#748: Pavel Tsatsouline and Christopher Sommer

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4:23 That's One the number one. Password.com slash Tim. Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer you a personal question?

4:36 Now it is kinda. cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endocellary No 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 sit down with world class performers. From every field imaginable to tease out the habits.

5:03 routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply. And test in your own lives. This episode is a two for one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its tenth year anniversary, which is insane to think about. And past one billion downloads. To celebrate.

5:20 I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favourites. From more than seven hundred episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. To give you these super combo episodes, and internally we've been calling these The Super Combo episodes.

5:34 Because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks. But to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider Stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps

5:50 They got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one, we went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests. You can find that and more at Tim.blog slash. Combo.

6:06 And now, without further ado. Please enjoy. And thank you. For listening. First up

6:13 Pavel Tsatsulin. World renowned strength coach. Founder and CEO of Strong First. And the trainer who brought the Russian kettlebell to the West. Kickstarting the Kettlebell Revolution

6:26 You can learn more about Pavel's school of strength. At strong first. Dot com I used to be Uh BT training instructor.

6:35 physical training instructor for the service special forces. And my education is on sports science. And I did over the years train a number of high end units in the West. I've been a subject matter to uh US Marine for

6:52 to the US secret service, to US Navy SEALs and others. My methods are used Officially. By some very high end. military and counter terrorist units into

7:02 Countries that are Main allies of the United States. That Perform. Very well.

7:11 in very rugged environments. And I take these methods and I apply it to other environments. So if somebody decides I just want to change my life. I want to get stronger. I want to have a better game of tennis. I want to succeed in a given sports.

7:24 I take the same methods that have been tested by operators at war. And I bring these people. The same methods. If you look at

7:34 Or typical person. And how do we get it stronger? Let's say that you have a Four cylinder engine. What the person would do is they would make that Six cylinder engine.

7:43 But before you're firing in two, now you're firing in three. But if instead what you do is you learn to fire an all four. Mm-hmm. So there are ways of training a nervous system to engage your capacity so much more fully. And if you look at high level performers at light body weight in some fields

8:01 Let's say a very high level martial art is somebody very skinny breaking a stack of boards. Or very skinny guy like Lamarck and deadlifting five times his body weight. So this is so much about the concentration. of mental force.

8:14 And for your listeners, I could give a very simple example how You can do that in your gym. Let's say that you perform try it with the simplest exercise possible. Try it with the Dumble curl or barbell curl. Because I know your sissies out there, you all do that. And

8:31 So let's say that you're going through your curls and things are suddenly starting to get tougher. So when they suddenly start to get tougher, I want you to Just Crush. The dumbbell.

8:43 Or the barbell, or the kettlebell, whatever it is that you'd correlate. Just wipe out or pressure it. And what you will see is you're gonna definitely gonna be able to get several more repetitions out. I'm gonna give you Two more techniques in addition.

8:57 Once you have practiced that. Then on the next set. In addition to crushing The bar and the way up. Also

9:06 Contract your glutes as tight as possible. Like somebody's gonna kick you in the butt very, very tight. So you're just like crutch a wall nuts. And at the same time, tighten your abs as if Somebody's gonna kick you, which You know, somebody might.

9:20 So if you do that, if you do these three things. If you contract your glutes, contract your wraps. Contract your grip. Everything that you do. Absolutely everything. It's gonna be greatly amplified.

9:31 And this is just uh Small example. Have the skills strength that I do teach. They call me

9:40 The kettlebell guy. They called me the father of the kettlebell, which I appreciate very much. I did introduce together with my business partner, I did introduce the kettlebell to the West. And right now the kettlebell. has become. Main street.

9:53 But what I'm really all about is about the principles, the underlining principles of strength. The underlying principles of power generation. And it doesn't really matter what modality you use, whether you use the kettlebell, the barbell. Your body weight. Whether you're armed fighting.

10:09 lifting a rock said it really doesn't matter. So I am Not about the kettlebell. I am about the principles that make it strong. What I have done is I have

10:19 Reverse engineered the way the strongest people move naturally. And I have brought it to the people. I've shown to people how to move in this matter. And how to shave off.

10:29 Years and if not decades. Of training. to Progress too much higher. You once mentioned to me in a casual conversation I called you for some type of training advice or it might have been via email.

10:41 And correct me if I'm wrong, but you said when in doubt, train your grip in your core. Is that right? Could you elaborate on that? Because I think it's not advice that many people have received. There is such a thing as called uh irradiation. So the phenomenon of irradiation, what it really means is

10:56 If you contract a muscle. the tension from that muscle is gonna spill over to the neighborhood muscles. So for your listeners, I'd like to try this. Make a fist. Probably going to fuel tension you're for. Now make a tight fist.

11:09 You're gonna feel tension in your biceps, triceps. Now make your white knuckle fist. you're gonna find that tension is gonna spread into your shoulder, your latch, your back, and so on. Okay, folks, you may relax now. the same thing happens. So certain areas of the body

11:23 have this great overflow of tension. So the gripping muscles are Amongst them. Why? In part because They have such a great representation.

11:32 In uh your nervous system, in your brain. And as for the abs and as for the glutes. That has a lot to do with creating your interabdominal pressure. So what does this mean exactly?

11:43 Visualize your muscles as speakers. And visualize your brain as the gadget that's plays the music, whatever it is. iPad, iPhone, whatever. And record player. Doesn't matter.

11:56 And the amount of your pressure in your abdomen. They dropped down all the pressure. That's the amplifier. That's a volume control. So by increasing the pressure in your abdomen

12:07 It's like you're turning up the volume. And vice versa. So when you're trying to stretch with increasing your flexibility. If you see somebody there trying to do a split and you see Mm-hmm.

12:19 The person is creating high Intrabombal pressure. And that just increases the tension of the muscle. Instead, what you need to do, you need to Yeah. Complete the release and let go.

12:32 And bring it down. So for strength we do the opposite. We have special techniques. Where you increase that pressure. And maximise your power. Those are just a couple of the different ways we can increase his strength.

12:42 And that's what you've seen in my certification. FYI, I am no longer with that organization. So my company today is called Strong First. And uh S of D certification, that's that same curriculum that you have learned back then. Just to touch on two points and then we're gonna jump into more training and and ask about how you would rank certain aspects of what people would traditionally consider perhaps fitness. what would you recommend as good methods for developing

13:08 The grip. And core or abdomen for those people listening, if they wanted to take a simple protocol and perhaps experiment for the next Is there any

13:18 Basic Approach that you might suggest for those two things? It can be done in conjunction with uh full body training regimen that uses let's say kettlebells climbing robes and so on. But if it is not

13:32 then what I s recommend that you do is you get some grippers. So the company is called Iron Mind. Ironmind.com And they carry hen grippers. One thing you need to understand is these are not those little sissy plastic grippers you get at a store. These are heavy duty grippers. They go up to three hundred sixty five pounds.

13:51 There's a couple of people in the world have done that. They also do have resources on how to do that. But Even without reading how. I can tell you how to train.

14:00 So get yourself a couple of gerpers, use their charge, the recommendations that Iron Mind offers. start training them in the manner that are referred to as uh gree stagru. Grouse to groove is a highly simplified training methodology that's been derived from Soviet weightlifting methodology. So in a nutshell, this is what you do. Throughout the day.

14:21 Every day. Whenever you feel fully recovered. So you have to have at least fifteen minutes of rest between sets, you know, maybe thirty. Maybe even more. Is you're gonna do a set.

14:32 And you're only gonna do about half the repetitions that you're capable of. So for example You picked up a particular gripper. You start squeezing it. You probably could do it ten times.

14:43 But you only do five. And you put it down. Let's say you later on pick up a gripper that's a little heavier. Maybe you could do three reps with it.

14:52 But you do all one. And in this particular matter. You accumulate traps and you keep going and going and going. And Everybody tells me that's impossible to get strong in this particular manner.

15:04 Yeah. Science and experience shows that this makes you strong. This makes you strong fast. This makes you strong a safe manner. You can apply this particular methodology. Again, I call it Gurisiguru. to any strength exercise or any strength endurance exercise.

15:21 Just to give you an example of its effectiveness, my father in law. Former Marine. at the age of sixty four, started following this routine. He was able to do about ten clocks at that point. In several months he was up to twenty. When he tests it.

15:34 And he could not do that many as a young jarhead. So You young bucks. out there, you can definitely get this done. So this is how you guys are gonna turn your grip with these grippers. Carry through with you throughout the day. You're not gonna get sweaty.

15:48 Just whenever you feel like it, just take it out and squeeze. As for training your Abdomen. There are many different methods of training the abdomen. But you have to abide by The following rules.

15:59 You have to keep The repetitions to five and under. No more than five reps. Anything more than five reps is bodybuilding. And you need to

16:08 Make a focus and tension. And we can focus on contraction. As opposed to on reps and fatigue. Just to give you an example of the Planck. No, the plank is a kind of a fashionable exercise in the core training circles.

16:21 And by the way, we don't use the word core. That's wrong first. Why don't you use the word core? Because people who use the word core, they do things we don't like. We don't like at all. So we just say We're just saying it's actually. So the plank. So traditionally they would put you in the plank.

16:37 And you're supposed to stay in the splang for a couple of minutes. And What's happening is you see this poor person who cannot even assume the proper posture to start with. And then as Fatiques had seen other muscles, wrong muscles start kicking in, the back starts arching, the butt start shooting up.

16:53 And what you're doing is what Greg Cook calls putting fitness on top of dysfunction. And what we do instead. Is if we do a plank We called the heart stump blank.

17:04 We would be a blank for no longer than ten seconds. And When you do the plank, you try to contract everything. Absolutely everything. When I showed that everything hitting the shins, your forearms, your neck, everything. Everything but your neck and face.

17:18 Everything below your neck you're going to contract. It's not for folks with high blood pressure, heart condition, and that's true for pretty much any type of training. But for everybody else is an extremely powerful tool. So you get down in a plank. You make fists, okay?

17:33 You contract your abs, you can tract your glutes, you can tract your entire body. You pretend that somebody's walking in a walk by and kick you in the ribs, which again somebody might course. And Andy Bowden and other top power lifters to whom I've taught this technique, they swear by this because this is the abdominal training for strength. This is not just some nonsense that she would do cranking out the reps. So

17:56 To sum up your abdominal training, find whatever abdominal exercises that you like. It can be the plank. It can be uh some kind of a setup. It can be something from your book, the for our body. It can be something from my book, The Arts Labs.

18:12 It can be something else. That's not important. As long as it's a good exercise that's been recognized that it does work. And Three times a week. Do

18:20 Three to five sets. Of three to five reps. Okay, folks, just remember this. Three to five sets. Up three to five reps.

18:28 Focus and contraction. Don't focus on fatigue. Don't focus on the wraps. And I promise if you do these two things. For several months.

18:37 You work your group. This matter. You work your abs. In a smile. Everything that you do today.

18:43 He's gonna be strong. I don't care what it is. It's a bigger deadlift. It's a tenant serve. It makes no difference. You're gonna be stronger. And the in the case of the the mid section,

18:54 And we're working with the plank if people decided they were gonna keep it simple just so they can remember it and do three sets of three reps three times a week. Let's just say Monday we'll be able to do it. Got it. Three second seconds three times a week. Yes. And try to contract everything below your neck. You wanna be strong. You need to keep your reps at five.

19:17 And on At five reps render is what you're really working on, I'll get out of my depth and into yours pretty quickly, but the sort of neural pathways and the recruitment of motor neurons and Sort of firing. Capabilities and so on.

19:30 Pretty much you're gonna have a high level of neural adaptations. You're also going to build some muscle as well. So you're gonna build the high threshold motor units as well, but it's not a bodybuilding protocol. You'll build some muscle, but it's not really the end, the end goal itself. You were trying to also you're trying to avoid the fatigue. You're trying to avoid the burn? Because whenever you start experiencing the burn

19:53 That's from something called the hydrogen ions that leads to a whole lot of problems for you. So one of the problems is it interferes with the command that your brain sends to the muscle to contract. And another problem that it creates these hydrogen ions literally are destructive.

20:10 So if you leave them around the muscle for too long, they really start Destroying your muscle. So Just keep those reps under. Five three to five. Don't worry about getting bulky. You're not gonna get bulky. It's not gonna happen.

20:21 And approach your training as a practice. So this is another very important point, too. I think this is a super important point. No, I'm glad you're bringing this up. I hate the word workout. The word work out does not exist in the Russian language. We talk about a

20:36 Training session or we talk about a lesson. We never talk about a workout, just Think of what does the word Working out what do you envision? Sweating is sweating and grunting and let's see how much I can punish myself and drain myself.

20:51 So the goal is not to get stronger. The goal is just to get worn out. And there are simpler ways of doing that, run up the mount. Okay. No, the idea here is practice. Strength is a skill and as such it must be practice.

21:05 And if you approach it in this matter, not only are you gonna get stronger so much faster, but you're gonna truly enjoy your training process. Training is should be something that should be enjoyed. So when people think of fitness, uh particularly non athletes I think that

21:18 There tends to be a very scatter shot approach and there's a paradox of choice challenge that they have where they're fed a lot of recommendations from many different people. And They have strength not necessarily muscle gain, but just getting stronger. They have hypertrophy So increasing their muscular size for lack of a a better description, endurance, flexibility. How would you

21:39 rank these in order of priority and why. Tim as long as the person has the required mobility. And symmetry. The priority is always and health, the priority is always strength.

21:52 Strength has to be first. So the first step that you do is you assess your mobility, you find uh specialists who can do that. FMS would be a recommendation of mine. The Great Cooks FMs. Functional movement screen. function moment screen is gonna find out how mobile you are and also how symmetrical you are. So as long as that is dialed in. That is in place.

22:12 You have to get strong. And strength is The mother quality. of all physical qualities. And that's not a statement by me, that's a statement by Fisher Matve, the father of fertilization, one of the greatest sports scientists ever. And greater strength.

22:28 Інкріз Йорформенс Yeah. Absolutely everything. So you can see of course, okay, of course, yeah, being stronger is gonna help you in let's say yeah punching somebody harder or lifting something. But how is that gonna help me if I'm let's say a triathlete?

22:43 How's it gonna help me if I'm uh Nur Sunroad. It is going to help you in several different ways. One is The perceived level of exertion.

22:52 It's gonna go down. Several years ago Norwegians did a very interesting study where they put Elite endurance athletes. Some were bicyclists, some were Runners.

23:02 On a pure strength. Roger. Does four sets of four reps of heavy squads. It's about as pure a strength as it gets. And in the end of the study.

23:13 Not surprisingly. All these guys were stronger. They could jump higher and so on, but they were Not impressed with that. That didn't matter to them.

23:22 What did impress them? User ran faster. Their race times went down. Because strength just makes enables everything else. If you're trying to let's say

23:33 Lose weight. being stronger is gonna help you do that because you're gonna have a bigger furnace, you're gonna train yourself much harder on the exercises. That are fat loss exercises. So it really doesn't matter. what it is that you're trying to achieve.

23:47 Strength is the number one. attributes you need to address. And that's why my company's called. Strong first. Mm-hmm.

23:55 One of the things that I love about you, Pavel, is that you say what you mean and mean what you say. There's a degree of clarity that I I envy. I might include it for people, but the uh when we did our sound check I asked you uh you know, to give me an answer so we could test the audio what you had for breakfast. And what was your answer? Coffee. And that was it. That was the sound check. I love the simplicity. Now Speaking of simplicity and also undoing the confusion that a lot of people suffer from

24:21 What are the Most counterproductive myths. Or misconceptions about strength training. That come to mind. Well, the number one, Tim, I guess, is the idea that you have to

24:33 Gold to failer. Every time you train. I can tell you one thing that the Soviet weightlifters I have done a very thorough analysis of the certain weightlifting methodology. Through the sixties, through the eighties, the glory days.

24:46 And I found Babs. They Typically did. One third.

24:52 of maximal repetitions per set. So what does it mean? If let's say that you're using a wave that's your ten rep max. Ten is all you could do if you push yourself very hard.

25:02 They would do three. Two six. Consistent. Now you probably asked yourself, Okay, I'm not a Weight lift here.

25:11 And what does this Soviet stuff from the eighties have to do with today? Well, two things. First of all, even though A person who is not a lifting athlete It's not going to train exactly as a wavelifter or power lifter.

25:23 Nevertheless. The methodology has to be derived from these sports because these are specialist strength force. So it they just have to be adapted to your needs. Second of all.

25:34 This particular Soviet methodology is still superior. To this day. This is very interesting, but You keep hearing about all this new world records. set in the sport of weightlifting.

25:44 Well. If you compare the world records of today. To the world records of the eighties. You will see then in most cases the records today are inferior.

25:55 Two records in the eighties. How can that be? They accuse people of doing drugs. And they changed weight classes.

26:03 Twice. Since the eighties. Of course. It's so wonderful. I'm so happy that today nobody does drugs anymore. It's just true. And Sure. If you look at the lifts performed by Soviet lifter Urik Varbanyan.

26:16 In nineteen eighty. Yeah, the Moscow Olympics. Those lives have never been Exceeded. These lips have never been

26:24 Approached. So this particular methodology Does work extremely well is still the best methodology, period. Later on in the Soviet powerlifting team.

26:34 adapted this methodology for powerlifting with tremendous success. The Dominate. The same particular methodology has been adapted to body weight training, kettlebell presses and so on and so forth. So it's the same thing that can be apply for everybody because this is principle based training.

26:51 So The major misconception. Is That you have to go to failure. If you just overcome that.

26:58 And if you make it a habit To do One third. to do certain the repetitions are possible. And do more sets instead.

27:07 You're gonna make much great big progress. You're gonna do much safer. And folks you're gonna enjoy your training. How does the approach shift if your focus is

27:17 Max more. Hypertrophy. If You're after maximum hypertrophy. It's Molly.

27:23 So they figured out in the Soviet Union that There's a direct correlation between volume. And uh hypertrophy. So you just pretty much have to do more sets. you're gonna have to do more sets in the like sixty to seventy percent of your max range. And a whole bunch of sets of five and six.

27:40 Just many of them. And your respirates might be compressed a little more. But that's it. If you do that, do this a couple of times a week. Many sets of five or six. Don't worry about how many.

27:52 Just keep going. Don't kill yourself. Enjoy yourself. Eat more. You're gonna get bigger. It's unavoidable. It's just as simple as that. Would you consider The

28:01 And please disagree if this is not the case, but i if you had to pick one movement for strength. Longevity. Would the deadlift be that movement, or is it not possible to choose one movement? How would you a try to answer that question? If you were to choose one movement, Tim, yes, I would choose the deadlift or I would choose the Calibull Swing.

28:20 obviously the kettlebell swing is not something you can compete in and something you're not it's not gonna give you the same satisfaction of lifting heavy weight. But uh those are the two Main Full body exercises. The full body expressions of

28:34 Power. that will go such a long way for you for Longevity, strength. Just the quality of life. What are the biggest mistakes? that people make with the deadlift. Whether that's

28:46 Technically or in programming what are the biggest mistakes? Well, Tim, I think the very big mistake is because they think, Okay, I have picked up things from the floor. This looks so simple. It's not an Olympic left, therefore It's very simple. So I'll just start filing on place and start training. The deadlift is a very technical lift. Even if you're just a recreational lifter, you owe it to yourself to learn

29:09 to develop correctly. That's as simple as that. So I say that's the primary mistake and that mistake goes for Every exercise that people do out there. I would highly recommend people check out your book with Mr. Bolton. Yeah, really very, very dense.

29:25 Shifting gears just a little bit, dense in the best way possible. No fluff. I'd love to shift gears and just ask you a few Questions about sort of your philosophies and your thinking, not so much the highly specific training questions, but When you think of, for instance, the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you? Tim, I

29:43 Unfortunate enough to know Many successful people And I think that What? Separates her from the rest is

29:52 DCO of strong first. Eric Furhart, he put it very well. He says balance with priorities. Balance with priorities.

30:01 So Eric, yourself and Many others are fortunate to know they exemplify success for me. What are the habits? that you've observed that allow people to have balance. with priorities. What are the

30:13 the things they do that other people don't do. Or maybe the things they don't do that other people do. Well I think one is calm. These people are calm. Because

30:23 People or hyper They get so trapped. In their reactive modes. They get too trapped. And the

30:30 Every day minutiae of their work and their existence. So they just do not pause and they do not think. Again, Eric has a great quote. From a Vietnam Air Seal. Which says calm is contagious.

30:43 Calm is contagious. So when the person is calm that he or she has the time to Meditate, reflect, Side the priorities and set the ballots. That's certainly holds true.

30:57 From what I've seen, and the opposite, of course, is true. He's just chasing the Absolutely. Chicken Little. This guy's falling. Yes, everything is urgent. I Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.

31:16 This episode is brought to you by Mementis. Mementus offers high quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more. I've been testing their products for months now, and I have a few that I use constantly. Personally I've been using Mementus Mag38, Ltonine, and Apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now, the Mementus Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients. Mementus also partners with some of the best minds in human performance to bring world class products to market. including a few you will recognize from this podcast, like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Kelly Starrett. Their products contain high quality ingredients that are third party tested, which in this case means informed sport and or NSF certified, so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. So check it out. Visit Livemomentus.com slash Tim and use code TICOU for twenty percent off. That's LivMomentus. L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash Tim and code Tim for twenty percent off.

32:27 And now Christopher Summer. A former US national team gymnastics coach. I'm the founder of the Gymnastic Bodies Training System.

32:39 Known for building devotees into some of the strongest Most powerful athletes in the world. You can find Christopher on Instagram. That Christopher

32:50 S-O-M-M-E-R one. Coach, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tim. I am excited to finally have you on the show. We've had so many conversations in the last Month or two.

33:05 And I've been so impressed with the subtlety and nuance of the training that you do. So I've been very eager. to have you on the show to explore All things gymnastics and gymnastics. Strength training related. So thanks for making the time.

33:21 And I thought we could we could start with just some definitions. So What would you Or how would you define

33:28 Gymnastic strength training, G S T. In a nutshell, gymnastic strength training I define as high level body weight strength training. So none of the training that we do for world class performance or the acrobatics or technicalist. Just purely.

33:45 the strength joint prep immobility components. And one example. of what not to do, perhaps, or or how gymnastics strength training might differ from the aesthetics that some people I'm not gonna say compromise with, but choose. We were talking about doing

34:01 a pike handstand press or um holding that position and the example feel free to correct my recollection, but was of how A lot of folks kick their hips way out to counterbalance. Instead of doing what? What would the gymnastics strength training version of that look like. Good example.

34:19 So what we see and this is kinda getting into some handstands, some skill training. But um handstand done correctly. is a reflection of physical preparation that athlete either has Or does not have. So if they lack strength, if they lack mobility.

34:35 then of course their technical handstand is gonna lack refinement. So now it's Terms of that Pike handstand. If they lack. Middle trap.

34:44 If they lack lower trap strength, then they're gonna try to counterbalance by really arching the chest out. Oh goodness. Not even sure how to describe it, like a pike and an arch at the same time. Sorry to interrupt coach, just for people who I realise I should have probably defined.

35:01 some terms myself. So Pike for people who are not familiar with this. The the easiest way to visualize it if you don't have any background with that is imagine you're sitting on the floor It's kinda like PE class, legs straight. And together. Bending.

35:14 At the waist. Toward your toes. Betting forward towards your toes. And so if you were to imagine you're sitting down With your legs out in front of you. Hypothetically at a ninety degree angle and you put your arms up over your head, let's just flip you upside down so you're in a handstand position.

35:29 That's effectively. What we're talking about. Exactly we're talking about. To hold that because center of mass is way out in front of the body then in order to hold that. the traps are what's responsible to keeping the back and the shoulder straight. So if you're not strong enough.

35:43 Can. Is it some people say, Well it's just skill training. Well, Everything builds upon everything else. So Pan Olympics coming out.

35:51 People are gonna be pumped, they're gonna see our Olympic team, they're gonna see the other Monsters around the world competing on rings and they're uh I wanna do that. And then they're gonna Jump right up. I mean, I've got friends who are

36:03 former SEAL team six and the first thing they did is jump up and of course they failed utterly. And then they come see us. 'cause it's it's like anything, you know, you don't jump right into calculus. You learn to count. Then we learn addition, we learn subtraction, yada yada yada. With enough time and enough layers, enough progression, then we get to advanced math.

36:21 So advanced ring strain. Same deal. I remember we were talking not too long ago about the importance of pacing when you're dealing with connective tissue, tendons and ligaments. Which is something I'm not particularly well known for in terms of patience and paceight.

36:37 But I've I've noticed that. But many of the guys who say do outdoor bar workouts, some of which are very impressive. Physical specimens. Well jump up on the rings and they'll be doing I'm not sure what they would even call them. They're kind of like w would be uh looked at as like a typewriter on the pull up bar when you move back and forth from one arm to the other. Side to side, pull up. Side to side pull up and

36:59 They're like, I was I was feeling fine, coach, and then suddenly my Yeah, I tore my bicep, or I tore my peck and It was fine until it wasn't. What are some if you look at the muscles or types of strength that most non-gymnists will not have, even if they consider themselves reasonably athletic, what would be on that list? And we already mentioned one.

37:21 Which is say mid and lower traps, and of course I would like to think I came to the table with kind of hat in hand because I recognize how hard a lot of this is, but the more I practice it, the more I'm astounded at how unprepared my body is for these movements. I mean as someone who has done a lot of pulling from the floor. For instance, as No decent.

37:41 Deadlift, I would like to think. I was just astonished at how weak. my mid back was. It was just it blew my mind. It was completely flabbergasted. What other muscles or movements do you find normal just c cannot perform even if they view themselves as athletic. For the lifters, the one that always jumps out at us is their lack of shoulder extension.

38:02 So um if I pick my if I'm standing upright may I lift my hands forward. That's flexion and I can go all the way up to my arms or overhead. I'm picking my hands up behind me. That would be shoulder extension. Right. So just to paint another picture for folks, like if you stand up

38:17 And then Interlaced your fingers behind your tailbone with your arms straight and then tried to lift them up towards the ceiling keeping your back straight. So the shoulder extension. And what we find as, you know, and and a lot of what we'll get sometimes from people as well.

38:32 I don't wanna be in the circus. I don't wanna be an acrobat. I I'm not interested in Skill training. I want I want strength. And what they don't understand is if you want to achieve world class levels of performance technically That comes first.

38:46 From having a solid foundation of physical preparation, which means correct range of motion. Good mobility, good connective tissue. So a shoulder extension becomes so for example, a lot of people fail, they can't do muscle ups. 'Cause they can't do shoulder extension. They think in their head that a muscle up is a chin up.

39:05 A little bit of transition that they don't understand and then a dip. What really happens is we do a pull up, we get our hands to our chin and then the elbows. pull back behind the torso behind them, and there's their shoulder extension. If they can't do shoulder extension, now they're stuck. And name.

39:20 They'll spend all this time working technique and doing rap and doing rap and What they're doing is they're treating the symptom, not actually the problem. So just as some background for folks, the way that we connected was I at thirty eight

39:35 Finally decided enough is enough. I've been fantasizing about Trying to learn gymnastics in a structured way for twenty plus years, much like my postponing of getting a dog for twenty years, it's just like why did it take me so long to do this? And I was in Venice. I'm gonna give These folks a shout out. There's a CrossFit gym there named Paradise of CrossFit and

39:55 Love the folks who run the gym and I would go there to train'cause they'd let me use chalk and do all the things that A lot of gyms will not allow me to do. And I met a gent who was doing a body weight workout. He's the only person doing a bodyweight only workout. And he suggested that I follow Gymnastic bodies on Instagram.

40:12 So we started following your company on Instagram and Saw older Let's just call it middle aged men, sort of my demo as it stands right now. who had started from scratch doing it.

40:25 impressive things and I had used age as my crutch and excuse for not pulling the trigger. in the last few years. So I reached out to Rob Wolf, who was kind enough to introduce us. And Then We use

40:39 collaborated in this experiment that we're currently doing, which is a roughly ninety days. With a handful of goals that we'll get to, but I want people to understand how we connected. So I'm in the middle of training right now. I have to say I feel better. Then I felt

40:54 With the exception of a little bit of elbow. nonsense that is not from this specifically, it's a recurring thing. feel better than I have in years. Just from the little bit that we've done. And the follow up question to that is When people are training for handstands At home. So self taught.

41:14 What are the biggest mistakes that they make? Well They won't like the answer. This is a little bit of national team coach attitude coming out. People tend to want what they want when they want.

41:25 And that's fine. If I'm looking for mediocre to average results. If I'm looking to really do best effort, I've got to back shit up and I've got to take care of my business. And for most of the adults. It's gonna be they have severe compromises in their mobility. Their shoulders don't work well.

41:44 There. hips don't work, their knees don't work, their elbows are shot, their forearms are tight from all the desk patrol. They're calves. Or like piano wire from sitting all the time. We won't even talk about hip flexor.

41:57 their scaps don't move, their scapula have no motion, they can't protract, they can't retract. Their spine Is locked. In just a flat. Or uh kyphoids, so they're hunched over. Their lower back is continually arched.

42:11 And they're just kinda frozen in this position and then they wanna try to move their body. Now, the common one that we get from people as well. These are extreme ranges of motion. These are artificial ranges of motion. And actually these are

42:25 Your natural range of motion. Problem is they quit using it. And so it just atrophied. We're not doing anything special. We're just gonna we have to recreate that natural range of motion first.

42:37 We've been doing it. Gosh, I don't know now, maybe since two thousand six working with the adults. And the thing that just we keep having my nose rubbed in it over and over and over again. Every time I think I have it down I find I need to take it further. It's just the complete utter lack of joint prep and mobility they come to the table with. Even your your own case is an excellent example.

42:58 We haven't done anything advanced yet. We're doing all basic, we're doing fundamental stuff. And you're already feeling better than in years. Well I think it's A lot of it has to do with Two things if I'm trying to self diagnose. The first is

43:13 Identifying it. Musculature and motor patterns that I simply had not developed properly previously. Even if I had a passing familiarity, like Well let me frame this in the form of a question, so

43:25 Can you define what the hollow position is, why it's important, and how How do most normals do when they do uh say hollow body rock? Maybe you can explain that too. Most people and when they think of abs, they think lower abs, they think upper abs. They're not gonna think about obliques at all, and they're not gonna think transverse abdominis at all. So lower abs are easy, upper abs easy, obliques okay. They they understand the sideways. They don't understand how obliques wrap around into the lats, into the lower back. Okay, that's fine.

43:54 But transverse abdominis, they're like Excuse me. Was that English? They don't have a clue. And that's what supports the body when it's in a straight body position.

44:03 So For example. ab rollers were m we don't use them in our program, but just as an example. Ab rollers were getting a a bad knock that if you do an ab roller, you're gonna hurt your lower back. Well.

44:15 Yes and no. You'll hurt your back if you're doing it wrong. If you're Arched in your lower back. So for definitions, if my lower back is arched, I'm an anterior pelvic tilt. If I'm the opposite movement and I'm kind of my tailbone tucked under And my lower back is flat. That's posterior pelvic till.

44:33 Oh my body's horizontal. then my uh back is supported when I'm posterior pelvic tilt. If I'm arched. It's Unsupported by the Moscow's churn, I'm hanging by the disc.

44:45 Which is true for a ton of exercises that we do. If I feel it in my lower back Almost universally when I send you videos, the feedback is more PPT post posterior pelvic too. And it should just be a man trap. Yeah, and for people who need a way to visualize this. 'Cause I realize a lot of this vocab is new. And coach, feel free to interrupt at any point, but an easy way to think about and remember Anterior pelvic tilt.

45:09 is imagine that you're Waste is the top of a wine glass. If you have anterior pelvic tilt, to the front, you're gonna be pouring wine out the front of that glass, basically out of your belly button. And if you have posterior pelvic tilt, you're tucking that tailbone.

45:24 you're going to be pouring wine. Basically down your sacrum, you know, down the back. of your body. It's just a easy way for me to to remember That is clever. I gotta say, forty years of national team and I've never heard it described that way. Yeah, it may it may be our go to definition from Uh you know, I can't do the gymnastics.

45:41 I'll have to stick with uh refining my definitions, although I am I'm making progress with the fundamentals and I'd like to talk about the assessment that we did. So I flew out to a great gym, Awakened Gymnastics in Colorado. And we met up That's our GD master affiliate. We only have one in the world. Awaken in Denver.

45:59 is our number one G B affiliate. They're the best at what they do. Yeah, it's a fantastic gym. And we did quite a few hours of various assessments. If somebody wanted to try to self assess or videotape themselves to have, say, someone qualified in gymnastics. Assess them. If you were to do an eighty twenty analysis, like which movements

46:20 Where exercises give you the most Data. Most bang. Most bang for the buck. Well let's see. No, so uh we went over with you, we checked hanging leg lift. Hanging leg lift automatically is gonna tell me um Dynamic screen check motion. Is that right? That's uh like on a stall bar. You don't want to be free swinging.

46:38 Well, it could be you know, mo most of'em, you know, w whatever they can do. It'll To my eye, as soon as I see it or our staff's eye, they're g they're gonna know right away. whether or not that person has adequate it's gonna tell us your core strength and it's gonna tell me hamstring flexibility. That'll do that in one bridge. Bridge is a huge one for adults.

46:56 That's been one of our we have uh thoracic bridge core stretch series. That's been one of our best selling products. That's what I'm doing this evening. Yeah. Yeah. Notice notice guys that Tim's real happy right now. That that'll change in just a few. Yeah. What characterizes this is A really important question. What characterizes a good bridge? And for people who are thinking of bridge, I mean it's imagine you're laying on your back, you put your

47:18 palms down by your sort of ears, let's say, feet flat on the ground, and then you go up into an arch. Now I was extremely surprised and found it quite hilarious. how bad my bridge was. I mean terrible. In the assessment. By your standards, yes. By what I see on a normal basis, yours was medium. Medium. It was like a D plus. It was like on the verge of passing.

47:41 But I realized despite all of my many years of wrestling where we did tons of bridges. Almost all of my bridging Bending at the low back, right? So my lumbar bends. Huge issue. Yep. So what is a good bridge? Little background. So

47:57 the lumbar in the lower back is not. designed to have a ton of movement in it, a big arch. your thoracic spine, your upper and your middle back, they're designed to have a lot of movement. They're designed to rotate. Your lower back is not But when most people do their bridge work, they're so compromised now.

48:15 even back up a little bit more. They're they're so compromised in range of motion their upper body. because they've been hitting the weights hard. They've been doing just a lot of high intensity training. Yeah. To preface that, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that at all. If you weren't one of God's gifts when you were born. You've gotta do something to make up the deficit.

48:35 The problem is when they do all that weight training They're not doing it in balance and maintaining their mobility. If they had, they wouldn't have the issues that they ran into. So if all you do is strength, strength, strength, strength, strength, then y you can always tell someone who has their they're the curl king and they're the bench press king. They come in and they're hunched over and their elbows don't straighten. Their arms don't go behind them and on there, like, you know. My shoulders are killing me.

49:00 Most of the time what we found is Yeah, their shoulders are completely Fd up, I agree. But their biceps are crazy tight also, and that bicep runs up through the front of the shoulder. And it's manifesting itself as a shoulder issue. So kind of all these come together, long story short, to cause them a huge problem being able to get into a proper bridge.

49:20 Which should be all upper body, no lower back almost at all. But people are doing the exact opposite. They hurt their lower back and they say, Man, these these bridges are dangerous. No, the brid bridges aren't dangerous. Doing them half assed and wrong without vetting your sources of information is dangerous. I found it

49:38 Incredibly. therapeutic as someone who's had a basically a frozen thoracic for God knows how long? Ten ten years. Sure. We mean we were worried about that. I remember we're like hmm, we're wondering well, we'll work through this. Tim has the upper body mobility of a Lego figure. What are we gonna do? So

49:55 But just the progression of Doing it And of course people should look for visual references and I'll point them to a bunch of resources. I'll point them to a bunch of resources in the show notes, but Can you walk through the checkboxes because I know we've done this even recently, the concept, I don't know why this didn't even occur to me, but of helping to take the lower back out of the equation by elevating the feet.

50:19 Elevating the defeat. Yep, and elevating them as high as necessary. Some people are so tight that they basically start in a handstand. And It is what it is, right? The main thing that we try to always hammer with students is they're always in a hurry. I I've gotta get it right now. Even our conversation, you remember way back when started that way.

50:39 I was like Dude, if you can handle it, we need we need to change gears here. We need to go slow now. In order to go fast later. Well you said if you want to be a stud later you have to be a P now, I think were your words. Yeah that

50:50 That sounds like a smart ass remark. I wrote that down. I've corrupted you. All your great podcasts and I've corrupted you. So what are the other checkboxes? So let's just say they they get the feel and they're like, Okay feet elevated to the point where they're not feeling Stress on the lower back.

51:09 No. It'll depend on pressing strength also. If they're very weak in the shoulders. Then they're gonna have to start from the hand's hand and work their way down, but we'll assume they've got feet elevated. Mm hip high or higher if necessary.

51:24 Doesn't matter a bit. Then from there we're gonna work on most people are gonna be up. They're gonna have bent elbows. So we're gonna work on straightening the arms. No matter how close they are, they could be wide. The blue wine.

51:36 Yeah,'cause Gosh, I had one special forces guy that came to me years ago. Tough, tough guy, first name Mark. And uh he had gained eighty pounds of muscle. Eighty pounds a mux up.

51:47 Oh yeah, he it was just like holy moly and he we was he just a beast. But He had completely F himself up because all he Did was gain strength without mobility. And athletically.

51:58 unless my sport is just purely lifting, unless I'm a power lifter. Unless I'm an Olympic lifter. then maximal strength is not my sole criteria for being successful. In fact Usually the strongest athletes in the weight room are not the best athletes on the field to play. And in fact I I don't know a single exception.

52:18 There may be one there somewhere that someone can share with us and let me know. Bye. I've been around the world. I won't say as many people as you know, but In forty years of world class gymnastics, I've I've met a ton of people.

52:32 I've never seen an exception. he couldn't even hang on a bar anymore with his arms straight without hitting his head. Wow. And you you think your shoulders are tight, poor Margan, he was like, Coach, what what can you do for me? For once I was at a loss for words, which is rare for me. I think you're screwed different.

52:50 And so what did you do with him in the bridge? Was he just stuck We he couldn't even that's this was hanging on a bar. We we couldn't even get in a break. It w it was impossible. What we would do with someone like that in Mark. So you're you're more so guys just just to give the audience some some feedback. I went into Tim's assessment.

53:09 Expecting medium. medium and Tim was much more mobile Much more athletic, much more well prepared than I had anticipated, so I had spent a lot of time putting a a custom program together for Tim. That because he did so well in his assessment.

53:26 I had to throw the whole damn thing away.'Cause basically you were y he was too advanced for what we had assumed he was coming to the table with. Someone who is crazy compromised. We're gonna have to sneak up on it. We're gonna we're gonna have to get in there and we're gonna have to first do Pac minor. We gotta listen up pec minor. We gotta get in there and we gotta work on them.

53:44 Bicep tendon. We gotta get the bicep tendon going, we gotta work on Forearms get forearms loose. We've got to break the scabs so there's some motion there. We have to do all of that. It's not high intensity work, but it's gotta be done.

53:58 And as you heard Tim say. The body thrives on it. It's like a tonic for the body. The body feels so much better because it's what the body's supposed to do. A lot of people don't care for it'cause it's not the high intensity sexy work. But it's that. fundamental work that makes the high intensity sexy work.

54:17 possible later. Not only possible, but safer. That's a good point,'cause we had I think one of the questions that people asked Tim asked for questions on Twitter. You know, what would you like me to ask Coach Summer? And some of the people came back with, you know, I know someone who's a gymnast and they're just beat the shit.

54:34 And my answer to that is simple. They weren't my athlete. They weren't my athlete, uh, we don't. Trained through pain. As a national team coach. For a long time.

54:46 Physical preparation was always our number one priority. We built the physical structure first. 'Cause it if you think about it, it's kinda silly. We and we see this a lot with people who are getting into weightlifting, they're crossfitters. They're Olympic lifting and they're they're enthusiastic, they're excited. And they want to get that weight on the bar. They're trying to build technique with a flawed range of motion, which of course gives them Fed up technique and it doesn't work and then they get hurt.

55:11 Or you you hear someone, Oh, I changed my shoe and I blew my knee. Seriously, your knee is that tight? that because your heel and your new shoe is a fraction of an inch higher. Or a slightly different angle that your knee blew. In our training program we need to call everything you need an optimal surplus. You need an optimal surplus.

55:28 Range of mobility, range of motion. You need a optimal surplus of strength. You need a optimal surplus Of stability. You need what you need to perform. And a little extra. For when things go down.

55:41 If things go so. when things go south. And if you're just right on the edge of what you're capable of. And they hope, Oh, nothing will go wrong. I hope nothing will go wrong. Oh, it is gonna go wrong. Absolutely gonna go wrong. And so you prepare the body for that ahead of time.

55:56 So when it does go around, it's like ah That didn't hurt. I didn't get nothing's injured. Moving on next turn. Well, one of the questions you've asked me multiple times when we've been going over different workouts and I would mention, for instance, I felt it In my bicep. Like I felt an extreme stretch in my biceps. So for instance there's a movement

56:15 that we've been calling a German hang. A lot of people would call it skin the cat, uh perhaps. Very similar where you would hold on to say a bar or rings in this case. And I'm gonna simplify this, of course, but sure tucking up going back. In between the rings and then hanging down. With as little of a

56:35 hike at the hips is possible. Nice flat back, nice straight hips. Exactly. And sort of palms facing towards the ground. And I was saying I really felt an incredible stretch in my biceps more than in the shoulders. And your question would be, and this is applied to different body parts Where did you feel it in the bicep? This is Getting back to the Not training through pain comment.

56:54 And Could you describe Why? You're like if it's in the middle. I don't really care. And same for like the abs, like we can smash those all day long. If it's at the attachment points though, then I wanna know about it or we're gonna dial back off. So why is that?

57:11 I'm gonna sneak around to it. So most people when they Do their training. Meaning well, and I'm not I'm not slamming anyone by any means and The only reason that

57:20 we know this and are able to share is because all these years I've been doing this, I made the same effing mistakes that they make. We just survived my stupidity and learned how to do better. I I used to tell my athletes there are there are stupid gymnasts and there are old gymnasts, but there are no old stupid gymnasts. Because they're all dead. But most people, most beginners They wanna base all their training off

57:46 Muscular fatigue. Which is a problem. It's problematic because muscle tissue regenerates About every ninety days. About every ninety days, you know, from N to N, all all the cells, everything's done in ninety days.

58:00 Okay, that's well, that's fine. But connective tissue takes two hundred to two hundred and ten days. So we we have a huge gap. So if I get in and I'm just and you know, I'm I'm I'm not a big fan of beginners training to failure.

58:15 simply because their structure isn't mature enough yet to handle it safely and by mature I simply mean enough productive, well structured hours under their belt. So particularly if it's in new ranges of motion, right? If they've joined particularly if there's joints.

58:32 Mm-hmm. If it's a muscle belly, if we're like you said, if we're doing core We'll beat your core down all day long and I'm not worried about it a day'cause it is just muscular fatigue. But as soon as we get joints involved, everything changes. And it it's actually really easy for people to verify'cause they can think back over all the injuries they've had over their training career.

58:51 you know, in their athletic career playing around with the kids in the back yard. The vast majority of those injuries are all joint related. Almost always. It's it's extremely rare for someone to have a muscle belly injury. It just doesn't happen. Yet their training, especially in the beginning, is all skewed just towards muscular develop and not

59:09 Connective tissue development. And that's that's where they get into trouble. So when they come to us the first thing we like is for them to spend. Is it gonna be boring? It is, you know, two hundred and ten days, we're talking six, seven months of Dial it back, guys.

59:24 Dial it back. And I think that It's important to emphasize too that Dialing it back. It means that you're not rushing, but it doesn't mean you won't experience a lot of progress, if that's fair to say.

59:36 crazy fair to say and you you found that yourself. Yeah. But what happens is some of them We run into this, maybe you have also, is we we get some people who are addicted to the rush. They're addicted to the adrenaline rush. They're addicted to laying there in a pile of sweat. You know, they wanna do the sweat angels, they wanna crawl out of the gym.

59:55 And the problem with that is if you're a world class athlete. You can't do that'cause I have to be back in the gym the next day and train again. I can't afford to destroy myself or the special operations guys we work with. We've gotta be able to do both. They've got to be operational. and increase their performance through their training. But they have to go hand in hand.

1:00:15 And so it's only in beginners that we see They think somehow they can cheat time. It can't be done. I mean connective tissue's gonna take Two hundred to two hundred and ten days. There's No supplement, you can't paint yourself blue, you can't dance under the moon. There's there's nothing you can do to speed that up. It's gonna take what it takes.

1:00:33 And so we work as hard as we can within those parameters. If there's joint being, we shut it down. Like your elbow's a good example. Years ago pushing too hard. Now that that if we tweak that elbow a little too much, it flares up on you.

1:00:48 We'll repair it. And it's gonna take time. But it takes much longer to repair it than it does to avoid it in the first place. Yeah. For sure. And just a couple of of notes and then I'm gonna swing back to the

1:00:59 Diagnostics and how people can assess but Another conversation. Yeah, a topic that came up I think I'm sure I brought it up. at dinner once was the use of anabolics or any type of growth agents.

1:01:13 And the point that you made, which makes perfect sense is that would just increase the likelihood of having Connected tissue problems and gymnasts because the muscular strength and growth would outpace

1:01:27 the development of and the adaptation of the tissues. Completely with backfire. He backfire. Where students make their their greatest gains in strength is to be able to do Dynamic plymetric work. And straight on ring strength. Those are your two biggest bang for the buck.

1:01:43 And Well we have learned the hard way. That's different. The main difference between working with young developmental athletes And full grown adults. is the order in which we need to present the material. As a young uh young athlete, I I can do all physical components at once. I can do plometric, I can do straight arm, I can do their mobility.

1:02:02 Bent arm, it doesn't matter a bit. I can do it all at one time. But an adult. who's now fragile from years of making a living. Sitting at a desk. Day in, day out.

1:02:12 So they get a little older, kids get bigger, levels of activities drop, drop, drop, drop. And They're compromised. We have to build these things in a different order. We have to first go Rebuild mobility

1:02:24 Then we have to rebuild core. Core I'm talking not just abs, but obliques and lower back. Most adults, a lot of their lower back pain. Isn't lower back related, it's oblique related. we have to go in and we have to correct that. Then we can worry about regular strength. Once those things are done.

1:02:42 then we can get to the moneymaker which is their dynamic strength. But with an adult, especially a strong adult. who's been athletically inactive. So they've been doing strength training but not out moving Doing sports, being active. You know, outside of their conditioning.

1:02:59 Or Let's say, for example, all they're doing is squats. And they're very linear in the path of their knee. And there's no meniscus work, there's no M C L work, there's no A C L work. And they go outside, they play a little softball here all the time. Yeah, well now I was playing softball, I blew my knee.

1:03:16 going around first base. Really? How many kids blow a knee running around first base? I mean the supplemental knee exercises that look wacky as hell when you first look at them that you've had me do and maybe we can show some of this to to people in the show notes. Even in the span of three or four weeks, I've seen a huge difference in knee stability.

1:03:35 improvement because I haven't ever performed these types of targeted movements before. Coming back to the diagnostics, we talked about The Bridge. We talked about the hanging leg lifts. Are there any other

1:03:49 Movement. Shoul extension will be huge. So shoulder extension would be sitting on the floor. Sure. Sitting in that pike that you described earlier, hands touching behind them. And then without letting the hands move, trying to scoot the butt as far forward away from the hands as they could.

1:04:07 Just that one movement right there is gonna let us see And show me. their scapular health, can they protract, can they retract? It's gonna tell me how tight their pec minor is. It's gonna tell me how tight their bicep is. And it's gonna tell me how tight their brachialis down by the elbow is.

1:04:26 Oh, the brachialis. Yes, your favorite. My good friend the breaky Alice. And also just the and this relates to kind of daily living. A lot of people who have back pain, myself included, quite a few years ago, if you're wondering if you have a tight pec minor, you can just Google Peck Minor and figure out where it is, but basically think right under the clavicle. Get a lacrosse ball. You know, go on the wall.

1:04:46 and try to roll out your pec minor with a lacrosse ball. And if you have back pain you don't always fix that back pain by just focusing on the location of that pain. Good point. And you start addressing the Pac Minor and a lot of that stuff is alleviated. And I wanted to throw one thing out there just for people who might be interested. And that is

1:05:06 I think part of the reason I seemed or was better prepared for the assessment than I would have been otherwise is that I started doing Really just one thing. one type of new exercise which was Compression strength.

1:05:21 Training. in that pike position. And did that for just maybe two times per week. prior to doing the assessment as I was traveling. And for people who are wondering what this is like if you really want to Feel humbled.

1:05:36 As I did. I was traveling, I was in Columbia. A very close friend of mine almost got to professional rugby in New Zealand. He's a beast. I mean athletically extremely strong, extremely fast. He's always going to be one of the top performers in the gym when he walks into a weight room. And he saw me doing pike pulses. And so I'll explain what this is to folks because he was kind of laughing at me and he's like, What kind of Jane Fonda bullsh are you doing here? You know. And I love that name. And and I said, All right. I'd like all right, big guy. You're so you're such a tough guy. Let's see you do these.

1:06:09 So for those people who are interested, so you're sitting in this this seated pike position we're talking about, right? So you're sitting on your ass on the floor. the upper body perpendicular with the floor and your legs out straight in front of you and point your toes. Kind of tense your quads to push the back of your knees into the floor. Then reach forward. And stretch forward as far as you can. Get your fingers out on either side of your legs as far out as you can. And then just try to lift your heels off the ground, keeping your legs completely straight.

1:06:35 And just pulse it up and down. Like I don't know, three to four inches, maybe if you can manage that. And just do try to do thirty of those. And my my buddy could not lift his heels off the ground and just fell over laughing. He's like, Yeah, okay, those are hard. But that compression, it's if you think about the range of motion that most people train for core.

1:06:54 They're going to be able to do it. sit ups or maybe they're doing hanging leg lifts. Up to Like an L sit. So their legs are getting up to kind of parallel height. Well that last ninety degrees and especially the last like forty five degrees where you're bringing your thighs towards your chest.

1:07:10 is so hard. I mean I had zero strength there. prior to doing just a few weeks of this stuff. It just amazed me. And for those people also who were talking about the transverse abdominis, coach feel free to veto this, but I think i it's also nicknamed the corset muscle, if you're trying to think of what it might look like as it wraps around the abdomen. So if you cough a lot or laugh a lot and get really, really sore, it's very frequently. Often engaging that.

1:07:34 Transverse. But Let me ask you so you mentioned Crossfit. You mentioned a couple of things, you know, d drenched in sweat, doing the sweat angels. What are your feelings?

1:07:45 About Kipping movements, like kipping pull ups. Had to open that can of worms. Well I was asking a mutual friend, I won't name him, and I said, What should I talk to Coach Summer about? and he said hipping bull ups, he'll lose his shit. So I said okay, I gotta ask him. We started I I was the original gymnastics guy for CrossFit way back in the early two thousands and

1:08:06 Ended up leaving. I was there before there was the first CrossFit affiliate when all there was was glassman working out of the Little Jim in Santa Cruz. Left just because to do GST right, like anything, the a dichotomy that

1:08:21 I always find curious with people, especially the crossfitters. is they will Be s so on point. with dissecting everything they do in terms of their Olympic lifting. You know, my pull is here, my pull is there, my knee was the quarter inch this way, down I mean they they're just methodical.

1:08:39 And they don't bring and I shouldn't say just crossfitters, but Then they Other people they don't bring that same degree of attention to detail to their body weight work. So one is supposed to be meticulous and one is somehow just supposed to be thrown together.

1:08:55 Yet they expect the same quality results. So if we look Back in the day, CrossFit you know, their lifting was nothing. by national standards. Now they get people who are qualifying to go to nationals. Fast forward all those years in terms of their gymnastic strength training and they're not even remotely close.

1:09:12 They they don't match. a national team. They they don't match A state level. Athlete. let alone a national level, let alone on international level. They're they're not even in the same ballpark.

1:09:23 And Part of the issue is because the Kipping pull ups were a huge big deal. It was a moneymaker. You know, I'll I'll be straight out, I'll piss some people off, but it was a moneymaker. as advertising for a program, they could bring someone in. Who's never been able to do a pull up.

1:09:40 Have'em hold their chin by the bar. And uh let'em fall. Hit the bottom of that movement. Bounce back to the top. And person's eyes up and they're like, you know, this is the best effing thing ever. I've never done a pull-up in my entire life. Oh my God, oh my God. And they're

1:09:54 And they're pumped. What they didn't realise is that This person has compromised basic strength and compromise shoulder flexion. They don't they don't have mobility in their shoulder. So they're hitting the bottom of that movement with multiples of body weight. So they weren't strong enough to do a regular pull up.

1:10:09 So now we're gonna drop them on connective tissue with multiples of body weight. That's gotta go somewhere. So it's gonna force that shoulder to open further than it can handle. And I'm gonna bounce off that connected tissue like a trampoline back to the top of the bar. And then to make to pour salt on the wound.

1:10:26 Now I'm gonna do a shitload of reps at the same time. I'm just gonna crank on it. And they were getting people who were coming in and you know across the way. There's no proof. There's da da da. You know, bullshit bullshit. You guys you guys can live in a dream world all you want. It was blowing people up. And

1:10:41 Now the good thing though, and to their credit, you know, it took time, there was a denial. No, it has nothing to do with it. But now we're seeing a recommendation of You know what, guys, we gotta start getting some Basic strength built first. Some basic mobility and then at that time kipping pull ups. Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with that. They're healthy

1:10:58 They're good to do on a healthy shoulder joint. with a good foundation of basic strength. But a beginner doing kipping pull ups? Really? That's insanity. That's just pouring gasoline on a fire. So kipping then

1:11:10 Is the finishing addition. It is not the starting element. We started working with adults our first We do we do seminars all around the world, you know, we spend a lot of time doing hands on. And our very first one we did.

1:11:24 I don't know. Two thousand seven or so. Yeah, we've got all these people, we've got all these beasts here and they're strong. And Try to do

1:11:33 Might. Entry level. plyometric work on some floor work with them. And the stronger the athlete, the faster they went down, knees, lower back, ankles. Um

1:11:45 Baby stuff. baby stuff. I mean we're we're not talking anything hard. We're talking about standing in place and with knees straight. being able to bounce down the floor using just your gabs. No way. They their their tissues couldn't take it. They hadn't done anything like it. Or

1:11:59 We had fifteen minutes on the schedule, for example, how bad mobility was. We had fifteen minutes on the schedule to stretch. Nothing hard, nothing intricate, nothing intense. Just an easy Basic stretch. Get'em loosened up for the day. That stretch took an Hour and a half to complete.

1:12:17 It was an hour and a half, Tim. It was a hour and a half. There were boding everywhere. It was like I was in Vietnam or filming a war movie. I turn to my staff, I'm like, What the fuck am I supposed to do now? They failed warm up. They failed warm-up.

1:12:32 Now in fairness. This stuff is really you would look at it and just like my friend who's like, What is this Jane Fonda bullshit? And I'm like Hey man, why don't you try this for ten minutes? It's really taxing. I mean, uh

1:12:46 I remember doing uh one of the stretching routines which I'll note I think is is might be of interest to people. Is I'm hitting each once per week. So there's one that is front. split focus. So very hamstring focused. There's one that is bridge focused and another that is Middle split. I doctor and middle split focus.

1:13:05 Inside the thing. And the point that you make is doing this twice a week will not double your progress. It will cut it in half. So you're only really hitting each of these once per week. I mean there are different Daily Limber Protocols. But I remember doing at the very beginning of one of these workouts, I believe it was Oh no, it was absolutely the uh the front split workout.

1:13:27 A shit ton for me, a shit ton of Calfraises. With a different. Like different foot placements. It's like okay, a hundred and eighty Capphrases later of different variations. I was like, Okay, and I'm only three minutes into this.

1:13:43 An hour long stretch sequence. And I know we're bouncing all over the place because I wanna give people kind of a buffet sampling of How this training differs. But one of the reasons I respect the programming that you put together and the nuance that you bring to this is that the observation then is and correct me if I'm Or you can elaborate on this if I'm missing something, but

1:14:01 a lot of the hamstring flexibility issues or limitations that people perceive. are at least in part due to lower leg. Absolutely. Issues including the Achilles a huge amount of R Yeah, including the Achilles. So you in this particular progression in the beginning You're engorging and then stretching. the the insertion point basically around the heel and then again at the knee and working your way up to the hamstrings and

1:14:28 There's a an athlete who's been on the podcast, Amelia Boone, one of the most successful obstacle course racers in the world. And she's basically pointing out the same thing. And she said, Yeah, you can take someone who's really inflexible in their hamstrings. have them roll out their feet with, say, a lacros ball or something like that and all of a sudden they gain Two inches.

1:14:46 In their descent with the hamstrings. It's all connected. We found by accident. So we never intended this and it we just part of what maybe helps people to understand the the lay of complexity that w that I approach training with. is that For years my my bread and butter was to produce

1:15:05 best athletes in the country. That that was my job. In order to have a job I had to produce some of the best athletes in the world. And we we had to do it from scratch. And so the it becomes an issue of one An injured athlete is no good to the United States. Right. Don doesn't matter how talented he has, how strong he is.

1:15:24 If he can't go out on the floor with the USA on his chest, we we can't win a medal with him, so he's gotta be healthy. And then the second caveat that goes with that is that We're trying to find a way. to make the best.

1:15:38 Better. 'Cause these these athletes are already the best on the planet. And you're going head to head with other athletes who are the best. So then How do you find a way to make something which is almost already perfect? Even closer to perfect.

1:15:53 And if you do What everybody else is doing. Right, without kind of going out into the jungle, if you will, into Indian country and and learning new things. then you can't get a leg up on your competitors. If we go we have PhDs who come through and this and that and we we always give them major shit.

1:16:10 Need your shit. 'Cause the way people think the world works is that They do their research. They write about it, they publish it. We learn about it and we implement it with our athletes.

1:16:21 That is not how the way the world works. The way it really works is You've got high level world class coaches who are Super bright decades of experience, you know, just my last senior athlete alone. I had sixteen thousand hours into training Allen. Sixteen thousand hours spread over twelve years. What is Alan's last name? Power.

1:16:41 Power. So yeah, you guys gotta celebrate Alan. He uh OU just uh won. national N CA championships. Again, major blowout by the uh largest margin in N C A history. Wow. That was the well, as of this recording very recently. Yeah, that was just uh this Oh goodness. The weekend of the uh fifteenth.

1:17:02 I think we're scheduled here to come out sometime in May. But yeah, very very big deal. But to go back to the other. So we're looking for an edge. And so we don't know why some things work. We just know it works. And I started getting notes from therapists around the world. For example, therapists are taught

1:17:21 that they should have a neutral spine. You should have a neutral spine. I was getting people from around the world that are writing me, but Athletically. I'm sorry, I'll be direct, but Neutral spine athletically is

1:17:32 biggest load of horse shit I've ever heard in my life. It you can't run with neutral spine, you can't throw with neutral spine, you can't climb with neutral spine, I can't swim, I I I can't do Anything with a neutral spine. Except lay in a box, dug in a hole, and they get ready to bury me. I mean that that's that's the only thing I can do with it. There's nothing athletically I can do with a neutral spine. So we know just

1:17:53 automatically to produce athlete. We're not gonna do a neutral spine because torso wise, there's only two movements. I can go from an arch snap to a hollow or I can be hollow and snap back to extension to the arch. Those are the only two movements the torso's capable of athletically.

1:18:08 Everything else is a variation off that. We can add rotation with some throws and some this and that, but That's all there is. So we spend a lot of time. building power for that.

1:18:19 And these therapists around the world started taking our really Gentle. introductory work and they train it on themselves first and I'm like, you know Just s real similar to what you said, Tim. You know, I feel better than I have in years, coach.

1:18:32 I feel better in yours and this is completely Maybe we could use an example that we've discussed before, which was a new movement for me, which is the Jefferson curl. Yeah, there's they're having some fun with that. So we look at Jefferson Crow right now, so it wasn't that many years ago that if you squat it below parallel

1:18:52 It was heresy. It was heresy. If you went below parallel then knees couldn't possibly adapt to it. You're just gonna blow your knees, you're Your kneecaps were gonna just pop off the front, or I'm gonna be shrapnel. Knee shrapnel. But everybody accepts now that you know what, there is nothing wrong with the body being exposed.

1:19:09 to its natural range of motion. Now do you have to build it up gradually? Yes, obviously you do. But Jefferson Crow falls into that, so Gosh, how how do we explain Jefferson Crow? I can give it a shot. Yeah, you'll be better. This would be this would be a good this would be a good exam review for me anyway.

1:19:25 So Jefferson Curl Mm. Is A gradually rounded stiff legged deadlift. That's the simplest way to visualize it. So if you're looking at

1:19:38 An athlete from the side doing a Jefferson crawl. They will most likely be standing on a box. holding on to an Olympic barbell right in front of their Hips slash legs. So it's just like the the very top of a deadlift position. But

1:19:52 When they start the descent and it's elevated. So that when you have Plates on and whatnot, there's room for it. But when they come down, they're gonna tuck their chin. And then vertebra by vertebra.

1:20:04 Round their back. Down. all the way into the bottom position where the objective would be or one of the objectives would be to get basically your wrists to the front of your toes. Or at least in a perfect world if you're advanced enough. Yeah, in in in a perfect world. And

1:20:21 Of course doing this very gradually with supervised attention from somebody who knows what they're doing. And then reversing that. And Again, going from this vertebra by vertebra.

1:20:32 rounding up until you end up in that top position. And then repeating. Is that a fair description? Fair description. Yeah, the the easy is just think of it as a string of pearls and we're just curling One pearl at a time. We've been having some fun with that one.

1:20:46 We have done Jefferson Crows, I don't know, twelve, fifteen years now. Expected standard is body weight for us. Note note to people listening, do not try this with body weight right out of the gate. No don't don't. So for example, one one of our senior students in Australia in his training, physical therapist, has his own clinic, doing really well. He tried it with just the empty bar, you know, the twenty kilobar at first.

1:21:09 Trashed them. He dropped all the way down to I think a kilo or two. Right, which is completely fine. And we'll we'll talk about why in just a sec. And then he built up and last time I checked with Mark over the course of I don't know, I'm I'm forgetting there's too many students. But around twelve to eighteen months he built up to Either three quarter body weight or maybe up to full body weight now.

1:21:30 And Back feels better than it ever has. But the key there is people got to understand is that This was a gradual process over twelve to eighteen months. It wasn't Just go.

1:21:41 Well we've got Oh very good. I'll throw Quinn out. I'm gonna m butcher Quinn's last name. Quinn's a PhD in physical therapy. Quinn Heena does some really good work. How do you spell the last name? Oh you got you had to ask. We can get it for the show notes. Yeah, we'll we'll get it for the show. Uh we chat a lot on Facebook and that. Quinn likes to um stir the pot if you will, you know, stir up some shit.

1:22:05 He's experimenting with Jefferson Kroll himself for think going on about three or four years now. And feels wonderful. he'll toss it out and so one of the things that'll always be come up is, you know, the McGill experiments where They would take a

1:22:18 Connective tissue. From a pink daver. And put it under such and such amount of strain and if we put it in this position with this much load It snaps. Okay, and everyone runs around and it's the sky is falling, the sky is falling. Oh my God, oh my God, don't bend your spine, stay neutral.

1:22:35 What everyone kinda missed the big elephant in the room was The pig was fucking dead. The tissue is dead. It can't adapt. It's dead. It's no longer living. And it wasn't exposed to very gradual loads so that there could be progressive adaptation.

1:22:52 Which is what our bodies are really good at. They kinda overlooked all that. So if I take this completely unprepared tissue and I do this to it, it'll break. So Some very interesting discussions right now, and it obviously everyone's fine, you know, we've We've got athletes doing great, adults who are doing wonderful, and the physical therapist will come around simply because it's healthy.

1:23:11 Now they've gotta understand and other people who are listening should understand also is that A weighted mobility work. needs to be approached with a different mentality, a different level of intensity. than conditioning work. Because connective tissue has one tenth the metabolic rate of muscular tissue.

1:23:30 It heals slower, to doubt's slower. So you have to kinda come to the table with a very patient attitude or or as I I consider myself like I'm I'm extremely impatient naturally. But I've learned in order to get what I want and to go where I want to go, I've had to learn to be Patiently impatient.

1:23:49 Or if I give in to the urge. Then I get hurt, athletes get hurt, we fall apart and we, you know, national Olympic trials are every four years. Nationals are once eight year. And you don't get another nationals. You don't get another Olympic trials if you blow it. You've got to be on point that day.

1:24:05 So it teaches us and our our environment was actually a blessing. practical, it's very much results oriented. There's no room for opinion. I think. I feel

1:24:17 I prefer It works. It doesn't work. It produces results. It doesn't produce results. You are the best in the country.

1:24:25 You aren't the best in the country. I mean it's very clear. Very clear it can't be argued with. And that w that was actually something when we segued into Kind of the fitness world, if you will. Where uh you come out of national team and then and everyone knows who the studs are.

1:24:41 In the fitness world, though. Everyone's proclaiming they're the stud. Everyone's proclaiming they're the national champion. There's nothing to support it. There's no results. There's no great athletes. There's no great abilities that have been generated. There's just the marketing. And that that was hard to wrap my head around'cause a national team that doesn't exist. You can't go to the Olympics and the guy who talks the loudest gets the medal. I have the loudest voice, I'm champion.

1:25:04 We think that's national politics right now. Oh wait, no, never mind. Different podcast. Did want to ask you how your visit to the White House, but I figure we'll save that one. Yeah, we'll save that for another time. Yeah, Tim went to the White House last week, guys, so I'll I'll fake his brain for you later. So I I interrupted, but yeah, you get to the fitness world. And another one of the differences that you pointed out for me, which I really liked, was that In uh the fitness world, it's exercise and diet.

1:25:30 Whereas in your world it's always been eat and train, or eat and train. Yeah. Eat eating train. What the people are trying to do and And I I'll throw a little a little blurb in here. We we have an outstanding nutrition program.

1:25:45 The guy who who wrote it. Former SEAL team six. when he started, but back in the day he was like one forty, one forty five. And um Jeff got all the way up to Two

1:25:58 solid muscle and his waist was the same size as when he was thin. He looked like two Vikings. two shoulders on top of his body. He came walking in, I was like What the f it had been a couple years ago. What the hell did you

1:26:12 Yeah. It's these basic nutritional concepts that we teach. But what we try to do with Dults is They're trying to stay ahead of a bad diet through exercise. They're trying to outrun a bad diet.

1:26:24 And it can't be done. It can't be done. And then What happens is if they somehow find this crazy combination of Massive amounts of cardio.

1:26:35 and they can kinda keep their weight in check a little bit, and then they stop that cardio, they immediately start gaining. Weight gain, weight loss, all of that should be separate. From your conditioning. You know, you you gotta get your nutrition dialed in. If your nutrition's dial in your body's gonna find its natural healthy weight that it's going to operate at.

1:26:54 Now if you're If you wanna be the giant muscle guy and that's not your phenotype, which is your body type. You know what? Tough shit, deal with it. You know, it it's not gonna change. You're not gonna change your phenotype, you're not gonna change your body's genetic expression.

1:27:08 Okay. That being said. You can maximise what your potential is. Well we hammer through to our students as you're not responsible for the hand of cards you were dull. You're responsible for maxing out what you were given. None so who knows what your strengths will be. Maybe it'll be more endurance.

1:27:24 Maybe you're gonna carry easy muscle mass, maybe you're a max strength guy. Maybe you're very skill oriented. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're very explosive. But whatever it is, you know, make the most of it. On that point. And then I want to come back to I wanna ask you about I think it's I wrote this down during our assessment.

1:27:42 Tony Fay. quote, no routines, end quote. That's all I wrote down. So that's a cue for a story, I believe, that you told me. That we'll come back to. Does that make any sense or is that just like a cryptic three AM note that I wrote to myself I don't know. But the You gotta stay away from the wine, dude. Never. Never. In Vino Veritas. We'll get back to that, but

1:28:02 Kind of know what it is. Yeah, we'll we're gonna come back to that in one second. The question I wanna ask first is one that came up a lot. From listeners. of this podcast which was And I'm gonna

1:28:14 Create sort of a composite of these questions. But like if someone is thirty five years old, let's just say Former athlete. Does basic gym work. Diet is okay.

1:28:25 Not terrible. They feel reasonably athletic, but they're not. competing in anything, certainly. I have never done any gymnastics. What would Good goals be for such a person.

1:28:38 And what would bad goals be maybe at the same time? Without question, bad goal. would be for them to jump right into Kind of full body weight, straight arm strength, for example, a back lever. Which

1:28:51 doesn't require a ton of strength. But they love to do it because it looks so cool. It's kinda like their first thing they can do that, you know, wow, look at me. The problem is is that it puts them in and Extreme load while in shoulder extension. So let me can I paint a picture for people? So back lever just to create the image.

1:29:12 And coach, correct me if I'm wrong. Imagine you're laying on your stomach on the floor. Arms by your sides. And then you turn your hands palm down so that your thumbs are pointing out away from your body. And then you lift your arms off the ground as high as possible with your arms straight and then place a bar in your hands and then lift your body off the ground. I mean, off the ground and kinda hold yourself there. Sure. Body would be horizontal.

1:29:38 Yeah. And what they don't realize is that when the shoulders are in shoulder f extension like that. is that the biceps are under maximum stretch. So it's not it's not a problem to do with being strong enough. the bicep is too loaded and they're gonna tear a bicep.

1:29:54 For a young adult, not a problem at all. And Well we're lucky, you know, we we have a lot of people who use our material. But some of our material, you know, Coach, you're you're too conservative, coach, it's a new world. Coach, uh, we don't have time. I I had someone who was twenty one or twenty three once, coach, I don't have time to take my time. I'm already twenty three. Okay.

1:30:13 All right, I I think you're misreading this. but they wanna jump right into their strength training and they do well, but they don't do the mobility work. So it wasn't last year. I think it was the year before. I think maybe the street workout community five of their top guys around the world. Snapped biceps.

1:30:29 These are crazy strong guys, right? I mean, we see them. These guys are beast. They're doing one arm chins, they're doing this and that. They all snapped him on back lever stuff. 'Cause they're the mobility wasn't in line. Now We all know when you're young, you can get away with a lot of stupid shit. Because the body heals so fast.

1:30:46 Luckily. Right, I I I certainly wouldn't have survived being twenty one if it wasn't that the case. But as an adult The structure is mature now. And

1:30:56 I think maybe a better way to look at it. is people think I'm getting older. Ligaments are breaking down. Tendons are breaking down, joints are getting brittle. And

1:31:07 Actually that's not the case. 'Cause if if we go back in time, when you were a little guy, when I was a little guy, when all listeners were a little guy, we ran around like madmen. Right. Oh, today I'm gonna ride my bike three miles. Sand was that?

1:31:20 Go jump on my bike and I'm gone all day. And I'm running, I'm jumping, I'm climbing and we're just we're just being crazy little guys. So we had this huge matrix of activity that the body is used to. Then We hit high school.

1:31:33 And for most people that's our first exposure to structured athletic training. Okay, and the body does well with it. Now the mistake is thinking that the body did well solely because of that structured athletic training.

1:31:48 all that activity, that matrix of activity that occurred for those years prior to that. Then if they're a high enough level athlete. Structured training might continue into college. Graduate. Time to get a job.

1:32:01 All right, I'm still you know, I'm young, right, hormones are pumping, I'm gonna go to work and then I'm gonna go play basketball with the guys in the games, I'm gonna hit the gym, this and that. That goes good for a couple of years. Right, I'm getting by. I'm having fun weekends. Weekends are full. Then You meet the cutie, right? You meet the love of your life.

1:32:19 You get married. Suddenly I can't go play basketball every night now. Okay, so we do this and that and a little at a time. our levels of physical activity. outside of conditioning.

1:32:29 are dropping down and they're dropping down a lot. Then kids come. Alright, well. There's another huge chunk of time gone. Then before you know it, you're thirty.

1:32:38 You're thirty five. You haven't been doing hit in the gym very often. There's certainly not time for Just playful. activity or doing sports or this or that on a regular basis for most people.

1:32:50 Right, and they spend most of the time hunched over that desk. Now the body wants to be healthy. It wants to be healthy. That's your your prime example. We get we feed it the right movements. In the right dosages. And it blooms, it blossoms. It's like Weeding and watering a garden, right? The body wants to be healthy.

1:33:07 But we have to do it in the right dosage. And so for example, those street worker guys, they hurt themselves'cause it was the wrong dosage. They wanted to go too hard too soon. Without the mobility. So for an adult to come back around and answering that question a long way. Thirty five year old.

1:33:22 Very first thing we gotta do. We gotta fix joints. We've got to repair joints, we've got to get that range of motion back. If you were to look at all of the adults that you've dealt with. Let's just say thirty five year olds.

1:33:34 If you had to pick and of course this does not cover all the bases, but if you had to pick, say Three to five. Movements or exercises. Or stretches for addressing the most common deficiencies, like getting those joints back into play. What would some of your selections be? So just for joint joint, I think we'd put Jefferson Curl at top of the list.

1:33:55 'Cause remember we have we have multiple sections of the spine. Right, we've got the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar. That's gonna come through also into glutes. That's gonna go down into our hamstrings, that's gonna hit our calves, that's gonna hit our Achilles as well. So for for one, that's a lot of bang for your buck for one.

1:34:12 Exercise. E even if that was all you did. Right. And you just did Jefferson Crow? A lot of aches and pains are gonna go away because of that. Next point.

1:34:23 It's always hard to boil it down. Boil it down. We took care of Pike. We've gotta get extension. We gotta get some thoracic extension. I'd throw elevated bridge in there if arm strength was sufficient to handle it. If not, we can scale it down to uh some weighted work with some bars or some some barbells.

1:34:42 Either some dowel with a plate. We've gotta get shoulder extension in there. 'Cause what happens a lot a lot of the conditioning we're exposed to is all front dealt heavy. Right. It's all it's all anterior delt. And

1:34:56 Pecs get tight, the interior delts are getting tight. And we start pulling our own shoulders forward. We create our own impingement. It doesn't matter, you know, so I'll I'll do more exercises, I'll do more exercises. Well no, you're you're just making it worse. What the problem is is there's not balance in the shoulder joint. There's no retraction and y it's easy to tell what does their posture look like? What do we see with everyone now? They've got that what do they even have a term now? Texting neck?

1:35:20 Kind of that turtle forward, distended forward. Look, I guess something like that. You know, the the scary thing there, and again, we we have some PTs who use our stuff around the world with a lot of success. And they're the ones who come in and educate us for Well say, you know, we've noticed this and they can they tell us they teach us well, to the limit we can not'cause we're not professionals.

1:35:42 But to the limits we can, they start teaching us the mechanics of what is really going on. So we have a very good student. Uh, Wesley Tan runs one of our affiliates. He's um full time osteopath in the UK. Runs another one of our G B affiliates for MA. G S T.

1:36:00 And Wesley's the one who taught me. That There's a point, coach, where if you abuse the body It's not gonna come back.

1:36:08 And so for example. You see some older adults who are extremely hunched forward, neck distended forward, chin up,'cause they're trying to see where they're going. Can It's not that they have bad posture. And they could fix it. It's that they can't fix it.

1:36:24 Because the vertebrae are Rectangle. And if you spend after spending years of hunched forward like that. It compresses the front edges of that rectangle till it becomes a trapezoid. And that doesn't come back. Once once that happens, it's done. It's over, it's done.

1:36:40 Same thing happens with the muscle bellies. So people will get frozen shoulder or impingements in this. That is if you're not using the muscle belly. The body doesn't want to support it because muscle tissue is expensive. Yeah. By expensive the body looks at it, it's expensive to feed, it's expensive to maintain.

1:36:57 For example, your body isn't a painting. You can't get to a certain degree of muscle mass, mobility, athletic ability, endurance, whatever you want to say. And then just Stop. and had it continue to exist like a painting you did.

1:37:11 It has to be maintained. 'Cause if you're not using it. it costs too much resources for the body to continue to keep it. So it's gonna start breaking it down. That's why you get a few days.

1:37:22 Right. And then uh you start losing strength, you start losing mobility, you start losing wind. easiest physical attribute to build. Endurance. Simple.

1:37:33 Super simple. Endurance is what? Endurance is simply strength repeated over and over at a lower load. No big deal. That's a six to an eight week process. Simple. No problems at all.

1:37:44 Mobility. And it takes some time. What's the easiest one to fix? Muscular strength. No problem at all.

1:37:51 So for Super important then that we we use that muscle mass'cause if it's not being used You're not only gonna lose the size of the muscle mass. The body's gonna start doing deposits of collagen on it. And it's gonna start shrinking that muscle building on the traps, for example, and of going back to those older adults we discussed.

1:38:09 It's gonna shrink. until a lot of it is connective tissue on the edges. Now what people need to realise and they don't Is that when they see an adult who's Hurting, right?

1:38:20 They're older, they're shuffling, they can't pick their knees up, their hips are frozen. They're hunched over, they're next displaced. They weren't that way when they were younger. This is all the result. of inactivity.

1:38:34 And poor progressions in their exercises and it didn't have to be. And then they need to take the next step of connecting is that If it happened to that guy or that woman. It can sure as hell happen to me also. If I go down the same road that they went down.

1:38:50 Returning to the shoulder extension, because I noticed in our assessment that I had terrible shoulder extension and I had kind of accepted it. with stupid reasons like well, you know, I've done too much deadlifting at too much Huge slabs of muscle in my back I can't do shoulder extension. Total horseshit. I mean

1:39:08 I didn't know. Mus those huge, massive slabs of muscle. Yeah, the the uh imaginary lattice syndrome that I have. And I mean that was just blown to smithereens when I met Let me Make sure I get his name.

1:39:20 Correct. It's Paul Watson, is that right? Oh yeah, Dave Paul. In New York City, who's gigantic and extremely flexible. So as soon as I hung out with him, I was like, Okay To let people know Paul is what we say, six feet, two thirty. I mean and just Uh he's about forty, I wanna say, and just

1:39:36 probably watch around at six percent body fat and can do a flat Like chest to ground. Pancake, no problem, can do dislocates with a weighted dowel or barbell, no problem with all different types of grips, which I can't do at all, even though I'm making progress. The shoulder extension, what is your preferred way to work on shoulder extension? Is it the sitting down arms behind you scooting the hips forward? Is there something else that you would add to that mix?

1:40:02 Well. We We ha we have to sneak up on that one a little bit. So sometimes we can't even work shoulder extension at first if the elbows are deconditioned.

1:40:12 So if brachialism. Just inside the elbow is weak. If the insertion

1:40:23 So If that's the case, we have to give that time to adapt. So you know that's one of the questions I ask is you how how's your brachials feel? How's your bicep feel? How's your elbow feel? Because we we never push through paint.

1:40:34 I mean you can. You can. But Have you noticed that the guys who push through pain They've got a shelf life of somewhere between two and four years.

1:40:46 And then the body is so beat up and so painful and so chronically injured. that it's just easier to be a fat slob sitting on the couch. And Had at least my pain dropped. than to try to continue pushing through and being a stud.

1:41:01 It's so common and it's also unnecessary. For example, and I I don't get this one. I don't get this one a lot. I'll bring it'cause where there's a lot of people and Don't get me wrong, I really like weight lifting. I think the Olympic lifting is sweet. There's a lot going for it.

1:41:15 I think the way that it is approached here in the state. is not as efficient as it's approached in China, for example, or in Russia. So For example. in both of them before there's any weight at it at all.

1:41:29 They build. complete mobility throughout the body. They can straddle their legs, chest on the floor. Same with legs together, pike, they've got bridge. They have all these basic mobility. And mobility. We talked about this. Is it related to Cloak Off. Yeah, and especially exactly. If you watch Cloak Off. Dimitri Klokov. People should watch this guy. Check out some videos.

1:41:54 But what they also need to do is not just watch the weight he's putting up, right? They need to watch his warm up in the training hall. And look at how amazingly flexible and mobile he is. Now what's important to understand is at a world class level Right at a world class level.

1:42:10 Resources are limited. energy you have for training is limited. The amount of time you have for training is limited. The amount of time you have for recovery is limited. Right. You have to maximize these things'cause you're going It's one thing to be the best stud in the town.

1:42:25 another thing to be best stood in the state. Another one in region, another one in the country. Um Completely different. Animal.

1:42:32 to be the best in the entire world, to be the best at what you do. Adam. Billions of people. We're we're talking livers of difference between the very top guys. So well.

1:42:43 all those restrictions and all those parameters in place. If the best in the world are stretching their ass off. In order to get strong. Why aren't you?

1:42:55 Agreed. Now you personally Put me on my spot, coach. No, no, no. Now you as an all of us, as an all of us, right? And what'll happen. Is people just kinda get blinders on. They wanna watch technical, they wanna watch progressions, what did you do for this and that? And then they'll blow off.

1:43:12 the mobility work that they do early. Not realizing At the moment. Stability work was the gold nugget they were looking for. They just didn't brush the dirt off in order to see that it was gold underneath. They just thought, Oh, it's just another rock. Who cares? No, it was the gold.

1:43:26 So if we're looking at Again, this thirty five. year old, former athlete. Maybe never was super competitive, but decent shape, maybe does some form of exercise two or three times a week.

1:43:41 In terms of a understanding that the mobility And working with J curl, elevated bridge, shoulder extension, et cetera, is going to be those are gonna be ingredients in the recipe. In their progression to gymnast of some type. Not even gymnasts. Or functional human being.

1:43:57 functional human being, right?'Cause if you don't train I'd like to you know point out people, we don't train gymnasts. We do gymnastic strength training, but I don't have I just got off the phone with our Olympic coach today, Kevin Majica, right? We had a great conversation. But guys, regardless of how good you are at rope climbs and plans and this and that. I wouldn't hold my breath that Kevin's getting ready to give you a call and say P's gonna be on our team this year.

1:44:20 You know, I sa I saw your rope climbs and you are kick. Ass. You are the one for us. Where we got a uniform waiting here for you. We're departing for Rio in July, man. Be ready. Pack your bag. It's not gonna happen, guys.

1:44:33 So correctional humanity athletes. Functional human being covers it all. So let me let me just jump to The punchline question, which is Let's so we look at if I wanted to give someone a stretch goal to inspire them to train consistently, right? So the mobility might not be enough, but if I wanted to give them

1:44:51 a light at the end of the tunnel. So I'm like, I know this shoulder extension stuff is gonna be very unpleasant, maybe not super exciting, but This is the objective. This is what you might be able to do in three, six, nine, twelve months from now. The back lever we've talked about is not necessarily a good goal because You might think you have the strength and perhaps you do, but you don't have to have a lot of things. Right, but they don't have the mobility, so snap goes the bicep. Nasty surprise waiting in that box. Gymnastic strength training. Go.

1:45:26 to have or goals. Just as context for people who are wondering. After trying to do my best to survey the landscape and figure out What might not be the stupidest goals. I wanted to the best goals, but I decided okay well.

1:45:42 Press strict press handstand, which we can define in a second, seems like a good one and it just seems like a sweet thing to be able to do. And then front lever. And then Straddleplange. Then Straddleplanch, exactly. So We can talk about what each of those are, but would the press handstand, for instance, be something that incorporates The strength, the mobility in all these pieces. If you had to pick one you had to pick one, that would be the one. That'd be the one.'Cause it's gonna have all strength.

1:46:09 All mobility. Balance, agility. Everything rolled into one movement. Do you want to take a stab at What does a perfect press handstand look like?

1:46:18 So I'm just trying to keep it simple, right? Bend over. Hands on the ground by your toes. And they can be put your palms on the floor so they're just in front of your toes. Shoulder width. Leg straight.

1:46:31 Leg straight. Okay, now if they needed to bend, we could, but we're talking about perfect world, right? And then Hands on the floor, shoulders directly over the hands. And then no jumping.

1:46:43 Using just the middle back, just the traps. 'Cause every everyone thinks traps, traps, traps anything. Traps just for shrugging. Well, your traps are a huge muscle. They're a huge muscle. And they don't just lie in the top of your shoulders. They're in the middle of your back. And

1:46:58 down towards your lower back as well. They're giant muscle and they're capable of a huge amount of power. And when you fix those Right. A lot of shoulder pain goes away. A lot of lower back pain goes away. But Go back to our other hands on the floor, shoulders over the hands.

1:47:13 Using that middle back, those traps. Pull the hips up on top of the shoulder. Maintain that flat back position. Yeah. We continue on with lower back.

1:47:23 finishing the legs up to the handstand. So a couple Things that make this particularly challenging. So one, obviously you need to have the flexibility in the hamstrings and everywhere else.

1:47:34 You have to have the compression strength like we were talking about. Doing those. Those murderous embarrassing pike pulses, which look like they should be easy and they are not. You bringing your legs basically to your chest in that last like ten to twelve inch range. Really challenging.

1:47:53 And then I think where you see a lot of people online from the standpoint of having the objective of of gymnastics strength training, right? Because there are all sorts of ways you can cheat with this stuff. To make it biomechanically easier. But if we're trying to do it strictly.

1:48:09 And why why do it maybe this is a nice thing to throw in because people say, Well it it's just a matter It's personal taste garch. It's personal taste. You you do it this way because you prefer this form. No, we we do it a particular way because this is what builds the most strength. That's transferable to other activities.

1:48:28 For example, this all continue. So who who have I pissed off so far today? I've pissed off CrossFitters. Yeah, yeah. So I I I once had and I like yoga, don't get me wrong. But their approach to handstand is flawed.

1:48:41 They want to go bone on bone. So they want to have their shoulders Depressed. So they're bone on bone. They want to have pipe shoulders. So so but shoulders shoulders can elevate. So if I'm if I'm standing upright and I elevate my shoulders, that would be like me shrugging my shoulders to my ear.

1:49:00 And then doing the opposite is the other direction. Well when we do a handstand And if I describe it this way, it's gonna make sense, right? I want Muscle.

1:49:09 And connective to you. to be doing the work. I don't want bone grinding on bone. That's not a recipe for longevity. Not gonna work. But the easy one is is they'll say, Well there's there's a yoga handstand.

1:49:21 And there's a gymnastics handstand. My answer to that is well. You're almost right. There's a gymnastics handstand. And there's a fucked up gymnastics handstand. Those are the only two there are.

1:49:31 Here's how we evaluate it. A gymnastics handstand, right, done with Nice flat back. Nice and all being a smart ass aside, right? We're gonna look at it just from a purely practical viewpoint. Which one leads Somewhere.

1:49:45 So if I do a yoga type dancing with that arch and the flex shoulders. I'm not going any farther than that. I can work on duration. I can do some other things, but I'm not going any further. I do a gymnastics handstand where it's flat. Now I have Nice range of motion in the shoulders.

1:49:59 I have strength through the middle back, through the traps. Right. I've got good core strength. I've got good compression strength. Now I can move on to good press handstand work. Why? Well we want to get stronger. That in turn allows me to go on if I'm in the mood and I want to do more, I'm going to More advanced one arm handstand work, pure wedding work, all

1:50:18 All those things R Oh. results of a proper nice straight line handstand that you can't do With the flawed approach. It's not aesthetics.

1:50:30 It's being practical,'cause we we don't do anything in gymnastics, right? That's just purely Aesthetics. Why why do we do things a certain way? It lets us generate more power. Why do we want more power? lets us get more air, let us do more flips, lets us do more twists, lets us do

1:50:45 harder things on rings. Which means More points, which means More gold medals. And let me throw out a couple of

1:50:52 observations and you can correct me if if this is wrong but like one of them, an example of something that people might think is aesthetics, there is an aesthetic appeal, but it's a side effect and not the reasoning behind it. would be a strong point in the toes, right? A strong point on the legs. So you see a lot of people doing handstands and I was guilty of this. Certainly.

1:51:13 And they have kind of uh what I heard what one acrobat call tofu feet. They're not fully dorsiflexed, like they're not pulling the the toes back to the knees, which I think looks terrible also pretty common in yoga, but They don't have that and they don't have a strong point. And so they're At the very least, their quads and their adductors aren't really fully engaged. They're loose. They're loose. And so they're they're leaking energy in all sorts of directions. I like I like that leaking energy. Yeah, it makes it makes a very good description. And it makes I think I probably stole it from Pavel Tsatsulin, but the

1:51:44 Powell's a good buddy I Powell's a good friend of mine. I like Powell. What is the consequence? The consequence there are consequences, one of which is you're wasting energy. So you're not going to be able to train as efficiently. Number two is you're not going to develop the proper Balance and alignment. because you're gonna be flopping all over the place and having to correct more so than you should.

1:52:05 So that just that. Pointing. has a huge impact on your ability to train the handstands. Like a s really strong point. And The other

1:52:15 point I wanted to make is Because I've of course in in the attempt to try to work on this in the past, which failed. And I've made a ton of progress in the last f month, but when doing it solo I would watch videos online and of course not all videos are created equal. And you would see people on that. And you would and you would see people doing a press handstand, but they would

1:52:35 Clanch really hard. Right. So you would see in other words, you'd see people they put their hands flat on the ground, in front of their toes. And then they shoot their head really far forward so their shoulders travel. If you were to drop a plumb line, like a string with a weight on the end from their shoulders, it would hit the floor, say like Eight inches in front of their exactly. And then they go up into the handstand and they have this arch in the back.

1:52:59 And maybe their feet are pointing straight up. And what does that look like? It looks a lot like what was the gold standard in sort of muscle beach Venice or Santa Monica like nineteen circa, nineteen sixty forty, nineteen fifties. Nineteen's nineteen fifties. But that's gonna place a lot more structural strain on the spine. So then if the what does the proper version look like I mean Roughly, right? Your ears are roughly in between your shoulder blades. In between your arms. Yeah, in between your arms.

1:53:29 Fully Shoulders extended up. Or not extended. What am I looking for here? Pressing pressing down through the ground and keeping the hand the shoulders directly on top of the hands. For people who want to just do a little experiment. Obviously do it do it safely, but I was blown away the first time that someone showed this to me. If you do a normal, say kick up to handstand on the wall, just the way that everybody does it, you're kind of f

1:53:52 flipping up and you end up looking away from the wall. There are million ways to do it. Let's say you do that And then instead of doing it the way you've always done it. before you put your hands on the ground, you start with your arms overhead. in the position that you want to assume on the ground and strug your shoulders up as high as possible, trying to get your deltoids to the sides of your ears. maintain that position and then go up and the stability is just

1:54:14 a world of difference. I mean it's nine day it's a completely different movement. All right. I have to ask this because a million people asked since we're on a roll here. We've already checked off yoga. That's true. And I have to ask come back, guys, I like everything else about yoga except your handstands, so Only a small amount of hate mail for the handstand.

1:54:32 Some of the coaches. And doesn't have to be in gymnastics, but it certainly could be. Some of the coaches who have impressed you the most. in between like my bouts of hands shaking and like accidentally getting chalk in my mouth doing the assessment and like when I could bend my arms. and do something. I took these cryptic notes. I wrote down one name which was Alexander

1:54:55 World champion male and female. Does that ring any bells? You know, I I've been extremely Extremely fortunate in my career. I have uh Just a multitude of friends who are

1:55:09 World and Olympic champions, world in Olympic team members, world in Olympic Coaches. Yeah. for a long time, you know, I just kinda'cause if that's your environment day in, day out, it just kinda becomes your norm, right? And then after a while you kinda stop and think like one day I was

1:55:24 I was at a competition. And I I was visiting with some friends of mine and I came back and My oldest daughter was Maybe around twelve at the time. She was like, Oh my

1:55:35 God. You know who you were talking to, Dad and I said, Well yes, sweetie, I know, they're my friends. She says That was the Olympic champion and that was the world champion. Yeah, I know, babe. I know. She just like Oh my good God.

1:55:47 Well, Dimitri Belozuchev. He is a good friend of mine in Dimitri. One world in eighty three at sixteen years old. Sixteen years old.

1:55:57 Just Unbelievable. He won again in eighty seven. What a lot of people don't know is In between there, Dimitri, obviously Russian.

1:56:06 Dimitri had a car accident. And broke his left lower leg between the knee and the ankle in forty two places. Oh. So basically, you know, that's powder. They put him in, he's unconscious, he's on the table and he's he's covered up and they're getting ready to remove.

1:56:23 His lower leg. They're gonna you know taken it off. And The surgeon. pulls the towel down, the sheet down,'cause he's prepped for surgery. I mean he's out.

1:56:33 And he sees its Dimitri. Now this is Russia. Right. in the early eighties. So maybe you didn't know this. Uh it's not warm friendly Russia. The doctor immediately Holy shit, I am not cutting this leg off'cause the surgeon who takes Dmitry Belozerchev's leg off

1:56:48 He's probably gonna lose his hands shortly thereafter also. National hero. So they save his leg. And Dimitri comes back from it. And

1:56:58 wins worlds in eighty seven. goes eighty eight Olympics, does great medal, gold medals. Well Dimitri. was lucky enough we're at different training camps than that. Dimitri was my roommate. Yeah.

1:57:09 You know, Russians are Russians, right? It takes a long time for them to warm up to you. So it took I don't know how many years, but we we started getting along real well after some years. He starts sharing some stuff. I mean, I'm like, you know, Dimitri'cause of his leg is trashed. Legislature Olympics. I said, Dimitri, you know how?

1:57:25 How the hell, dude. Yeah. Only lasts for a few seconds. I I can do anything for a few seconds. I don't know, dude. Well,

1:57:34 So just great, right? So he's you know a legend in gymnastics. We get together with a room full of World and Olympic champions who are Russian. They will all defer to Demetri. He's he's that big a legend. And this isn't a room full of massive egos.

1:57:49 Yeah, there's there's no shortage of confidence here and if Demetri's in the room. They treat Dimitri awesome. It's a very, very cool thing to see. Well. We go forward. We had um a world champion from the Russian on the women's side.

1:58:03 Who uh won Worlds. And Demetri's coach Alexander was responsible for training both of them. So Alexander's the only one in history who produced A male. World champion.

1:58:14 And a female. World champion, he's the only one. And Alexander right now. is down coaching the uh Brazilian team. What is Alexander's Is that his first or last name?

1:58:24 Alan, I always screw up all the Russian pronunciations. All my Russian friends are gonna laugh'cause they're totally used to me butchering this, but it's like Alexander Alexanderov or or something. Got one of those. If I'm with my Russian friends, I just say Alexander and everybody knows who I mean so I don't have to embarrass myself. Allowed him, made him makes him him. Yeah, exactly. What makes him different. What makes him him is the ability So it starts with

1:58:53 depth of knowledge, to have enough depth of knowledge that you can look at an athlete And plan what you need to be doing. Four years from now. Eight years from now. And then reverse engineer all of it to today.

1:59:07 All the training cycles, the strength, the D loads. It was from Dimitri. that I for so back in eighty three, Dimitri was the only gymnast, and I think today probably one of the only ones who Every fourth week was a D load week. Why? To give the body a chance to recover.

1:59:23 Now there's a lot of people who talk to you, but way back then, right? The training if you visit with Dimitri, right, it's all this Chris. It's mathematics. It's all mathematics we do. To them, you take these correct pieces, would you be like doing the correct numbers? Yeah. creates your equation if you put the equation together correctly and then you solve it, there's your answer. And your answer is the physical preparation at the end in a successful competition.

1:59:48 So Alexander is great. Great and knowing. We're gonna just be consistent over this training block. So, you know, an Olympic cycle is four years long. So we're getting ready to finish this Olympics.

2:00:01 Right and then the next one. Cycle starts. So it could take, for example To get someone Two

2:00:09 Seventy five. Eighty percent. Of their genetic capacity. with a good coach, a good world class coach. gonna take three to four years.

2:00:18 gonna take four years. Just to let the body grow, adapt. Do you think that's also true for 30 like training an adult? I do. Okay, great.

2:00:28 No. That's a healthy adult. So if they're severely compromised. So you know, to get through our whole our whole curriculum should take three to four years. If they're severely compromised and we have to do

2:00:42 Damage repair? We've got to heal some injuries, we've got some chronic things. 'Cause what what's a chronic injury? A chronic injury is simply an injury that you kept abusing until it became semi permanent. That's all chronic injury is. It means

2:00:55 You slammed your hand in the door and it hurt. Your response to slamming your hand in the door to earning was to keep slamming your hand in the fucking door. And you kept you kept slamming in the door and you say, God, my hand really hurts. What should I do? What should I do? Quit slamming your hand in the damn door and it will get better. But people.

2:01:12 They don't think that way. They're just like, Well, I but I really, really like doing this. And we get people coming to us really beat up'cause we're taught No pain, no gain. Well we flip that around, we say no brain, no gain. We're not talking about the pain of fatigue. The the easy way to know the difference between

2:01:28 fatigue and injury. is simply the sharpness of the pain. So for example, and it's some experience also. If you're feeling pain. Right, and maybe it's from a core workout and you stop, you're doing hollow body rocks, whatever, you've Doesn't matter what you're doing setups.

2:01:43 You stop. If it's fatigue, it's immediately gonna start to lessen. As soon as you stop, the pain starts going away. If it's an injury. And you stop.

2:01:54 it's immediately gonna begin increasing. That's your oh shit moment. Yeah. Oh I have screwed myself up. Right, and so You kinda have to ride that. We want to work.

2:02:04 to where the body is working, but we don't want to work so hard. It's like for a long time it was a big thing for people doing kipping pull ups. to take pictures of their hands being raw and bloody from their rips. They were looking at it as a badge of honor, you know, that I worked so hard. And in the short term. For that moment.

2:02:24 Yeah, they worked really hard. Now I looked at it differently. I looked at it as like You stupid shit. What are you gonna do tomorrow now? Right.

2:02:32 There's no amount of work you can do today. that could offset the amount of progress you could have made throughout a properly structured week. It can't be done. You see that you see that with kettlebells a lot too. I remember that I remember when I was really deep in kettlebell training, it was Yeah, you take yourself out for God knows how long, you rip all your calluses off.

2:02:51 But they mean well. They mean well, we tend to use two terms with our athletes. We have Immature athletes and mature athletes. And it's not an age deal. It's an attitude deal. So an immature athlete

2:03:06 is someone who wants what they want right now. Okay. A mature athlete is someone who's willing to do what needs to be done now. to get rewarded for it later. Delayed gratification. And it's the mature athlete that in the long run.

2:03:20 always comes out on top. They're always the ones with the greater longevity and the greater success. The other ones, the immature ones, they're really talented. They may stay ahead for a while. But eventually you're gonna get so ding and Broken and beat up. That they have to step aside.

2:03:36 And the mature guy and the mature athlete or woman, right? They're they're just doing their thing day in, day out. It's like Writing a book. That has three hundred and sixty five pages in it. If I

2:03:46 Ask you tomorrow, Tim, go home tonight and write me a book with three hundred sixty five pages. You're like, Chris, you've lost your fucking mind. But if I say Tim I want you to write me a page. A single page. Every day.

2:03:59 In a year. We've got a book with three hundred sixty five pages and if you picture that that thickness of a novel. That it's a lot of pages there. But if I look at that thickness of a single page. It's so thin that it seems negligible that it doesn't even matter.

2:04:13 It's like why did I bother? Well. It's it's the consistency that adds up over time. That's where you see you see these great athletes Gotta understand they see you see a world class athlete.

2:04:25 That did not start training yesterday. This is a multi-year process. Well also I think that there's a uh behavioral modification and a component of this which, you know, if you wanted to dig in the research is is supported at this point, which is Doing each day. less than you feel maximally capable of. It's a fantastic sort of positive reinforcer. And

2:04:47 This applies in sales. This is what IBM did way back in the day when their sales force was Slaughtering the competition. They had the lowest quotas. In the industry because they wanted their salespeople to be unintimidated to pick up the phone. So we could substitute intimidated to pick up the phone with intimidated to go to the gym or start a session.

2:05:06 You could also apply it to writing. Leave a little in the bank. Leave a little in the bank. I remember there two examples offhand as it applies to writing. A friend of mine was very, very consistent, prolific writer, and he said my key is every day I write less than I feel capable of.

2:05:23 And the guideline that I was given was two crappy pages per day. That's all you have to do. two crappy pages. Sometimes you overshoot that and you have a great work out and you're feeling as you put it froggy. Right? You're feeling fantastic. You're feeling fantastic and you just blow through it and set a bunch of PRs, but you didn't go into the workout with the pressure of having to achieve PRs in every exercise. And Yeah, Hennyway, maybe not the best life model, but

2:05:46 was prolific writer and still still a stud, yeah. And he would end mid sentence. He would end still feeling like he had more to say in a specific paragraph or sentence, so that he had a place to pick up the next day. So on the point of consistency, and actually I want you to finish your last thought because I totally hijacked. The uh conversation but you said it takes three to that, dude. You hijack my thoughts. Three to four Three to four years. This is ballpark seventy five to eighty.

2:06:13 This is just an example to people'cause the body will not let you run it a hundred percent. Won't do it. Well good, there's not enough optimal surplus that we mentioned earlier. Three to four years to get to seventy five, eighty percent. It will take me another three to four years, another three to four years. to get to about ninety percent.

2:06:34 Another three to four years. And then after that It will take me another three to four years. to get to about ninety-five percent. And that's

2:06:44 Me riding herd on them. That's My standards. Right,'cause remember it's easier for me to maintain that immaculate standard. Because I'm not the one. Feeling the fatigue right now.

2:06:56 It's very difficult for world class athlete to train themselves. And It doesn't do a world class coach any good. to have all that knowledge in his head. It takes a partnership. Right. It takes both of them working together.

2:07:08 to create this great athletic animal. But the interesting thing is that Another three to four years you get to ninety five percent. And as soon as they ease up. the body drops back down to that seventy five eighty that's where it likes now. To build back up won't take nearly as long as to build it in the first place.

2:07:24 because the structures are already in place, nervous systems already develop, yada yada yada yada yada. But That's where the body's comfortable. So as far as adults are concerned. There's a thirty five year old.

2:07:36 Meadow to be able to produce at ninety percent. No. They don't. Do they need it ninety five percent?

2:07:43 No, they're they're not full time professional athletes. They don't they don't have time for that. Can they produces seventy five to eighty percent. Yes, they can. And the interesting thing is Is. Will that put you on the Olympic team?

2:07:57 No, absolutely, absolutely not. Are you gonna be close to it? No. But Will it put you being better than ninety nine out of a hundred people around you?

2:08:06 Absolutely. Absolutely, it will put you there. And if we put a percentage on that, that means that just by being consistent. putting some years consistent years of training and that puts you in the top one percent of the h human population in terms of physical ability.

2:08:23 That is not a bad consolation price. No, it's not. And I wanna underscore the consistency point because I've always been an intensity guy, right? I mean, for the most part, because that's my default mode. Yeah. And uh you know, it's served me well. Everybody's right. Yeah, it served me well, but there's a point where The sword cuts both ways. You sent me an email recently. I'm going to replace the name just

2:08:46 Unless we decide to I was gonna say, or maybe take out the profanity just in case. Yeah, I'll take out the the F bombs. Yeah. Dear you lazy bastard. No, that's not how it starts. Because I want to talk about older students who have picked up gymnastics and Okay. So there are a lot of people who are rightly, I think, or uh naturally skeptical of the ability of, say, a thirty five, thirty eight, forty plus year old to acquire

2:09:10 the skills that are associated with people who start when they're five, six, seven years old. So I'm gonna replace the name with Frank. Okay, so I was having a hell of a lot of trouble with Talk hops and to just explain that, I fully plan for everyone listening to put a lot of video examples in the show notes. You'll have visual references for a lot of this, but tuck hops. It's a great exercise.

2:09:33 Uh there are different ways to practice this, but a tuck handstand is instead of having your body ramrod straight from your hands all the way to your pointed toes at the very top, you're basically bringing your knees to your chest. Or Ribb Cage while you're in the handstand position. With your

2:09:50 feet still pointed but your heels kind of touching your ass. Is that a fair description? Mm-hmm. I agree with that. And I was having a lot of trouble with range of motion. I just couldn't get low enough. And so coach sent me an email, which was You know, Frank is one of my senior students. Here's a video of him working his tuck handstand compression. While it's not exactly the same exercise, this does provide a nice visual example. Now the part that stands out for me is what follows the video. Cause I watched the video and I was like, Okay, that's

2:10:17 Pretty solid. And You said you know he started roughly two years ago out of shape. weak and rather pudgy on his first workout I believe that he failed three times twelve seconds Bent hollow body hold.

2:10:29 And There are people on wheelchairs that are stronger than that. Yeah, and I I'm probably gonna get the d not gonna do this exercise just but I mean a a a bent hollow by they hold is effectively like imagine if you're In a Crunch position on the floor.

2:10:43 Right. And then you put your arms Just kinda pick your feet up like you were gonna do a sit up, except don't sit up. Shoulders up a little off the ground, feet off a little ground. And then just try to rock back and forth. That's it. So he failed that couldn't do three sets of that times twelve second. Couldn't do it.

2:11:00 Not a chance. Fast forward two years and he's a beast. There are two points here that really left a mark on me. So the first was he's very consistent. Okay, we've talked about that. This is the part that I really liked. So he never rushes through exercise and every time he gets stuck on a progression and is not able to break through that particular plateau. He simply drops all the way back to the first progression and begins working his way up. So I want to try to illustrate this because this is a really'cause most people

2:11:27 Myself included, will just bang their heads against a wall. With the plateau movement. Let's take the press handstand, which we've been talking about as a great kind of bang for the buck objective because it incorporates so many different elements and attributes that you need to develop. What would A series of progressions like four or five

2:11:46 And Does it literally mean that if he couldn't get through movement five that he would drop all the way back to number one or would he go back to number two and number three? Okay. Now he might go to

2:12:02 He might not start with the very week one programming of, you know three by one rep. He might drop back to uh week eleven. where we provide the programming where it's five by five. And just to demonstrate mastery.

2:12:16 The next workout bump. But Basically what he's doing is If he failed. On that exercise.

2:12:24 That means there was a chink in the armor somewhere, there was a hole in the preparation, there was a some deficit that had been overlooked. or some part of the body that had not yet supercompensated. So Basically we want we want people to go through when they're in training to just be super simplistic. We want their training to go through a period of Overload.

2:12:43 Where whatever they're doing is kicking their ass. Okay, it's hard. It's intense. And then without changing reps or sets, right? We want the body then to go into a period of load. Where that same amount of work, that same load.

2:12:57 Same exercise, same reps, same sets. Feels like it's not. Moderately difficult. It's feeling easier because the body's gotten stronger. And then where people always cut it short, where they undermine themselves here.

2:13:11 Is they Don't go into underload. So to be super simplistic, underload is where Damn. I'm just not feel like I'm working very hard. You're moving the same weight.

2:13:21 You're doing the same reps, you're doing the same sets. Right, but you're just you're just cutting it short. What what people tend to do is they want to ride that razor's edge. I did this much today. I'm gonna do more next week as that typical five pounds on the bar. Okay, well that's

2:13:35 Great. You know, if that was the case, I remember my first way to pull up workout, I was excited. I was excited way back when I was a teenager. I came home, I hit my five pounds, I pulled out my calendar. Did five pounds, I'm gonna do a pound every week. I said holy shit. I'm gonna be pulling fifteen hundred pounds in a year, man.

2:13:51 I'm world champion. I'm world champion in the making. Linear doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. So what happens is that you hit that point of Well you're maxed out currently.

2:14:02 And then you gotta step off. We gotta give the body a chance to accommodate. So for example, you mentioned Rob Wolf, Rob is a good buddy, Rob's super sharp for those of you who don't know, he's a Nutritional guru check out his stuff. R O B B for people. R O B B Yeah, he's got he's got two B's there.

2:14:18 Well Rob is a high intensity guy like you, Tim. And so I shared with them. The year Allen won national cell national champ. Imagine. You've defeated

2:14:28 The entire country. There's one champion in Your It. Everyone you kick their ass.

2:14:36 Unbelievable feeling. Extremely awesome. Well that year. I didn't change Anything. on Allen's conditioning the entire year.

2:14:45 Not a damn thing. I didn't change an exercise. I didn't change a rep. I didn't change a set. Not for that entire year. For the progressive

2:14:57 Resistance. Purists out there. There might be another way. But remember he wasn't a beginner at this point. No,'cause a beginner, right, it it wouldn't do any good if I can do a wall push up inclined on the wall. I mean, Alan was strong, he was already doing hollow back presses, you know, rope climbs were for

2:15:13 Mainten of healthy elbows, yada yada yada. But for that year I didn't change. Anything. All that changed was

2:15:21 Work out. That Took an hour. Got to the point where it was taken. Forty to forty five mennons.

2:15:28 At which point do your stretch and get out.'Cause the less time you're in the gym the better. Okay,'cause it's it's less wear and tear on the body. Think of it when I hear when you mention, you know, people who love to be high intensity. Okay, it's cool. But The analogy that comes to mind is someone who wants to be high intensity all the time.

2:15:44 Like having a new set of tires. Every time you come up to a stop sign. You don't gradually break, you slam those brakes hard. You skid to a stop. Every single stop sign. How long is that pair of tires gonna last?

2:15:57 It's gonna wear out pretty quick and No, the body's not like tires. It can rebuild itself. As long as you don't put it Or

2:16:06 physically. break the structure. damage the structure beyond repair. Some degree of care.

2:16:13 You rebuild yourself, but if you keep s getting to that stop every single day. Matter time it's not if it's guaranteed. So let's throw out a couple of I'll use another automotive metaphor. Let's switch gears and I will Ask just a couple of questions that

2:16:30 I think people would love to hear answers to the first is Someone Listen to this, they're extremely excited. to do gymnastic strength training. And maybe they go out and they're like sampling

2:16:42 different things from all sorts of different places. And uh you know, of course I have no bus I should say with full disclosure, I have no business Association marketing if any kind of affiliate, anything from you. I just am a real fan of how you train. So I think people should check out your your training programs. But What exercises should people not attempt or just remove from consideration for the first

2:17:04 Say six months of Gymnastics strength training. Probably. I would say muscle ups. The issue becomes there's nothing wrong with the pull, there's nothing wrong with the dip.

2:17:14 the shoulders will adapt relatively quickly. You know, they'll get up on rings at first and they're shaking. And that's simply because the stabilizers aren't used to the load. That'll adapt within, you know Two weeks, four weeks, they'll be fine. The issue they run into is because their shoulder extension is weak. They can't get the elbow behind the torso.

2:17:33 So instead of doing a dip with body weight. Now they're trying to do a tricep extension with body weight. Completely different animal. Their elbows can't go, their elbows are trapped at their side and now their hands are in front of'em and they're just trying to press themselves up.

2:17:49 Trash and they're always not some people. Okay, we do see it. Some people have incredible joints that you can just pound and pound and pound and pound and pound. Nothing happens to'em. Run'em over with a car. Right, all you're gonna do is hurt your car. Everyone assum they're that guy, they're that woman.

2:18:06 The reality is, you're not, guys. You are not that person. If you were that person. I would see you at training camps right now or you would be a celebrated professional level athlete. So accept the fact that you're human and those are not your joints. You can't take that approach and have longevity. It's not gonna happen.

2:18:24 Okay, so muscle ups go out. Muscle ups go out. Now how how do they get around the muscle up? Mm. How do they get'cause their elbows hurt. They can't do it slow. We need to build strength, we gotta do it slow. How do they get around? They do the kipping muscle up. Okay. Well that gets me on.

2:18:39 But Where I get the benefit of muscle ups is through that transition as I'm going between the pull up through my chest up above. That's where cross is. That's where plange is, that's where Maltese is, that's where all advanced ring strength is.

2:18:54 It's that strength. When you see a gymnast Right, when you see him this summer at the Olympics, right, and we're just as an aside, guys, we've got some podcasts coming out for gymnastic body. Sorry, Tim, competing with you here. That's all right. And We're gonna talk some training, right, with some of our Olympic guys. And when when you see them You are um you're gonna see this massive musculature and it didn't come from push ups and it didn't come from dips.

2:19:18 It came from that advanced ring strength they do. So if you're doing a kipping muscle up and you're going From below the rings to on top of the rings and it's gone. You just skip the most beneficial part of the muscle up. Let me waste it. Let me ask a related question because of course every four years

2:19:33 I watch gymnastics, I love watching gymnastics, as do a lot of people, and they go, Holy shit, if I By hanging from a bar for an hour a day. I need to start hanging from a bar. How much of the rings. How much of the musculature in the upper arms

2:19:51 Biceps specifically comes from straight arm work versus some form of bent arm work. Excellent question. So The majority of the massive biceps they see is gonna come from the straight arm work. So for example when the guys would uh

2:20:07 At that level of training, at that level of strength. Rope climbs for example. My guys had to do a triple on a seven meter row. All rope climbs are done with no legs. Okay and G S T.

2:20:19 We do ropes without legs. We get some people who say no the rope is used for transportation. As soon as they take out the escalators in emall and they put ropes in in place of it. Or they take the elevators out and they put ropes, I'll buy that argument that we use a rope for transportation. Until that happens.

2:20:35 A rope is used for getting freaking strong. Yeah, yeah. Right. That's the point of having a rope. So they would in five minutes they would do a triple on a seven meter rope. Get in the back of the line, do a double on a seven meter.

2:20:47 Get back in the line. And do another and that'd be about five minutes worth of work. Okay, now For them what we did notice and a lot of people miss this We're gonna do two things here at once. So for the maximum strength component of it, it's the straight arm work, Maltese work in particular.

2:21:03 Or it just blows the body out there. And people listening. Don't just go into your garage and try a maltise on your rings. You can. You can totally,'cause I don't think Maltese will hurt you. Maltese won't hurt you, but you're landing on this concrete on your face underneath the rings is probably going to hurt. Maltese won't it's the sudden stop at the end. That will be uncomfortable.

2:21:24 Now what we found out with the guys though is uh you know, we did over the years the weight vests, the way the heavy weighted roe climbs pull ups. Nothing but Better mass on a biceps secondary from the ring strength. Then High volume rope climbs.

2:21:40 Nothing. Nothing blew him up. Now the key though is For everybody listening, if you go and you jump right into ropes right now and you haven't built A foundation of Rose, pull ups, multiplane pulling.

2:21:52 Then get to rope climbing, right? You're gonna give yourself a raging case of elbow tendinitis. Yeah, your elbows are gonna Just yeah. Disintegrate. Yep. Like anything else, you gotta pay your dues. But if you go through the proper steps and you're prepared to do rope climbs, there is nothing better because the bicep is an endurance muscle. That's its job. Now it can do this.

2:22:15 But its primary function is not too much. How much can I do the heaviest load for one rep? It's primary function is Go out and kill something. Pick it up. and carried it a long ass way back home.

2:22:27 That's its primary job. That's his primary job. So it just blossoms from high volume work. Now the key is Is that it's gotta be. high volume with

2:22:38 a reasonably high load, which on the robe clients is body weight. But we we gotta build to that. Two things that I'll throw out there just because people might find it interesting. So the first is you can build extremely muscular biceps. This is not gymnastics related, but with purely straight arm. Heavy pulling in the deadlift.

2:22:56 Combined with let's just let's just say you had one day of heavy pulling. And by heavy I mean two to three. reps like to the knees, kind of like the Barry Ross protocol in the four hour body. Sure. No eccentrics, you know, drop it. And then Let's just say you do that on Mondays and then on Fridays or Thursdays, whatever it might be.

2:23:15 You do higher up kettlebell swings, two armed kettlebell swings. You can get really, really muscular arms without doing any bent work whatsoever. Also When we're talking about and easy enough to switch that high rep kettlebell mark.

2:23:29 to uh throw rope climb on Friday. If you are Advanced enough. Bulletproof enough. Which mine are not. as an example for folks. Like I've done plenty of rowing

2:23:39 But Here's the difference though. When I have a parallel grip, if you're like I can bull fuck that I can do bent rose with a barbell with two hundred and twenty five pounds and or whatever and you've think that you're the king of pulling if you don't do a lot of parallel grip work or fat bar work and then you go to a thick rope, you're in for a surprise. Maybe we should touch base on the uh difference real quick between the various. Yeah, please.

2:24:04 Okay. Guys in in terms of GST specific strength. If you are doing just pull up work, your parallel grip. Is by far.

2:24:15 going to have the greatest return on investment. Simply because that parallel grip. Hits the brachialis so hard down in the elbow. The reason we need that is when you climb a rope, you're gonna have more of a parallel grip. You do that parallel graph pull up. Obviously you're developing that.

2:24:31 When we're on the rings we're on. Top of the rings, right?'Cause we always everything is aimed for eventually. Getting onto the rings to build strength. So When they're on the rings we need the grip turned out past

2:24:44 Parallel now. Back in the day. Greg Glassman and I Greg is the you know, he's a super bright guy, founder of CrossFit. But he just didn't understand why we would turn the rings. Past parallel. He he thought it was just aesthetics, Coach. It's just aesthetics.

2:24:59 Well, the problem is if I'm on the rings and I do a dip, I do a muscle up, I do whatever And I straighten my arms and I Don't turn the rings past parallel. Coach, I apologize for interrupting, just for people to visualize this. So let's just say you're up on rings.

2:25:15 And you're doing dips and you're in between the straps. What and correct me if I'm wrong here, Coach, but when you get to the top, that means top of the rep, arms are straight. Top of the rep and your arms are straight. That The rings themselves the thumbs out slightly. So instead of having the rings parallel, pointing straight ahead or turned in, which is what most people or turned in, they would be at, say ten PM and two PM or something like that. Exactly. And it will vary. As as long as they're out. The reason is is what's the weak link in straight arm strength is the elbow.

2:25:47 The weak link is the elbow. what a lot of people will do is we we've had people who were taught Well elbow pain is just part of doing ring strength. No, it's not. Elbow pain. is an indicator that your ring strength is Fed up and you need to do better programming.

2:26:00 And for a reason. I took you off track though just because I wanted people to visualize the proper thing. So you're saying to Greg that when you get to the top, you know, the issue is it's not just aesthetics. When you get to the top aesthetics, you've got to turn past parallel so that the brachialis is activated. Right, there's a reason that after all these years of CrossFit being on re using doing Thousands upon thousands of kipping pull ups and dips and all this stuff that There are no iron crosses.

2:26:27 Unless they're a previous gymnast. There's no home grown. Crossfitter has an iron cross. Home grown crossfair to ask. Lange or a malt.

2:26:36 Because right from the beginning on those very basic movements they didn't turn past parallel. They didn't turn the rings out. The brachialis wasn't trained. The brachialysis is what supports the elbow when it's straight. So if it never got trained, they can never move forward into the money making exercises. So that's why in those parallel those pull ups, if we use a parallel grip.

2:26:57 And it's easy enough to do so and just do a set. Do a nice parallel grip workout. And then compare the soreness that you feel. On the inside of the elbow from fatigue. compared to regular chin ups and regular pull ups, it's night and day.

2:27:11 And then we would do chins and then pull ups. So the Other exercises to remove, if any. So we have muscle ups. Back lever. Yeah, muscle up back lever. And you would add to that list?

2:27:24 You know. This one is A little unfortunate. And I don't know that it's so much of a removing As uh

2:27:33 Deprioritizing? Yeah, a cautionary tale. It takes time to rebuild connective tissue and it's connective tissue through the ligaments and the joints. that generate power through the body when they're doing plymetric work. There was a rash of Achilles ruptures.

2:27:50 When there was a couplet done of So they were doing deads, I believe, with two hundred and twenty five pounds. And then that was coupled with box jumps. Yeah, and they were doing that for round. There's not a problem with either one of those in isolation.

2:28:05 The problem came when it was in a competitive environment. Oh yeah. Most of the adults, right, were in their their later twenties and in their thirties. You know, the typical people who are working out. And'cause it's a race, the box jumps turned into jumping down also, which turned into rebounding applyometric off the floor.

2:28:25 'Cause I I gotta get these done, right? I'm in a race. So they had pre fatigue the Achilles with the dead left. And then went into the plymetric of the box junk. Nothing wrong with either one of'em, but in combination Took some people, I think that there were like nine ruptures that year.

2:28:41 Which is You know, one, okay, it happens. Right, Ivankov had it had his Achilles, he was one of the The leading guys we were looking to from Russia. Ivan Ivankov on the little champ.

2:28:52 He was the top guy that was favored to win the gold at the ninety six games. Now is it because walking across a parking lot is a dangerous thing and we should all avoid parking lots? No. It just happened to be.

2:29:06 the last straw and it had been damaged prior to that. Which a long story short, you went back to the front split series. That is the very reason that there is that high rep calf work there. to promote Achilles' hell. Because

2:29:19 connected tissue and the tendons in that do not have their own blood supply. They get fed, they heal, they strengthen. through the muscles moving around them and gravity, that's what flushes the area. So if we only do very high High intensity, low rep work.

2:29:34 There's not enough blood flow for them to be healthy. This isn't mine. Room a friend of the Bulgarian Olympic coach. for um the seventies and eighties is a good friend of mine. Genius.

2:29:45 genius at programming Rumen makes me look like a What's his name? I can never pronounce Ruman's last name. You guys can look'em up. Bulgarian Olympic coach for the women. Seventies and eighties. Al Ruman. I wanna say our bastardized uh American spelling is Are you M-I-N or N-A-N.

2:30:05 Sadly. Ruman had a a really heavy accent. So a lot of the American coaches, you know, they they didn't want to take the time to talk to'em. But you know, I I was a linguist in the military way back when so accents not as good as you, Tim. But accents don't bother me.

2:30:19 Yeah, he was an older gentleman. I would keep this guy up late so many days around he'd be Chris, I I gotta go get some say huh. It's okay, just one more question. Just just one more question, Roman. Just one more. So our knee series that we do came from Rumen. The one now. Oh no kidding, yeah, that I've been doing with the skier. Inside squads or

2:30:37 He saw Alan when he was eight, and Alan was incredibly powerful at eight years old. Just just unreal. And uh he was getting too powerful for his frame at that age. You know about eight we're starting to hit a Preliminary growth spurt. And uh The woman gave me that knee series.

2:30:53 Yeah. Week and a half. You know, his knees weren't hurting, they were starting to get slightly uncomfortable. Ruman showed us that. Well Knee issues gone, never never again, nothing with knees, ever.

2:31:04 Well. We could talk for hours and hours more. But I want to be respectful of your time and we can always do a round two sometime if uh you have the the willingness and uh the audience wants more, but I do have a couple of questions before I get into some of my usual rapid fire that I'd love to ask. Do you still have some time to chat? You've opened a can of worms, I'll talk training all night. All right, here we here we go then. The next question is From

2:31:30 one of my listeners and it's quite simply how do you mentally prep your athletes for big competition when you're down to that you know you go to the nationals or any competition, but specifically big competitions. How do you and by Prep, I mean mentally prep. The day of Is there anything in particular that you do? It starts with repetition.

2:31:51 So we we talked a little bit about training. So in in in a nutshell we'll we'll come back around and we'll fill this out. So in the preparation prior. Successful repetitions. It takes a certain number of repetitions. To lead to competence.

2:32:05 And it's competence that leads to confidence. And that's what leads to a successful Competition. So as Americans We tend to be in a rush.

2:32:16 Be in a hurry. We don't want to take a lot of reps. We wanna get something, we do it correct a few times. And then we want to bump on. Completely different from the Chinese approach, completely different from the Russian approach. Where they'll literally do.

2:32:31 Hundreds of repetitions. Before they move on to the next drill. And then they're they're not upset about it'cause they understand it's a Process. As Americans, we're always looking out and it's a it's both a good thing and it's a curse.

2:32:42 One, it's a good thing because it forces us to be so creative. We're so hard charging, we get so many things done. Physically sometimes it it kinda works against us because it we don't give the body and the nervous system a chance to stabilize. So

2:32:58 If you want to be confident At a competition. You have to pay your dues in prep. Example and that's Mentally and and physically.

2:33:07 For example, seventy two Olympics. Okay. Talking about this with Dmitry Belowzerchev, my friend, World and Olympic champ. So in seventy two Olympics, Olga Corbett. Was

2:33:18 By all accounts going to Crush. Everyone at the games. She was gonna crush everyone. In training. As they went back and the Russians went back and they reviewed all her training, she had over a ninety eight percent hit rate.

2:33:32 That meant she was Almost perfect. Almost perfect. When she went to the games. She had a major meltdown.

2:33:41 Now the question of course raises. How was it possible for someone who was this perfect for this long in training? to go to the competition. Just fall apart. As they dug into it, they found out the error was not in physical preparation, the error was in

2:33:57 mental preparation. So as Olga was cranking at home She was the one who decided when to go. Coaches waited on her. judges waited on her, everything was structured on her. She was very comfortable.

2:34:10 Okay, she didn't start till she was ready. She Equipment she's ready for, lighting she's ready for, Madding's familiar, everything is good. When you get to the worlds and you get to the Olympics Judges don't give a fuck if you're ready or not. When they raise that flag Yeah, it's brutal. In fact To give everyone a little taste.

2:34:28 The warm up gym is not there. The warm up gym might be ten minutes away. Or it it might be a ten minute walk a five minute walk down this concrete hallway. So you go and you warm up, you walk down this hallway. Right, and then your ass waits there.

2:34:43 And then the flag goes up. And you gotta go to a hundred percent within thirty seconds. You got thirty seconds to be on the equipment. Massive hit. Yeah, massive head game.

2:34:53 So they went back and they found out that Olga's problem was that everything had gone her way. She controlled too many variables. Too many variables and it there was they were too easy. They were too accommodating. And so what they did is the Russians changed their training just to screw with people. So if I'm coaching someone, right, and it's gonna there's gonna be a mental component. I'm gonna fuck with them.

2:35:13 I'm gonna tell him. All right, you're up. And then walk away. They won white. You know, let'em let'em get antsy.

2:35:22 Make'em go when they're not ready. Make'em do a cold set. Okay, don't don't let any and everything you can have a crowd people around them trying to mess with them. Any and everything. And I and I will also say It's much harder. For women.

2:35:36 than it is for guys. simply because women are more caring and nurturing than guys, a guy goes out to compete. And he's worried about one thing. He's worried about kicking ass. Okay. The girl goes out there and she's worried about kicking ass also.

2:35:48 But she's also worried about Not wanting to let anybody down. Are they gonna be disappointed with me? Are they gonna like me? She has this whole range of other emotional burdens that a guy doesn't give a shit about. They just don't care. I I've seen girls who are just amazing in training and get out there.

2:36:05 And just'cause they have this other load that they place on themselves that guys don't have to deal with. And the way you handle that in training is We just have to get more reps in. I gotta have more reps and do everything you can to put'em in a situation to where

2:36:19 For example. Two thousand and four. I was doing uh some of the prep I was doing Some of the floor for the tramp. And helping with Vault and doing the physical preparation for a girl we had trying out for the Olympics.

2:36:32 She did not make it. Yeah, you had to be top six, she was ninth. Okay. And uh Carly, fantastic girl. Great girl. Their approach, though, for mental training I thought was flawed.

2:36:43 They brought someone in and you know I won't say names. I'll just I'll just say that I disagreed and it was it was a very they're trying to be really, really positive. So, you know, thirty thousand square foot gym, big giant yes signs everywhere. Yes you can. Yes, it'll be great. Yes, it'll be wonderful. And the reality is it's not gonna be wonderful. It's gonna be stressful. It's gonna s suck.

2:37:03 When you are in a competition at that level, the pressure is crushing. It it's a physical pressure that you feel on you and you still have to produce performance at a world class level. And the only way to handle that is we have to try to

2:37:19 Replicate that in training. Right. So that the pressure's not going away. The error that was known at Carly was trying to downplay the pressure. I would say do the exact Opposite. Do the opposite. You should go to the training. to the competition and hopefully

2:37:33 Less pressure. than what you go through in training. Now that's not gonna be true at Olympics and such, but at most things It should be the case. Should be the case, so

2:37:44 Mentally. No, if you're scared oh let's let's say If you're feeling unconfident, if you're feeling threatened. Uneasy. Your preparation was flawed.

2:37:55 Brings up an anecdote that I heard from Paul Levesque, better known as Triple H, the professional wrestler, who's also An incredible. business executive for WWE, but he visited Floyd Mayweather. And

2:38:09 He visited Floyd. Maybe an hour before a huge title fight. For a championship belt. Or to retain his belt. And

2:38:17 At one point Paul said, you know, I'm I'm gonna leave, I don't want to interrupt your prep. And he goes, Why would you interrupt my prep? He goes, If I'm not ready now, nothing I do between in the next sixty minutes is gonna make me ready. He said you can Yeah, I I love that attitude. Yeah, feel free to hang out. He was just walking watching basketball or something. And and it also you brought up this SEAL team six members and so on earlier. I mean, that's a I think a great example of a parallel track, right? In the sense that

2:38:41 they very much want to sweat more, in some cases bleed more in training. So that they can avoid dying in real battle. So the simulations are extremely brutal. And intended to be sort of along the lines of

2:38:56 I'm not really up on my ancient name. Pronunciation, but I think it's Archelocus. Who said we do not rise to the level of our hopes we fall to the level of our training. So making the conditions equivalent. No stress.

2:39:13 How how in the world you can be in a hundred and forty five gun fights And not feel stressed when you're heading out to another one. You just yeah, fall asleep on the helicopter. Yeah. I'll do my thing and get back on. Seriously?

2:39:25 It's like a Well yeah, I mean gosh, yeah, just just another day in the office. Holy moly. So on the day of, assuming you've done the requisite preparation you've condition them to perform well under stressful circumstances. Change nothing. Change nothing. Change nothing.

2:39:44 This is an important lesson not just in competing, but in Everything. So a lot of people psych themselves out. of doing as well as they could have by prematurely comparing themselves to the people around them.

2:39:58 Instead of Just go out. Take care of your business. Do your best. We'll see where it falls.

2:40:05 If you're going up against the best who's ever been born. You're not gonna beat'em. There's not gonna be a miracle. The sky's not gonna open, guy's not gonna reach down and bless you with extra athletic ability. Yeah, it's it it's it's not gonna happen. So you just ignore that. You know, you go out and you just stay in your own head.

2:40:21 Do your thing. Now psychologically, people handle it differently. Some people. We had the same. Chemistry on Olympic teams.

2:40:29 Some people like to be left alone. You know, let let me go do my thing. You know, and they'll come together for the team, but then when they're prepping for their set, you know, they gotta go off on their self. There's other guys where they feed off that interaction, right? They want people coming around and getting them pumped up. Then there's all in between.

2:40:46 None of'em are right and none of'em are wrong. It just is what it is. And it's important to just deal with who you are. Same in training. There are some people who thrive on multiple training per day.

2:40:57 And they they just blossom. They do awesome. There's other people. who have to train just a few times a week. Doesn't matter. There's been Olympic champions who trained both ways. It just depends on what your body does best with.

2:41:11 I'm very curious to hear the answer to this. This was from a I think it was a it might have been a mother, I think it was a father who said What questions would Coach Summer Ask. A gymnastic coach at A nearby facility.

2:41:24 before sending his own five to ten year old off to train with them. Yeah. And I I went through that. So I did I didn't coach my daughter. I didn't coach my daughter. I wanted to be dad. And uh I didn't get involved were were there things I would have done very differently?

2:41:39 Yes. But her happiness in the process was more important to me than her success and she was state champion. But that was more important to me than stepping in and making sure everything was world class level. I I didn't want to go there. First thing I would do. I'm reviewing someone.

2:41:57 that the bell curve is reality, right? The bell curve shows that there are there's a huge majority of people who are average. There's a few who are at the top and there are a few who are at the bottom. But if you talk to someone You've never met anyone who says, Yeah, I'm in the middle of the bell curve. Every fucker you talk to is exceptional.

2:42:15 Every single person, right? Every person is another millionaire in the making. They're another they're gonna win the voice. They got Academy Award, it's coming. Nobody says yeah on average. And it's the same thing with gyms. So first thing I would do is look at a competitive record.

2:42:30 How have they done and at what level have they been successful? So are they successful at a local level, at a state level? How have they done in terms of regionals? How have they done in terms of nationals? Are they on national team? How consistently have they been on national team? Is it year in, year out? Was it a one time deal? After I look at that.

2:42:49 The very th next thing I'm gonna look at is I'm gonna look at injury rates. How healthy and successful are these athletes? How would you find that data or would you just ask them point blank? If they're a world class coach. They're always gonna be straight with you. Only people in my experience who talk shit.

2:43:07 Or the wannabees. Yeah, that's consistent in everything that I've expected. In everything. I I had so two thousand and three Uh yeah, it's two thousand and three. I'm at a training camp. And Paul Hom has just one The world championships.

2:43:22 He's just one world. And Alan is a little guy. We're we're at a training camp and Paul's coach Stacey Melani is there. And we're we're at a technical. And it's on round offs, on round offs of all things. And so Stacey comes and he sits down next to me.

2:43:38 Says Chris, what what do you think about this? Now in my head I'm thinking Who gives a fuck what I think about this? You just won world championships. I want to know what you think about this. But he asked my opinion. I don't say I'm not gonna be rude to Stacy, but in my head I'm thinking that.

2:43:52 So we talk about it for a little bit and then Stacey gets up and he goes around the room. visit him with other coaches that he respect and he wants their opinion and then he he makes his own opinion. Down he had just one world. So it would have been so easy for him to be kind of aloof and snooty and arrogant, you know, I'm this and that. But the point is that that's the reason At Stacey One Worlds.

2:44:12 That he was a coach of that calibre'cause he was Always open to learning more. He never said I know everything. And like you said, I've never met an exception. It's the ones who aren't at a high level who think, you know I know everything. There's nothing left to be learned.

2:44:28 And it is just not the case. So I I w I would check that, check around, you know, talk to people. Watch the athletes in training. You know, go go and watch some workouts. How does the coach handle it? Is there a lot of tears? If it's a guy and there's tears in the work out, he's got a broken leg.

2:44:44 Right. And girl girls, you know, girls are girls. I I live in a I've got two daughters, a wife, even my dog is female. There's tears here constantly. This is part of being female. So if it's an occasional tear, no big deal. But if there's a lot of crying all the time. There's a problem. I I'd I'd move down the road, but if if they're happy now it doesn't

2:45:03 Healthy. Doesn't mean A free for all? Healthy and happy doesn't mean Indulging?

2:45:10 You know, there should be structure, there should be accountability, but It should be pleasant. No, kids or any athlete adults as well will either live up to the standard you set. Or they will live down to the standard you set. I can just kinda go ahead and try to get a feel, you know, is is this a place where you want is the comp competition record as good?

2:45:27 Is this an environment that I'm content with my child being in? Now if you get a good feeling, okay. As an adult, if you were assessing a gymnastics coach for yourself. And you could observe a workout. Let's just say you could only watch the warm up.

2:45:44 Excellent. What would you look for? To be there or not be there, or what would the uh characteristics be? Do they take the time to warm up the joints? Or did they jump right into work? Do they actually take time?

2:45:59 to mobilize. Are they doing stall bar work? Are they doing Jefferson Crow work? Are they They loosen up their wrists and their knees and their ankles. You're really loosening their back before they get going. Are they doing some type of Of pre-strength. Are they doing lower level strength elements to get the muscles warm and firing before jumping into the hard work?

2:46:20 You can tell a lot from how a program warms up. No, that's what I was asking. And I mean, there's a movement that also From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. Just like we were talking about the biceps and high capacity for volume.

2:46:36 The QL Walks. Which you introduced me to. Which if you really want to have people laugh at you, this is a great move to do. Although you had mentioned, and this doesn't surprise me at all that you've seen high level powerlifters use it doing this with that's where that's where I got it from holding on to kettlebells kind of with a goblet squat type of grip. So what this looks like, folks, we've already talked about this seated pike position. So you're sitting on your ass, legs together, legs straight. So

2:47:00 Basically keeping your legs completely straight. If there are other elements, please let me know, coach technical points, but Basically you're like walking your ass cheeks. Yeah, point. Doing uh speed walking sitting down. Yeah. That's actually the that's a great description. That's exactly what it looks like.

2:47:17 And QL refers to the quadrant screen up, yeah, quadratus. Quadrus Lumborum. Yeah, quadrus limborum, which is sort of like the grand central of all sorts of muscles and fascia. in the back. And it's incredible how much that loosens up my entire lower back. And hips. Doing this very, very simple QL walk. I'll pick up.

2:47:37 Gosh, sometimes three, four inches. Oh yeah. Just from loosening up from those first. Yeah. How long should a proper Gymnastics warm up. Take it.

2:47:47 And one more? Which is warming up the joints. Are there any specific movements That hit the shoulders from any angle. More perspective. They would indicate a better warm up.

2:47:58 for gymnastics strength training. Then Others. It it would depend on duration. duration of the workout. So if you're in there for an hour. Yeah. I'll I'll preface it. Say you're in for an hour.

2:48:11 I would say probably ten to fifteen minutes is reasonable. Now At the same time. If I have significant mobility deficits.

2:48:23 Well perhaps the majority of the work out needs to be mobility work. It could kinda shift. Possibly as high as a half hour if I have a multi hour training coming up. It's complicated enough and we've tried this over the years. There are enough things to address that

2:48:39 should be addressed on a semi regular basis that you can't really Get everything in. to a single warm up. You're probably gonna have Two or three variations.

2:48:50 You know, if you're doing advanced work. you're probably gonna have two or three variations in order to get to everything. Like for example ring strength before a good hard ring strength, it's very nice to do theraband series for the shoulders. different shapes and poles and circles and all these things with theraband are really great for warming up the interior of the shoulder. On other days do I need to do that as much for shoulder? No. It might be

2:49:13 More weighted shoulder work is appropriate for other days. Is it necessary to do All of them at the same time. Most of the time no. We have one senior student really, really good.

2:49:26 Matt started training with me in his late forties. He's now fifty two. Beast. Press handstands, planges, uh front levers. At fifty two ridiculous shape.

2:49:38 And um he went through a period Where just for shoulders to feel better. He did. Every shoulder prep we had all our integrated mobility our courses. are set up very unusually.

2:49:49 Where for our introductory courses Adult students come in. Alternate. and exercise with an integrated mobility'cause we want them fifty fifty. We found if I a if I told people how important stretching was

2:50:01 They always blow me off. But if I required it, do a set and before your next set you have to do this stretch. Then back and forth and we just had great results. So Matt's is uh Crazy maniac, still still skateboards, still water skis.

2:50:15 Those as G S T. And uh shoulder would get a little finicky. So he just did extra mobility and it it just fixed his shoulder right up. I was introduced to an exercise by a master's crossfit. Competitor actually.

2:50:31 That really helped with shoulder I would say warm up more than mobility, but for Pressing. exercises even in GST including any type of hand balancing or handstand work.

2:50:44 Which you have to have a decent amount of grip strength for this, but I was very skeptical of this, even as someone who's done a lot with kettlebells, but I I've never been a huge fan of the bottoms up. Work with kettlebells meaning uh Yeah, it's got it flipped up and gripping it by the handle to bell on top. Exactly. But I was like, you know what, screw it. I'll try it with a lightweight. You know, I started with say whatever it is might be like fifteen, sixteen pounds and I've increased that. I'd be I use thirty fives now, but

2:51:08 A little bit of chalk goes a long way here, but you you would uh Basically swing it up to a clean. And then press it overhead and then you just do rotations. So I'm doing like side to side rotations and it's incredible how Well that activates the smaller

2:51:26 Musculature. Oh, it's cool. We didn't do them with kettlebells, we'll do'em with uh light dumbbells. So basically Guys well what Tim's is trying to is just take a dumbbell, push it up overhead.

2:51:38 Turn the thumbs, externally rotate it just a bit, and then just do Outward circles. Keep a flat back. Shoulders open, no arching. Do them for time, one to two minutes.

2:51:50 You know, just good gracious, wonderful warm up. And then you know, something we didn't address and I'll throw it in just real, real, real quick. I know I know we're running out of time. But some people who are experiencing shoulder issues in terms of mobility. Not to do with the shoulder or necessarily the bicep, but sometimes it's'cause the lats are so strong and tiny. And so I have.

2:52:11 Absolutely. Exactly. A a lot of and'cause and a lot of the lifters too,'cause those those lats are working out. You guys are moving some serious weight. And those lats are of course working and if there's not corresponding mobility going with it, it's real easy for those lats to kinda get chronically contracted, lose their mobility. So a lot of times you get in there and just stretch the heck out of that lat. automatically get relief on the shoulders.

2:52:34 Okay, Coach. I am going to do a couple of rapid fire, then a couple of Closing questions and then maybe uh I mean you and I are talking quite a bit these days, so we'll We'll consider doing a follow up and I definitely want to share.

2:52:45 So the results of our experiment with people also so we'll certainly be hard to in constant contact. The first rapid fire question is And the answer doesn't have to be short, but it certainly can be. When you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind for you and why? Well it's not Obama. It's not Obama. Piss all the people off out there.

2:53:05 You know, someone I have admired for years and years. is um Tony Robbins. He would be very high on my list. I tend to be very eclectic. I'm not trapped just in athletics. But what I found in terms of uh

2:53:20 Business. Arts. politics, it it it's all the same. When when people get to that level of success, they they all have the same attitudes. They bring the same tools and attitudes to the table. And I found it surprising that I I could sit down with you, Tim, and visit

2:53:37 I can sit down with special operators and visit. I can sit down with uh, you know, world class. Ballerinas and dance and artists and that. I just did this weekend to do with a world class artist. And

2:53:49 We all you would think there's no common ground there. But there is common ground because what's required to achieve success in all of those requires the same skills. You gotta be consistent You gotta master the basics, you gotta be patient. No, you gotta constantly reinvent yourself, look for a flaw hole in the preparation.

2:54:06 Fix it. Move forward. And I think part of training yourself to be observant is I like that. And being willing to hear the answer.

2:54:19 Definitely. That's why you take a bunch of people who are the best at what they do and you put'em in the room. generally speaking, they're gonna get along just fine. Absolutely. Now why Tony Robbins? I mean, I'm a huge fan of Tony Robbins, he's he's he's been on the podcast and I I have tremendous amount of respect for him.

2:54:35 But I want to just hear your reasons. I firmly believe, especially in the US, I firmly believe that if Someone isn't as successful. In any arena you toss it out, whether it's professionally personally in your life.

2:54:50 financially if you're not as successful as you would like to be are making progress. Towards that. It's our own fault. We have so many opportunities here that

2:55:01 so much wealth of knowledge that a lot of times so for example when GB got started And there were Two years, a year and a half, two years in the beginning. Where I was doing eighteen hour days and Did make a nickel.

2:55:16 Nothing. And everyone around me was like, What are you doing? Well, you know, I've got plans for this and we talk about a little bit and they're like, Well, you know, if you need some extra money and you could go get a job. Think about how much further ahead you'd be right now. But you have to have that vision. Once you have the vision.

2:55:31 You've got to be able to put practical steps to it. And then everyone's good at that. I outline st people outline stuff all the time, but then Can you stick with it?'Cause we know, when you run your business, Tim, when I run my business, there's no one telling us what to do. We're the ones to monitor ourselves. This needs to be done. I'm gonna get it done. And it's kinda that difference between

2:55:53 Letting someone else being in control of your life and you choosing to be in control of your own life. I know some people are gonna get upset and your coach, you know, I'm a single mom, it's this, it's that, I can't do everything I wanna do and I I get that. I get that. I've been there. I've gone through that. I'm certainly not saying there are there are quick fixes. Because these fixes can take years.

2:56:12 But I think if someone's willing to put the time in that there's so much opportunity and they're willing to do that four years. It's kind of a big giant blank check. A lot can change. You you really have a lot of control. And so that that was a message that, you know, and I I didn't say it nearly as well as Tony Robbins does. And I am gonna twist your arm so I get an an introduction someday to Tony that's high on my list.

2:56:34 Yeah, well I uh I throw a little jam session for the people who are on the podcast so Both of you will be invited. Totally awesome. I'm so looking forward to that. But you know, way back when Poor as could be. hadn't made national team coach yet, was just getting starting in my coaching career.

2:56:49 Everything that could go wrong went wrong. And uh here here's this guy saying, You know what, just think clear, plan ahead and be willing to work. That resonated with me. You know, it's like I just had this discussion with someone this morning.

2:57:03 You're young. It's so challenging it's so difficult to be patient, or you're 35 and you're starting to get back in shape again. And the hardest thing they need to do is they've they've got to, especially if they were a good athlete previously, you've got to set that attitude of having been a stud before. Aside. Because that body you have right now

2:57:21 is not that studs body that you had previously. It could be again. But it took time to build it the first time. It's gonna take time to rebuild it this time. Or personally in your life if things aren't where you want'em to be.

2:57:34 gonna take time to build it there. I had this Olympic Weightlifting coach, I think you guys would hit it off famously, especially if if you were both a couple of drinks in. But uh She's dangerous. Very very similar approaches.

2:57:48 He said uh you have A Ferrari engine in a Toyota Corolla chassis. That's another said you can't just slam on the accelerator and expect good things to happen. But yeah, Tony's very tactical, practical. And I apologize if you and everybody else can hear. metal bowls being spun around. That's what my dog Molly does when she's trying to tell me that she's hungry. She just licks it empty empty bowl and sends it spinning. I'm like, Yes, I get it. I know you're hungry.

2:58:12 Being subtle. Yeah, being very subtle. What book Or books have you given the most to other people as gifts? Woo. It's not so much as I I'm a big fan of Robert Heinlein. Oh yeah. Strange Stranger in a Strange Land.

2:58:29 At all. Just all of them. I I I come back to those over and over again. The uh The theme of uh self reliance. No, is I I came from But really, really.

2:58:40 humble, modest family background. And so I I think that instills a hunger and a work ethic. It's a little bit Kind of embarrassing actually it's a little bit of a Charles Dickens theme there, you know. frustration thing things weren't where we wanted'em to be or where I wanted'em to be and then How big a price, how hard are you willing to work in order to change it?

2:58:59 One I'm enjoying right now and I'm just getting into it. is uh the obstacle is the way. Oh yeah, by Ryan Holiday, very close friend of mine. You're killing me, dude. You're killing me. Oh yeah, yeah. I'm just gonna hang out in your living room so I can meet all these people. Oh yeah, yeah. No, you and Ryan would hit it off. Oh yeah. That's a great book. I actually this is a really small world.

2:59:18 So I actually produced the audiobook for that. You kidding me? And I you know, when you were talking about preparing your athletes for the stress as opposed to painting it over with yes you can and positive psychology and really kind of sowing the seeds of their own destruction by doing so.

2:59:38 I was thinking about stoic philosophy. So It doesn't surprise me that you're reading The Obstacles the Way, which has become an extremely popular book among professional sports teams and coaches. I mean the Patriots, Seahawks, they've they've all read this. Someone else that caught my eye who had read and that led me to it was Schwarzenegger. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Gosh, I mean comes to the States with no money in his pocket

3:00:00 And then becomes World champion. In athletics. Becomes a millionaire in business. becomes a movie star.

3:00:09 And becomes a governor. Success in four different arenas in life. Oh yeah. Good Lord. So he said he liked that book. I was like, Well, good enough for me. Yeah. So two things I know we're about to run it, but the two things that also uh astonished me when I interviewed him for the podcast was number one, I didn't realize in doing the research

3:00:28 until I did the research that he became a millionaire before he ever had his first starring role. in real estate. Yes. And absolutely that gave him the ability to only audition Not out of financial necessity, but for the roles that he wanted. So you could say no. And that his highest grossing film of all time for him personally was Twins because no one wanted to make it. And so he took a cut on the upfront payment.

3:00:52 For the salary per se. in exchange for back end points that were abnormally large for the film industry at that point. Yeah. Fascinating guy. Love that. Do you have any particular morning rituals? What is the first six minutes of the morning rituals I'm supposed to do?

3:01:09 No, the ones you you actually have or don't have. I tend to find As I've gotten older. 'Cause I'm in my in my fifties now, early fifties. As I've gotten older I find that my uh By far.

3:01:22 My most productive times are early morning. That's when I'm I'm sharpest, I'm clearest. I'll tend to get up, you know, pretty early before everybody else in the household is up and I'll get When do you get on? I know it's it it varies. I I'll get up somewhere usually between four and five.

3:01:38 You know, it gives me a chance my girls get up in a few hours. It gives me a chance for that two, three hours of just clear thought. Maybe it's working on a project, maybe it's a new manuscript. Maybe it's just you know I indulged some reading, the house is quiet. I do my best if after that girls head to school and then I get my work out in. If I'm consistent with that, then my rest of my day is usually pretty golden. Yeah, you've already you've already won. I remember somebody said to me, If you win the morning, you've won the day. Still working on it. That's a work in progress, but I definitely agree.

3:02:07 With that Do you drink coffee? Do you eat breakfast? Do you drink coffee? I went for years and You know, you're always told I I'm not a coffee drinker. I'm I'm one of those few I think who it just tastes like cough medicine to me.

3:02:20 It's not me being virtuous, it's just me despising the taste. And it's funny'cause my wife is a big coffee drinker. She loves us. So she's got her gourmet grinder and all this stuff. But for me no, no way. You know, I I found as I got older That

3:02:34 I do best if I don't do breakfast. I do best as uh I used to be heavy heavy protein. And then uh after I got over fifty, if I cut and this is me personally. Would it work for younger athletes who are training? I doubt it. Bigger engine need more fuel, but for me older, it's slowing down. I find that

3:02:53 Not doing breakfast. Reasonable lunch. My my protein sizes are so much smaller now. Mostly badges. Have a good healthy starch, usually it's rice or potatoes. Reasonable.

3:03:04 Little protein there, some fat or line, which Wait, do the same at dinner. Yeah, and I'm I'm done, I'm good, I'm I'm I was amazed how much I was overeating. Just from habit.

3:03:16 Oh yeah. Yeah, eating by the clock. I mean I've noticed the same thing. for myself and I've been amazed how many people I've interviewed for this podcast who are the best at what they do, who do not eat breakfast. You know, his answer was coffee. Dom. I keep it simple, you know. And then

3:03:35 Wim Hoff, same story. You look at Former General Stamma Crystal. Same story. And it just goes on and on and on. I'd say good to third Of the men specifically, not sure if the female body responds as well to it, although I'm sure there are intermittent fasting people out there who would say that it women respond

3:03:53 In the same way, but very high percentage, I'd say maybe a third of the men I've had on the podcast do not eat breakfast now. specifically, these are men probably over the age of forty five. So I don't know. I would imagine their diet has probably changed over time. And interestingly enough If you do dig into the literature, there is

3:04:12 Or if I want to be a a nerd, there are data to suggest that as we get older It is possible that we absorb protein more effectively. when we have larger doses of protein. Less frequently.

3:04:26 So having see that is interesting. Yeah. Every once in a while. Getting a big stake. Yeah. You know, once a week, once every two weeks I'll go and I'll just get this massive thing of protein. Then I'm good for a while just very modest.

3:04:41 Yeah, so this like bolus of protein for like older women. I think this I saw one particular study Could have been an observational. Uh no, I g no, I doubt it. If they were trying to standardize the protein amount, but it was some large amount. It was like seventy, eighty grams of protein in a single feeding. was absorbed better than that same amount split over several meals in the day. Really fascinating stuff. What?

3:05:02 Would you put on a billboard? If you could put a billboard Anywhere. Or would it say that. Yeah. Top of the head doesn't have we're not looking for universal truth, but just what's Uh I would say probiotic.

3:05:17 Probiotic. We went I don't know if it had was a history of uh I had to cut'em out, you know, too much margaritas. You know, it's kinda funny, you know, as you get older it starts creeping in more and more and more. But I went through a phase where it didn't matter what I ate.

3:05:32 Didn't matter what I ate if I ate. Fat, if I eat low fat, if I eat village. High high protein. Terrible digestion. Just terrible digestion. I happen to come across something that's that said you if you have da.

3:05:47 Might be a probiotic issue. And so through a good buddy I had a laboratory grade. These particular ones were from Clare Labs. You kinda need a prescription for them, but they're a laboratory grade probiotics. Wanna say it was K-L A I R E

3:06:01 Got it. Now I'm not paid by them guys and they're a son of a bitch to track down'cause you need a prescription for'em. Yeah. And you know, I gotta get'em a health provider. But hooked me up in twelve hours. And so I uh I was like, holy moly,'cause I'd been uncomfortable for months. And in twelve hours this took care of it. Contacted a buddy of mine.

3:06:21 Who was, you know, great dad. Nutrition. He and RC, you know, Coach, you should go ahead and probably take, you know, two, four weeks and just really hit these probiotics hard and repopate the guy, you know, years of

3:06:33 Too much margaritas. Too much protein, not enough veg vegetable matter to feed the good bacteria. It's so night night and day difference. I I bet Simply because of that. I dropped eight pounds.

3:06:46 Yeah. I bet. I mean uh I'm currently taking V S L three and a few other probiotics, but One of the points you made that I think is really worth underscoring is the vegetable matter and prebiotics.

3:06:58 So providing the food that creates the environment in which bacteria that you want to grow can grow effectively. Whether that's through foods, where I think, you know, one of the ways I had this biologist tell me At one point he said I think slow carb's gonna be vindicated because you know, the beans and lentils and so on are vilified by paleo, but they provide the perfect vehicle for

3:07:21 A Rebiotic. environment that can foster the development of and growth of these various bacteria in the gut. And if not that. You know, if you're if you are a paleo purist. You could also consume something like foss, you know, fructoligosaccharides or inulin or any of these other things, but

3:07:39 Wow, I had no idea that you had that experience. Yeah, it was it was shocking. Prior to that, I would have said number one supplement was a multifigh vitamin D drops. Mm-hmm. How much were you consuming just out of curiosity. And of course the amount you take depends on what your levels look like. It depended. Yeah, just just a little background there. So I I was at um our Winter National seven years ago. Just kinda the environment, you know, national team, kids everywhere, middle of the winter, it's always in a February. And I I would just get s sick really bad, kinda bronchitis like sickness, once or twice a year for

3:08:11 Gosh. Decades. And uh at one of these I was I was half dead. My assistant coach is trying to run my athletes. He's doing his best, but it's it's not going real well. I'm trying to coach hanging over a railing.

3:08:23 Yeah, I'm visiting with Rob Wolf later. that night and I'm just like, you know, this this is ridiculous and and Rob's the one who tagged us at coach, you know it's It's always in the middle of the winter. Try some vitamin D. It started to liquid vitamin D.

3:08:36 If we don't count food poisoning in Hong Kong. I've not been sick since. And that's quite a swing, you know, once or twice pretty serious per year too. Nothing for seven and the only thing that changed in that time was the vitamin D. So I

3:08:49 I'm you know I'm pretty pretty practical if that was the one variable I changed and that was the result, well boom. That's the doorstep I butted at. Do you have a particular brand that you use for that? I want to say I I looked at it so many years I just kinda pick it up off the shelf. And I wanna say it was biotest, perhaps. I can't swear about other ones. I just know I've always used that particular one.

3:09:10 I've done Gosh. All kinds of different protocols from One or two drops a day. It's like a runny Elmer's glue for those who haven't had it. Yeah, it's the taste isn't, you know, anything to get upset oh my daughters when they were young disagreed. They said worse thing in the world. It it's it's not bad at all.

3:09:29 We've done Daily a few drops all the way up to Once or twice a week with Eight to ten drops. You know and just mix it up. It just seems like, you know

3:09:39 As long as you're consistent, it almost doesn't matter. Yeah, so I'm guessing each of those drops is probably an IU and one international event. Oh gosh, it seems like Man, I'm I'm tired of the computer right now. I I'd go I'd go grab that for you. It seemed like the dosage is surprisingly high in each drop. Yeah.

3:09:56 And I'm I'm a big fan, especially as you get older. You've gotta go get blood work. Anything else is gasin'? Yeah, you need to get blood work, period. I mean, if you get your car checked out more often than you get your blood work done, then you need to rearrange your priorities. So last question, and this is where I'd like you to Certainly, among other things, point people to where they can learn more about you.

3:10:17 And gymnastic bodies, but what ask or request would you have for my audience? To the people listening. Oh okay. Very good. Actually I I love that question. I would like them to consider two things. I would like them to consider Where's the fire? Where's the fire? Where's the rush?

3:10:34 Where's the rush? Why are they trying to accomplish everything? Their current goals. Yesterday. Why not slow down a little bit? Not saying not to work hard, but w why don't we just slow down a little bit.

3:10:46 Little more reasonable pace. Some more consistency. That would be number one ask. And then second one is Mobility, whether it's my material, whether it's just the stuff that Tim posts for you, whether it's someone else's material.

3:11:00 You know, m it's fine with me guys, but we've gotta get those bodies moving. We've gotta get natural range of motion. Back again. That alone, if we did the hierarchy, what will increase quality of life the fastest for them is going to be Mobility first.

3:11:15 Then Core. Then you know your more conventional strength, your arms, your shoulders, yada yada yada. And where can people Find You online, on social media, et cetera. What would you recommend as a next step for somebody who's never done gymnastics anything?

3:11:30 Who wants to dip their toe in the water. First thing go to gymnasticbodies dot com. We have a special landing page. for your listeners, Tim, with a nice discount for'em. We have a nice introductory program. Uh that's just gymnastic bodies.

3:11:45 G Y M N A S T I C B O D I E E S dot com Slash Tim. We got a nice discount there for you for a nice intro program. It's about a twenty four day program. Gentle introduction to kind of the language we speak.

3:11:59 Get started on some mobility, some great follow along videos for'em, you know, kinda. Hold their hand, make sure they get started off on the right foot. It's been a tremendous learning experience for me so far and it's only been I mean really a handful of weeks that we've been digging into this deeply, although we had some prep time and talking about it. Prior to that.

3:12:20 And uh definitely guys, if you are like uh I'm so busy, I'm doing this, that, and the other thing. Take a look at the program, but at the very least follow the Gymnastic Bodies on Instagram. And every time you see a video from a student who seems to throw one of your excuses out the window, like take a second.

3:12:39 Admire what someone has done from scratch. Like Matt, who you mentioned, who started in his late forties. Because like one by one, if you just watch that Instagram account for a week, you will run out of excuses very, very quickly. What about Elsewhere on social media, is there anyone where else people can say hi to you?

3:12:57 Our um Facebook page is Jamasseybodies.com. A little more proper there. My personal page, Christopher Summer, S O N M E R A little more.

3:13:08 No rules there. My my interests are wide ranging. So if you come to my page you uh you're taking your chances what I'm gonna torture you with that day. It might be a conditioner, it might be, you know what, I I think such, such is kick gas and I like it, so you're gonna like it too. And you do you do throw up some ridiculous in the best way possible videos of just monsters. Doing some absurd, absurd stuff. I mean, uh the who's the gen you sent me you encouraged me to check this out, this guy who was going from you were trying to explain

3:13:40 The Let me get this right. I wanna say plate plans that I was doing a while back, which are kind of like a front raise holding onto a plate with the shoulders super, super protracted and the massive Posterior pelvic tilt. Oh, I sent I sent you that clip of the world champ on rings. Yeah, I think you said you sent me of one of Van Gelder on rings and then you sent me one of this guy on parallel bars going from Van Gelder again. Oh, okay, going from the handstand to the uh the straight body plant just

3:14:08 Oh full go full body weight instead of We do it with ten or twenty five pounds. He was doing it with full body weight. Oh my God. How do you uh spell Van Gelder? So it's Yuri. Van Gelder. I think he's from Netherlands, if I'm remembering right, former world champ, uh V A N Space G E L D E R

3:14:27 Just a monster. Oh my God. Oh such so just Crazy strong. And not I mean, doesn't look like a small guy either. I mean Scott. He has got a wide back. Yeah, so People should check that out and I'll link to everything in the show notes. Well, coach, thank you so much for the time. I know it's precious.

3:14:48 And I think people will get a real kick out of this and we crammed a lot into the talk. No, we did talk a lot. It was good. So I look forward to chatting again soon, which I'm sure we will do. And to everybody listening. you can find all of the links to everything that I can track down that my team can track down. related to all the topic we covered.

3:15:07 Links to coach everywhere, gymnastic bodies everywhere in the show notes. That'll just be it. four hour workweek dot com forward slash podcast. All spelled out four hour workweek dot com forward slash podcast. And as always, and until next time, thank you for listening. 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?

3:15:36 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. 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 podcasts. 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.

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