Beast in a Maltese cross. If you want to know what that is, go check that out. And it just says underneath.

2:21:17 Lock your out. And uh It's like, yeah, if you're not dumb about it, like our body we have this full range of movement for a reason. And look, if you're hypermobile and this and that, yeah, take it into account. Yes. But also it's like You're allowed to ask questions about the rules.

2:21:36 Make sure you understand why the rules exist. And if the person can't explain it, like hmm, interesting. Well at least like cross examine it. One topic that you wanted to make sure we touched upon. is soft tissue work. This is a topic near and dear to my heart. So Take it away.

2:21:51 Where should we start? Again. So many things. I've met Kelly Stiret maybe three times. You know what I mean? I think he's been on the show twice and Can I set the stage for people with no idea who this is? Set the stage for Mr. Stirette. All right. So Kelly Starrett.

2:22:05 Famous For Becoming the supple leopard. Which by the way, I'm not sure if he's ever shown this photo. There's a photograph of him. In the gym that he started with his wife.

2:22:15 Which is him in a leopard print bathrobe. Pulling a zoolander. Not sure if that relates to the title of the book, but the point is. High level PT performance coach works with the highest levels of military, highest levels of athletics, and And also

2:22:31 This is important to me, at least. is a practitioner. He walks the walk. I think for his I think I'm getting this right. For his fortieth birthday? And this is a large man. He's a big boy. He's got to be two thirty, two forty, two fifty, who knows? In that range.

2:22:49 Thighs. As big around as this table. He's going crazy if he's listening to you say this right now. Oh. Oh yeah. No, I'm just gonna keep laying it out thick. Like his legs are j ridiculously large. He is a very strong man. And for his fortieth though,'cause you would look at him, you'd be like, Okay, that's a meat cube. I'm sure he's very strong in a couple of lifts. However, for his fortieth I think it was

2:23:13 You wanted to power clean some ungodly number. And he can't really use one of his wrists, so he catches The barbell and this like half salute with one arm. When he catches it on the shoulders. So there's that.

2:23:26 So on his birthday wanted to do that. He wanted to, I believe it was run an ultra marathon. Not just any ultra, but the quad dipsy, which is a killer like a widowmaker. You guys can look it up. It's in Northern and do a standing backflip. So it's like you would look at him, you wouldn't assume all these things.

2:23:42 Are possible. And yet, there you have Kelly Starrett. So that is uh the back flip. Yeah. Yo And also

2:23:52 Formerly. incredibly high level a world class kayaker. So This is an athlete. Who now helps.

2:24:02 other athletes and and many more non athletes in addition to that. So I I took us on a bit of a sidebar. But you were saying Kelly. I think everyone should own his book on Becoming a Self Lever because there's so many concepts. I bought that book in two thousand thirteen and So many concepts. Or things that I've continued to like build my knowledge base on that have helped so much. F one thing from that.

2:24:24 Look that was just a small mention, but went a very long way for me was keeping a relaxed face. when doing my fast release or soft tissue work. And When you're doing soft tissue work, and we can just use an example, if you're on top of a foam roller.

2:24:40 Or you're using a hard med ball. Kelly harder products like his supernova product. It's very hard and you roll on top of it. It can hurt. Because you know rolling your tissues on top of this hard piece of equipment. The instinctual thing to do was like G grinness and make this.

2:24:56 And what happens, like even when I did that instinctively, I tightened up right here. And those tissues, they bind up. to try to keep you safe. You hold your breath, you tighten your face, you're not able to get as deep into the tissues that you're trying to work and help become more supple. So Kelly's advice is like get rid of your pain face. Stop! Right? Because inherently if you just try to Uh.

2:25:16 Get this loose, get this relaxed. You'll start to probably breathe, you'll start to get deeper in those tissues. The soft tissue work will work better. That's the goal of that. Why is the soft tissue work important? The soft tissue work is important because What I've found Is that when you have certain tissues that are too tense, earlier in our conversation, we were talking about not holding the breath so that you're not holding on to too much tension. But what tends to happen for many of us is we have different areas of our body that hold more tension than others. And what soft tissue or self-mile fast release release does.

2:25:49 Is it helps you search for areas like you're tacking down certain tissues, that feels good, that feels good. Ooh, that feels gummy. You're Doing work on that, whether it's with a med ball or a body lever, which is the leverage tool I showed you. And when you're able to breathe and work through those areas. What you'll find is when you Again, work through that and it's not as painful. You go and you move again. you might have extra range of motion. You might have less joint pain and a joint that's lower or high of the area that you were just working.

2:26:18 And a goal of this is to have that tissue state that you create after doing soft tissue work. Have that be your default. That's the goal. Yeah, let me mention uh just a few things here too.

2:26:32 One is gonna sound super bougie, but I'll say it anyway. Even when I was driving around in my POS hand me down minivan and making next to nothing out of college. body work and again like scale it down. If I had to go drive into the most dangerous part of San Jose to the most The sketchiest massage place just to pay for like a 30 minute massage because I couldn't afford anything, like I would do that. So like body work. And soft tissue work is something that has just been a non-negotiable for me forever.

2:27:03 And it doesn't fix everything, it's not a panacea, but Just to to get into the like microdosing movement. Like you can also like micro dossage in terms of like self Soft tissue treatment. So Before bed?

2:27:17 Pretty much whenever I'm at home, certainly, before bed, I always roll. And That is not just to work on the tissues, it's also to down regulate And I'm not sure if there's any science to back this, but it feels like it helps me shift into more parasympathetic state. helps with sleep.

2:27:36 And I literally it's five minutes, I would say, probably no more. Typically lower body, not a lot of upper body stuff. But As a result of that tiny, tiny continual dosing. It's like when I do get body work. It's very common. They're like, wow, you're like your muscles are very easy to work with. Like, what is the story here? And I was like, Yeah, it's just

2:27:58 Flossing. Right. It's the daily practice. of doing that soft tissue work. I haven't used it yet, but I'm excited to use You know the person who owns this product. So they should maybe in quotation marks just call it the nutcracker, because I think of a nutcracker. What is it called? The body lever. The body lever. The body lever. It looks like a giant nutcracker that you can like.

2:28:17 With your arms used to Compress your leg. Or your abdomen, or you could Brace it against a leg and use it to like benevolently crush your arm to do forearm stuff. I mean, it looks very, very

2:28:29 flexible rock climbers have used something I think they probably have rebranded it now called the Armaid just specifically the for the forearm stuff. I think there's a company I think so. Maybe rogue, they had this thing that you could open up and clamp down on like your legs and arms. Like These level. Very, very similar idea. So I'm looking forward to using that. I remember I saw you maybe it was in the same video.

2:28:51 But you were in a sauna. Yeah. Proper Banya hat on. with the nutcracker on your leg. And I was like, ooh, I want one of those. And I actually took a screenshot and sent it small world. Kelly Starrett, and I was like, Starrett, where do I get one of these nutcrackers? And lo and behold.

2:29:08 full circle and now I shall have my nutcracker. Uh here today you did yeah. Look at this. Christmas comes early. What? other types of because when people think soft tissue like there are right and wrong ways to do this, right? Not everything delivers the kind of benefits one might hope. So for me, I mean this is very

2:29:29 one oh one, but it's like if I find an area as I'm rolling out my IT band or like my vastest lateralis on the outside of the quad tends to be get very, very tight. And if I find that like gummy painful spot, it's like okay You don't just gloss over that, like let's sit on that. For a while. Also using vibration, like even like uh now they have Theraguns and stuff. I used to use a Hatachi magic wand for this. Funny enough, if people know

2:29:56 Popular lesbians. Uh you read it. Uh Okay. I could see that work. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So multi purpose, you know. Uh but Using percussion devices for sure. Yeah. Also on uh when I've located through foam rolling like that. Painful spot going to it with a Thoragun or something like it. million different devices you can choose from. Any other particular types of

2:30:25 soft tissue work that you like to do. Let's just start like with probably some of the easiest that you can manage. People like Gwasha. You could get yourself a gua sha tool, you could pull out a butter knife.

2:30:36 Right. You can pull out a butter knife. lotion up an area that you want to work like. Let's say that you are do a lot of gripping and your forearms are tight. Pull that out. look at the area lotioned up and then start to work those areas. Concepts when doing soft tissue work with any implement is number one, you have to breathe. The thing that people I think makes it

2:30:55 hard for people makes them not want to do it. Is they do it. They feel Tension in certain area, they hold their breath, they tense up it. doesn't loosen up because they're too tense and it's a bad experience so they don't come back and do it.

2:31:08 Yeah. So Just like we were talking about how when you're doing exercise, you need to regress it to your pain free level. Just because it's not that you regress your soft tissue work to a pain free level, but you regress it to a a level that you can breathe. And try to relax.

2:31:25 while dealing with the pressure you're putting on yourself. So if you're putting so much pressure that you just have to go like that, you would decrease the pressure. You're not ready to Which is also true with manual therapy if you have somebody working on you, right? Like if you're bracing or holding your breath or making a pain face. It's too much pressure. Mm-hmm. Absolutely, way too much pressure. So that's something that can help you actually make progress with the practice because

2:31:48 If you can keep that as your North Star. Try to relax my face. make sure I'm breathing and put in as much pressure I can manage if I'm keeping these two things in line. you can progressively overload the amount of pressure you place on your tissues. Yeah. I mean just to I'll pull something out. This is from I can't remember who told me this, but it's from Time Massage. I mean, who knows if this is originally from classic Time Massage, but a very, very, very good

2:32:12 Time massage therapist, which is an incredible art form. Incredible, said to me, Like, there's no such thing as too deep, only too fast. You can get really deep with a lot of pressure. You just can't get there too quickly. And You can apply that to self massage also like

2:32:30 There's a guy Jason Neemer, co Creator of something called Acro Yoga, amazing time massage therapist, also. And he'll just use his forearm and his elbow on his own like arms, on his own legs. You don't necessarily need a whole magician's kit full of tools. You can also just use your forearms. Exactly. Tennis ball at home. I think some tissues that people really leave out of the mix are their feet. Especially the bottoms of his feet. You know, it's I was just gonna say this like a little

2:32:57 Looks like a tennis ball called Rubs R U B Z, but it's got little little nubs on it. Super hard or is it soft? It's pretty hard. Super hard? Yeah, it's pretty hard. But just I will travel with it. And it's like the amount of relief you get systemically from rolling out your feet. And I think I you know I picked that up from is Ed Cone. Actually. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. He talked about like decompression, a certain type of hanging. He has a very particular device. And then I'm pretty sure he talked about rubbing out the feet. Cause he said it helped with his knee pain. I was like, Huh, I think I'm gonna try that. I'm really happy you mentioned that about Ed, because when it comes to soft tissue, there are many people within The sphere of

2:33:35 Fitness. On the Evidence based side of fitness. That when people talk about soft tissue work. The only thing the only rebuttal they have is like, Well, there's really no research to

2:33:47 back that up and it's probably placebo. And it feels good, go ahead and do it. But there's nothing really prove it works. And the frustrating thing about not just that, But Many aspects of evidence based fitness is that There's a waiting game. To wait for paper.

2:34:01 To tell you something works. That's probably been done for centuries. Yeah. In many different cultures. Four. A long time massage and soft tissue work has been a panacea for.

2:34:13 So many different groups of people around the globe. But we have people in exercise science that wanna discount it because they don't have a paper that proves this eff efficacy. So that's why like I don't get me wrong, I'm not saying evidence based work isn't Helpful.

2:34:27 But don't allow Evidence based studies. Two block you off from trying something that might just be really beneficial for you. That's all. Yeah, let me add something to that'cause this is definitely a nerve for me as well. It's like, all right, look.

2:34:42 Science. It's amazing. Okay, the scientific method as a structured way of not fooling ourselves, incredible tool for humankind. I mean indispensable. And Western medicine, I'm gonna say, this is gonna be controversial, like the most effective healing system ever devised on the planet, period. Full stop. Like if you look at like infant mortality.

2:35:02 and reductions in infant mortality, the the advent of antibiotics. I mean this th it is an incredible system of healing. As are many others. All of that said. As someone who has Been involved with

2:35:16 Supporting early stage science now for more than decade. Science is fucking expensive. And it's really slow. And uh What that means is also

2:35:28 Right, within the realm of exercise science, it's like You don't want to fool yourself. So you should be scientifically literate. Yes, you should pay attention to the literature if you can. Yes, by the way, they take some training to get to the point where you can actually read something like that properly. However

2:35:43 There are so many incentives. That will prevent most studies from ever getting done. that you could be waiting forever. And especially in the realm of exercise science where it's like you're not Experimenting with

2:35:56 A speculative Type of invasive brain surgery in some far flung like third world country. It's like No. Try some soft tissue work. Who cares? Like the downside risk is so minimal. Yeah.

2:36:09 See how you feel, like learn to trust your body again, which is another reason why. I more and more so, and it's not valuing it more so, but increasingly value movement. Because it teaches you. to get reacquainted.

2:36:25 With The subtleties of feeling your body. Which autopilot linear Movements in the gym do not automatically do. And then you

2:36:35 can become a better gauge. And look, this isn't to like pat myself on the back, but like as you do more of that, it's like when we were doing the rope stuff this morning and I was like, Oh, I feel like I'm flaring. I feel like I got a little too high on that right foot. And it's like, You develop these sensitivities. And then when you have and look, I'm not again I'm not Burshnikov or I'm not a surgeon with the most delicate hands in the world. Can't read Braille, but As you develop that. You can then trust your body.

2:37:00 It's like all right, you'll begin to pick up patterns and also I'm like gonna I think I had too many. exogenous ketones, but lots of personality. I'll keep going for a second. The other thing, and this came up through my archery in the last like six months. So I was training with amazing guy, Jake Kaminsky, two time silver medalist, one of the most successful archers the US has produced in the last thirty, maybe fifty years.

2:37:23 And He Like me. Takes meticulous training notes. Including soft tissue. So that if he had a problem, he's like mm.

2:37:33 This rib is slightly out, which is a really common issue with archery. He could be like, No, it's not the last workout. He's like, he identified through patterning because he shot a million plus arrows easily. He would be like, he would look back and he's like, it's usually five or six workouts back. And I could identify either what helped me or what the problem was. And similarly, it's like just Experiment. Take good notes.

2:37:56 Try not to fool yourself. And keep what works. I ditch what doesn't. But man, the soft tissue stuff. It's so incredibly helpful. And I wanted to add also just because I mentioned the pre bed.

2:38:10 Not to totally hijack this, but so it goes. You mentioned rope flow prior to bed. If I'm not misremembering. That was not on Mike. But Do you do Rope.

2:38:22 Before bed? Yeah. I'll do like some nights it's maybe three or five minutes. Some nights it'll be just like Flown for twenty minutes outside my house. And relaxing. And you were saying that also it Helps to alleviate the morning stiffness the next day. You know, okay. I'll come back to the soft tissue thing in a second, but

2:38:39 Mark and I were having a conversation early last year and we were like man What can help us just like get rid of waking up in the morning just feeling that morning stiffness? Not morning, you know, wood, morning just body stiff. Don't want to fix that. Don't want to fix that. You want that. That's a good sign of hormonal health. But the the general morning stiffness where you just kinda like get your body you you know, you gotta ring out your body a little bit. So

2:39:03 We thought I thought about that for a while and then I just started doing rope flow before bed. And the first night I did rope flow before bed, which wasn't something I usually did. I usually just like, you know, I'd come home, work, maybe take a walk, go to bed, wake up, do rope flow, feel amazing. Did Ropolf before bed, woke up the next morning and was just like Like really, I just felt. Like I didn't need to My body was already lubricated.

2:39:27 That's what I felt like. And I was like Okay. Maybe this is just a one night. But

2:39:33 I then noticed that the nights that I didn't do some rope and All it is is rotating before bed. Let's just call it that. Like if you have something that you can get some natural rotation in before bed, cool. If you have the rote practice, cool. But getting that natural spinal rotation in before bed will help you feel better when you wake up in the morning and you won't feel your your back will not feel as stiff. It's huge. So

2:39:56 The reason why I know it works is because I have nights where I don't do it. And I've also told many people in the stronger human community to try that and get let me know what they feel. And everyone that does it wakes feeling better in the morning. So like I know that it's one of those practices that like if you have a practice where you do some soft tissue work, don't stop the practices you do, just add in like Three minutes. Do two to five minutes before you go to bed. Two to five minutes.

2:40:20 Yeah, scale it down. Right. If you're like, I don't have ten minutes, like oh do one minute. Every single one minute's fine. Like do three passes on the I T bad on each leg on a foam roller. Like, come on. It's like there will be a point at which you have no excuse.

2:40:35 And I'll add one more thing which I guess I accidentally omitted from my mind a soft tissue. work, but it's definitely soft issue work. And this is something that has stuck for me big time. And I've

2:40:47 Passed on to a lot of friends also. to give credit where credit is due. So my mid back was bothering me. It's I I had this really old injury and my mid back was really spasmed. And I was doing hand balancing practices a hundred years ago. with a guy named Andrey Bondorenko.

2:41:03 And I didn't train with him much. I mean, the guy is a phenom. He is a, or at least at the time was a top cirque de Soleil performer. Famous for one armed hand balancing, like one arm handstand. He's not a big guy. Right. Who knows? He probably weighs hundred and thirty pounds, maybe, hundred and forty.

2:41:20 Maybe the Of people I've met personally. the most incredible combination of strength and mobility that I've ever seen. And Andre A N D R I I Bondarenko. And I think his his Instagram is just Andre Bundarenko.

2:41:41 Excellent teacher. And we did some hands stuff and I was explaining my back issues. And he's like, Oh, you need to get one of these mats. And the mat was I ended up getting the Nayoya Acu Pressure Mat and Is this the shock D?

2:41:56 I might be the same thing. There are a bunch of imitators too. There's one called Bet of Nails. The basic idea is it's like a thick towel with plastic golf cleats. Covering it. And then there's one for the neck.

2:42:07 And It fucking hurts. And even to this day, I've done it hundreds of times. Like if you're a little sensitive, especially if the tissue's inflamed. It hurts. If you stick with it past like three or four minutes, then your body chill out. And I typically stay on ten minutes.

2:42:23 The reason Andre introduced it to me is his coach when he used to do Team acrobatic competitions, which is a big thing in like Eastern Europe and other parts of The world. Where you have it's almost like if you could imagine like Cheerleading

2:42:39 Plus plus plus where you'd also have like male only teams, female only teams, where you'd have like a flyer, someone who's doing crazy acrobatics. That would be Andre, who would get shot into the air with guys who would make like a kind of they call it the basket with the hands. People can look this up. All those guys would just be beaten to hell. And the coach would make all of them lay on one of these forty five for forty five minutes after every practice. And I started using it and I was like, Okay.

2:43:03 I have no idea how this works. All I know is man does this work. And before bed, especially with a lot of my back issues, that is non-negotiable. I'll give one trick for folks also. If you have low back issues specifically, Traveling with the whole kit and caboodle is kind of a pain in the ass. Just take the neck attachment.

2:43:26 travel with that, that'll fit easily into most suitcases. And then you can like Lay on that for your low back. on like carpet in the hotel or whatever. Ten minutes before you go to bed. resolves like fifty percent of my low back issues for sleep.

2:43:39 It's incredible. So the cool thing about this is like it's really simple as to why this all works. Blood flow. You bring pressure to an area, you drive blood and nutrients to that area after pressure is relieved. So when you have that on your back, or you have that on your whole back, because I actually have the same thing at home. I have it in a box. I need to bring it back out because I did it for a while and I was like, that's cool. I like it, it helps me relax, but I didn't keep it. So I'm going to bring that back now that you mentioned it. But all these things, they're they're driving a bunch of blood to that area.

2:44:07 Which now when you get up, you feel relief in those areas that you brought a level of pressure. And that's why it's so good for healing of specific areas. And that's why when it comes to soft tissue. I don't just do the hot areas that most people would think about, like maybe the quads or the forums, et cetera. I hit my whole body throughout the week. So I'll do

2:44:26 Tissue work on my head. I have like a tool that I'll use and while I'm in the sauna. I'll get On my temple, I'll get on my head, I'll get on the back of my neck. I'll get here. Must make people comfortable. This is not like your sauna out. But but when I do go to out to the public sauna, I do take a Gua shot tool and a body lever with me and I will hit that stuff in there. And usually people are like, What are you doing? That looks like it feels so good. So I'll give them the gua. Yeah, you know what that's not so bad. That's not so bad. I mean, I've been to some of the Oh geh.

2:44:52 Russian Turkish bats in New York City and that there are these old guys off from the old country who are like shaving their chests in the sauna. And I'm just like, bro. You can that's not a you shouldn't be. It's not okay. It's not okay. So Point I'm making. Not cracker, fine. I'm okay with it. Absolutely. Yeah. But but that's the thing. You're you're bringing blood flow to all these areas, and if you can Going back to the what you were mentioning about learning how to heal yourself.

2:45:22 That's what this is. Body workers are essential. They're great. I have no issue with them. But I think that

2:45:29 If you're someone who you go to a body worker and you're usually maybe a two time a month thing, because that's what most people can afford, like usually it's like once or twice a month. Now you can go to a body worker multiple times a week because you are your own body worker. You learn to find the areas that First off, you learn like when you put pressure in a certain area, you get relief somewhere else. So you take a mental note. And at this point for me, I know that when I'm feeling a little something in this upper part of my glute, I know what to hit. If I'm feeling something in my wrist, I know what to hit in my forearm. Like I have these reference points of how to heal myself because I've become familiar with pressurizing my body. And you c you learn these things, you know what I mean? So

2:46:06 And y anyone can learn this. You don't have to have a degree with a bunch of schooling on this. You just have to touch yourself. Yeah. That's it. You just have to yeah, you have just have to experiment. Another one. And I actually owe Dustin Moscovits. The thank you for this, co founder of

2:46:25 Facebook. Now a sauna. That's the worst branding, which is why I always forget the product name. It's like the Back buddy. It basically looks like a very tricked out.

2:46:36 like pimp my theracane. So like a theracane would be like a plastic candy cane. That you allows you to get to points on your back. That at least I am completely unable to touch. Right. And then there's one that looks more like an S. Yeah. Okay. That I'm pretty sure it's called Back Buddy. People can look this up. If you just search Dustin Moss Moscovitz backbuddy, I'm sure the right name will will come up. And uh

2:47:01 I have one of these. Like everywhere I go. As well, because there's no way. Like in turn in terms of soft tissue work, like me doing good work on my back is gonna be a little tough. for getting like very focused attention. All right, anything else to add on the soft tissue side of things? In terms of equipment, get the uh Amazon has med balls.

2:47:20 So you can get yourself a medball on Amazon, that's Medball meaning medicine ball. Medicine ball. Yeah, yeah.'Cause like that can allow you to like And they're they're inexpensive. So you can roll on top of it on top of your hamstrings, your quads, you're you can do some torso work, but it's like It's a good inexpensive tool for you to get yourself some soft tissue work. And just for clarity, you are

2:47:40 rolling on top of it or you're rolling the medicine ball on top of your leg as an example? You're on top of it. Yeah, yeah. You are on top of it using your the pressure from your body to put into that ball. So I would look at these as like different these are different types of pressure. The medball allows you to put your own pressure into that. implement. So there's that. I think there's this woman called Jill Miller. She has on Amazon Tuna fitness spalls is what they're called. I like those specifically because

2:48:07 They're not extremely hard. They have a tad bit of give. They're hard, but they have a bit of give. So you can really sink yourself into it with that pressure. So I would suggest instead of like Cause most people they want to get the hardest balls. But the thing is is like hard, hard instruments, especially when you're pushing or pressurizing into them. They can almost make most people

2:48:27 back away from that resistance. Most people need to use a a slightly softer implement to ease themselves into this soft tissue work before moving towards like the Kelly Sterret supernova or his peanut or any of these harder implements. So that would be as some type of pressure. The body lever allows for a leverage type of pressure where now you are pressing two things into each other and you're finding that type of pressure. And then it also allows you to kind of need. But you would like at a massage with with a masseuse, you now can use that pressure to need. And then as far as other implements, there are Gua Sha tools that you can get.

2:49:00 from different companies, Amazon or whatever, where again, it's this rubbing pressure. You want to have these implements that provide you different types of pressure so you can do whatever it calls for on any given day. Let me ask you Just because I have to ask or my O C D will not allow me to Nordic curls.

2:49:23 What are Nordic curls? And what does your resume look like with respect to Nordic curls? The Nordic hamstring curl is something that I started doing again after I met my buddy Ben Patrick, I wasn't able to do a Nordic curl when I first met him. Okay. So explain what a Nordic curl. Yes. A Nordic hamstring crawl is also something you should not just run out and don't do it. Try without supervision. Don't do it.

2:49:48 Don't do it. Regress it. Uh if you try an order curl, most people will pull their hamstring. There's a way that you could do a Nordic curl would be like Let's say there's a flat bench. Let's imagine that you are You have your knees on the bench.

2:50:01 You could strap your Ankles into the bench. And the goal is to lean your torso down almost kind of like just like you're leaning your torso down. all the way down and then come up with the strength of your hamstrings.

2:50:14 So you're not slamming down, you're not just falling, you're going down slowly and your hamstrings are gonna be the the hamstring strength is gonna be the limiting factor if you Are you able to control yourself down or bring yourself up? Yeah, exactly. So just This is it, I mean, it is hard the way you describe it, and it is even harder. I have a Serenx machine for uh the Nordic answer. Yeah, I have a machine at home too. Yeah.

2:50:37 Haven't touched it in a long time. It's a little dusty at this point, but Imagine I'll give another visual For folks. So imagine that You had like a nice thick like memory foam. at the edge of a pool. So you can put your knees down without your knees hurting.

2:50:53 And then a really fat friend came behind you. And just sat on your ankles. So now You can get to like

2:51:02 your max height on your knees, your knees are in line with your hips, which are in line with your shoulders. Yeah. And your fat friend is sitting on your ankles. But you're like comfortable on the memory phone. And then Without breaking at the hip.

2:51:14 Keeping the knees, hips, and shoulders in line, you put your hands behind your back And then go all the way down so your nose touches the water. And then come all the way back up. It is so fucking hard.

2:51:27 Okay. And then How does this fit why the hell am I asking you about an order, Carlson? There must be some historical reason. So I saw that um a few years ago. I saw that like Tyreek Hill did a certain amount of Nordic curls. Who is this person? Tyreek Hill is an NFL player. I for I I don't watch much football, so I forget the team he plays for, but he's like People see him as like uh he's one of the fastest, if not the fastest player in the NFL. Yep. And one thing and a trend you notice amongst a lot of

2:51:54 Guys who are Very fast. Is that they also have the ability to do a few, if not many, Nordic curls. One thing about the Nordic hamstring curl, there has been some research to back this up, but it's not doesn't mean you have to do Nordic curls if you want to build resiliency and sprinting, but they Progress Nordic curls.

2:52:13 on athletes that sprinted, and these athletes all had less occurrence of pulling their hamstrings because of the amount of strength that you build in your hamstring at length. Because you notice at the end range of a Nordicur, your hamstring is at this lengthened position with stress on the hamstring, which is why if you're new to movement, you need to regress it because you could pull your hamstring in that position. It it feels Yeah, pull a hamstring, by the way, is not like ouch that hurt, let me sleep on it, and now I'm okay the next day. Yeah. Typically it's not one of those. It's not. It's not nice. So when Ben talked to us and and and told me about the Nordicls. Tried one, couldn't get it.

2:52:49 And I was like What did this NFL guy do? Oh I forgot how many I think Tyreek did maybe Twelve or thirteen? Twelve or thirteen.

2:52:59 So What I wanted to do is I wanted to progress in order curls, and when I saw Tyreek's video, I was like, I want to do more than Tyreek. So For me to progress Nordicurls, man, I started at the basic regressions. Like I started

2:53:09 First off, having a bench higher and going with limited range of motion, so not going all the way down, finding where my body would not be able to handle the pressure. And going to that range. Repping that out slowly lowering down took me a few months to lower down to a flat bench. I was able to finally do one Nordic curl. Then I would do a crow where I would go down and

2:53:29 push myself up and give myself assistance. And over time that built and then I Think, correct me if I'm wrong. But I think in the video I managed to do eighteen norder curls. I'm not sure if I did seventeen or eighteen nordic curls. Something like that. I mean I'm I'm relying on uh I'm relying on some deep research here. Yeah. So

2:53:51 Let me take a look here. I I I mean I think we should Pull up the tape. We'll have a video here. We'll have some footage here. Deep research says it that the previous record Tyreek was ten and you did fifteen. There we go. Yeah. But The point is like The differential

2:54:08 was substantial, right? From a percentage standpoint. Yeah. Right. You you did not just like eek out barely beating the record. You beat the record substantially. Yeah. And th this isn't like a world record. I think there's a guy who he's much lighter, but I think he managed to do like twenty five Nordicls or something like that. So it's like I'm not the guy in the world who's done the most Nord Norder curls but I want it to be Tyreek. If I'm gonna beat Tyreek in one thing, because I'm not faster than Tyreek, it's gonna be doing more Nordic Cirls than him. But you know, it's one thing like A strength coach who I respect so much and he's taught me a lot through the show and through what I'm able to see him do with athletes in Danny. He's someone who I love his work because he's someone who takes everything that we've managed to talk about here and he applies it to Different athletes he works with. So he'll have certain athletes that he progresses like a lot of Nordic curls with. He'll have athletes that he does different soft tissue work with. He has athletes that he purposefully has them do certain types of static stretching, which certain people are like, static stretching isn't good for you, but Ian knows when and where to apply these different modalities rather than saying,

2:55:13 That's just bad. We shouldn't do it. Ian is someone who understands how to use all of these things. Holistically. to make progress. That's something that I really think most of us should try to do when it comes to our personal physical practice. All right, so bone density.

2:55:28 I have lived most of my life. And in certain segments of my body, I was shocked to find, I think partially due to the back injury and reducing certain types of loading. But like I have below average bone density in a few segments of my body. Not all. It's like

2:55:46 Yeah. Average is fine. But averages can be super misleading. You gotta be careful with averages, so The average on Dexter? Great. But

2:55:56 in certain segments, way below average. So I was like, hmm, I've been thinking about bone density a lot. For longevity and health span, you want sufficient bone density. Yeah. And There are different ways to Catalyze the adaptation Right. Of increased bone density. Compression.

2:56:15 Lifting. Parentheses tension. Parentheses isometrics, impact. Jumping, right? And then rotation.

2:56:22 Which is certainly for me, and I think for a lot of people, whether they consider themselves athletes or not. That is And obviously. O mission a lot of the time. Right. That could be mace, kettlebell juggling, rope. Yeah. And that's more so um pulling at the bones. So that that rotation like it's it is rotation, but it's also

2:56:42 pulling these segments like I'm you need more tension. So rope may not be actually a great example, but Kettlebell. would be since it's at like the end of a kinetic chain that's getting elongated or at least yeah stretched in that sense. Okay. All right. Aging insurance. Certainly.

2:57:01 This is something I think about a lot with aging parents as well. And really trying to like talking to a doctor I know really well and he's like, Yeah. I call my parents a trainer and I just say when I see He's like I just say make them cry. You have to make my parents cry because they need the bone. Like you have to load it, can't be comfortable. Or at least overly comfortable. Anything else that you'd like to just add on bone density? Oh also another one just because The one place I am happy to spend a lot of money is on very, very, very good doctors. And I'm fortunate to have really good doctors. You have to ensure you have

2:57:35 Adequate. Calcium. absorption and that you are not taking things that could over time interfere with calcium absorption. So in addition to the stressors you gotta pay attention to what you're able to absorb. On my YouTube channel, I have a video that I made. It's like forty something minutes on bone density that goes into everything.

2:57:56 All right, it goes into all of this. So like if you guys want to spend some time and go and watch that video, that's it's gonna be worth it for you. But one thing I want to mention. I'm happy you mentioned the jumping thing because Jumping is a something that we just literally stop doing some people. Yeah. I it's something that I saw I was a soccer player for years. And when I got into a certain form of like, Practice.

2:58:18 There was a point where I didn't jump for years. Unless like maybe I was just doing a random box jump here and there, which I ended up being really crap at because jumping is something I stopped doing. And what happens to many people is like because they Slowly stop getting off the ground. There comes a point where they never jump again. And then they're 40, 50, 60, they jump, they pull something, and then they're like, I can't do this because they can't first off. They don't have the strength to propel themselves off the ground, but they also don't have the

2:58:45 elasticity to be able to land and handle the force from the ground. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not the it's not the jumping necessarily the the problem, it's the landing. It's the landing. Yeah. So I think Something that can be a great investment for many people, including those that are older, is a rebounder. You know what a rebounder is like a mini trampoline. Yeah, you can have a little trampoline. There's many brands. Elicon is like the Rolls Royce of Rebounders, but there's also like the Rolls Royce. Yeah. There's also like lesser expensive brands, but I I love the Rebounder. I have a Rebounder, and the reason why I like it is because like it's something that I can just keep in the backyard and when I go outside, I can just hop on it real quick. It feels pretty meditative, but like there have been quite a few studies to show, especially in older adults, that rebounding helped them build bone density because of the low intensity jumping that it causes for them.

2:59:33 Why I can guess at the answer here, but why is that better than say Jumping rope. Or just jumping and regression. It's the regression.

2:59:42 You know what I mean? Because Many people they try jumping rope. Many people, their feet will get beat up a lot. It's something that you can you absolutely can and should build the capacity to do. I look at jumping rope as like Rebounder? Light hopping.

2:59:59 thirty seconds to a minute to two minutes of jumping row each day or every other day. Then over time you're gonna get to a point where you can jump road for five, 10, 15, 20 minutes. But the thing is is the ability to jump rope without certain muscles and areas getting taxed more than others. is a full body build of elasticity. From the feet.

3:00:20 all the way up to the neck because everything needs to have The right amount of tension, but not too much tension. So what a lot of people notice when they start jumping rope is that they're like, Oh, my calves got super sore. Right. And experienced people who jump rope, it's not their calves that get super sore. It's like Everything just kind of starts getting tired out because their whole system is just Popping them off the ground very lightly.

3:00:40 Whereas when you're new to it. that impact and even your feet are too weak to handle that impact on the ground and don't pop off. So that's why A rebounder is going to be super good. Then regress jumping so you can have your hands on something and start jumping, then just Literally, my hands on something.

3:00:57 Put your hands on the table. Fuck. Use that to help you have a softer landing. Initially you might have a lot of weight in your hands so that you because like maybe you can't handle that landing, but over time you're gonna be able to put less weight. And then this is where I got my mom. So hopping AKA basically

3:01:14 emulating what you would do kind of jump roping. Yeah. You could do that light lightly. You can also kind of transfer from leg to leg light hops. But the goal is to again Do not be embarrassed with how low you have to regress to feel comfortable with this. Don't just try starting to jump. with a jump rope immediately, because if you do that too soon and your body's telling you signals that you're not ready for, whether you're getting a lot of impact in your lower back, your knees, your feet are feeling really beat up, you need to listen to those signals and regress the hopping. I'm telling you, if you can Regress hopping.

3:01:46 Do it a little bit. Doesn't have to be every day. Could be every other day, just a little bit. You will get to a point where you can Start jumping rope. If you wanna see an example of what not to do, people can

3:01:56 Search for the Tim Ferris experiment parkour episode where I went from like no jumping to let me try to learn parkour in a week. Yeah. Don't do that. Yeah. Yeah. Do not do that. Yeah. Basically just like blew apart. My entire body like Force gumps braces. Uh huh. Not a good idea. Yeah. So yeah, regress. But the reason why I think that that's so important, it's great for bone density.

3:02:18 Like what what we're saying here. But I think it's like It allows you to Bring back that skill. and never lose it because once you're able to start hopping and it's now an effortless thing.

3:02:28 just a little bit will allow you to hold on to it for the rest of your life. And if you have it right now. Do the low intensity jump rope. Just you don't even need a jump rope. Just do some hopping each day so that you maintain that ability to just propel and land. That goes very far. And a majority of the population can't do it anymore just because one day they stop and they never did it again. Yeah, I can't remember who told me this. I'm inclined to say Kelly Starrett, because I get a lot of these from Kelly. So Kelly, I'll give you credit for this, even if it's not you. But I think it is Kelly. Who is quoting a famous Russian sports scientist, as I recall it, who said, Once you stop jumping, you start dying.

3:03:07 I love that. I Yes. Dude. That's true.

3:03:13 There is this video. Maybe I'll be able to find it by the time this comes out, but it w it literally showed This young man. And it showed all of his Relatives that were over 40. He had something up there and he was trying to have everyone jump. No one, even actually, there were a few people in their 30s.

3:03:28 Everyone tried jumping and they couldn't. They could barely get off the ground. It's such an awkward thing. And he's someone who trains jumping so he was able to like go super high, but it just shows that like Once you stop It can go very quickly. But I want people to understand this doesn't mean you can't get it back. It just means that you gotta treat yourself like a kid. That's learning to walk again.

3:03:48 You gotta start with the basics, be okay with that taking a while. Your feet have to adapt to the stress. Your body has to adapt to handle that force. Could be a year, could be two, could be th whatever. So what does a rebounder session look like? How long would you bounce on it? Literally you could bounce on it like again, just kinda like with the rope. You could do a minute, you could do ten. A rebounder takes away a lot of the impact that you're gonna have from like The ground.

3:04:11 because it allows you to go in and then you're able to use that energy to pop back up. So when you become like there are rebounders like the Belicon, I think other rebounders also, they have these handles that you can use if you find it difficult. Yeah. They're freaked out. They're like the Batmobile sled. Yeah. There's a whole fitness trend of like people on YouTube that do rebounder exercises. Like it's a workout for them. And I think this is a great thing. Some of them Or heavier.

3:04:37 That's powerful. Somebody who is Let's say they're they're a hundred pounds overweight, a hundred and fifty pounds overweight. but they can actually start jumping again. Yeah. And they can start bouncing again. But then over time they can Transfer that. To flat ground.

3:04:51 Yeah. That's why I think it's super powerful for Everyone. If you find that jumping, you you can't do jumping. Rebounding is great. Now, I also like rebounding too because it's something that I feel kind of decompresses my system a little bit. I like it.

3:05:04 Because when I get into the air, there's just like this I can't replicate this floaty thing that happens in the air where just like it's just like you're weightless. And when you become experienced, you can really go down into the rebounder and just get super high and just You're just literally going down and floating. When I come off of the rebounder, my body feels similar to when I finish a swim. I feel this

3:05:26 global decompression everywhere. So it's one of those practices. that I look at that makes the body feel better afterwards than before. It can be a workout if you want to be. I don't look at my rebounding as a workout. I look at the rebounding as a a recovery practice that feeds my body and allows me to do more hard work later. I look at the rope. As that too.

3:05:45 It feeds my body and allows me to do more later. It's it's healthy for me. And it's just fun. I think a a big thing here. All this stuff for me? Is fun, man. It feels like Way.

3:05:58 Right. So That's very important for me. Playing the long game. It's too boring.

3:06:05 Or too punishing. Ultimately. It's gotta be sustainable. Mm-hmm. I'm excited to try a lot of what we've talked about.

3:06:16 So where can people find All things in Sima. Me and my Producer Owen Carr. We make videos on the YouTube channel, which is just my name and Seema Yang. So you can if you want to find the Bone Nancy video, the traditional strength training video, that's at my YouTube channel, which is just my name, Seema EYang. No, just a note for people, there's silent N in there.

3:06:37 So N S I M A I N Y A N G If you say my name wrong, trust me, I ain't gonna get mad at you, don't worry, okay? So Don't be scared. Over at my website, the strongerhuman dot store is There's ropes, sandbags, kettlebells, the body lever.

3:06:54 Pretty much everything that I use, it's over there at the Stronger Human Store. And then if you want to learn Rope Flow for free, I have a Roplow Foundations course that has like fifty five modules and like over fifty videos that go in depth. Taking you from being someone who can be basic with rote flow to someone who can now flow with many different movements. That's in the stronger human community, which is on school.com slash the stronger human. And I also have stuff there where you can learn kill about flow. How to do soft tissue work.

3:07:22 Pretty.com is spelled like normal. S K O O L. S K O O L dot com slash the stronger human. Thanks for that correction. My goal for that place is First off, there's a great community there of over twelve thousand people right now. Like I love how these people bring in their different expertise with what they're doing. Not everyone is doing all the exact same things that I do. So it's cool that I get to learn from them too. But It's just a great community of people that are all just Trying to become stronger and build their own personal physical practices. And my goal for myself there is just to put everything that I've learned there. I want to mention this, Tim. Your podcast is a podcast that my me and my best friend, his name's Brian Balaya.

3:08:00 We were listening to your show back when I was eighteen years old. Like we were listening to your stuff back actually, no, I think I was I think I was twenty. The nineteen and twenties when we were listening to the show, because we would uh we would literally go on calls and be like, Okay, dude, what'd you learn from this? We'd get the books that were referenced in the show. I think we read the way of the superior man because of something you mentioned on one of your somehow. Somehow came up. Yeah. So that's what like got me on the path of like self-development and learning, constant learning. And Brian would say the same thing, like me and him are gonna go crazy because like, oh shit, we just went on to embarrass. So it's like it's cool. So I wanna say thank you because honestly, dude. I've listened to so much of your show.

3:08:40 so much of your show and it's taught me so much through the years that for me being here right now. It's literally insane to me. I'm just happy that I was able to stay kinda chill during this show. Cause this has been really cool. So I want to say thank you. Cause you like you literally, man, your stuff has changed my life. Seriously. Amazing. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So glad we got to spend time together. And I'm very excited to see

3:09:05 What you do in the coming years. How old are you? Thirty two. Turn thirty three this. You got some runway. I cannot wait to see.

3:09:14 The fact that you're doing masters I just I got some shit. I also compete in adult. I don't only compete in masters. Because masters starts at thirty, right? And I remember this best winner, someone's like, Yeah, you should do some masters competitions in skiing and I was like What's the lowest age that one can be masters are like Thirty and I was like Oh, I see. So people who just stopped competing at the highest levels.

3:09:43 Ah no. I'm not gonna be like a mop for those guys. But there's like ranges of masters. There's like masters one, which is what I did, right? So I compete in adult and masters. So I'm always but there's also masters two and three. So like they do it from like thirty to thirty three. Then thirty-four. Yeah. So it's not like I'm competing against some six year old sandbagging. You're slack Take this guilty bit. No, they're all around my arthritis. Kimura your arm off. Awww.

3:10:13 Yeah. Don't look at me that way. But I also compete in adults. Take your walker and get out of here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh man. Yeah. So Oh man. Well the very very, very fun and super, super informative to s to spend time together.

3:10:30 And very inspiring because As you're talking about these things, and I'm sure I'm not the only person, I'm sure people listening. You do a very good job of making it seem Which it is. Right.

3:10:44 Not just tangible But Achievable. Scale it down, right? You're not gonna walk in and do 600, 700 pound, 800 pound deadlifts tomorrow if you haven't been deadlifting. You don't need to do that. You shouldn't even attempt to do that. You shouldn't even attempt your one rep max.

3:11:02 And uh The payoff that you can get from layering these things in. learning to feel your body, learning to then trust your body, becoming familiar with the map that is your body and how it changes over time. The payoff with this type of microdosing of movement. the microdosing of soft tissue treatment. It does not need to be an

3:11:24 turn your life upside down, change everything, transformation overnight. And it shouldn't be because that's gonna fail. And From experience I can tell you whether it was with training with Jersey back in the day or training with Coach Summer back in the day. Like these little things done consistently. If you are consistent and you add some progressive overload

3:11:49 Doesn't mean a lot. Doesn't mean slapping on twenty pounds every time you go to the gym with extra weight. Micro progressions. That are sustainable so you're not getting injured. ideally, right? Those things will happen, little nicks and bruises along the way. What that can add up to when I look back at some of those experiences, it's just unbelievably Impressive.

3:12:11 And more important, fulfilling and you can actually fully inhabit this body that by the way, like mind body, there's no separation. It's just one integrated unit. And like we are evolved to move our bodies through space. That's why like the idea of a brain in a jar doesn't really work.

3:12:31 Like uploading consciousness now. Like it's all integrated into the movement of the body. And I think you are an incredible ambassador for it. So thank you for that. And you're a very, very, very good educator. And that is hard to do. That is hard to do in a very crowd media landscape. And I saw that video and I was like, huh.

3:12:53 Interesting. And then Mark's name popped up and I was like I think I recognize that fucking mutant. Hold on a second and I texted Mark. And uh here we are. So I'm glad it happened. And

3:13:07 We will link to everything in the show notes, folks. We're gonna go get some food. Which I'm very excited about. And Show notes.

3:13:16 As per usual. Tim.blog slash podcast. We'll link to everything. And I can guarantee you if you search for this episode N Sima and S I M A there will be one and only. It's hard for me to imagine. Getting a collection of those and uh

3:13:34 As always, folks, until next time, be it just a bit kinder than is necessary to others and also to yourself. Very important. Compassion that doesn't include you is incomplete, as Jack Cornfield would say. And Thanks for tuning in. Till next time. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.

3:14:12 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. Albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash. Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.

3:15:01 Sleep is the key to it all. It is the foundation many of you heard me talk about how today's sponsor, 8 Sleep, has improved my sleep with its pod cover. Well, they just launched their latest product, the Pod 5. I cannot wait to try it out. And here's why the Pod 5 introduces 8 Sleep's latest product, the blanket, which uses the same technology as the Pod's cover to extend temperature regulation across the entire body. So if you're too hot, too cold, you can fix it. If you're a couple and one of you is hot, one of you is cold, you can fix it as well. It all fits right over your existing mattress like a fitted sheet. On average, members report the pod has helped them fall asleep 44% faster. 34% deeper sleep and giving them up to one added hour of sleep each night. Also the pod snoring detection. My friend Albert might be interested in this, and automatic elevating platform have reduced user snoring by 45%. So it does a lot. You'll also get a personalized report each morning, allowing you to track your sleep stages, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, and more, all without having any devices strapped onto you. So head over to 8sleep.com slash Tim.

3:16:04 and use code TIM to get$350 off of your very own Pod 5 Ultra. You can try it at home for 30 days and return if you don't like it. So why not give it a shot? Sleep is everything. Again, that's 8Sleep.com slash Tim. Spell it out, 8Sleep.com slash Tim for$350 off. Shipping is available to many countries worldwide. One more time, eatsleep.com slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by Peek. That's P-I-Q-U-E. I have had so much tea in my life. I've been to China. I've lived in China, in Japan, I've done tea tours, I drink a lot of tea. I've been drinking fermented Pooh Air Tea specifically.

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