How to Improve Your Mobility, Posture & Flexibility | Dr. Kelly Starrett

38:20I'll call them asymmetries or not full range of motion being expressed where that might be happening I love I keep coming back to this but this thing about getting down under the ground for 30 minutes each night While watching TV or while maybe even while eating dinner while talking to your family or partner I think it's fantastic It also gives me an excuse to push the the sofa's off to the side of the room because I have this weird Naroticism about furniture in the middle of the room So I'm imagining getting mats on down in the down on the floor the living room and suddenly we're not programming another thing that's I think one of the things that's happened and it's a good thing.

38:56It's a feature of the system Strengthen issue in the last 20 years has become very sophisticated. So Juliet and I my wife and CEO open our gym in 2005 This was the CrossFit gym in San Francisco. That's right. Yeah, you're a full location 21st CrossFit in the world early, but we couldn't buy a kettlebell in San Francisco We had to drive to Santa Cruz. That says a lot about San Francisco. I can say that because I'm from the Bay area But you they there's one place in San Cris is sold and planning and sports that imported these Russian kettlebells Thank you, Pavel and we had to make this trek down to buy them.

39:33So the fitness I think we I bought my first pair of Olympic lifting shoes out of the back of someone's car like a drug deal like a Olympic lifting Yeah, like you just couldn't buy them. I think it's old shoes I'm like actually an Olympic lifting shoe with like a heel, but like you can buy those at like three different stores in Malibu right now Like you go right over there. There's it's we've normally you can buy a kettlebells and target So the world has become much more sophisticated Um, sometimes like overhead squat is a good example Fantastic diagnostic tool tells us a lot to bar held overhead squat down super simple all you have to do is have normal range of motion and And you're you're joining you.

40:11Well, it helps Julia don't like to say I was bendy before I was big, but you know the idea here though is Let's go ahead and also put skill back into this But most people weren't overhead squatting You know at all it wasn't part of their language now everyone knows what an overhead squat is right dan john crossfit all the Olympic liftors have been doing this forever But what we are seeing is that the the natural evolution of fitness and strength and conditioning Is that we've become we've gotten really decorative in our room. So we create this room. That's just every inch has a knickknack Has an assistance.

40:47This is my tib raise is my neck thing. It's very decorative experience And instead of asking what was essential in terms of energy systems and positions that I can train So that I could go use those credits uh, you know For lack of a better word it's fitness has become very recursive. I have this zone two so I can use more zone two Or I have pull ups because they begin to get more pull ups instead of all how do that make you swim? What's the minimum amount of time we can spend in the gym so that you can go express that Lex is right in a sport or an activity and Look there are times in your life where the gym is the only thing you got You know july and i one we had two kids and a baby or two kids and our businesses We did the 10 10 10 at 10 which was like 10 air squats 10 kettlebell swings 10 pull ups at 10 p .m For 10 minutes and i was like elite my fitness is really good every day Well, I just did one I could do it right because that's all I could fit in So you know, I think what's happened is we have now sold people this idea that fitness happens in a one -hour block And if it's not an hour You know then it's not worth doing and if you kept a bar loaded in your garage You could walk out there and do sets in between making dinner You kept a kettle on your kitchen You could do povls four swings on the minute for 20 minutes And at least have some exposure and loading so A long way around the bar of saying I want to protect your gym time because it's really sacred amazing time where you can Have fun explore ranges get strong get jacked feel great about yourself Interact with your friends and what I don't want to do is encroach any more on that magic time Because we have a lot to get done in the gym Physiologically if we're going to compete against these other teams For going to be Stanford We're going to need to really maximize that time the gym So that means we need to push out some of these other behaviors So we're not stacking them in and they're eroding the time we could be squatting or benching or cleaning or running or sprinting or cutting or playing You mentioned warming up with play which I think is a wonderful concept um And presumably brings about more dynamic movement Um and another reason I like it is that I Loth warming up aside from the types of warm -ups that I just described and I hate it and I'm beginning to realize that I'm the way I've been training even though it's been um I would say useful and and successful for where I've been I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do heading into the new year.

43:11Love it This is not like a new years episode. Hey, this is a you know evergreen because it's you um But we have a new year coming a lot of people are are going to naturally mark the time during and after the holidays is a transition point and If one wanted to start to Not necessarily completely restructure their fitness, but wanted to start incorporating a few things So we've got sitting down in the evening for 30 minutes We got incorporating play into the warm -up. What would that look like? Are we taking a tennis ball and bouncing it off the ground? We're setting some rule in playing a game Sure What if I'm alone in my um my playing a little little little handball type game against the wall?

43:49Absolutely see something on the internet want to learn new skill. This is time to put it in Uh, I'm gonna talk about my Brilliant friend David Weck He has something called rope flow that he created and it's just a piece of climbing rope And he will talk about all the things that will do for me. I get a thousand pnf patterns I tie my upper body into my lower my upper body into my lower body. I can do explain pnf. Sorry acronym Sorry, sorry, that's a a model of Facilitating movement developed at Kaiser Valejo It is by Not in cabinet, I think Maybe I'm getting confused in those and anyway the the bottom line is this how do we help the body restore movement by using its Own position awareness.

44:34Got it. So if you've ever done a hamstring stretch Where someone holds you and you resist that contract relax is a style. Let's say technique born out of pnf Okay, no problem. Okay, so he's got these ropes and and so suddenly Like I use this with all my teams is suddenly I'm spinning ropes I'm getting thousands of evolutions of the wrist turning the elbow turning the shoulder turning I'm generating speed in weird positions that would be vulnerable and that's effective at high load high stakes I get to twist I can tie my eyes into it. I can develop my stance and in five minutes and messing around You're like oh, I feel good and we've added some speed to that right because a lot of the warm -ups I see people doing like hey, there was no speed You know what sport is speed and you haven't added any velocity to your training So where are we gonna do that?

45:26I love this. I'm excited Dave wek does a lot of amazing things His rope is a foundational piece of my if you Work with me and you have shoulder pain in neck pain You're gonna get my shoulder spin up or David wax rope flow every day That's part of our homework. What are we gonna do to give you exposure and restore what you're supposed to do with your body So walk into the gym use the bathroom hydrate whatever it is you need to do and then five to ten minutes of some play type dynamic activity Throw a medicine ball around jump on a mini trampoline pick up a barbell do a complex Do some breath hold work.

46:01There's a perfect place to lay in all the breath hold work I think they call it dry face breath holding right is this dynamic apnea work where you basically are holding your breath So for example with our teams We try to try to have this is a magic number seven Sort of hypoxic events where we do something on a breath hold until the athlete has a crisis and has to breathe And part of that is I want to get the brain ready for these high CO2 levels Right, and I want to challenge respiration and it's so easy get on the bike Here's something everyone can do For five minutes. I want you to take a ten second inhale On the bike hold your breath as long as you can when the bomb goes off in your face We cover nose only Started the next one of the next minute and what you're gonna see is wow that was really uncomfortable really psychologically Preparing myself to get into a fight That came from the French free diverse one of the coaches.

46:56I was working this like here something we used to do with our with our French free divers I was like this is so good McKenzie Laird Hamilton Wim Hof the people who've been exposing us to dynamic apnea work is amazing But that's another example of something I can do instead of mindlessly just being on and I got to get a sweat Like let's go ahead and just layer in play and destruction. I love it Do not lay on the ground of foam roll. Let me say that again. Do not lay on the ground of foam roll That's the worst way to your rate for a fight ever I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors function I recently became a function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing while I've long been a fan of Blood testing I really wanted to find a more in -depth program for analyzing blood urine and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health My hormone status my immune system regulation my metabolic function my vitamin and mineral status and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality function not only provides testing of over a hundred biomarkers key to physical and mental health But it also analyzes these results and provides insights from talk doctors on your results For example in one of my first tests with function I learned that I had two high levels of mercury in my blood.

48:09It was totally surprising to me I had no idea prior to taking the test function not only helped me detect this but offered medical doctor informed insights on how to best reduce those Mercury levels which included limiting my tuna consumption because I had been eating a lot of tuna While also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with neck and acetyl cysteine Both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification and work to reduce my mercury levels Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health and while I've been doing it for years I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive I've been so impressed by function both at the level of ease of use that is getting the test done as well as how comprehensive And how actionable the tests are That I recently joined their advisory board and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast If you'd like to try function go to functionhealth .com slash huberman Function currently has a wait list of over 250 ,000 people but they're offering early access to huberman lab listeners again That's function health .com slash huberman to get early access to function Today's episode is also brought to us by eight sleep eight sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling heating and sleep tracking Now I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night That's truly the foundation of all mental health physical health and performance And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees eight sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment By allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle and end of the night I've been sleeping on an eight sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now And it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep eight sleep is now launched their newest generation of the pod cover the pod for ultra The pod for ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity Higher fidelity sleep tracking technology and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees To improve your airflow and stop your snoring if you'd like to try and eight sleep mattress cover go to eight sleep calm slash Huberman to save up to three hundred and fifty dollars off their pod for ultra eight sleep currently ships in the USA Canada UK select countries in the EU and Australia again, that's eight sleep calm slash Huberman Somehow when we talk about how it's not a coincidence um You became synonymous with foam rolling it became a tsunami life synonymous with you That's okay.

50:45It's uh, I mean, it's not okay. It's okay with me They weren't saying about me, but I was about to say it's okay. You know anytime somebody Um goes public facing and starts to try and educate people, you know people There's certain things that are sticky. They have like high -sale ants like um Yes, I like to get into a cold plunge but how I How Andrew Huberman became associated with cold plunge or buying a cold plunger is wild I mean sure I own one and you know this sort of thing I think they're great for shifting your state But it's hardly the cornerstone of my life or my um existence But I love it.

51:18I use it, but I think foam rolling I think looked different enough from what people had had not seen before and It you know these things just they have a stickiness to them who knows why Um, what is the deal with foam rolling is is there a utility to foam rolling? Absolutely Um, is there a wrong way to do it? No, but there's a way that's not a great use of your time. Okay, right? So we're all looking at is We have find out amount of time and what's my goal to quickly touch my whole body? You know, what are we trying to do? So If I was using soft tissue mobilization and or using a roller or ball or something What's my goal here?

52:01Well, I think in the research is very clear. It can help with pain and restore range of motion Again, very clear and I want to point out sort of one of my research friends Brent Brookbush the Brookbush Institute has incredible summaries of musculoskeletal care Brent is a genius and if you go on his site There's a little hourglass and you can search like sugar points and you'll see All of the deep dive research analysis of the meta research like you you'll be like, okay, this is really excellent And and it is tricky because You know what doesn't work for my body or wasn't I get used for a time now is useless And it's easy to shout on the internet.

52:36So what's our goal if I was in pain and it's about to exercise A quick two or three minute intervention working on Let's call it desensitization of the tissues. Let's let's be mechanism agnostic for a second and say that's a really low level into entry safe highly effective way for you to suddenly feel better So we create a window of opportunity to move that's really cool. I love that no physical therapists in the room No one went blind. You didn't dislocate right So That could be a really excellent use of some soft tissue work the same way a boxer would go or an emphiter or the Olympic Clifters in China They have people who are giving non -threatening input to the body to tell the brain it's safe or to rehydrate something or Get some again.

53:24Is it just stimulus so that the brain says it's safe sure? Are we restoring how the tissue sliding glide sure? A lot of times I think if you look at any of the mobility work I'll just put writ large really comes down to just doing a couple things most of them are just isometrics So we have a lot of isometrics which everyone can agree is good stuff And we do a lot of tempo work. That's really just moving slowly through range It just may be that I'm using a different tool to have that Isometric stimulus or that that tempo moving slowly stimulus So We like to say let's use mobilizations Mobilizing the tissues.

54:05Why are we doing it? What are we trying to do? Well pain is a good reason and again multi -factoral highly subjective why do I have pain while I got in a fight with my wife and I didn't eat and I You know twisted my knee back and Vietnam and you know who knows right But what are the inputs that I have to self -sue the desensitize and turns out a ball and a roller is a really good one So I can use those to help myself feel better That's all of the problem. Did that solve two weeks of shitty sleep? To that solve my poor nutrition and lack of fiber that solve the fact that I don't feel safe in this environment No, but it got me a window of opportunity where I can go feel better in my body.

54:41Is anyone against that? No, okay So what we can also say is hey, this would be a great way to do what restore your range of motion a one tool and a system of tools To get you to do what have normative range again Right for whatever reason your lasts are super stiff your doesn't Again, it's more complicated than that, but sometimes it's not more complicated than that And if I just get you getting some input into there Maybe we can restore that range of motion or create a window where you can go use it again Lastly, I would say is that it's a wonderful tool to decrease domes delayed onset muscle soreness So in the evening you blow out your quads do a little soft tissue work and what you'll see is maybe that's Blood flow maybe it's Non -threatening input.

55:24Maybe it's just massage Maybe it's just the parasympathetic input that massage has touch right just down regulates Maybe those the reasons I feel better, but the bottom line is is that a good use of your time? Yes Or all techniques on the roll were the same no Right, and I think that's where we've lost our minds is that if you yeah you just rolled up and down your calf didn't do anything I'm like, yeah, well you just what are you doing? Right, what if I rolled side to side? So suddenly we can start to layer in some really complex thinking around this How about this you you have a roller out and I put my calf on there and I start rolling side to side Should that be uncomfortable?

56:03I'm guessing you're gonna say No, but um Will you know any time I've used a roller any time I've used a roller Oh my man there I don't do that sucks. I don't know well I mean, I don't mind it like it's not like the kind of it's not like level level eight pain or anything It's just it's sort of like it feels very localized Even if the roller is a big fat Costello the bulldog size roller It feels like someone's kind of needing down in between my muscle fibers And then I start to think maybe I just have like low fiber density And if I were Mark Bell or something then this would feel comfortable But you know, I I always feel like the roller is going down to the bone Face of LFD Fiber density So you know what I think we can do is let's establish some some some guidelines for people because this is this is one of the ways that we can feel better Our home without bourbon without I'd be profan without T .H .C.

56:57Like we need to give people some tools That don't like that aren't without having to buy a sauna if you can afford one great, but not every I mean this whole thing with sauna love Saunas but doesn't say you know well until very recently my life like I couldn't afford a sauna Until very recently, you know, even as a tenured professor at Stanford. I'll just say that right you can actually be angry at your parents for not Giving you a sauna. No, you know when I was a kid my dad And I used to go to the Y in the evening sometimes or I was a little and I'd shoot baskets or he would he would lift weights Nautilus machines back then yeah, and then Get brutally again, and then we'd sit in the sauna or that there was a hot tub You had a different set of trauma traumatic experiences sitting in the sun the Y No, actually I learned how um I learned how how men I learned how men uh over over 40 spoke in 1985 There you go.

57:49There you go If everyone had a roller in a ball There's a lot of dysfunction and discomfort we can manage if you push on a tissue We expect that tissue to be painless to compression or un not uncomfortable to compression again Don't pain is a weird word. I don't want to set that up But you shouldn't be uncomfortable to compression. What's nice is that if I push on something all I'm doing is Is creating an isometric. It's just a vector isometric instead of pulling an isometric through the length of the tissue I'm putting it at a different vector and angle So that would just be one I could start there and if it was uncomfortable Well, guess what now I can get my nervous system involved So I can teach my brain that it's safe to create a contraction here So what do I do?

58:32It's flex flex hold it for four seconds This is very basic I realize but for many people They're either already foam rolling and doing it incorrectly or they're not foam rolling We want them to do it correctly So Finersion correctly It's quote unquote okay to flex the muscle that you have in contact with the foam roller while you're rolling If I find something that's uncomfortable or stiff or doesn't feel like mother side I'm gonna stop found a place to work I'm gonna build take a big inhale. So I take a four second inhale I Want to teach myself that I need to be able to breathe in this position my one of my You know friends great cook is like if you can't breathe in a position.

59:12You don't own a position You know that sounds very I ain't got to But what we're gonna do is we're gonna say it's okay to breathe here and I'm gonna contract here And then I'm gonna slowly relax and soften that's tempo that's moving slowly And I can handle higher loads and what'll end up happening is if I repeat that cycle two or three times Guess what my brain desensitizes that changes range of motion my brain suddenly is like That's not a problem anymore. So we just move on And in a two or three cycles of that contraction breath hold long exhale that starts to sound familiar Right, how do I come down long exhales?

59:49I'm not trying to spin up. I'm trying to say this is this is safe I've done that with my breath. I've done that with contraction. I'm just getting input in just Just touch to my body especially on parts that maybe don't bark at me very often right people are shocked To learn that sometimes when they have knee pain How stiff their quads are and then we can test it load it feel it palpate it I'm like those things are just stiff and when we un -stiff in them whatever technique you want to use Restore sliding surfaces get neural input in there We create range of motion suddenly we change a motion dynamic Improve deficiency the brain says hey, that's no longer a threat or we're experiencing that as a new pattern or position That be enough to reduce your pain But pain isn't the only reason we're mobilizing we're mobilizing so that we can reduce session cost So we can work out harder the next day and keep an eye on our minimums of our of our range of motion Love this and now another just very basic question because I'll be honest.

1:00:51I haven't foam rolled much in my life Um and and it doesn't have to be a big formal everyone sometimes those big white those are pool noodles Right, that's what it was for like made in kooling Texas is like a manufacturing byproduct and someone's like we can put these in the pool And then some physical therapy was like sweet like that things way too big and too hard and too square and too soft Like there's a whole bunch of things like sometimes you need an elbow sometimes you need a forearm sometimes you need a thumb So you can have much smaller diameter I'm much bigger fan of smaller diameter rollers.

1:01:23I just think they fit your body better Thank you for that also very helpful um Let's say I want to quote unquote loosen up or um or move out some potential soreness or soreness from a given muscle Like the quadricep Does it make sense to start in the middle of that muscle the top like does it can you work above and below the the the knee Um are all of those things gonna help i realize this is a much fuller discussion than we can have no But if you miss but like how should i approach i'm like okay, you know my my uh my quads are a little sore my on my back A sword do i go straight to the back or do i start with another with another body region i don't think it matters What i want interested is inputs and outputs Right what i'm really interested in is what did you do to make yourself feel better?

1:02:09Did you just hope it would just go away and then one day it didn't and then you had to activate the emergency medical system So let's define a couple things What is an injury? This is a great question Injury for us is there's a clear mechanism of mechanical trauma There's a bone sick out of your leg Andrew time to go to the hospital injured right you're injured right hurt to snap in a pop Yikes I have night sweats disinist fever vomiting nausea unaccounted for weight loss weight gain Changes in my bladder bowel function problem like hoffs and just swallow those are red flags You're not sore you're sick Let me introduce you to the doctor again, right?

1:02:48If your pain or dysfunction is so bad you cannot occupy a role in your family cannot occupy a role in society cannot occupy a role in the team That's a emergency Emergency problem that is a medical condition that needs medical so you come in today to treat your back It may need we need to activate ems need to go to the hospital we need to get because it's so severe you can't do your job Everything else I want to call non injury. I want to be very specific with the language use we call it an incident it actually comes out of this Sort of language There's a guy here here's the long way around the barn I read this great book called deep survival Which is Lawrence Gonzalez which is about why people end up in survival situations And it's a literally a lot about like we got away with it for a long time and then I just didn't have them You know I ended up two miles out sea.

1:03:38I've done it a million times in this time right that's it But there was a footnote in there from a book called normal accidents by Charles Perro who's recently passed on I email Charles because I was like this is blown my mind He calls a lot of times will have trivial events in non trivial systems So he's taking systems the thinking he's looking at complex system organization And his idea is that an accident a normal accident is actually just expression of the system if you gave the system long enough to express itself The inputs now puts are so tightly coupled that it's difficult to see what causes what and how they influence each other That's the body So your stiff shoulder isn't a problem until you fall in the ice And then that stiff shoulder suddenly can't take over pressure and overhead and you tear your rotator cuff off at high speed You'd say oh blacks want events super crazy, but that's actually just a normal expression of that shoulder system If we gave it enough time to express itself.

1:04:40So he has Sort of like incident an accident So an incident is I want us to start to think about incident level problems are pain loss of range of motion I'm just thinking we're becoming curious Why is the brain sending you the signals pain is a request for change So when if we ask our athletic populations, I just did this with a hundred kids I'm like how many of you are paying for 100 high school kids two hands go Two high school high school So what we're suddenly realizing is that pain is very much a part of the athletic condition the human experience certainly the athletic experience you've been in pain a billion times and still gone out and done the thing So what we we want to do is say pain is not always a medical problem.

1:05:23It's a medical problem when The rest of the time we're saying how are you using Fitness training as a scaffolding To understand nutrition hydration soft tissue work desensitization Reprefusion of the tissues So that's what we're trying to do in sport and training is empower people to say what's going on with my body And why don't I Feel the way I do or why does something hurt and why can I remedy that and then when I run out of ideas Let me go get some help So the the rolling um we can think of as a way to you know move out soreness prepare us for more work the next day or something like that But is it fair to say that we can also use the roller as a diagnostic tool?

1:06:07Sure like if I'm feeling like an unusual amount of of um, not unusual, but let's just say um That I'm feeling like a was because when I when I lie down on that roller and I like you know like slide back and forth Like I've seen the videos of you and other folks doing them like that really hurts Does that necessarily mean something's wrong? No, okay So it means it means that For whatever reason those tissues have become sensitized And your brain is interpreting that stiffness as a threat and it's reading it as pain Right and some people they don't have that they just their tissues Feel like this, but they don't have pain when they do that But that's not a normal tissue You should be like layers of warm silk sliding over steel springs And what your is that what is that what quality tissue should feel like?

1:06:54Absolutely that layers of silk over steel spring layers of silk over steel springs And what we see is that we're loading and training it such high intensity since such density now That our tissues get stiff. I'm just gonna hang stiffness as for whatever reason five high -fibrate High density of tissues whatever the reason the tissues don't behave the way the joint system should Right, and that's a problem because my training shouldn't mitigate or attenuate or change my range of motion It can but now how am I keeping an eye on those changes or as you said earlier As I do a sport and I start to do a sport and specialize I'm throwing throwing or I swim or I kick on one side How can I start to identify as my body is changing and adapting that sport so I can drag myself back to a sort of a great reddeness and that's one of the reasons that that mobilization tool is such a powerful tool again.

1:07:52However you want to do it I think it's useful for us when we have We I came with this thing called the D2R2 model because the other ray was taken R2D2 So the first word of business is I want to desensitize or something hurts Something hurts. Let's desensitize it. I can do that all different ways scraping is powerful desensitization Isometrics can be really useful Of rolling BFR can give me desensitization. There's so many techniques to make my body Yeah, but for sure so that no longer my brain is proceeding this as a threat Because if you're in pain you cannot generate the same amount of force or wattage or output and your brain is going to start to Trunk it's going to start to lock off your movement solutions, right?

1:08:33This is going to happen So we want our we want everyone to be saying hey, we don't panic. We have pain. We just treat it like another diagnostic tool Then second D right we desensitize and then we ask is this something to be de congested So De congestion means that oftentimes tissues that are swollen Become more easily sensitized tissues that are swollen and congested don't heal as fast if you have a swollen ankle Those collagen fibers will not knit together as fast as a right if you have a joint that's swollen or a tissue of swollen your brain will Shut down force production in and around that joint system Is swelling an emergency?

1:09:11No is a swollen joint environment really healthy for the the entire brain surface of the joint? No, we want to manage that But oftentimes when someone comes in and the tissue is congested right just sometimes we say swelling and we think ankle Right only capsule or but here we have a if you've ever flown on an airplane and had cancels Those that's congested tissue If we manage that congestion if we move those lymphatics along we Muscle contraction drives the lymphatic drainage the the lymph system is the sewage system of the body De congested tissues often express less pain and what we find is that in broken bones or soft tissue injuries If we can better evacuate that swelling better evacuate that congestion now We do see you now healing at the rate of a human being we're not right limiting the healing But also we can help you manage that sensitivity Then the third one is could we get some blood flow in there like how you said?

1:10:06I once I warm up and feel great welcome to the power of blood flow Tushies become hydrated or shifting blood from the stomach all the things that happens right all that Venus return is coming back on board But suddenly we see that if we get something pumped full of blood It tends to be less painful and that's a really easy So if I have an orthopedic thing Maybe I spend a few minutes just getting a huge quad pump on the leg extension machine then I go squat heavy Right, so now I have desensitization De congestion reperfusion whatever tool you want to use for these is fair game with me Just as how I've come to kind of conceptualize these different tools and the last one is restore Do you have full range of motion full normal in that joint?

1:10:45Yes or no because that's the last thing that we talk about Because you're still able to perform your sport at college or do your job, but we're not seeing how Inaccess your abilities and not access that range of motion may be limiting your movement choice and potential Overloading it tissue and by making it work in a less effective manner or even just leading to progressively worsen worse posture Sure, which is probably well define the fine posture for me because I think that's a really great place to start right yeah I can define bad posture is when you catch yourself in a in a reflection and you realize well I'm starting to I'm starting to look more like a see then then a then a not that's so great, you know The question is is that a matter of aesthetics or pain?

1:11:25Well Certainly for me, it's not pain, but you know I stop becoming injured. I notice that it's not becoming I I noticed that unless I pay attention To my posture while sitting unless I do a you know like range my fingers together and pull my my chin back a few times a day that I'm just naturally starting to tip over forward towards my text messages that aren't even in my hands right now And I think this is you know the The younger generation I mean now that I'm 49 I can talk like that right. I mean it's striking 1900s They are My 1900s exactly. They're they're starting to look like a their shape like a sea that it's um and I'm a big believer in People especially men doing neck work.

1:12:09I feel like I like if if you especially how about especially people doing that work Yeah, well here's the thing every anytime. I'm happy to go go there with this one Maybe even at the risk of being politically incorrect anytime I've suggested that women also do neck work they say no you should see my goalie daughter Because for every pound stronger your neck is Your reduction in concussion risk drops huge a pound. Thank you So we keep the iron neck by the door and she walks in and there's a we have a Vina our family Where she's doing our iron neck train she looks I mean she's like dad. This is why I don't have a boyfriend Thank you.

1:12:44Sorry Caroline, but that's the way it goes right because she's like look at me I look like an idiot But she loves having a big strong neck that doesn't can take the shot from the ball Yeah, listen, I wish everyone would train their neck I had I had an accident where I fell off a roof But walked away from it my neck was sore, but I heard it and felt it and I was like oh goodness But it was actually from skateboarding stuff and falling and that I started training my neck years ago and realized that Wow when I train my neck I'm one of the few people in my Age cohort that doesn't complain about shoulder pain now.

1:13:13Maybe I don't have full range of motion Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong people, but anytime I see Somebody with really broad shoulders where their neck is is really inside of their jawline It looks like a head was placed on the wrong action figure body I just want to go over to them and say listen a it's aesthetically a ridiculous It looks like one of those flip books in the kids where you can change the head the body and the legs to be different animals More seriously It's a hazard because it's your upper spine It's clearly not in line with the rest of your your strength profile And the other one is the more incentive based thing is hey listen if you train your neck Everything else gets stronger and your head and your brain is going to be safer And as a neuroscientist they usually listen to the last piece.

1:13:54I'm so I'm so glad we're talking about this I do Bridges I know that they can be risky with tongue in the roof of a mouth I'd like to do bridges to the back and then I I do have a four -way neck machine or I use a plate Jeff Cavalier's got a great video of how to do this so we can link to did how to do it safely You got to you know close the chain by having a hand on the ground this kind of thing to do it safely But I've just found that neck work also serves posture In posture serves the ability to make eye contact when you have those things we call conversations with people in real life And I do think it these things stack up to we won't call it like psychological confidence But the ability to meet somebody you know like firm handshake you know trying to crush the other person's hand Look people in the eye stand up straight whatever your height these things really matter In subtle ways or not so subtle ways.

1:14:40I think that I do feel like like Yes, that the younger generation and the older generation that they sort of drop They kind of drop out of certain elements of life If you're looking down at the ground or your phone all the time you can't look people in the eye You're posturally not right. You're in pain. You're not as strong as you could be I mean these things stack up to being um like in a in a aquarium full of fish You're becoming the fish in the background that's like you know like it was kind of sickly and the other fish are getting all the the good stuff And you know if you define posture as Like the Latin word root is position.

1:15:15So we're really saying is I have good position. I have bad position Who brought I have bad position One of the ways I think We've lost the narrative a little bit is We try to give people these extrinsic cues to correct their posture Shoulders back and down chuck it in like so all the Sun you're like, well, what am I going to be a human being? How do I practice this when I'm doing a complex skill? So the organization of your body the organization of your spine particularly Really is a reflection of your movement habits your behaviors your self identity. There's a lot of things in there right you didn't get the job You won the we got the number from Julia or your sleep deprived even Or and I call myself out because people are gonna do it there many times when this podcast when I go and I look at the Because I do listen to the podcast trying to see places I can improve etc Um and I'll be like wow my posture.

1:16:03I'm like hunched over and I think myself You might just reflecting my posture No, I'm not tracking my sleep. So you know go back and look out like yeah I wasn't sleeping as well those days or or whatever it is right I mean, I think that we are all guilty of not paying enough attention to our posture so What we can do is we could define posture Is there is a median range of the joint positioning Where we simultaneously have most access to our physiology right and I'll explain that a little more But also those shapes aren't associated with increased pain risk and increased injury risk Which is real the research does bear that That there are positions and shapes that lead to less effective movement or more likely to experience pain It's probabilistic.

1:16:50It's not guaranteed. It's there's more likely So one of the things that I think you could you could understand is hey do you want to have access to all of those machinery So go ahead and slouch go ahead with me and then just turn over your shoulder. How far can you turn? Yeah, I'll be sure now watch this Get into position where you take a huge breath Get into the biggest position where you take the biggest breath Okay, so that's a pretty rocking shape now turn your head Warrr it goes further So by you Being queued can you adopt a shape? An organization of your trunk that allows you to ventilate a little bit more effectively You completely change and reorganize your structure which led to an improvement in output So when I'm working with people there's only two things I really can wrap my head around one is Do you have normative range of motion?

1:17:41Yes, you know? What are the tools we have to restore that and prove that And does that expression give us greater biomotor output because those are objective measures when biomotor output I mean range of motion force production power right I see that I can express the physiology in a unique way that makes me you know more effective and that is why You'll see suddenly we have this definition that is maintaining the physiology and aspects I'm not gonna have a good shoulder flexion with my arm over ahead is when I'm sitting up Tall or or in a position where I can take a bigger breath And I think that's what's really great because that gets us away from good posture bad posture And so hey that position doesn't serve you as well In these circumstances and in this position I'm working with the Pararescu team and the Air Force the number one reason they were having back injuries was getting those litter Out of the helicopter because they have a litter the soldiers there with all their gear on They've got a lift from a totally weird flexed position Right, and that's just turns out.

1:18:44That's not a really effective posture position shape that transfers the head and the higher loads So what do we do we work on the range of motion? We give them skills to try to organize more effectively in that shape And lo and behold we can reduce injury risk and injury incident in those soldiers right? So what we're always thinking about here is let's get away from good and bad and like posture doesn't matter And it also doesn't matter at low load low speed and I want to be very clear about that So you can get away with murder At low velocities and low speeds, but speed kills. Oh everyone's fine But when that speed wobble starts to happen We start to see greater likelihood of deflection from posture your abs don't work as effectively you can't create the same Interim domino pressure Right check check check check check so that's why we always are saying hey is this true That you're saying Under high load high speed when there's consequence because maybe this set of conditions works under these Conditions, but it doesn't work across all conditions and for me I'm trying to take the best information I have working in sports and performance and trying to transmute that to my family Transmute that to my neighborhood and to the kids I'm working with I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors Element element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need But nothing you don't that means the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium all in the correct ratios But no sugar proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium Are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body especially your neurons or your nerve cells drinking element dissolved in water Makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes I dissolve one packet of element in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning And I drink that basically first thing in the morning I also drink element dissolved in water drink any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing Especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes They have a bunch of different great -tasting flavors of element They have watermelon citrus etc.

1:20:59frankly, I love them all And now that we're in the winter months in the northern hemisphere Element has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock I really like the chocolate flavors especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up So you put in hot water and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate Especially when it's cold and dry outside when hydration is especially critical If you'd like to try element you can go to drink element .com slash huberman lab to claim a free element sample pack with the purchase of any Element drink mix again that's drink element .com slash huberman lab to claim a free sample pack As long as we're talking about posture feels like a good transition point to pelvic floor Years ago and this is a plug for the the material that you put out online and in books, but long before we met I decide to sign up for your men's pelvic floor.

1:21:49Oh, yeah, of course. I sold our woman's pelvic floor course It was so interesting because you know At that time One could go online and learn a little bit about pelvic floor everyone and we talked about this With a couple different guests on this podcast including the Director of Maris male sexual health. I mean, it's an MD PhD or at least an MD as I recall my guys in burger Stanford we talked about this with narekler haver and other people in the female health to me Normalizing this conversation. Yeah, we normalize this conversation. You know that the pelvic floor is rich with vascular for blood flow and Neural input for controlling muscles either passively or actively and I'll tell you the number of people I know who have urinary issues sexual dysfunction issues.

1:22:35I know because they tell me that they squat heavy in the gym They do their key goals and things like that then I've had guests on like my guys and bergen others and they say Yeah, actually If you have a tight pelvic floor doing key goals is about the worst thing you could ever do for urinary function or um erection function. That's right You know because you're sending in the wrong direction you need to learn to relax your pelvic floor Then some women will say and it seems to be women that report this whether or not men Just have this but don't report it. I don't know. I've had people write to me and say yeah, you know, I'll do Some lower body work in the gym and some urine is sneaking out and it's like well pelvic floor And you had this great course on pelvic floor that taught me among other things Um, and I will say I wasn't suffering any of those particular issues But I had prostate pain in my firties and I was like what's going on when got my PSA measured?

1:23:28Perfectly normal thought what's going on started researching online read your work and realized oh I think I might just have tight pelvic floor started doing Certain things including you taught me how to sit down and stand up correctly in this video It's like you have to keep your sternum high, right? You sort of I think you said there was like a stately state least uh, let me just there's no wrong way right way to stand up or sit down everyone, but there are ways that Reflect increased function, especially when you're in a dysfunctional state Right, right. Yeah, right. I don't want to we're not trying to um yet tell people what to do or not to do But I was like wow, you know, I'm probably hunched over too much.

1:24:06I think my hips are back too far when I'm sitting um and Maybe I'll move to a standing desk or sit stand desk, which is what I did low and behold prostate pain goes away Now you know and had I not found that course I might have gone down the path of medication or something else took care of everything I also I will say the other thing I learned was I I tend to have a slight um enter pelvic tilt So think you about the pelvis like a bowl as I understand like if that bowl could be um, you know The ridge of that bowl could be parallel to the ground or tilted forward the enter pelvic tilt or back You know, posterior pelvic tilt.

1:24:39Neutral seems like a good idea But most people tend to have a you know some natural propensity towards one or the other started wearing I pretty much always wore flat shoes or ditos or you know skateboard shoes are pretty flat I lucked out there. I should game is strong today. I should game is strong today. Adidas still wear them every day. I love them um or or no shoes. Yeah, you know, which is which is great and I noticed okay that corrected some of um some of that prostate pain too By making oh excuse me what what helped correct it was to make sure that in the gym I did something it turned out to be glue ham raises that would put my belt take my pelvis through a fairly full range of motion from From you know, love the posterior to anterior tilt and I've come to love the glue ham raise We're talking full range glue ham raises as one of the most useful tools just posturally for pelvic floor so not it's a beautiful I'm interested in this system right resetting high neurologic component to actually do the thing One of the things I hinted at earlier is like I'm chased by a motor output right intra abdominal pressure And being able to have a pelvic floor that works for you is part of that system Like again, we can take the physiology and goose it up and down What's interesting about I had a famous friend who was filming tv show And we're working on his internal rotation of his hip So if you he you imagine someone on your back and I bring your knee to your chest And I swing your foot away From your midline right the femur rolls in that's inter rotation of the femur forever And I worked on his internal rotation of his femur and just proved his hip flexion needed chest Just got those things going I get this text that nine is like bro What is up with my boners?

1:26:21They're out of control what is going on out of control in the in the positive direction And I was like well, there's this thing called blood flow And when we improve blood flow Turns out reperfusion is on the list of things that we chase So he'd been crimping the hose just to speak just stiff right and And I think when we start to see that Endo pelvic fascia is this system. It's so easy for us to be reductionists Like I wouldn't even say you had prostate pain. I would say you had pain in your prostate area Right, and in fact, that's what it was told the prostate region Right and and because you're like I don't know where my prostate is.

1:26:56Okay. That's I'm in my general sense and I also saw that PSA level was well within normal actually low range And I was like what in the world is going on here and you start Yeah, you can find some pretty scary stuff online about about spinal cord injuries and this kind of thing Did what we just talked about um and boom. It's never been an issue again We have um all the Olympic lifting gyms even our gym we kept a towel on the platforms So that women particularly would P themselves when they would receive a heavy clean heavy snatch and we would just Wipe it up. They'd actually urinate on the platform.

1:27:30Oh, yeah, that happens all the time. All of the Olympics everywhere You'll see that that is blattering condense is not normal, right Totally normal to poop yourself before a fight. That's what animals do Totally not normal to pee yourself peeing yourself as a sign of dysregulation for sure So what we're as you're seeing is though Hey, I can't manage this high Intraindominal pressure. I'm creating and what ends up happening is we pee ourselves So we can start by saying well are there positions in shapes directly? I want your pelvic floor to work and all the shapes is max There'll be some shapes where it just doesn't work as effectively and if you're a man So if we're getting into it if you go pee You'll see a lot of men will put their hand on the wall and they'll adopt a Enter your pelvic tilt to pee and what they'll do is basically just turn the pelvic floor off And so if you stand up and do a big anterior pelvic tilt your pelvic floor will lose some of its tone It's easier to initiate a string So anterior pelvic tilt again, folks is imagine your pelvis is a bowl You're tilting it forward like you're going to pour water out of the bowl, which is a fair analogy here That's right.

1:28:34You're saying They keep a neutral Pell this and use the force of their of their muscles control their blood I'm saying that if it's much more difficult to pee in this position where we have high high control over these systems And what you'll see is that most people will adopt a shape where they're basically in a hip at their pelvic floor so they can pee standing up I can't believe we're going to dissect urine posture You're an aiding posture, but I think it's I think it's really important Let's contrast that to the famous sculpture of the The boy peeing and he's like leaning back leaning back same same posture He's his pelvis is forward and he's leaning back.

1:29:14That's the same posture. So Same more with sons will know this right um, so um you know when you're a young kid young boy You can like it almost feels like you can pee over a car if you had to Maybe I tried that Um, I'm saying it was a Volkswagen one Yeah, right right so but here's so is there a proper posture for pee no no no but initiating a stream maintain a stream is Like that's a sign of sexual health of functional health is your general health And what's nice now is notice how we got to this very nuanced conversation about erectile dysfunction About bladder insufficiency about right peeing ourselves We got there through performance by we'll have athletes who literally had a whole bunch of babies Suddenly have difficult time creating high -end tribunal tone will jump rope and as soon as and pee and as soon as they come back to a more Organized position that allows them to transfer energy more effectively recruit better musculature have better organization Pink stops So what we said these female athletes are women athletes so you recommend the jump rope well Yeah, absolutely eventually I need to challenge that for us an easy way to do it But what we see is can you squeeze your butt and jump at the same time and what you'll find is that a lot of people as soon as they Adopt this into your pelvic tilt glute goes off and they don't have that glute control So that can be problematic for a whole host of features.

1:30:45So imagine I was hoping we were going to get to hip extension eventually But you know what we see is that stiffness in the front of the quads anterior line of the fascia stiff front of capsule whatever the mechanism is we do a lot of sitting or just worse squatters My inability to take my knee behind my hip we call this knees behind butt knees behind butt guy That's what I want to be known as knee but goes behind your butt like you're in a lunch. That's right. Sorry, Ben And then what we're gonna you're gonna see is a lot times when we put people in those positions. They can't get a good glute squeeze Okay, could one practice this something about spin a wall since I've taken a yoga class and squeeze your butt You would be like I can practice this Okay, so there's a pose in in yoga and I'm not an advanced yogi but I've taken a few yoga classes in my day Where you you're on your you're basically Propped up sitting on your knees.

1:31:36So it's over like in the camel and then yeah, high kneeling and then Hard to squeeze your butt there. It's hard to squeeze your butt there and then huzzle of all the forces yanking you anteriorly Those facial lines the the quads you're basically in that high kneeling position and because the lower leg is bent behind You you're being dragged forward and it's difficult to squeeze your butt and extend over backwards So there's that I do they call it camel pose where you reach back and grab your heels and you're supposed to look up at the ceiling That's a rnarly one. It's an Arleine if you do it in the Bay Area the t -shirt will say don't be surprised if some emotions come up If you do this in Austin, Texas, they just say it's supposed to hurt keep going I'm just joking here.

1:32:15This is like regional humor, but in any event um, I think that's actually accurate by the way But in any event it's it is a slightly um unusual for most people who aren't accustomed to it to do that pose Again doing that pose bring it up for a reason and if you don't do that pose you might do kipping pullups That's a global extension position that all we're doing is taking the spine and putting a huge global load in it Instead of a localized load so an anterior pelvic tilt I might think of localized extension inflection where I have one or two segments doing the lion's share We whenever we can prefer to have global flexion extension because the spine maintains its integrity a little more effectively So doing things like wheel pose awesome putting your hands up near your ears pushing it feed that flat on the ground pushing up into a you know an art Arc shape on the ground Great diagnosis.

1:33:07This should is this something that most people should be able to do Yes, can most people probably do it? No Can we then break down the components of it? Yeah, absolutely even iangar yogimaster Started to bring in props blocks and belts because he was seeing that as his students weren't able to achieve some of the base shapes and what they were doing was Human jenga to get into those patterns. They were just solving the problem and he was like hold up Let's not go around the problem. Let's support you while we load you and breathe in these these positions and shapes Given that most people don't have a ton of time for movement Designated blocks of time for movement If one we're going to do let's say some attempt toward wheel pose practice or camel pose practice or Any number of the other things that we're talking about here which are taking the body into positions that it That we're not naturally putting it into given our activities.

1:34:05Yeah, great Otherwise, male that Would you suggest doing these at the end of a resistance training workout when does it work for you? At some point you need to be exposed in this position When are you going to get exposed to this position if it happens to Be able to be clumped in with your training fantastic If it's at home in the evening fantastic if you if you've done some sanitation before It's old school right It's almost like they were like let's get this system going a little bit. So later on the day. It's a little bit easier So at some point we need to expose you to some positions We have something called the hip spin up and Typically for my athletic populations my teams, especially I'm like I want you to do one of three things a morning.

1:34:44Got 10 minutes. That's all masking eight to 10 minutes Hip spin up shoulder spin up or breath spin up Just just do one of those if you're if your back hurts or knee hurts you get hips men up if your shoulder or neck hurts You get shoulder spin up And then if not just cycle through those so at least in the morning we're starting to touch some of these Crucial shapes that you're never in and if you do the hips spin up and suffer I'm like well That's telling me about your movement history or injury history your movement diet And again, nothing that we do on the ready state is related to supernatural levels of range of motion Just basic range of motion the range of motion again that everyone Learns in med school everyone learns of physical therapy school So what's fun about what you've said around this sort of This pelvic floor health piece is that when we get people doing some mobilization really brought to me really brought my attention of Jill Miller Is that we start mobilizing the endopalvic fascia we just land a ball Just anywhere from your pubic bone to your diaphragt your up to your diaphragt process But particularly belly button south You'll see that none of that should be uncomfortable and one of the reasons we see high incidence of You know pelvic floor dysfunction, but also high incidence of sports hernias Is that we have a hip that doesn't work very well and ends up dragging That pelvis into positions where it's not muskily very strong Right, I can get out of position where I have a lot of good sort of activation or or access to those positions Then I have fascia and musculature that's super stiff Because every time you do abs you celebrate the stiffness right you do abs.

1:36:19You're like oh, I'm sort today I'm gonna have some ice cream When's the last time you manage your hamstrings your quads probably yesterday When's the last time you rolled out your abs and your obliques Never previous life. Hi previous life before you respond So I think one of the things that we're seeing is again that'd be a perfect time doing the evening Don't go to the gym and lay on the kettlebell and be a creepy guy Stead pull out that volleyball at home pull that princess ball You got a Walgreens and start having a conversation with your pelvic floor turns out you know your your your abdomen pelvic floor Can also be mobilized So we just it's really simple Front of your pelvis is your pubic bone.

1:36:58That's the front of the pelvic floor The back is your coccyx and each ishield tuberose your sit bones. There's the side everything else is your pelvic floor So you can take a ball and just stay away from the holes and if anything hurts to compression You found a problem so you can contract and relaxes apply that same tissue So I might be on my side. I might be rolling with the ball right underneath me You would just be sitting down on your coffee table and just putting that sitting that ball in and around Your pelvis and around your glutes and around your pelvic floor, right? You might be dangerously close to your grondle.

1:37:32You're welcome So the idea here though is you know oftentimes we'll have affants with back pain We're not looking at the pelvic floor or hip pain But you have six short rib hip rotators, right? You don't just have a couple rotators Huge rotator cuff of the hip and some of those things are congruent and kind of part of that pelvic floor So it's not that I need to go after my pelvic floor every day because again Let me just add another thing to do your list But if something changes I suddenly wake up and I don't have an erection I suddenly are discovering that I'm peeing myself because I'm an elite cyclist, right?

1:38:06Something's happening that I'm like, oh, I don't have to do here Let me start to work on my belly Let me see if I can work on restoring my positions And can I do a little pelvic form mobilization And that's a great place to start and which doctor was involved? None Which pelvic floor therapist was involved none in fact if you carry that to your Your specialist and we're like all right we get to have the rule conversation now because you've already done the other stuff One thing that um Frightens me and maybe unnecessarily so is when I see Men in particular doing crunch work like to ab work crunching with ankles crossed Um a because Um people tend to cross the same ankle over the other one.

1:38:48They don't they don't symmetrically switch sides and my um my other Understanding is that this can also lead to some pelvic floor issues in asymmetries simple solution could be to not cross the angles while doing um like repeated contraction work of the abdominals It might be silly I would put that lower on the list of problems I have right like I think if we went into the world right now and looked at people doing Curls you know curl ups The real thing is is that you're only way that you're turning the abdominals you know Am I do I have a bigger range of motion of the trunk There are so many ways to be thinking about what the trunk should be doing and reducing it down to this one curl I think if one of the things that we're looking at like I'd much rather you hang from a bar and curl up.

1:39:42Yeah, so this is the This is pretty much I won't say the only ab work I do I do some anti -rotation work by staggering my stance when I do Curls or anything else because it's a very time -efficient way to do it making sure my belly button is staying straight So you're resisting the temptation to rock from side to side and get the anti -rotation work Obviously switching up the stance but doing what you describe hanging from a bar doing pikes um Something you're also getting grip work Just for time efficiency you're also like not just separating the abs and working with the abdominals with the knee to the chest because that's really what we're seeing is that Do you only need your abs working in this position?

1:40:18So basically you're reproducing another seated position except you're crunching your Chest to your seated knee and that's really what that position is. Do we do it long? What happens if you do it long lever? Short lever means the elbow is bent long lever is the elbow straight short lever is the knee is meant long lever is the leg is straight So why aren't we working in all those patterns and positions and then Being creative. There are so many bread resources the the kids at um Dave Duranty hasn't free ab work. I think he's an Olympic gymnast from Stanford superstar But you can go on to I think it's iron monkey.

1:40:54Sorry guys and uh, you know what you'll see is um There's so much fun way to play and think about what the role of the trunk should do and I think we're moving Beyond thank goodness this like I have to be a rigid robot all the time and that we need to ask what is the trunk supposed to do a good way of thinking about this and I think your Sit up as a good analogy Really a book that makes the rounds from time to time is a book called the spinal engine By surge greco vetsky and he really talks about the trunk as a driver of power Not just as a chassis of which the big engine moves and that really is a nice conceptual way of simplifying movement But If we define functional movement most people agree it works in a wave of contraction from trunk to periphery from cordless sleeve From axillary skeleton to peripheral skeleton But that means boy there are positions where I'm really effective and can generate a lot of force and there'll be positions where I can But if my spine can't handle flexion.

1:41:56It's not a spine if it can't against extension It's not a spine if we can't rotate and being in these complex Position in shapes. I'm like red flag So how are you training that thing and if your only rigid dogma is straight up and down Which is a great reason to do mobility work is suddenly we can side bend and we can twist and I'm I exposing myself to some of those shapes And so we call that work borrowing from one of my Olympic Friends stume McMillan spinal engine work putting PVC side bending Playing with the different shapes and again if you through get into the David wek ropes if you threw medicine balls You would suddenly see you're like you're right.

1:42:34I can't be a rigid piece How am I training the functionality of my trunk beyond just my six pack because at you know straight curling Will certainly give you a six pack, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna surf with power Run with power punch with power etc I mean look at what would just happen with those fights right with the women you know fighting just the rotational power They have you can't get that from just cross crunches of your legs. So the fight right before the Tyson chick car fight was arguably the best fight and people had seen it a long long time the spirit of it and just the I mean they were just incredible everyone watch us women sports That was really great.

1:43:12So I think what's great now is If we can get people to start to be curious and to play and you know I'm not saying you need 10 ,000 different movements But instead of just hanging from the bar and doing knees to elbows or toes to bar What happened if you brought your right foot to your left hand and you started adding in a rotation to that and suddenly You're like I suck at this and ultimately what I want to do is I want to uncover every deficiency in this play Because I'm still gonna deadlift. I'm still gonna swing. I'm still gonna launching do all the things that I know That makes me feel robust and makes me ride my bike better and be a better of kayaker But simultaneously there's a lot of play on either side of that.

1:43:50I love that you're defining progression as incorporating these novel movements Exploring dude. That's Westside 101 Lewis Simmons. I mean like hey this week we're squatting with this bar Then we're squatting with this bar and then we're changing your height then we're changing your stance I mean Westside barbell has been doing this forever. I didn't realize I did that. I knew they were like Crazy gnarly like every bar has its own max Right, and so what they've done is said hey the squat pattern is the thing we're training But how do we put another twist to the pretzel now the weights in front now the weights behind now it's out And now it's too deep and now we're box squatting and like wow you're gonna have to be really competent skilled squatter to handle all that Seems like in so many sports not just for resistance training, but in so many sports.

1:44:35Um, there's this move shift now toward being an ATV and all trained vehicle like you can't afford to just be Goat at one thing, you know, um, and the cool thing about it is that you know the more dynamic range that people are expressing the more The kind of evolution you see of any kind of sport and I think we're gonna see this with fitness to I'm realizing this as we have this conversation The way you're really suggesting is that people explore their movement patterns I love this thing that I've heard you say for years and I know Mackenzie harps on this too, which is a brine Mackenzie That is um, you should be able to breathe well in every position It's such a fun test actually It's such an easy test, you know squat down like you can get something out of the cupboard See if you can take like a full belly breath there see if you can get the your belly going out on the inhale there I like to do this test myself.

1:45:19Everyone saw hanging from the bar. I'll you know those pikes I don't get very many of them admittedly. I'm doing like five sets of five Occasionally we'll try and twist a little bit and I as my grip strength improves slightly Maybe I'll be able to get more usually my grip strength goes for legs it would be easier Um, I'll take those either a compliment or an insult coming from you Kelly Um Tell you's exceedingly strong he deadlift 600 pounds on the regular he's he's exceedingly strong and he's he has incredible endurance You're actually more of an endurance guy. I think this is worth mentioning That you have not very strong.

1:45:50You have you have more of um, right, but um, you see my strong friends I'm not I'm not deflecting Your physiology is definitely biased towards certain things like unequivocally and what I am not good at is being brutally strong Oh, I've been training for 20 plus years Hard training longer than that 30 years and this is all I can deadlift. That's pathetic You see my strong friends So what you see is that I've been cramming a square peg into around home because I really like it But really I should be a probably 190 pounds and I should be an aerobic athlete Right like if we threw a hundred pound backpack on you and went backpacking you'd be fine You'd you'd be like a me even now in the you you're sitting at somewhere like 240 right?

1:46:36Like 62 you you can go you can go for days like you're naturally an endurance athlete And I think it's worth saying because people are listening Kelly's a big guy all my training is biased towards you Cannot believe how much conditioning I do. I am a disciple of Joel Jamison I'm a huge fan of trying to look at where I'm spending my time in these different heart rate zones And then you know, I'm just such a nerd of that because my primary sport is trying to keep up with my wife on the mountain bike I think this is really important because I think we've been talking a lot about things kind of adjacent to resistance training I think it's a wonderful shift now in in culture that resistance training is being used done by yeah by by young people By older people women and men, you know, it's fantastic This was not the case 10 years ago.

1:47:21This was definitely not the case 20 years ago. No, it was like bodybuilders football preseason football players in military With the only people weight training now. It's everywhere But you're naturally an endurance athlete I'm guessing that most people I'm assuming is this true fall into the slower twitch kind of more endurance propensity than I mean, how many truly Naturally strong fast fiber type people are walking walking around up there if we just took the challenge The ones that are our sprinters and super spring and you know who those people are right their mutants You know I Think I was always best at a skilled sport that use conditioning or use strength When I compare myself to my friends who have a huge rubber engines It's embarrassed.

1:48:09I'm always the weakest fat as slowest smallest person in the room And it is I can't like if you just want to ego check just come hang out with me just meet my friends See the people we're working with and you'll see you're like, okay Genetics is not the same. I think we've told a little bit of a lie in the internet Sphere that like if you eat this way and you do these you'll be elite and like We can certainly say that you have a training effect For sure and you should do that, but that's not the same thing as being a mutant and there are just so mean mutants out there shocking Yeah, I think um It's actually a worthwhile exercise to figure out what ones natural leanings are.

1:48:48What do you like to do? Yeah, how about that? I just think it's important that We remind ourselves that the whole point of this is to have the most fun and what you'll see he put up a video of some Chinese elementary school Kids and the Chinese Olympic lifting team coaches coming and assessing their kids and very quickly They put kids over at squats. They had them jump on a single leg. They had them do double jumps and they were like you you To have your parents call me right so you can already see that coordination matters wiring matters And they were able to say hey, these are the things that we think are gonna make good Olympic lifters So those kids I think we start to split cohort early on But most important is everyone is the weight lift period and it's not light to pink dumbbells It's real heavy weightlifting But how much do you need to do?

1:49:41To be better at your sport or to minimize your spine those are the spine changes or or osteophenium or osteoporosis those are great conversations, but not necessarily conversations about performance Right, so it's almost like we need to divide this into a cat like aesthetics and I'm keeping myself intact in versus I want to go to the Olympics because what you're seeing on the world right now is that it everyone's an expert I'm like can I see how you work with 40 athletes? Can I see how you periodize that can I see how you manage travel and nutrition? Can I see how you know you were responsible or not responsible for this team Having all its members.

1:50:16So what we're seeing is that it's a this performance thing is a really big task And it gets confused and watered down a little bit by everyone fitness as well. I I squat so I'm an expert too Not the same Our good friend Kenny Kane taught me something he's shaking. He's shaking his head The best he's a wonderful guy. You're not gonna find him on social media because a few years ago He just decided to take his gym and and and himself off social media He's very very talented. So we're gonna give you his phone number. We're gonna have you call him because you can't do him Very talented athlete and wonderful person.

1:50:51He taught me something I say about eight years ago that I've found oh so useful for By training longevity my enjoyment of training and it was this very simple 80 % of your workouts Andrew he said are going to be at 80 % of what you could do that day Okay, that involves some humility. I like to sweat hard. I associate intensity with hard work Etc. He said 10 % are going to be at 90 % intensity Meaning 100 % is the most you could give possibly whatever time is allotted on that day Given the sleep given the nutrition given the life circumstances on that day the readiness for that day right and then Here's where it breaks down a little bit more five percent are gonna be at 95 % and 5 % across the year are going to be maximum 100 % everything you can give do or die workouts that day And for me last year, I believe it was was that was the the rock carry cam cam hands as podcast I gave everything I had Had of course had the mountain been a little bit higher I'd like to think I would have gone a little bit further But I gave everything I could because that rock was slippery and it was muddy and my hamstring was out the day when we started That you know, I was in pain when we started anyway I think that advice That Kenny gave me was some of the best advice I've ever heard because my tendency would have been and had been to come in and go at 90 95 or 100 % every single workout A got you a long way that got you a long way Yep, and it also brought me to this place where after eight or 10 weeks of training I would get a cold or I'd get some nagging thing a little thing not you know wouldn't put me under but then Or that needs to take a week off normal accident theory So I think I'd love your thoughts on Kenny's recommendation for me It's one of the things that I pass along anytime says it about some fitness advice.

1:52:45I say well listen I'm a neuroscientist not a fitness guy, but I know a thing or two based on the mistakes I've made Here's a great piece of advice that's really helped me 80 % of your workouts 80 % Tensey another 10 % at 90 % Then the 95 you know 5 % at 95 and 5 % across the year are the all out everything you can give leave it all on the mat type workouts We can start with a simple idea. We say let's be consistent before heroic But I if your intensity Causes you to not be able to show up for the gym for three days. I'm like sweet. That was sweet And our abtation response to that is sucky, right?

1:53:19I much rather you Beginning more consistent and not blowing yourself out remember that there was a phase where like you shouldn't be so when you leave the gym Remember that like there are people would talk about hey leave some reps in reserve like show up the next day Grease the groove that's old povalsots and lean stuff I think that's really good advice especially since most people are not 20 Most people and when you're 20 you need to go find out what the limits are touch the fence the electric fence once in a while, right? Like the lick all the door knobs. Let's just go that way But you know what ends up happening is there's a lot of things have to be in place for you to be able to go to the well that many times And what we know now because we have all of this data is that we can make better progress Not Burning it to the ground every single time and it's difficult for us because if I'm just Fitnessing how do I quantify that right?

1:54:14It's easy for us to quantify another kilo or another watt That's makes it a lot easier and what you'll see is the best practices of these athletes We do spend a lot of 70 to 80 percent heart rate That's what we call recovery and jewel james and language 80 to 90 we're calling that conditioning 90 above Overload but what I think is nice is that that gives me a lot of there are some days where I touch 78 or 80 percent And it's hard because I'm sleep rep deprived stressed out my nutrition hasn't been great of sleeping in a strange bed Right, you know traveling whatever. So I think what you're seeing is Is something that one of my Early coaches talked about Mike Bergnery says when the frying pans hot let's cook and that means I need to know myself and as a coach I need to know you and I'm like Andrew you look great today.

1:55:03How do you feel great? Let's go Let's go chase something right and when the frying pans hot we cook But the frying pan is not always hot and if you pour in bang energy and jack 3d and you can't even hear inputs and outputs So I think you I think that's such solid reasonable advice and really what we're looking at is How can we eat a train much more consistently longer and longer and longer you can only go to the well a few times And what I'll tell you is that is I still love to power clean. It's like my favorite thing and That 100 kilo power clean is heavier than it was when I was 40, you know And I wanted to pretend like that 100 kilo power clean is not a problem But I actually have to progress and get myself there and there are days where I'm like oh 80 80 kilos is my jam today So I think that's really good advice and difficult for us to say how are we measuring success In our training subjective experience.

1:55:59No, no problem. Let me give you a baby Keep this newborn alive and then let's go see how your training is the next day. You're gonna be terrible You haven't slept on my your stress, right? So I think what's nice is having some sub objective measurements around maybe body composition is one of them That's important to you But are you getting faster over the course of a week? What are your testing? How do we know inputs and outputs and right now we're just doing we're baking a lot we're making a lot of Suicides right you they'll fountain drink where you just makes all the things It's you know, they always taste the same at the end like crap But that suicide remix all the fountain drinks is a little bit of what we're seeing In that and one way of protecting ourselves is saying hey Let's make sure you can train tomorrow Suicides obviously reflecting on that the other day for some reason why at a wedding or a party young typically It's a Y chromosome associated disorder to feel like you have to mix a bunch of bunch of stuff and then get someone to drink it Um, not wrong non -alcoholic drinks for young kids by the way, but mixing all the sodas putting M &M's it Just something like all my my Fence and I think that's what we see a little bit and if you if you I am a deep coach nerd.

1:57:07I love fitness. I love fitness. I'll jump into any class anytime like sure. Let's go Let's see, you know, I it's so fun, but I need to see I do get to watch sort of trends come and go things get very hot, you know They get very popular they and again the fitness has become a hobby. It's an amuse and that's okay It's totally okay that Jim is a hobby, but that doesn't hint about what's the best way to develop Capacity elite capacity long -term longevity capacity those things almost don't go together Let's talk about hip extension. Oh, bless you as somebody who Doesn't like the elliptical or stationary bike, but loves the assault bike.

1:57:51I love the assault bike. I don't know why Just feels like really good work. It is hard work But you're not gonna find me on a two -king bill made it harder with echo bike. Thanks for making it worse But what is the echo bike the rogue echo bike is even worse than the assault bike The assault bike by the way folks is the one with the fan and I'm not sure if they put it the fan is for resistance Not to not to keep you cool, but it has that effect somewhat in the winter. You'll know what the fan does So The echo bike is a harder a soul bike. It's just like imagine Doing it on fire uphill in the sand with the headwind then you're like, okay This is if you can make it worse.

1:58:27It's worse if you have one of these I'm gonna swing by this winter break and I'll try this thing But I love that because high physiology low skill That's great. You just described me in a nutshell. I can take Anyone not know how to know anything about your range of motion And I can be like who are you physiologically today? Let me introduce this freakish amount of work in this tiny range of motion That's very safe. So we can really touch high intensity is very safely there Mm -hmm. Yeah, I like it much more than the skier. I'll do the skier every once in a while But I find that the skier if I just sit and stand a bunch of times.

1:59:04I feel like I can just do this for 15 days See how I'm like is this exercise? And I'm like am I doing this right? I don't know for some reason doesn't feel like work The assault bike always feels like always feels like work Okay, so hip extension the assault bike is not hip extension typically you're you know tend to be no People tend to be hunch forward you could get up right right you can still don't have any hip extension No hip extension. Let's talk about if I'm squatting and I stand up. I'm extending the hip As you stand up right I'm going from flexion to extension Yeah, one thing that I think for people listening that at least is helpful for me when when hearing about squatting is to think about Whether or not it's a deadlift or a squat you can imagine taking your hands putting your fingers at your hips and you know hiding your hands in your in your In that joint between the femur and your pelvis as you go down right your hands get get tucked into the the fold between Between the two of those you stand up.

1:59:53It opens. So it's hip hinge. They typically call it And I think what you we look at the squat and the lunge is very their cousins and the difference is long lever short lever And typically how you're holding the weight that's the only difference And sometimes upright torso position, but ultimately we're really looking at You know what's happening with the degree of bend of the knee right that's why they're such elegant cousins But if I'm squatting down and I stand up people are like I'm working on extension working on extension all the time I'm like okay now Let's continue this extension conversation and bring that knee behind your butt into a lunge and that's hip extension And if there's one thing that I'm seeing across so many of the populations I work with is we're starting to see changes in erosion in this Fundamental expression of power the only people we don't see it as our lymph expiriners there and and you'll see that pocket like we work with the all blacks and We're obsessed on maintaining the hip extension these very strong athletes because It means that they can run faster on the field rug bt.

2:00:56Right of those it um Am I correct in thinking that hip extension we can think of as a You partially reflecting hamstring function where the hamstring is responsible for bringing the heel up toward the butt But also for bringing the femur back behind the torso. I I realized I'm not using the pt language By the pt's online you Community of the pts that you guys just crack me up in the field of of Medicine there's there's an analogous Specialty of medicine where they have the similar kind of like orneriness and it's being a pt is very competitive And so there's a you don't do this but the pt community it's like it's some you can make a cart You can make a whole sitcom about this the the attacks often range from significant to Like cluster around petty Not because they're not knowledgeable, but because there's so much nuance in this field Right, and it seems that there are a few things that everyone agrees on and then everything else People love to argue in community out of community So anytime I say anything about movement of the body I want to just say I realize I'm probably not using the correct Perfect.

2:02:04I'm just use that same defense of petty clusteredness clustering the pt Ness I'm sorry all the physical therapists out there I haven't represented you in the way that you would like to be represented I'll say I'm just talking my own experience. It's just differences in nomenclature right and I'm trying to be very meticulous in my language issue One of the things that we want to look at is Um, and this is a Philip Beach Muscle's meridians ideas that there are contractal fields and this goes along with If we look at Thomas Myers anatomy trains if seeing the system As a system of systems. So we start to look at your back and your erectors And then we tie that into the glutes and then we tie that into the hamstrings the tie like the calf It's kind of a whole almost rops around the door at the bottom of the foot right The planter surface of the foot So suddenly we're looking at this global system that's designed to create this mass extension position Locomotion we start to lock some of those pieces down a little bit But one of the things that we've seen is that when you aren't competent in this position Your hamstrings for example have to do a lot more work because your butt is no longer working on hip extension Your adductors are restricted and they're not bringing you back into flexion So suddenly what we see is that your hamstrings are having to do the work of calf But when your hamstrings are tonneau the time you don't have hip extension so a simple test we do Is called the couch stretch And all you to do is face a wall and turn away from the wall So you're kneeling on the ground hands and knees away from the wall You're gonna put one of your knees in the corner So your foot is going straight up and down the knee is in the corner of the wall And then I want you to see if you can squeeze your butt in that position Still hot hands and knees except one foot now is kind of in the corner down the wall going to your butt That's position one and a lot of people are gonna struggle with recruiting and actuating their butt in that position Because it's what I'm calling positionally inhibited.

2:04:05We don't know what the mechanism is So you're getting the knee back behind the torso Yeah Much as one would if that if you were sprinting in the back rear leg is Really we're just flexing the lower leg we're flexing the lower leg shank right that lower limb Second position is to come up into a high kneeling position So you just bring your knee up and so like you're kneeling Except that we have a trailing leg now with a leg that's going up the wall So front leg is it a sort of a right angle right? You have foot on the ground right angle rear leg is a knee tucked in the corner That's exactly right at the foot where the floor meets the the couch Foot is up on the couch.

2:04:42Nope. Just on the ground. Okay, and we'll provide a link to it Yeah, and I called the couch just because I created this thing a long time ago And I created on the couch from my young athletes while they're watching TV Right, I just needed some hip extension exposure, but we can do it on the wall. I do in the couch Ultimately, what we try to see is do you have glute squeeze? Can you take a breath? Right if your breath starts to get real small in this position So every time your knee comes behind your body you can't breathe anymore How's that working for you when you're run? Is that good or bad?

2:05:11Seems to be that your breath should remain pretty constant and dependent what your hip does So then we'd like to see if people can come to a more upright position So that's kind of position three So a little bit more upright torso. We're starting to increase Hip demands as the torso comes upright Torses coming upright the knee is moving further away from the chest on that loaded leg And what you'll see is that most people are going to be like wow that's real stiff or I can't even get there Or I can't breathe there I have to banana back to get there And I certainly can't squeeze my butt there and I want to tell everyone This is a low -level test The real test your front foot goes up on a 12 inch 18 inch box So we're not even in the test yet.

2:05:50We're in with front leg extended. No front leg just up higher So we elevate the front leg into what's called a hip lock So that front leg is suddenly taking my pelvis and rotating it posteriorly Knee is bringing the running into pelvis pelvis is like talking And now you're really going to see what's going on with your hip extension So this is the equivalent position more or less of front knee Sprinting like really like like a jutted up in the air You know, maybe even pass the belly button definitely pass the belly button Rear rear leg behind you so this is sort of like you know caught in midstreet That's right and so suddenly we have this nice test that allows us to see in our competency there And I want to remind you if you do the couch stretch and filament your knee is actually in hip extension It's not your knee isn't even behind your butt here It's that hard and I'm still biasing it towards flexion So what we're seeing is that you have a real deficit of hip extension So that's one way to improve it you can just do the test Camp out there takes some breaths contract relax breathe do your resistance isometrics whatever you want to do there So many ways to judge that up rotate side bend The question is how are you now loading that thing in your life?

2:07:05So we can put a band on you and get you do some isometric standing But show me in your movement language in the gym How you're reinforcing hip extension So when we were talking about deadlifting with a tandem stance Still not hip extension right? I'm extending the hip but that trail leg is not rear foot elevated splits quad Ding ding ding ding we start to get there right Bulgarians flipping attire Like anytime where I need to be able to a big lunge is a good example forward lunge back lunge Tell me about flipping attire So you tell you about flipping attire but then at the top of the movement You're doing like a kettlebell swim where you buck your hips forward like you're gonna try and kick over that Volkswagen You're pushing over right and don't you don't try and pee at the top That's right.

2:07:47But you're talking about bucking the hips forward. That's right. Suddenly you're upright And that leg that trailing leg is an extension in a long leave or position So we spend a lot of programming one of the best persons at this is France Bosch I mentioned earlier and he has something I've termed like the Bosch snatch So if you imagine being in a double stance So I'm just like I'm swinging a kettlebell If I took a plate or a dumbbell doesn't matter I'm just gonna basically go from a hip hinge and as I go overhead with the weight of the load whatever's appropriate for you I'm gonna take my front foot and step it up on a box So all the sudden I'm going from a flexed position in the hip sea shaped body right or upright torso but hinge C -shaped right Weird to see and then have Altica C and then I'm gonna step forward And now I'm gonna have that one of those legs is gonna be an extension And so suddenly now we're adding speed to this extension because that's not what we do with reverse rear foot L -ves foot squats We're not loading that in speed So we start to add the speed component to what we're doing and suddenly we've Discovered another way to challenge our movement.

2:08:55It doesn't just always be after a heavier It can also be faster So I'm basically if imagine if I was here's a great example I love pressing I think overhead pressing is the bees knees. It's one of my non -negotiables. We're gonna press Seasaw press overhead press we're pressing But if I take your front foot and put it up on a box Make sure that back foot is straight with all your toes on the ground and press from that position You're gonna find out why you don't have any hip extension It's gonna be so you won't even think about the weight you'll think about your groin exploring So a lot more people probe that that me chance those With very light dumbbells first go press go find out how well you can press overhead and you're gonna see that like wow This tandem stance front foot elevated You know press is gonna kill you kid um there's a movement.

2:09:40I do I'm guessing Well, I'm curious if it Activates hip extension the way I think it does here's here's what I've been doing that I found useful I don't know if it's true or not But what I'll do is I'll tie a fairly thick band to a pull -up bar I'll squat down. I'll hold it like I'm holding a like a pull and from like a pull carrier and a in a In a parade or something I'll squat down and I'll jump up and but instead of of But I'll buck my hips forward at the top. So like feet go out in front is very unnatural Movement actually as opposed to jumping and putting my toes down pointing my toes down my foot toes are kicking for it So I'm trying to mimic the top of a kettlebell swing at the top of this movement I would say you know one of the things that is useful for me as I am asked to come in teretopials programming look for holes in their movement practices we look at Fundamental shapes.

2:10:36So what's nice is that Okay, hang on everyone Let me let me define exercise for you. Let me just I'll just give you a little framework And I'll start by saying if something inflammatory the shoulder's not that convocating It doesn't do that many things goes overhead Goes out to the side goes in the front it goes in the back That's what your shoulder does you can bend the elbow you can twist and all those shapes But those are the four fundamental primary organizations of the shape of the of the shoulder hip has flexion extension right Really I could I can go laterally, but that's just a different kind of squat But really like am I squatting with the foot really narrow or am I squatting a little bit wider So what we can then do is say in these fundamental bookends these benchmarks.

2:11:23This is what we call archetype Suddenly I can ask well, how are you loading your overhead position? So if you're always pressing on a bar or pulling on a lat down machine you actually are overhead But you're not in the fullest expression Over overhead right which is your arms straight up and down parallel by your ears hands over the top of your stems over your head Right, so what we can then do is say well, what what tools do you like to use kettlebells great That's one of the reasons kettlebells are so great single arm. I can't hold it out here It's gonna fall I have to finish over my head right dumbbells the same by the kettlebells the salt it constrains us To express full overhead motion.

2:12:02I can look at do you have enough inter rotation with the hand by the side Are you doing enough pressing like activities? Shot or ranga the finished position of my row right bench press dip running those are all movements where my shoulder comes into extension Whether the arm is straight or bent So what's nice now is I can say well in my Distracting those tissues or compressing those tissues Well, you're like what do you mean? I'm like are you pressing or you doing a pull up right pressing overhead or doing a pull up That's compressing or distraction right very simple ways of looking at these movements We can say well, how are you coming there did you get there from a snatch?

2:12:38Where did you get there from a front rack position? So we can look at start position finish position and suddenly what you're realizing is you're like oh, I'm starting to understand the route movements And route positions that help me improve performance predict Future performance and help me get through pain because if I have people not expressing the highest levels expression of the movement That's something we can improve. That's technique right. It's not just get bigger and stronger It's say let's be more technically proficient So I have all of these ways of looking at the movement selection choices again.

2:13:08What are you comfortable with? But then I can challenge it with load make it heavier We can do volume we could add speed we could add cardio respiratory demand You could do more than five and suddenly you have to do 20 and we have metabolic demand in there You and our competing all the sudden right now suddenly I go from open torque to close torque. I go from giving you a barbell to a dumbbell right I go from open chain to close chain Suddenly we're like holy moly block practice random practice I have all the tools for me to understand are you competent putting your arms over your head or are you exposing these shapes Under these different domains and I think when we only look at Sort of a few ranges of motion and we only look at load is the way Then we lose all the opportunity and richness of programming got it.

2:13:56Well, let me come back to My silly example of the band and the jump thing and say okay, so for Getting better hip extension Which is what I think a lot of people need is what I'm hearing a lot of people learn hip flexion So you're jumping and then coming up. Yeah, I mean or you know We've seen these beautiful images of certainly not me, but like people doing long jump where they're kind of like you know Unposition something. Yeah, so the idea is because with the band it's safe, right? You know Trying to get the hip into extension or feed out in front of the jump thing It's a keeping pull up without a pull up.

2:14:29You're just keeping on the bar and I don't keep on my pull ups By the way, um because I'm a time under no, I don't keep on my pull ups I do I train with Ben Bruno from time to time you keep on a pull up with Ben Bruno there You're never gonna hear the end of it ever so I don't but I don't anyway because I'm a time under tension That's fine. I'm gonna say that I love strip pull ups. I do strip more strip pull ups and you can imagine But if you can't keep there's something I want you. Okay. Got it We'll argue about this more offline But I love to sprint so um that's hip extension absolutely. Uh love to sprint love to sprint And I love jumping like I'm a big believer in this maybe true.

2:15:10Maybe not true Idea that as we get older we tend to jump and land last a lot of injuries come from you know lack of eccentric load and Out of the Soviet system when you stop jumping you start dying You and the lowest form could be trampolining The highest low another low form jump roping highest form started to be really powerful. I love it I you're killing it and what's great now is you've just made this switch We start describing your training in blocks of positions What position am I training what shape am I reinforcing? Right that's a really not it's not a muscle remember your muscles Or not wired for movement your brain is wired for movement right you don't have any selective control over a single muscle in your body That's a mistake.

2:15:57So you're not really working your biceps you're working Arm flexion right in a variety of positions this squat exercise biases in my quads more But I'm not actually Quotting right because that's impossible. Yeah, I think that the the misconception the broad misconception Is that resistance training is just to build and strengthen muscles in a body building kind of fashion and no disrespect to the bodybuilders But no we learned a lot but you know we learned a ton and and yet most people Would probably do well to think about functional movements In fact, there are a few Instagram accounts that really like to come after Not just me, but a lot of people that have talked about resistance training at all They talk about functional patterns and I have to say as much as the the messaging sometimes I think is a little bit abrasive I pay attention to these and I have seen some of the before and afters that they'll show for people that will incorporate into their training like a like throwing or You know ballistic movements from you know fully stop sprinting out the gate kind of thing and focusing immensely on Bouncing the two sides of the body and without having done those programs I have to say like yeah like a lot of these people had some pretty dysfunctional patterns And they look like they're doing better and I think it's because I must I have to assume that they're incorporating a much broader range of of movements More hip extension working the two sides of the body all the things that you're talking about all the things that you're talking about and so I think that the body building Peace I think is a great thing for getting people out the gate I would say the amazing thing about resistance training forgive me for going long here, but I think this is something that If somebody is not naturally inclined to exercise or resistance training resistance training is one of the few forms of exercise That because of the blood flow the so -called pump give people a visual and Sensation sensation based window into the progress they might make hell yeah, right?

2:17:50I mean, this is unlike like going for a run and getting to like at the end of your run You see a little less body fat and then two days later you you you've reduced your body fat percentage right Like it gives you a window into your future when you resistance train that way and and a gateway into a conversation that's very complex This is all I think about and people are like hey, I just want to feel better I don't want to get hurt my calves when I run you're like okay, it can be really simple And also you have your right to look jacked in tan. I mean you you can be jacked all you want Mark Bell makes this point every single place look.

2:18:19I think There's something that I try we don't ever punch down. We just don't you know just point we point to what we do This is our model But any model that someone's on the internet a model has to do three things it has to explain current phenomenon Right, it has to predict future phenomenon and it has to be easily communicated So let me see your model how it works. How does it explain if I do your thing Well, I get better at this thing right that's the thing I'm interested in right So what I see is all a lot of recursive fun Fitness or people feel better, but I still have to go over here in squad or I still have to go over here and and and become conditioned But we can see the truth of needing to expose people to bigger ranges of motion and more skilled movement Then with some of the things we're getting traditionally in the gym Right, and and I think one of the things that we saw with like a pivot towards movement culture Right kind of coined by Edel Portal is that What we were seeing is that the gym didn't be get necessarily better movers What we had was people originally Doing a skill throwing something running track and field we would train and then go do more of that And then what we did is we took the gym or took the sport skill movement out of it And we just remained in the gym And you can see the reaction to that as well.

2:19:46You're not very elegant You can't don't have any movement solutions. You don't transfer your energy very well You're not you know, you're not graceful. You can't you have no rhythm. So the real Key for us is like I think we want to put playback in there and you can see what the reaction is To hey if we're just doing bench press and hacks quads maybe that's not making the best Mover but it's certainly making a jack guy who's what we call it wasn't in that movie hot girl fit Where uh, you know, it's one of the recent movies where like guys uh, who's the guy from Twisters that incredible actor he was in top gun anyway He's swimming and the girl was like hey, why are you out of breath?

2:20:26He's like I don't do cardio I just do abs and biceps. She's like oh my god, your hot girl fit like you have this big engine That looks good with no go And I want to make sure that no offense to all the hot girls out there But the idea here is what does it you want to do with your body Let's start there and then we can start to say well, what do you have access to what your training age And it's a nuanced conversation is probably why you should have a coach and develop a coach for the rest of your life But let's not pretend having abs and big biceps Is going to make you a good m a fighter right and you can see why the resistance of hey that made me less athletic We want to be careful of that Yeah, I like using the Resistance training to make me stronger and better at running Yes, and that's my that's actually that's what's in my mind.

2:21:16Yes I only ran cross country one season high school wasn't very good, but really enjoyed it But I love running I've been running for a long time and I'll never be a high -rank cross country one year in high school Maybe we ran against each other or a boy. Oh no, you're a year older than I am so I I want to yeah, well, I'll tell the story some other time It's not my my stories aren't irrelevant here, but but I use resistance training to be able to run Better faster further without pain for me. Yeah, that is that is what I would hope We look at training for now apply along Jevety lens Adurability lens right or as Juliet says she's like don't you want to just be able to pop off the couch and go on adventures Right, I want to have a body that's capable of that I think what we've been pitching in the gym doesn't really do that and even that I just want everyone to hear and double click on what Andrew said that framework is that I now have a third Party objective measure does my running get better with my training and so really go it would do great way to without your training Yeah, my faster.

2:22:18Do I feel better? It's really worked for me and it keeps me out of um any Kind of gravitational pull toward just trying to get more weight on the hack squat machine Which I enjoy progressive overload I enjoy doing movements better with more weight etc. But um I find that the gym just becomes this um When it's a closed loop I find it it becomes this kind of like endless exploration of like what am I really I also at this age like I want to maintain strength and build some muscle perhaps what most do you want to get heavier? I don't isn't that weird. I don't know my go right now. It must much muscles.

2:22:54You can't because winter's coming My goal is to actually get much stronger without getting bigger and and to keep my endurance going I like to do one long rucker run per week at one shorter run One one sprint type run. Oh, I just figure like I'll be everyone what you just described for a typical person Is doing a long piece a short piece and a high intensity piece? That's right. That is that's the way that's the crack Yeah, that's what I do every week if I'm you know most weeks and then I'll lift you know legs one day You know torso everyone laughs torso. What kind of you know torso including neck and abs?

2:23:28Let's see the next level go flank Till you want to get torso on flank really confused and uh and then I'll do the what could be called distal muscles I'll do an extra workout for for calves biceps and triceps and forearms and grip strength on Saturday and and that combination of things right this isn't about my training to me meets the demands of life like I can sprint for the airplane with my luggage And get there and not cough up both lungs. I can go backpacking like if you say hey, let's go backpacking or Grand Canyon tomorrow you're gonna carry 75 pounds sack. What a great deal a little bit sore it's not sure but you'll feel good.

2:24:02I'll feel good sore, right? We can um go to the gym together and I can put You know what feels to me like a respectable amount of weight on the hax squat We do some full -range glue hammeries. I can hang from a bar But I'm not trying to beat a pull -up record or run a try run a marathon I find that any time I've gone to the extreme in any one kind of training I end up injured sick and I'm just not interested in that and I like to think I could be wrong I'm projecting here probably that I'm representative of what most people want I also want to be able to overeat a little bit every now and again like Thanksgiving coming a little bit I also want to be able to not have to eat All day and then eat a big dinner and not dissolve into a puddle my own tears because I'm neuratically worried about Something nutrition based like I tend to I basically skip one meal a day just by virtue of my schedule It's like a non intentional intermittent fasting and the people who are obsessive about protein will say Well, gosh, that isn't as good, but yeah, okay, so maybe I get a little bit less muscle I'm not doing I don't want to be so neurotic about my training that I'm not focusing on the bigger missions of my life and Notice that what you said was I train so I can have fun And I just want to double click on We have sucked the joy And the play and exposure out of training and out of fitness and now it's I have to have this VO2 Maxwell Live to 150 and I have to do right and you're forgot that we This whole thing is so you can go spend some credits So I like to say the gym and all that really focused training is Spending time on credits, but one of my coach friends no co -criticism says crossfit routes She's like we don't nature for time Stop natureing for time like this we're surfing so we can surf all day and we can surf more waves than the other kids Because you're not fit enough, right?

2:25:47I want to go hike and then ride my bike and play and ski and do all the things I want to do with my body And that made me I want to hold my kids or I want to do my job and this you know in this warehouse We're starting to train for life and a little bit more simple way and it doesn't feel like this crazy burden And it also happens to be the best tool to understand how you're moving Because my expert coaches can watch you run and be like oh, that's what we're working on and I'll go right to the thing Right But for the rest of us we need to say wow my shoulder that bench that fly dumbbell bench was a little bit tricky I'm losing some shoulder extension right or at least I'm touching these shapes And that ends up being a really interesting diagnostic tool where we can really take a shot at improving function And reducing musculoskeletal distress And I think this is the this is the template for yeah enjoying your training and including enjoying training hard Is one of the most asked things one can do years ago when I was skateboarding I mean it I ruined skateboarding for myself because got picked up out of sympathy to be fair By a couple sponsors and then got obsessed with the fact that you know I wasn't progressing that broke my foot and you know pretty soon I didn't hate it.

2:26:57I loved it and I loved the community But it turned into something else and had I just taken a step back from it and said all right I'm decent at this I could get better and I'm just gonna focus on doing it for pleasure and make a living some other way I'd probably be doing you know like you know frontside inverts and pools now and unfortunately I'm not I'm lucky if I get a nice little frontside grind on coping But whereas with fitness Resistance training running I I love resistance training running the cup of coffee before my workout tastes ten times better Because I'm gonna work out. I love to use it as an opportunity to listen to music listen to podcasts Like there's so much that's in and around it that's still just pure pleasure Even on the days when I'm like at 95 % of output or 100 % of output We're 80 % of output.

2:27:39I'm like I just I'm having so much fun. That's right and I can't wait to get back in there. So when we're we are looking at side health right The first thing we argue instead of saying what's most important? We say what does it you want to do? And who are your friends are gonna do it with and are you gonna do it a lot? Let's start there then we can start to weasel in everything especially with social isolation With sort of lack of community. I mean, I feel like sport is the last place where people congregate right sports sidelines this is the sort of you know lingua franca of the whole you know world I've taught on every continent is an Antarctica everyone knows what to push up is everyone knows the deadlift is It's not science.

2:28:23Sorry. It's not math. That's not the universal language. It is Banch press everyone knows and everyone can tell you how much you bench and any language So there are some things there are their universal I think when we look at the humanism moving organism Then we can really start to not feel crazy about how our world is changing But we how do we fight back by setting up more opportunity to to move more and And for me the the whole lens ends up being like We basically is we're trying to parse through complex problems. So I have a world champion who's injured Two -time world champion isn't able to finish the tour You know the first question I asked them is tell me about your sleep I'm a rough sleeper.

2:29:07Oh tell me more about that right because I can't even tell your inputs and outputs unless we're getting to sleep Then I say well, tell me about your nutrition. I clean great to find that for me I don't even know what that means clean turns out undercalorie Undernutrition doesn't get enough macros doesn't get enough micro so I'm like oh we start to correct that we start to click sleep When we really start to divide some of the behaviors into for me as a 51 year old I'm obsessed with my tissues not failing like tearing an Achilles is like Every physical therapist worst nightmare And I jump rope every day and I have great range and I do so many isometrics I'm just not gonna tear my Achilles now.

2:29:44I'm in tear my Achilles but I'm not gonna tear it So tissue health is part of that so now I have to look at nutrition I have to look at my blood work and I have to look at my sleep Right so that I can really define some of those things as that creates a readiness tissue tolerance health Then I can be looking at the other things and that's really as we start to get again the framework of sport or framework of play Creates this place where I can suddenly start to understand Inquits and outputs and how to take care of this carcass so that I can do what I want with my body Which is our new definition of mobility?

2:30:17Can I do what I want with my body and can I be pain free? Am I correct in my very non -scientific assessment of Instagram accounts whereby when I see a 80 to 100 year old person moving well That person tends to be doing something sort of gymnastics related There's this incredible video guy Chinese guy very tall Chinese guy doing essentially skin the cat and then until pull up skin the cat People can look it up. Um doesn't involve actual cats. Hopefully um it shouldn't 85 year old woman sprinting so we're talking gymnastics type movement. It stops sprinting movement Rarely sometimes it'll be somebody in a gym lifting a heavy weight But more often than that it's gymnastic type movement pull up dip parallel bar balance beam sprinting Is that what got them there or is that just the expression of what what genetics do they feel safe Show them nutrition show me their training age, but what's noticeable there?

2:31:22Is that we have disciplines that require greater range of motion and skill body control and high power output Right huh So one of the things that we do in our programming for adults is I make you sprint once a week like sprint Just people have not sprinted and I don't mean you can go out and run I don't think you're capable of that But I'm gonna put you on a bike. I'm gonna put you in control I'm gonna see what your peak wattage is that sprinting So ideally I would love you to be able to do some hill sprints and repeats But I don't think you have the tissue tolerance or the range of motion for that And I know what the the outcome is gonna be but I can put you on a bike And say can we hit this peak wattage and what you just discovered there was Hey, I still need to maintain my ability to move quickly and have control through great ranges of motion That is a recipe for you know why if you did yoga and did some sprints You're gonna be pretty badass.

2:32:15You know, that's a pretty good way and why people who just do the elliptical and the Little little small dumbbells are they're they're fooling themselves. It's a lot of busy work There's a lot of busy work out there. It makes people feel like they're involved in a program Again, the way we want to take our feelings out of it How do you progress those pink dumbbells a thousand reps is two thousand reps right show me progression Suddenly I can't progress and regress those things the other thing I want to say is like Is it making the thing better what are we training for and you know, I think it feels decorative to have Busy work and I do all this pre -hab corrective exercise.

2:32:53I'm like hold up Why don't we do the thing we're doing and regress and progress that and ask if you have native range of motion? Yes or no, but you know if we look at the typical person especially someone listen to this podcast They don't have two hours in the gym So if your program is requiring two hours of me. I'm out If it requires an hour of me, I might be out You know, I'm so busy that sometimes I eat lots of 30 and 40 minute pieces Pepper throughout plus a lot of other play and that's good enough So we really do need to look at how people are finding themselves in their environments to ask is this appropriate for you And what's essential and it turns out a lot of this You know 20 something playing around viding yourself in the gym is great when you have three or four hours in the gym Yeah listening to an entire album or podcast or Book chapters in sequence.

2:33:41I think is if I may far more valuable than I'm allowing oneself the opportunity to text and be on social media during a workout Because it just becomes a very distracted thing I think that the workout of any kind is also an opportunity for building concentration And one can listen to podcasts or books etc But or an album sequentially through but I find at least for myself if If I work out in a way that's interrupted by a social media or texting or email Because it's available there that it carries through into the rest of the day That I'm more distracted. I believe you How about that? I believe you and that's what's so great is you're like hey that doesn't work for me You know um I find that my best thinking is done under enormous aerobic load Like I literally I'm like oh and I have an often well jump up and write something on the whiteboard and then go back into my thing because You know, I just it creates flow state and it's and if I'm distracted I can't really hear what's going on and that's there's a time when I want to distract myself You know, and there's a time when I want to be amused.

2:34:47That's fine You know, I've got to do two -hour ride getting ready for a four -day backcountry ski trip here in February But notice I'm already been getting ready for for in the beginning of November. I am ready It's taking me going to ramp up and so much of my training now is is going towards Can I successfully do these four hard days the way I want to? So some things come down a little bit strength cut dials down I change my body composition like to be a little bit lighter I'm playing but there's sometimes where I have to get two and three hours in of steady work done And I'm like headphones, you know, I mean so it's okay to be amused you don't have to be a monk doing what you're doing But I really like what you said feels I feel distracted.

2:35:27Yeah, let's use this is Let's use it as a concentration time. All right. Let's use this interaction time I the gym shouldn't be the loneliest place in the world if you're not making eye contact and talking high -fiving get a different gym I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about fascia you and Jill Miller or some of the first people that I ever heard talk about fascia in a In a in a lab or way in a way that allow me to finally understand what this incredible aspect of our physiology The many things that it's doing I realize this is a vast discussion that we could take several more hours Not a fascia researcher right and yet I think As I recall you were in the first people to talk about you know that the relationship Telling people what that there's fascia now we have this thing called fascia Clearly an important part of our our physiology our ability to move to what extent do you think that tight fascia quote -unquote I'm probably offending many people in this moment tight fascia restricts our movement and that working on fascia release if or Moveable facial mobilization.

2:36:29Thank you Can allow us to move better maybe better posture maybe even feel better and there are a lot of theories Some probably wrong some probably right about what fascia can and can't do for us But what are some things about fascia that you find particularly interesting that you'd like to pass along? I think what we should do is if you pull fascia out of the human movement equation and human doesn't the fails to stop moving Right, so the recent like we've just discovered fascia right? That's not really entirely true There's a really like 20 -year -old set of videos by a guy was a he describes himself as the somanot His name's Gilhead Lee and he did these live deceptions on the YouTube.

2:37:09I don't even know if he's still there But he basically did all of this gross anatomy for free on the internet and he describes So the one of the first people really described fascia as this sort of incredible You know connective tissue network that envelops wraps, you know, stores energy communicates Is tensionality It's full disclosure and what school embolder and I may have dated a girl who went to rulfing school and was a rulf And I'd a rulf was one of the first people to really talk about how can we mobilize fascia with touch? So I was introduced to fascia in the 90s when I had rulfing done on me So when I'm trying to help someone think about pain or restore position and this is overly gross But it'll it'll create a framework for people We ask is this an environmental problem?

2:37:56Are you poorly hydrated because your tissues need to be hydrated? Slide are you inflamed like that's why we talk about nutrition and we talk about sleep Because we have this environmental piece Then I often will say hey do we have just a movement problem? Do you just have crappy technique Like let's fix the technique first. Let's get you moving to the highest expression of the movement First hey turn your foot straighter. Let's let's let's we centrate that joint. Can we can we have a better organization? Then we start to say because sometimes it's just movement problem just you needed some queuing We say it's this a joint capsule problem because capsular stiffness the joint capsules a bag of connect tissue that surrounds all your joints and it can account for huge chunks of arranged motion limitation So a lot of we do is we after we try to mobilize it to joint tissue and again, that's my own bias The way I was trained as an Australian trained maniot therapist this maintenance school Then we say well, is this just a good old -fashioned muscle restriction and we call it muscle dynamics because that includes high -tone stress fear but trigger points are well documented phenomenon Muscles get stiff they become fibrotic right You could have high tone trying to protect you all those reasons, but that's still could limit your range of motion And lastly we say sliding surfaces So instead of kind of talking about all the different layers of dermis and skin and fascia we say do the things that slide Should are they sliding?

2:39:14So if you grab your skin on your forehead it should slide and all the directions Notice that the skin should slide all the directions over your tendons right If I grab your typical persons Achilles and grab the skin over the Achilles it doesn't budge It's like they have an exoskeleton that's that facial kind of compartment And it's seized it's adhered it's bound to the underlying surfaces which creates tissue restriction and higher tension So when we're mobilizing these tissues we're trying to keep tissues sliding and gliding That's an easy way of thinking about it Nerves have to run through nerve tunnels Taking huge breaths keeps all of those You know aspects of your trunk moving and we just need to be thinking in like a systems approach So Sometimes if you went and saw an ART practitioner and it didn't solve your problem.

2:40:05This is active release therapy Yeah, okay. It may not have been a facial problem, right? If you went and saw someone who only worked on the muscles It may not have been a muscle problem if you went and saw a chiropractor and they worked on your On your joint structures, right or a good physio It may not be a joint restriction problem If you saw a coach they couldn't cue you out of it. It may not have been a so what we need to do is we recognize that if more squats To solve all the problems when we have solved all the problems if rolling on a roller had solved all the problems Seems like we had a solved all the problems So I think what ends up happening is we want to put fascia equally as an important part of the system And one of the ways that we can directly impact that in a freeway At home is to begin a conversation of just some simple Myofascial mobilization in fact myofascial means muscle facial But there are osteo -fascial connections does the fascia You glide over the bone there, right?

2:41:01We can look at the the the tenonis facial connections Again to these tissues sliding glide the way they're supposed to slide glide and that's a much easier way to look at it And then I'm going to test and retest not with subjective pain, but how is your range of motion and access to your range of motion Thank you for that. I've um wanted to try roll thing for a long time And then a friend of mine who's a former CEO team operator told me that at some point during the roll thing That he received that they put a glove on and went up his nostril and did some fascia relief on the Release excuse me on the inside of his nose and it quote it was the most painful experience he ever had And I was like all right well I don't really know anyone a naval special worker, but they're they're so soft.

2:41:47Right I didn't say that Kelly said that You know who you are my friends, but I You know that I confess You know, it's not like I avoid paying at all costs, but that that made me think that um I might not want to do roll thing. I also don't want Someone putting their finger up my nose. So I'm assuming that I could say hey, I want I want try roll thing And I don't need to get because you hear this stuff like oh, you know, there's all this emotional release which you know There are other ways to get that the um, I guess is it always painful is the question? Does it need to be painful? His statement is pretty and pretty severe Pull let's pull roughing outside because I'm not a rougher But let's just say that mobilizing your tissues doesn't have to be painful In fact, it's likely that you'll experience some discomfort But let's talk about a couple guideposts for you Number one, you always have to be able to take a full breath Right, so if I'm mobilizing you or you're mobilizing yourself and you suddenly stop breathing You're going too deep So an easy way for you is to say hey, do I have can I breathe here number two?

2:42:49I like to have volitional contraction So if I'm mobilizing someone or someone's doing something I should be able to flex them out I should have control over that if the pain or depression is putting too much load on the system where I literally lose neuromuscular control What am I doing? Right and then you know those two pieces can I take a breath here? Do I have control here? Those go a long way to keeping me in the bounds and then we tend to not work on a tissue longer than five minutes This because I want to get the rest of it tomorrow and if you give me 10 minutes of work That's incredible We like to put the soft tissue work before we go to bed And what we found was that we had better adherence No one's doing anything productive in the 10 minutes before they go to the bedroom Number two Like a child when you put a child to bed you're like first we take a bath and reread the book and then we go to bed Right your brain is like I know it comes next.

2:43:40So if you do this rolling or on your some soft tissue work self -massage You are training your brain to know what comes next We find that when people have engaged in massage or self -massage They don't stand up and want to fight anyone. They're very relaxed if you've ever gone to a spot and had a massage You don't go out and snatch or get into a fight afterwards. You're so chill, bro So we found it's a great way to as Jill Miller says switch on the off switch That's a beautiful way of talking about that How do I tell myself to shift out of this you know fight or flight into coming down Five minutes per body part start anywhere on the leg start any what stiff what's asking can I breathe can I contract Oh, you're gonna see that that's a real simple way to start getting some input and not all your tissues are the same If you come to me with knee pain I'm gonna want to be able to look at your range your positions But I'm also gonna want to be able to stay on your quads.

2:44:34I mean my full body weight and if you can't take that I'm calling that incomplete and those people out there who are gonna be like whoa that's heavy duty You have not worked with my population who have monster thighs on our thick and fiber on it and it takes real weight So we all have different sensitivities But if I respect your ability to take a breath and contract then all the sudden we're we're we're Upregulating what I recommend you go to Thailand You get a time massage from a 65 -year -old master woman who is weighs 109 pounds And when she is working on your quads and you tap out she's like no, I'm not done here if you felt your quads You're gonna realize how low the bar is all right um Heat and cold you were one of the first people that told me hey listen colds great cold plunges cold showers are great for shifting your state for resilience training It's fun.

2:45:28It's fun I swam with lareds pool this morning. Did you pull cold laps? It's fun. I'm gonna put in quotation marks. Yeah, it's sometimes it's type two fun It definitely will shift one's state for many hours afterwards for reasons we now understand But you were one of the first people to point out to me that For injuries oftentimes it's better to refuse the tissue and that heat sometimes perhaps is the more favorable tool if you had to pick one so What you I think you even talked about that there is research to show that cold water immersion Can attenuate training effects if done in the six to eight hours after hypertrophy and strength training because of its potent anti -inflammatory properties prevent some of the inflammation that would prompt the adaptation response and put simply If your goal is bigger muscles and getting stronger don't do immersion -based deliberate cold exposure in the six to eight hours After your training Find to do it on other days find to do it beforehand in fact athletes at Stanford do that on the basis of a lot of work from Craig heller and others Find it not doing it all if you don't want to do it again.

2:46:41I'm not a I'm not a I'm not gonna die on the sword of cold plunging But it can attenuate or even prevent those adaptations, but at other times it's a great tool for reducing inflammation shifting one's mental and physical state in their Great direction look it always sucks to get in the thing the whole point is you feel much better when you get out Then you did before you ever got in so that's the simplest way to put it I'm a middle -aged guy who wanted to be the best middle -aged mountain biker in my neighborhood He is my timing of my plunge Going to affect my ability to be that Meteorically no so stop it What people are like wins the optimal time.

2:47:21I'm like wins it work for you Does is that first thing in the morning juliette found that if she got hot and plunged into the night she was like Woken up and fired up and ready to come not going to sleep now And I get hot and cold hot and cold and it's like someone hits the emergency break, right? So first of all wins it work for you Right Second all if there is a performance concern we try to put it as far away from training as we can that's what we say Training the evening plunge before if you like you've trained the in the morning plunge the evening like it cold That's cool But what you hinted at is the same reasons why we don't ice injuries Because it limits our body's ability to To heal so it rate limits and it might do it by Phase of constriction it your body eventually by is going to warm up anyway So one of the things we like to say is your body either heals at the rate of a human being Or it heals slower So there's no such thing as a fast healer you're just oh you're really good at healing at the rate of human physiology And the rest of us are doing dumb things that are limit rate limiting our healing nutrition sleep Right when we are talking about anyone after surgery or injury Our benchmark in the line of the sand is eight hours of laying in bed without looking at your phone That's minimum And I don't care if you're sleeping because resting is the next best thing But I can't actually understand inputs and outputs and let me be super clear if you're trying to grow a body Learn a skill change your body composition get stronger heal That all rhymes with eight hours.

2:48:50We look seven is our minimum And of course you're human being you're gonna get by I was stressed out last night I want to come on to this show with my friend Andrew and do a good job like I didn't get great sleep But I'm a human being. I'm still going to show up So what's nice then Is we can start to say okay? What can we control in terms of managing and up regulating boosting maximal healing rate for humans and it turns out cold water may Not be the best icing something might suppress prostagland and release right which means that you can think of it as you have these circulating stem cells And again, sorry everyone get this just very cursory and we need the chemical Signals from the injured damaged tissue to call those things to be but if I ice that and suppress that Those some of those cells can go swinging on past.

2:49:37There was a great study. I saw a million years ago And it looked at ibuprofen usage in Australian military tactical athletes who had bad ankle sprains and Those athletes who are given ibuprofen which does the same thing as ice suppress this prostagland and release right cuts off some of those chemical signals were back faster than Then their counterparts who did not have the ibuprofen but they had chronic ankle instability Because they did not have a sufficient healing response because they had shut that healing response down So what we find is Look your body will wait until you warm us back up But if you think you're gonna do angioneogenesis and make new capillaries and modulate all these things by slapping a Non -specific ice pad for a non -specific amount of time over a non -specific tissue You gotta be kidding me and so it's really Mickey Mouse does ice help for margaritas that are warm.

2:50:31Yes Open heart surgery. Yes, right? Waking you up in the morning. Waking you up in the morning Hey, I have a kid who needs a placebo. I can numb that thing and give my kids some placebo. I think that's great Definitely can work for pain control because as soon as you're numb you can't feel anything But what's gonna happen when you pull that thing off? We're gonna come back so we have found that we have much better and again since instead of saying That's bad We're turning out and saying we have so many better tools now to manage congestion Because that's really what we're trying to do with ice and healing is we're trying to stop Swelling right but is swelling a mistake By the body and the chances are it's not really a mistake again Two and a half million years of evolution this stuff's pretty awesome But what we know is failure to move and evacuate that swelling is a problem So when we get people on non -foticking muscle contraction NMS devices like the H wave or something like that We find that we can actually De -conjests and keep moving in controlled ways And we have much better clinical outcomes than we do if we ice what about heating pads hot water bottles Son of do you sit in the sauna?

2:51:38Yes, I do love the song how often are you in the song? Whenever I can you know and sometimes it's short sessions and sometimes it's super hot sessions and Sometimes I just get hot and cold a couple times and I try Like you said earlier I'm not after some specific adaptation response The sauna is a great way for us to chill out and hang out and sometimes we're bored and we got to make dinner or move on So I you know, I try to sauna if there's anything I do I saw a lot Bigger the engine the bigger the brakes then that's for me. It's such a big break. You mentioned layered I've seen layered a drag the assault bike into the sauna something most people probably shouldn't do because they would die of Hyperthermia, but that was strepo.

2:52:18It's the worst place on earth It's a it's an interesting tool though the heat. I find that if I get the sauna uncomfortably hot and then force myself to breathe super slowly only through my nose So that I don't actually feel like a burning sensation on the inside of my nostrils and I just do that for You know 10 15 minutes that it's wonderful stress resilience training But very different than the cold plunge where you can either muscle through it or distract yourself or whatever in the heat You know your heart rate's going up and there's this temptation to I'm like um to follow that heart rate toward a more elevated stress state and so I find that you can get Very very hot.

2:53:02Obviously be safe about this folks But still maintain a lot of calm and I think it's a wonderful tool But you have to kind of work at it and I enjoy this by the way so people are probably here you go again Like why not just enjoy the sauna But I like to listen to Gregorian chance or something in there and do this like very like how even and calm can I stay Oh, I love that at 215 or 220 Um, and I wear I wear the cap so those higher heats don't yeah register to the brain You will drive yourself out eventually your brain is gonna just I was drove and drives me on the sauna As I wretch I actually like feel like I'm gonna vomit because I've gotten so hot my brain stem is like bro You can just override so I'm like moot gotta get that moot and I get out of the sauna And then you wait one of the reasons I love the cold so much Which up in our cold our pool or our cold plunge is that I can get back in the sauna right Right, it's the contrast of I try to do it once a week sauna cold sauna cold I think that's so great once a week You know again not training for any specific thing except to be able to go back to jacos house Because I did sauna at jacos house with some family members of his and friends And I think they wanted to see when I would tell him the question So they went I think they cranked that thing like 22230 and they caught He got me on this they're I ended up down on the floor You know and they were they were teasing me because it's obviously cooler down on the floor Then it is up top and so they call that the Huerman spot the wimpy spot, but um Yeah, he's a beast with the sauna everyone.

2:54:29It's not a contest and It is it is in the willing cow's hold. I'll tell you it absolutely is one of the things I like about the heat and the cold Is that it informs me about my readiness state? Because just like my CO2 tolerance my breath holds are very short when I'm stressed and under recovered My heat tolerance drops dramatically and so does my cold tolerance It's easier to pick up really fast. I start shivering right away. I'm like, whoa I've been in here for 30 seconds. I'm already shivering I'm like, huh another piece of data says maybe I need to make it a 70 % day in the gym and move I don't have to take a day off We believe jillin and I believe in this thing called desire to train we wake up every day like you Probably self -medicated with some exercises kids, right?

2:55:15And we we start thinking about what we're gonna exercise what we're gonna do we're gonna ride our bikes What are we gonna where we live like wait when we wake up? We start thinking about when we're gonna do it And we wake up on some days and it's not there And what we ask ourselves is not there. Why is not there? Is it me? I should be there. We should go train anyway But we really try to listen to that voice and when there's no desire to train It's really strange how correlates with crap heat tolerance crap CO2 tolerance crap cold tolerance And I think it's a nice way of understanding yourself from sort of a third -party objective measure Especially as you get good at this you're like wow really suck today.

2:55:47Yeah, I love that. I think um assessing one's degree of kind of forward center of mass for for effort is great I'm borrowing this analogy from somebody else. I didn't come up with this He said you're with all things you're either you know back on your heels flat -footed or Forward center of mass and I think we've heard a lot about you know trying to encourage ourselves to always be forward center of mass What I'm hearing today is that great to do that sometimes great sometimes to back off but to just explore the full range of For lack of a better way to put it sort of emotional range of motion, you know And remember ultimately all this is supposed to be additive right and it's supposed to inoculate me by creating a framework that makes more durable My body and my my my relationships.

2:56:36I mean we we didn't even talk about the fact that the sauna is like It's just glue for people It allows people to come together I think one of the things I've noticed with my male friends is that it gives us a place like once a week We get together because it's so hot. We also we're also When we talk barrel we talk with our friends and we kind of share stories and can be talk about our lives And so it creates a framework for that and if that was the benefit of the sauna I'm in just that alone right that my wife and I feel more connected after taking a sauna together I'm like well who cares about the heat shot proteins and all simers?

2:57:11That's probably important too But I like having a lot of bottom things and I think we it's easy for us to sort of So hyper science and hyper tactic things that we forget the whole point of the brain is to be around other brains That's it. That's why the brain exists and then those brains go do red shit in the world together And sometimes it's that simple and when we start throwing that filter on it becomes a lot more sustainable I'm not interested in being 110. I'm interested in being durable enough to take the hits on the way to 110 I love that Some of my best friendships have been forged in the sauna.

2:57:44That's true right not by pushing ourselves necessarily just I just become the thing. Yeah, it's so cool I know that some of my New Zealand teams have a cover They call it recovery and sometimes they'll share I have a cover ceremony and drink a little cover and then jump in the sauna and But it really binds to the boys, you know, they really Creates a downregulation of facts. I mean, it's so you know, I think Again my own bias because I love this stuff is that I think all of it is about physical So if we took a sort of macro step back We could say is what does your physical practice look like tell me about your physical practice?

2:58:25Well, I get up and move my body and I try to eat a fruit and some protein for I get out the door and I walk all day long And I try not to sit in one period of place for all long period of time and then I get home And if I'm lucky enough to exercise I do and then I sat on the floor and I rolled a little bit That's a full practice You walked you got sunlight you you know, I mean and that and I think is a much better way of thinking about This versus sort of let me add another line of code tier of Programming where you're now you're doing three sets of ten of this thing What are your thoughts on nutrition?

2:58:57You seem to be pretty Balanced about this before we started recording you were talking about some meatloaf recipes. That sound pretty amazing Clearly you love food. I'm the best at meatloaf, but I may be seven out of eleven times bamboo terraced bench champion I'm gonna tattoo but it's fine You enjoy food. I love food So you're not you like to eat and you cook a bit as well Most people feel I sink kind of overwhelmed Yeah, the discussion is on nutrition now. We're trying to get a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight Which I subscribe to but if I'm supposed to spread that out across the day Sometimes I'm doing that sometimes I'm not I like fruits and vegetables You feel like a failure because you didn't have a ground.

2:59:40I mean honestly if it can feel for people like oh, I didn't do it No, I think if people make getting high quality high protein to calorie ratio foods as the foundation of their Diet and then eating some vegetables and eating some fruit whoa bro. What about the peels? You're gonna kill people And then I love that smile. That's dang. I'll eat the orange peel if it's a really good orange I will people who know me. I'm I've gotten some wide eyes. It meals where I'll take the lemons out of my drink I'll just eat the whole thing down. I don't care someone will tell me why it's gonna kill me But I don't eat the seeds.

3:00:11Well, I'll eat the peel too um So some vegetables fruit and then some starches you know per energetic requirements and or real life like I'm not gonna stay away from the sourdough bread because I don't need to starch that I'll have a little bit of it like you know I feel like we've lost our rational approach to eating Because people feel these you know these quantifiable metrics of you know calories and protein. They're important clearly but I've always known you to be somebody who's very balanced about the occasional ice cream Yes, steak, but also vegetables. I mean A. Why do you think that the nutrition conversation has gotten so distracted Even contentious and B.

3:00:52What do you do and you know if you were gonna raise a kid you've raised kids If you're gonna raise a kid and and say here's what like Balance nutrition looks like to you. Yeah, okay? Not calling you nutrition. I said to you How do you see this picture? What I want to point out is that if we're gonna have a conversation remember my My real job day job is high performance I'm gonna have to talk about body composition I'm gonna have to talk about fueling Do you have enough carbs on board to do what we're gonna do? Are you eating to recover to reduce the session cost right? How do we minimize the sort of the physiologic cost of this training this competition?

3:01:26And that's all wrapped around nutrition nutrition. I already hinted at I'm gonna have to talk and Ultimately ask you to a blood panel and look it's make sure that you have everything on board so that your tissues are tissues And can handle the loading or prescribing them. So I didn't want to get into nutrition Beacuse at all because it's always about body composition for me. And I'm like that's the most boring reason Mike we Sean Stevenson Wrote a beautiful book about Creating a table culture and a culture on eating for your family So for me the functional unit of change is the household That's the place where I want to make and put all my energy in time That's how we'll transform society one household at a time But sitting down with your kids the research around that eating with your kids like twice or three times a week is phenomenal right like Is beautiful?

3:02:15I have to become more nuanced because if I have a team I'm working with Like we had a tournament Two weeks ago at Stanford we played four games And the less that's four collegiate nationally ranked teams that were playing at bad asses How do I Feel those women? How do I get them? What do they want to eat? What makes them feel good? What makes them feel bad? How do we balance all of that like I found out that putting Food on a table with a table cloth increased calories again as a high performance for me I'm like how are the ways that I can be thinking about this from a Practical standpoint my personal thing is that we focus on trying to create this has been really useful for Jolenein in objective measure point eight to one grams of protein, which means I don't measure anymore I'm per pound a body now 51 years old per pound body weight So what does that mean means that I really try to prioritize protein every meal super simple And I try not to eat one protein.

3:03:15I try to eat all the proteins, right? That's probably better. I try not to choose personally very fatty proteins because my genetics don't really support it If I want to see triglycerides and and things go through the roof then I'll you know watch me eat eggs and butter and steak like keto gives me diarrhea So what I'll say is I try to go for leaner proteins there And then on the fruits and vegetables Because I think we have a real problem with not enough micronutrients again talking about tissue health and definitely not enough fiber Those are huge problems and if I get 800 grams of fruits and vegetables This is a nutrition strategy a promoter -yre friend E .C.

3:03:53Sincowski of at Optimize Me Nutrition She put this 800 gram challenge based on some research And it changed everything because suddenly I was I was like oh my god. I got to eat more food I have to eat more fruits and vegetables and I was stuffing myself with fruits and vegetables Getting enough protein. I was like, I guess there's no room for a cookie You know and what I really liked about that it was agnostic about your cultural preferences It didn't matter if you're a vegan Didn't matter for vegetarian. It didn't matter if you're carnivore you want to do carnivore plus berries Doctor self -right out It gave people permission to have their food identities But it also met the met the minimums and then we can dose up and dose down based on what your performance needs are And this is 800 grams not of carbohydrate.

3:04:35This is 800 800 grams of four big apples Gotcha a banana is like 80 to 100 grams Okay, yeah, if you want to be real dangerous you ate eight eight bananas that I you could die I mean you should you could die and um a big salad with the ales cucumber tomato and probably probably two to 300 grams Okay, so then you'd also want to get some fruit maybe another that maybe some Christopher's vegetables etc. Check this out again I'm just gonna do some boy math here Starbucks cookie delicious Really 300 calories. I'm gonna call it delicious, right A pound of cherries is 230 calories So eat a pound of cherries and tell me you're like, ah still on something sweet a pound of melon was like 220 calories a pound of melon so Chlorically not very dense Right, but nutritionally super dense so we're end up loading a ton of more food on and it really does prioritize those things and from a performance standpoint One of our friends is this incredible nutritionist at at Michigan football Abigail is amazing there and she will tell me about How she's using nutrition as intervention for sports performance and she'll have men come up to her and say Abigail I pooped today and they're she's like, yeah, that's great You know you should poop every day and they're like no, no, you're just saying I I pooped yesterday too And it's the first time these kids have pooped consecutively They don't poop regularly and I think Again, if I'm just trying to get out in the weeds and talk about what's normal and not normal We should talk about you didn't eat fiber and she's like wait until you poop twice in one day And they were like that's crazy.

3:06:17I've never in my whole life And what was the difference is they started eating fruits and vegetables and fiber And when we start to create those benchmarks It's a lot easier for me to see inputs and outputs and then we can argue about Can you choke down 100 grams of carbs an hour because you're in my elite cyclist You know, I think you'd be shocked at how my a lot of my athletes have changed their relationship around food Because it serves their needs It's not their identity around control and it's something that you and I've been very cautious of Because if you have two daughters to speaking we're really concerned about creating dysfunctional patterns or relationships to food Because in this fitness space it can be real gnarly Yeah, I see the progression from you know sitcoms of the type that we grew up on to reality TV shows to social media where social media can do so much good Education wise, etc.

3:07:10Connection But it's basically a reality TV show that everyone's been able to cast themselves in if they want And certain characters are casting their you know, physics certain figures are casting their outrageous behavior And you know, we're so all in this reality TV show called social media I think that's really the best way to describe it You know when people start to feel like oh wow these people are getting attention for this reason or that reason it Created gravitational pull toward people behaving a certain way and then obviously some of that can be really self -destructive Do you win health?

3:07:45I mean, this is a great question. I asked people so like you shredded down super dysfunctional eating Can't go out and eat with friends you don't drink anything with calories like it's really gnarly to be hyper lean And then what I'll say is when you took your shirt off did you win Instagram did you win? Because you got another 60 -70 years on this planet. How does that work? We don't really die. We'll manipulate macros to take weight off put weight off players in season out of season You know, we'll have we'll have really good athletes say I think I should lose four pounds next two weeks for this thing And I'm like hold up.

3:08:18I'm not going to put you in another stressor when our we're trying to like let's go ahead and talk about body composition after the season but ultimately when we really get people on board with How food has the potential to enrich their relationships? How fun it is to cook how fun it is to prep how fun is to serve other people Then we have this really different relationship with fueling and that's that's really remarkable But it is really easy to say I won and I'm like okay, so this 90 day fast. There are so many Fitness things out there where they start with a fast or brutal calorie restriction And I'm like that's your jam to get people lean fast.

3:09:00It's just to slam off the calories Like we know what's gonna happen How many people have done some kind of 30 -day 90 -day thing and the next day? It's like they're off the rails So if you're doing some body recomp and then you're off the rails for me I'm like I don't think it was very good because I got this a long season we're playing I think it's I have to be careful here because I realize this gets into Some issues when I did an episode about Anorexia I learned that first of all anorexia has existed for centuries This idea that it's more prominent now with social media actually the numbers don't bear out The what does bear out is that it is the most deadly the most deadly by Far of all the psychiatric illnesses.

3:09:42Oh shit It leads to death in in in a far greater percentage of cases than any other psychiatric illness including bipolar where people often commit suicide a great great great Much higher percentage of people commit suicide who are by bipolar etc So it's a really serious thing and yet we assume that social media has made that worse But there's this now cluster of all these different eating disorders that don't qualify as full -blown Anorexia in erossa sort of like ADHD now we understand people are having attention deficit issues that might not be Clinical ADHD, but that cluster around it and like people's adults and children's inability to hold their attention on an idea or topic for any appreciable amount of time.

3:10:23So it's a very serious thing. I love that today You've talked about enjoying your training Like really enjoying your training it all aspects the resistance part the cardiovascular part the mobility part You know that in the evening getting down on the floor also enjoying eating With people enjoying the sauna. I mean, I think you know people see the big guy that you are the amazing track record You have a working with all these incredible athletes and you're quite a complicated athlete yourself And I think this is the first time for me anyway that I realize I get you are Thinking about how to make this whole thing pleasurable and mesh it with real life Which I'm realizing now shouldn't come as a surprise because you have a family a flourishing family in addition to a flourishing Business with the ready state and and so forth.

3:11:07I think if there's one message that really comes through Over and over again. Say it's like how can you make fitness and nutrition and health Part of your life But not let it take over your life for your mind in a way that isn't healthy Yeah Thank you for that and if that's coming across at all I think we're we're doing a better job and I would say certainly temperate as I've gotten more reasonable You know, I think we get older and you can see a little bit more of the horizon and you you know You start to wrap your hands around how are we going to solve these problems in these different places?

3:11:40And what is sustainable? You know, I really think that that's you know We see quick inputs and outputs that are high levels of sports performance and someone takes it again I want to take those lessons and Transmute them to my own household and it really sustainable fun way the nutrition piece is such a Dangerous one and young right now july and I are very obsessed with youth sports and spending time with seeing if we can improve that Experience for families so they come out unharmed and And you know reds relative energy deficiency in sport You know is where we start to see that kids are not eating enough to fuel activity and their growing body Some will taste and it's really hard on their physiologies and we starts to show up with lost Periods it starts to show up with stress fractures, right?

3:12:29And we start to see sort of this some degradation And sort of the the body's tissues, but can really crash a lot of problems And you know stasis Sims is probably the first person to really put it on my radar of hey your physiococh I need you to become an expert with the people that you're working with you know Are you eating enough support and and I see the some of the elite women I work with elite women Really battle this is what the body I need to be paid and to win world championships And that's not the body that people want on the Instagram and you know, you know Should I have a salad after this training?

3:13:03I'm like we just play for three hours. No, you're not gonna eat a salad Like go get this big ass burrito, and then we'll talk about your salad next, you know So it sounds like the athletes are under eating yes My understanding anyway the statistics also under fueling which I know it's confusing But you know potentially not thinking about food at the right times And within the general population of non -athletes especially youth however it seems that people are Overconsuming calories, so there seems to be two two populations clustering out here We have a this reminds we have a rule at our house for dinner.

3:13:37We have a three vegetable rule This is from one we work with Margaret Garvey who Cooks a protein whatever that is and has also three vegetables and that's where she starts And we have I had one daughter who is like gourmet chef Georgia is just the total badass, you know Gee, and then I've Caroline who is the pickiest human being on the like isn't brown on my day, you know And and she's getting better, but when we had three vegetables This suddenly what we saw was that she might eat one right and we could start to have exposure But I think if we crowd out some of the because I we don't want to have a restrictive house, right?

3:14:12But you know if we crowd out some of the other foods We found that it was a lot easier for us to say this is what we're eating and we eat this together as a family And then if there's other food. I mean your teenagers are gonna leave the house and eat whatever they want Just just be clear everybody. So you might as well stuff them with the good stuff at home I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about supplements um These days we hear a lot about creating creating creating creating I I like creating been taking it for years We'll occasionally do a wash out where I just kind of let let a bunch of water out of my vibe Why not and then get back to it?

3:14:46I won't do for any specific reason. I just do it. I travel forget to bring creatine So yeah, but most of the time I'm taking five to 10 grams a day. Okay. Um, we've heard about the body benefits the brain benefits For athletes and just quote -unquote exercises the typical person listening to this podcast Um, do you recommend creatine? What are what are some of the things that in your household? I'm getting this picture And I've been in your home and I I will say that the spirit in your home is a wonderful one um Brian McKenzie and I showed up more or less unannounced at one point and like There's it's uh, it's a delightful thing like people's spirits are it's a space station It's a space station of stoke and like you want to be a part of it and you can come in.

3:15:25Thank you It's uh, it's a great environment and um, it was very warming to see that and and the way that you embrace all these different aspects of life and your It's busy and it's hectic and it's fun and people care for one another in their direct with one Another but in a way that's really supportive. It's really in my mind a great model for for a home and it's really uh It stayed with me and it's really a pleasure to reflect on it. Yeah, well, it's a team effort in there for sure so um, I'll just ask this What supplements do you think are If not necessary then highly desirable for most people and then for athletes and maybe because we get this question a lot now Especially after stacy came on the podcast for your the female athlete to work with In particular are there supplements that um add on to that that initial batch So I think we we can divide these things of like Into food like things right and then sort of perform yeah like way protein.

3:16:20It's just a protein replacement high -high quality high Protein to calorie ratio that's right and if you don't handle way like my athletes I'm like let me introduce to these vegetarian proteins and that's because you're having a hard time Timing your meals or just getting enough protein because you sometimes you just don't feel like it so great great utilization there um for Caroline She gets omega's at night because she doesn't want to have any accidental fish burp at school She's a teenager so she takes them for she goes to bed and We're really interested in brain health and there's some early research and again not my expertise that I've heard of right about talked people about That vitamin D creatine and amegas might help attenuate symptoms of concussion If they they get hit right or so post -pre so for those things are on carol and she gets creatine every day She gets an omega every day and she gets vitamin D and some of that is probably this enough vitamin D during the summer Because we I could pull it out But we live in northern climbs and they're indoors and there's good research supplement I think Dan Garner had a great piece just talking about Vitamin D supplementation in the military and the decrease of like risk of of of fractures in the foot just with vitamin D so That's the start for me I take a good multi because I'm like I'm just gonna cover the basis you know and um Then you can look I think the next sort of valence of interest is have you had a blood panel on your vitamin B levels Is there anything we need to do based on your environment or your genetics?

3:17:54And then I think it's real in the weeds past that and I again play around with that One of my super smart friends was like I think you should take a statin a small dose statin Once a week and I was like all right So I was like better take some co -cutin with that. It's an experiment. I'm running right down sides are low I'm getting my blood panels talked to my physician But so co -cutin is on the menu for me just to make sure I don't have anything And so I think suddenly What we should be looking at is how do I round out? My family doesn't eat fish so we're not getting enough some amegas from those sources And no one will eat walnuts, but I'm the only one eat walnuts So you know how do I round out my nutrition with some supplementation and is there a benefit for some other things That with my genetics or what's what's going on like J star has mutated empty if H .R.

3:18:50Gene right And so we are always watching be vitamins for her Right, so we can't let her right poor mess later. They're second. J stars is wife. That's right. Sorry. J stizzle See you guys as a gene awesome relationship you guys have poke fun in one another you're clearly Awesome companions to one another and you do great great work together I am the broken anchor of the relationship. I like so she is a you know, what's really interesting Is I have I'm a little bit like you I think I'm excitable. I get obsessed with things Super fun go down rabbit holes. I like to experiment and J star is like the true north Like no, that sounds fishy.

3:19:29We're not doing that, you know, like I came home one time and I was like you know what? This cow's milk is out of here our family is only drinking goat milk I only had the best goat milk. I just had the best goat milk and she was like sure that's gonna And I gave some goat milk to Georgia and she's like hooked it across her and she's a baby And then I drank the goat milk and like vomit into the sink and I had goat milk on my lip and I And Juliet just is so patient by saying huh I wonder if that's a good idea. I wonder if you will stick around so she's the rudder She is 100 % the rudder. She is a three -ton world champion everyone She's a robot cow and she is my training partner.

3:20:05She's the greatest training partner I've ever had We use training as another way of spending time together. I love it Thanks for sharing a little bit of the picture of your home. It matches exactly my experience and Chaos a little bit of chaos and a ton of love And I've been quoting him a lot lately. I cannot take any credit for this but Navale who's you know famous on various podcasts that he says you know what what are we really shooting for in life? It's a fit energetic body. This is Navale not me by the way. He said fit energetic body a calm mind and Resources we don't have resources and a home full love.

3:20:48So I don't know from yeah I think that's the list then the rest of your life working on those and you're gonna have a really It's coming really fun and I just want to remind people you hear me say that again that this should all be enjoyable And it is fun to track It's also you know, which which devices are my wearing right now? I'm not wearing a single device You know because I want to feel and sometimes I track and sometimes they don't track and how am I feeling and Ultimately everything is really coming down to How do I come to understand my own process and my interaction with the world process?

3:21:22And I think I'm getting better at 51 of knowing I don't need six cookies And I really need to get more fruits and vegetables and sleep and I don't need a device to tell me that Love it Well Kelly doctor star at oh Thank you so much for coming on here today and sharing with us so much wisdom We covered so much you covered so much. I mean pelvic floor fascia cold heat Movement patterns you give us a ton of practical tools getting down on the floor sit stand and on and on um But a small portal into the vast amount of knowledge you have in that head of yours and I just have to say that you know It's been a delight today because These little bits have come through about who I know you to be in the in the rest of the world This is the real world we just happen to have microphones in front of us the rest of the world And you've been at this a while this business of trying to help People figure out best ways to move how to be a better athlete how to you know, improve one's fitness how to take a rational fun hardworking approach at times But also fun playful recreational approach to This really key aspect of our health and many key aspects of our health So I just want to thank you for coming here today for doing the work that you do and um, you know You are one of the real ones as they say my brother You know you just and you and you walk the walk you're strong you can go far you have fun doing it your Great husband and dad and you've been a great friend to me So thanks for coming on here.

3:22:52Let's get you back again and um just thanks for being you my pleasure Anytime and thanks all the great human uh people that make this thing possible. It's it's really a thing Thanks for brother. Thank you Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with dr. Kelly starrett to learn more about Kelly starrett And the work that he does with his wife Juliet starrett at the ready state as well as to find links to dr Excellent books. Please see the show note captions If you enjoyed today's episode with dr. Kelly starrett and you'd like to learn more about the science of exercise physiology And the protocols that can best serve you in your fitness athletic and other goals You can go to hubermanlab .com Enter the word fitness and galpin g -a -l -p -i -n into the search function And from there you will find links in all formats youtube apples modify to the series that we did on exercise with dr Andy galpin who is a true world expert in this topic and it covers all the things you could possibly imagine Related to fitness and exercise to meet your fitness and exercise goals if you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast Please subscribe to our youtube channel That's a terrific zero cost way to support us In addition, please follow the podcast on both Spotify and Apple and on both Spotify and Apple You can leave us up to a five star review Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode That's the best way to support this podcast if you have questions or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the huberman lab podcast Please put those in the comments section on youtube.

3:24:19I do read all the comments for those of you that haven't heard I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book It's entitled protocols and operating manual for the human body This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years And that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience and it covers protocols for everything from sleep To exercise to stress control protocols related to focus and motivation And of course I provide the scientific Substantiation for the protocols that are included the book is now available by pre -sale at protocol's book calm There you can find links to various vendors you can pick the one that you like best again The book is called protocols and operating manual for the human body If you're not already following me on social media I am huberman lab on all social media platforms So that's instagram x formerly known as twitter threads facebook and linkedin and on all those platforms I just got science and science related tools some of which overlaps with the content of the huberman lab podcast But much of which is distinct from the content on the huberman lab podcast again That's huberman lab on all social media platforms If you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter our neural network newsletter is a zero -cost monthly newsletter That includes podcast summaries as well as protocols in the form of brief one to three -page pdf's Those one to three -page pdf's cover things like deliberate heat exposure deliberate cold exposure We have a foundational fitness protocol We also have protocols for optimizing your sleep dopamine and much more again All available completely zero -cost simply go to huberman lab .com go to the menu tabs scroll down to newsletter and provide your email We do not share your email with anybody Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with dr kelly starrett and last but certainly not least Thank you for your interest in science