2718: Should You Train Like an Athlete?

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1:47Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right, exercise, it's good for you. Builds muscle, burns body fat. It definitely contributes to longevity and better health. But what about athletic training? What about workouts that help you develop athletic skill? Does everybody need to include this? Or only people who want to play sports on the weekend? We're going to talk about that today. Athletic training. Does everybody need to do it? Let's do it. Only if you're cool. I know what Justin's going to say. I feel like you caught me running yesterday or something.

2:21Well, this was actually. Or should I say attempting to run? Hey, this was inspired by the story you told me because I went through. First, tell everybody what you were saying because I had similar experience. Oh, so, okay. Admittedly, right, and we go through this all the time where we have good conversation and dialogue about something, and I go, you know what? I've neglected that long enough, or that's something I need to include in my routine. There's been a whole host of things since we've been doing this show for 10 years, from windmills to specific mobility drills to better assessments to deeper.

2:55I mean, you name it. We all go through this, right? And lately, a lot of the talk around just endurance, stamina, and just athleticism. And it's really been an afterthought in my training for quite some time, for sure the longest period of my life. And I'm like, you know, I need to incorporate. Now, through the last experience of so many injuries, i'm like okay i need to like ease my way in so i'm not like i'm gonna go out and go run some miles right yeah i'm like you know i'm gonna go for a walk on the treadmill tomorrow or yesterday right into a trot and then and then i'm gonna jog a few times just to get re-acclimated and start the adaptation process right yep and so basically i did a 30 minute walk and at every i don't know seven minute mark or so i did a nice little 30 second to a minute long you know jog that turned into a little bit faster jaw.

3:46I wouldn't call it a sprint, but somewhere in between. Prancing. I mean, never in my life have I ever found myself concentrating so much on running to the point where I had, you know, David Weck? Yeah. I'm going to get you some of those. I kid you not. I was doing it in my head. Step, step, step. And watching my feet. just concentrating and every step felt like i had concrete shoes on and i was like oh my god how wild is that and how quickly you can feel like you're a healthy fit person because i still would consider myself that uh maybe not peak shape me but definitely i still strength train i'm still so stronger than the average guy i still keep my body fat percentage in check and eat a good diet uh exercise regularly and you know you you you consider fit in my head because i come from an athletic background as a kid and even in my young adulthood i still think of myself that way yeah but then the reality is i go to do something like that i'm like oh no i did i completely have lost my years in between it's just like it's it's really wild atrophies like crazy You don't have that skill right now.

5:08You hit the nail on the head, Justin. I fall into this trap all the time. What we've done or what a lot of us do, a lot of us, and I say us, is like people who work out. And what does that look like for a lot of people? You go to the gym. You work out a few days a week. You take your steps. So you've got good health and fitness in the sense of you've got some stamina, you've got some strength, and you feel good. And there's nothing wrong with it. That's good. but what we've done is we've divorced that from skill so there's i have decent stamina and i have decent strength but because i stopped practicing this particular movement pattern i lost the skill and this is what i fall into all the time so you know you may have the stamina to run a mile yeah but if you don't practice running you lose the ability to run yeah and what it feels like you explained it very well yeah awkward yeah feels like what am i doing the leg strength you know You got the power.

6:05You can actually recruit the muscle in terms of being able to generate that type of movement. But actually having that all sequenced correctly and fire at the right timing and all that, that requires practice dedication. It's so funny to think that in my mid-40s, I can very easily, even deconditioning me, can get underneath a barbell back squat and put 225 on my back and organize my muscles. to move that weight with no problem, no fear, no awkwardness whatsoever. But doing something that's fundamentally running, just my own body weight and for a short period of time, now feels awkward, like wild to feel that transition in my life and realize like, wow, like, and I know we talked about this with Joe DeFranco.

6:53I remember we had a great conversation with him about things like, you know, jump boxes and things and why we should do that even as we age. And, you know, it was a great comment, another one of those times where I went on a kick of doing stuff like that afterwards. But to feel awkward running, I'm not sure I can recall a moment in my life, another moment in my life where I took off to run and genuinely felt awkward. I mean, I feel like that was such an ingrained skill for so many decades in my life that you go to do it and you go, wow. And this is, I think, the key why everybody should train, quote unquote, just oversimplified like an athlete.

7:33I think there are fundamental skills you just don't want your body to forget. Because what happens, just like, because we look at muscle, we think, okay, muscle is the machinery that causes movement, which is true. But muscle, the way that it functions is controlled by your central nervous system and your brain. And when you stop practicing a movement pattern or a skill, your brain atrophies or eliminates that skill. Just like if you stop moving a muscle, it would atrophy. If I stop using my legs, my legs would get weak. if I stopped practicing walking, I could strength train all the time. I could have strong legs.

8:07If I stopped walking for 10 years, but worked out my legs, when I went to go walk 10 years from now, it would feel strange and awkward. So the question is, what skills do you want to maintain for the rest of your life? I think that's the question you need to ask yourself and then implement some of that training in your workout routine. And I can think of a few, I can think of a few that I personally now feel awkward doing because i don't practice them uh running is one of them yeah uh i think jumping is definitely another one throwing is another one you and i go to throw things with my kid and i used to have a great arm when i was a teenager in my 20s i could i could whip a ball i got a terrible arm now dude i just went through that and a hack which again if we're going to talk about this is like maintain a skill probably not you know a great solution but uh because my son got into lacrosse you have a stick and like i always used to throw the ball for my dogs and then my arm after a while like oh my god my shoulder would kill me and so i started throwing with this um netted stick and it's just like goes way further way less effort i'm like oh my god this is so much better put me out of my misery though you see me throw something like this you know oh yeah push the ball forward oh god put me out of my misery yeah i think it's so true i think it's important though like uh maybe you know right they say you never forget how to ride a bike that's actually not true yeah you might not fall off but if you haven't ridden a bike in a long time you know how it feels when you get back on one i think it's important to practice all these different things because your body forgets how to do them and forgetting how to jump and losing the skill of jumping is strange yeah like you go to jump and you suddenly hit the ground and it's almost like your legs are stiff before you hit the ground it's like oh what is going on having kids, by the way, having little kids at the, at my age, cause I, you know, I had my, my second set of children in older age, it really reveals things to me.

10:01Like, you know, I do the dad hack thing all the time, which a lot of dads do. Cause that's, you know, we like to make things easier. Uh, but you know, if I'm chasing them on the playground, it's like, well, I'm going to be a zombie because I know if I run, I'm going to pretend to be a zombie cause they walked and they're slow. Cause if I run, it starts to feel quite strange. So implementing these things, I mean, I literally was, had this thought, Adam, I'm like, I'm going to start practicing some of these skills. not for fitness. It's not necessarily because I need more endurance to stand around.

10:27Well, over the years, I've been a lot more methodical about if it's been a long period of time, like how I start implementing and reintroducing a lot of the movements. And, and again, I had mentioned when I was at practice and I was just like in the bleachers kind of watching my son do his thing. Like I just started to work on my extension and I'm like doing, you know, heel raises and I'm, you know, moving laterally and I'm rotating and twisting all these mobility type movements, like very slow, methodical, just getting my myself like organized in these poses and everything. Because it's like, I don't recognize those like as quickly as I used to.

11:06It's not something that's like familiar anymore. When it's not familiar, it's like the reintroduction and it's like owning that position. But then now we can start adding acceleration because if you just jump to acceleration, oh my God. That's the greatest realization that I've had is that for the longest time, because it's not like there hasn't been periods of time in my past, in my say 20s and 30s, where maybe I didn't run for a little bit or I didn't play basketball for a little bit or I didn't do one of these things. But then I could literally just reintroduce it and just maybe not go 100 % intensity, but reintroduce it and then I'm like right back where I have to be very methodical about it to your point.

11:43It's like even the thought yesterday was like, I'm not going to just get on the treadmill and just see how far I can run. I was like, I'm going to walk. Yeah. And then I'm gonna have these little 30 second. I started with 30 seconds. Then they turned into like one minute bouts of a, you know, pretty easy jog, slight run. And, you know, and definitely felt like I could do more, but I'm like, I haven't done any of this. I'm going to just, let me see what my body feels like tomorrow. Cause I could feel just the impact even. You know, the best evidence of what we're talking about is when you look at the medical community knows this, when they're dealing with older populations, they know that when they take somebody who's let's say starting to lose their balance that when they move them to a cane that they start to progressively get worse with their balance they know like once we go here there's no your ability to walk without it's going to get much more new appendage that they're leaning on and then when we go from there we're going to go to a walker and then we know once we go to a walker it's going to get even worse and so what the thought process used to be was let's use this as soon as possible now when you talk to uh health care professionals.

12:43They're like, let's see if we can figure out a way to keep you from using this. Because I know once you use this, you're going to decline quite quickly. One of my favorite populations to look at for this is in Okinawa. In Okinawa, they have an aging population and they have really, really good health over there. It's one of those areas that we call blue zones. I know that's contested, but people do very well there in old age. And in many of the traditional homes in okinawa there is no there is no chairs on the ground right there's no chairs yeah and so people in their 90s are still in you know traditional japanese okinawan home you the the dining tables on the floor and you sit on the floor and so these people into their 90s are still every meal sitting on the floor and standing up as a result uh they stay much more mobile and they maintain that ability by the way uh you you're if you're in your 40s and you haven't sat on the floor in a long time you know how uncomfortable it is to suddenly have to sit on the floor you've lost that ability this is why one of my favorite things to introduce to clients that were even in their 40s uh was just simply like turkish get-ups or teaching them how to get up with no hands from the floor yeah and like tell it and i would practice i'd have that conversation my clients like listen of all the things i'm going to teach you all kinds of stuff that's going to be good for you but don't lose this skill like keep just challenge yourself occasionally to do this because once it's gone and you can't do it so hard to work to put the work in to get that back it's not that it's impossible but like the analogy with the cane it's like once you cross over and you become dependent on not the ability to do those things like that this is my worry about the last qual we did when i brought up the ai legs you know the oh yeah oh yeah because i mean a tool like that for somebody who struggles needs a cane and then you could just bolt on this Immediate dependency.

14:30I mean, and then the atrophy of that will be even faster. I mean, it's literally taking all the strength out of an effort out of moving the legs and just, okay, I'll just defer to this thing. And so as crazy as it may sound, the future, I bet we see a ton of people. That lose the ability to walk. That will just be, just have these exoskeletons walking around. And what we'll see is it'll at first be very advanced age. And then before you know it, it'll be people younger and younger and younger. Well, it's just important to understand that there's fitness. uh so strength mobility stamina and then their skill and they're not necessarily the same they definitely they definitely communicate with each other right yeah you gotta have fit you know being strong and mobile and having stamina contributes greatly to your ability to do different skills so i'm not saying that that's not important but practicing those skills is uh just as important in other words if you go to the gym to maintain your fitness and health and you do let's say you pick from 20 exercises and it rotates.

15:27That's a lot. That's a lot of strength training. Most people don't even go through 20 strength training exercises. Let's say you did that and you always did that. Over time, your abilities would shrink, shrink, shrink, shrink to where those abilities that you practice, those 20 exercises and things similar to that are all you can really do well. Anything that's outside of that, you start to lose that ability. This is where the muscle bound myth came from, where you get bodybuilders who are very muscular, who don't have good movement because they train just sagittal plane being very specific. So now, now to the person who's just interested, because we may be, you know, someone may be listening who's fit, wants to look good.

16:09And they're 30. This is not really a concern of theirs right now. One thing to keep in mind is you're losing these skills will eventually impede your ability to develop your body, uh, because your body's only ever going to be as good as it needs to be. And it'll actually challenge it. In fact, it'll start to bump up against what you practice because you lose these other abilities. In other words, not being able to run, uh, does it impact your ability to squat? Even if you practice squats, eventually it will. Eventually it will because there is, uh, there is some crossover there. So yeah, this is like, this for me is a, a topic I've been thinking about because I'm like, I want to improve my stamina.

16:48And so I immediately went to fitness mind, which is what's the easiest thing I can do to build stamina. Like more reps or either more reps or I could get on a, like a bike, right. I could use like an assault bike. Right. Easy. A little more low impact. Yeah. Easy. Get on the drive. I'm going to get lots of stamina, but then I'm like, you know what? It's not going to help me. Uh, run better. Yeah. You'll lose that skill. Yeah. I need to practice. Uh, I need to be able to practice running. and now uh so somebody who's working out a lot they're like how do i add this to my routine i'm already training really hard i don't want to competing signals i don't want this and that you don't do them to work out you do them just to practice the skills so the running isn't like i'm going for a run to work out yeah it's like i'm going to practice uh running i mean i'll tell you my goal my my goal and the the method behind the madness of like how how i started that yesterday was like 100 i could have done more but again it's like i haven't so why so i'll start with just those little you know it's a 30 minute walk with these little intermittent you know one minute jogs and then i'll get to a place where that those one minute jogs get pretty easy and then i'll start pairing them into two minute jogs and then eventually what it'll be is i'll start to work on my mile time you know the first time i run the mile it'll be you know a slow mile probably let it be nine ten minutes to finish the mile and then i'll try and increase that and then over the course of i don't know a couple months i'll have got my mile time now and then as long as I, you know, you know, maybe biweekly interrupt or start one of my workouts with a one mile run then and maintain that I should be able to maintain a decent mile time by, by doing that.

18:20And then I should be able to keep that skill. Like that's the top. And so you're basically training it. Like I'm not doing this to fatigue. I'm just trying to be comfortable. That's right. I don't even, I'm not even coming close to fatigue. Like even that, I mean, I was making fun of myself, like going like how awkward it was and this and that. But I mean, I, I know like my discipline my ability to push through something and like i totally could have kept going in fact what what i'm most proud about is i actually feel really good today i mean i trained legs and then i went for a walk slash jog run whatever and i feel good it was appropriate yeah it was appropriate and so to me and that's where i've gotten with my you know gauging my intensity and and how much i push is like i want to feel that i did it and i want to start to send the signal and adapt to getting better at it but i also don't want to like pay for it the next day where i'm like oh god then i'm just why this is if i'm trying to improve the skill then i want to take it before fatigue i want to go i want to always stay below that and i'd rather edge on the side of caution first than go like i could definitely do more you know and push that and as crazy as that sounds it's actually difficult to do especially from a bunch of guys that work out or say they come from an athletic background is the competitor in me is like let's see what i can do mile time right now you know i'm saying it's like okay that's not necessary so yesterday was actually for me a really big accomplishment not in what i did but what i didn't do you know because past me would have got inspired to do something like that and then i would have gotten after it right away which is just ridiculous yeah that's not how you approach it you know this makes me think of too is you know uh when i when i would train a lot of clients that towards the back half of my career, I started training people, um, that like the sixties and above, I had a decent amount of clients.

20:04Many of them referred by doctors that I trained. And when you see, and people have elderly people in the family, know what I'm talking about. If you ever see someone in the age group who's deconditioned average, let's say the average 67 year old or seven year old, if you've ever seen them fall, uh, it's, you see their body stiffen up. They can't catch themselves and they tip over locks up they yes they tip over like if you hit like if you cut a tree and it just goes over what's happened is they've they've lost the skill of being able to react yeah and so it's literally uh their body doesn't know what to do and so they just lock up and boom hit the ground and so this is an important thing to practice um and it's easier i'll say this to someone young listening to right now it's easier to practice it a little bit now and not have to go back and regain it so you're better off just practicing a little bit than you are waiting until you're like, uh-oh, I need to get - Have you guys had moments?

20:58I just, I mean, part of this motivation for me too is not just the conversation we had, but not that long ago, I had a situation where I had just got the cars detailed and I'm parking in my garage and my garage floor is epoxied. So it's very sleek. And just from the wet tires going on there, it left this, just this light residue. and when I stepped out of the car I slipped and I caught myself but the way I caught myself was like it felt like I was whiplash yeah oh yeah and it was like this close that that could have went bad and because of my reaction time where I you know when I was 20 I would have been like no big deal where it was like it's it like startled me enough to be like that could have went really bad just getting out of my car like that's embarrassing and so there's this part of me that's like you know and i don't practice that i'm not practicing i'm not challenging stability and things like that enough and i will lose that skill if i don't if i'm not intentional about programming i totally that happened to me this day i was coming downstairs i had my socks on and you know we have a wood floor and i slipped and i went into the other room so my wife was down the hall all she saw me was slipping going to the other room she thought i was this like risky business right yeah dude she said no it didn't look cool she thought i she thought i hit the deck oh my god because the way I felt now I caught myself yeah in fact I was proud that I caught myself because the way it felt is like what you're saying that was miraculous yeah yeah yeah that's like I could a little bit more to the left or whatever that would have been bad but you know it makes you go like oh this is how these happen that's right this is this it's like and and I think it's very uh eye-opening when when I consider myself a health or fitness person this is what it looks like fitness is the foundation.

22:40So, and strength is the foundation of that. So when you're somebody who needs to build your balance, if you really do have balance issues, like if I had somebody who's seven years old with balance issues, I would start with strength. Getting stronger improves balance. So that's the base. So the base is fitness. Above that is skill. So you can have lots of fitness and poor skill and actually cause yourself problems. That's what we're talking about. Oh yeah, no. You don't want to divorce the two, in other words. No, I just, we went to a concert, not a concert but a comedy show two nights ago and uh you know picked my buddy up who's young fit strong like us squats heavy deadlifts heavy does all things and uh threw his back out doing some little bullshit what was he doing nothing he was doing something so like he picked like yeah he picked like one of his toys up from his kids or something and he locked up and seized up that sucks you know and and was and he's like you know frustrated because again because he's fit yeah he's fit and he's strong.

23:32Like, I mean, he's not an out of shape guy, but again, we're at an, and I was explaining this, we're at an age now where there are very specific skills that you got to incorporate into your training that you just don't think about. And this is an example of like windmills and stability training. It's like, it seems so whatever. It's like, oh, I can barbell back squat three 15. That's not going to make my biceps look better. Yeah. And I'm already strong. Why do I need to work? But it's like, if you don't do that, then sometimes this, and I remember that training clients it was always like that i remember like this was the next i don't know level of me being a better trainer was recognizing how important it was that i program stuff like this into their training programs because i would get these people really fit looking yes you know and strong and they'd pick up a shampoo and then they would get injured and then i'm like man that's that's on me you know i'm saying like my my client and they would look at you like baffled like i can't believe i hurt my back picking up the shampoo bottle or reaching You feel like an idiot.

24:29Yeah. It's like, yeah, shame on me for not training those skills. All right, speaking of dads and working out and stuff, did you see the study that studied how a father's fitness level or exercise habits impacts his sperm, which then impacts his future children? Really? Did you guys see this? Okay, so this is a huge study. And what they did - Buff sperm? Yes. So researchers from Nanjing University found that the offspring of exercised fathers had superior endurance and metabolic profiles. This was published in Cell Metabolism. It showed that these benefits persisted even when the offspring themselves didn't exercise.

25:09So, okay, I brought this up to you when you first had a kid with Jessica. Yeah. And I know you attributed all the great genetics over to Jessica because our genetics are similar. but you have done so much for so long. I think this is just another, another study that supports what I, what I think is that I, cause I can't remember what I shared with you when I had read something that basically said the same thing that our training actually starts to impact like our genes that we sell. Yeah. It reprograms it. And so a 20 year old me having a kid is the, the outcome is going to be different than 40 year old, you know, trained Adam for 20 years having a kid.

25:50And I think that makes, I think it made a difference. It does. So it makes sense. It's trippy to think about that. It makes sense if your sperm and the egg is preparing the baby for what environment they may encounter. So your - Well, look at breast milk, how that changes based on chemistry of what's necessary or whatever the environments that they're in. The body's just adaptive and smart now. So in other words, your sperm is like, hey, you're going to acquire a certain level of strength and endurance because of this environment that you're being brought into is essentially the theory. Yeah. But that's what the – it was a big study too.

26:26And it showed these epigenetic changes in a father's sperm. I mean, I think that's so cool. I think that's even more inspiring for moms and dads or – It's motivational. For couples that haven't had their kid yet. Like, hey. Let's work out. Yeah, put the work in because it's going to pay. Yeah, it matters. It makes a difference. Totally. And so that much more motivation. I have something I read that blew my mind. I told Dylan to pull up the top 10 most expensive movies. And I use movies because I don't know what else we spend that kind of money on creating. Movies are up there with some of the most expensive.

27:02Sure. I'll say already that GTA 3 is going to supersede all these. That's what I'm going to bring. Oh, Grand Theft Auto? Grand Theft Auto. Okay. So the top, give me the top three movies list. I just know that from reading, like it crushed Avatar and all these other ones you mentioned. Bro, it's, okay, you could combine. Okay, you saw the number one. Yeah, they're like half a billion dollars. Half a billion dollars. You're like, oh my God. For a movie. How sad is that that we spend that much money on it? Yeah. We spent, add up all three of the top three movies more on a video game. So it's in the billions.

27:35One point, like 1.4 or$2 billion, somewhere in that range. Insane. For a game. For a video game. You know what's crazy about that? I didn't even know you could spend that much money on a video game. You know what's crazy? That just, just for people who it's like, this is the world. This is a, we live in such a broken world, right? Like we're human ingenuity and resources get pulled into creating the most creative form of entertainment. So we spent 1.2 or$3 billion and used some incredibly bright minds for this, not to solve issues that could actually, you know, really help people. I know some people, it helps me, but it's interesting, isn't it?

28:14Well, it's especially when, I mean, obviously we've had some video game talks on here that have been controversial where we piss people off and we talk about the downstream effects of being addicted to video game playing, pornography and stuff like that. And I don't know if I categorize video games in the same category as pornography and the detriments of it, but it definitely, I mean, I, from personal experience, know how much of my life that it took up in my twenties. and I tell you I mean I've admitted this on the show I proudly used to say in my 20s like I'm gonna be somebody who makes good money and has a family and I game with my buddies like that was like I proudly said that so Adam and I did like very very staunch about that that I and matter of fact I remember carrying this chip because in my 20s I was already making really good money had my house so you could prove it yes right and I was already gaming my buddies and I we gamed all weekend you know I'm saying every night when I came over work, I game for two hours.

29:11Like it was like, it's like, it ain't going. It's, and I made this excuse that it was such a fun part of my life that why would I ever pull something like that out? And I remember I had an older friend of mine that we were really close. He was, he was about six, seven years older than me. And he used to always kind of razz me like, you know, Hey, when are you going to, when are you going to give up the video games, bro? And I'm like, Oh, I'm never, I'm never gonna give that. He's like, come on, dude, at one point you need to do that. And really what connected it for me was just It's like, you know, whatever goals and aspirations, other goals and aspirations you have in your life, you know that it's taking from that.

29:46Yeah. So whatever, whether it's 30 minutes, one hour or two hours, you're applying to that. Replace whatever said goal you claim, whether that is building a big company or building a family or this or that. It's like you are taking, that time can be applied to those things. And so your video game playing better be more important than all those if that's what you're going to do for the rest of your life. I think a big part of it is when we're occupying ourselves either with entertainment or, you know, like especially entertainment, right? We're occupying ourselves with entertainment in some form, whether it's video games or social media or movies.

30:21Not saying that there isn't any value in there, but it's so uncomfortable to not be occupied because then you start to ask yourself the hard questions. What am I doing? What am I doing in my life? Who am I? You start to think about things that are uncomfortable. comfortable and so we actually prevent ourselves from having those thoughts yeah like you like he brought to you yeah which is like how much time are you spending on this and what could you be spending that time yeah what books could i be reading about being a better father what books have you reading about being a better business owner i mean there's so many or working or or i like to hang out my buddies could you do that in a way that's fostering more times your relationships yes like doing things in your community there's so many things you get accomplished and i think that's the thing it's just like it's it ends up a distraction that's something you got to can can compete with and also in many admitting the the addictive properties that come with it too i mean i i still uh i'll have moments where um where i've watched a certain amount of tv for the week i feel gross and i'll like there'll be nights where i took like katrina be like oh you want to watch something no i just leave the tv off tonight like i already feel like we've watched a lot of tv and we're when it really hits me is because of how good the addictive properties are and how many choices we have and how much they loop you in when i'm watching things that i know just like it's not even that good yeah it's like like when i if i catch myself watching i'm like what am i like it's one thing if you got like i'm i am not i love movies i think that can be a great time for a couple to do that and i'm not so this is not me shitting on all movies like that or the fact that we watch any tv so i think there's i think there is some value to that and the relationship body i love to cuddle up with my son and watch a good lego movie like so i'm not i'm not but i also know what it's like for it to start with that and then it's another show and it's another thing it's something and then before long it's become a habit that i just do that thing after this other thing and then it's good it gets extended longer and then before you know it like i've already watched all the things that are of any value and good and now i'm going down the rabbit hole of stuff that's just like left mind on me i gotta junk food i gotta say that's the biggest change well not the biggest that's that's a big change in my life is i watch almost none which is wild i used to watch stuff all the time i watch almost nothing oh wow yeah was it a rip off the band-aid or was it a scale down for you you know it was just um there were things that i wanted to do instead uh so i wanted to play with the kids i didn't want to watch something while the kids are sitting here because it's not appropriate for them so then i'm not going to watch it yeah and then you know what i'd rather go to bed uh at a good time so i could wake up in the morning and be ready for work and work out or if i'm with my wife at night sometimes i'll watch something but sometimes we just sit there and talk and um it takes away from other things that i found so i just little by little have lost the now if i if i was home alone i could definitely get caught in it oh yeah i could definitely get caught because uh sitting alone with your thoughts like nobody wants to do that yeah you know oh it'd be really hard because it's it's pretty easy for me to make that decision i mean it's it's very clear there's been times where i make that call where i'm now we're not gonna watch anything and even if katrina and i I have nothing that we have pressing to talk about.

33:27If we just are sitting in bed awake next to each other within five minutes, all of a sudden, great conversation happens. Some of the best dialogue, best conversations will happen. And that's so fruitful and so fulfilling and so good for the relationship. And so it's very easy for me to connect that dot for that reason. If I didn't have that, that would be difficult. It would be difficult for me to sit there as a young man without my partner or kid to do that and go like, well, I'm not really doing anything else. It's better to fill it with something else that you find. Oh, yeah, audio books. Growth, something that grows you.

33:57I mean, that would be the case. That would be if I was still a single 40-year-old in pursuit of being better and growth, that would be the thing I would wrestle with, I'd say. Just like I did with the video games, I'd be like, okay, I could go play video games for two hours, but I also could go read an audio book that's going to make me smarter or better. You know, it's a new thing that I think would be a value that used to be a default that now is no longer a default. I think for younger people who don't have kids and other responsibilities, which then it's easier to see, like this is more important, I think is hanging out with each other more often without saying we're going to do this.

34:31We're not going to play this video game. We're just going to hang out with each other. I don't think people do that as much, at least based on the data where you see how less often people go out and how much more lonely people feel. That might be a good replacement. So if you're listening to this and all right, what do I do? Organize it with your friends. Hey, guys, we're going to get together and we're going to read this book or we're going to discuss these topics every week. Yeah, I just saw a thing that Gen Z calls, they - Board games are bad. They called meditation like raw-dogging boredom.

35:04It's like, it's so hard. Have you heard people talk about raw-dogging flying airplanes? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no music, no nothing. Just sit on the flight. Pictures and videos of them staring at the back of a seat. I mean, it's comical, but I have to say, it is cool that it's caused enough of the pendulum to swing one way that there's this effort being put forth by the younger generation to be like, okay, I'm going to tough this board amount. Speaking of funny, I was meaning to bring this up, but there's this guy, he's got a Kickstarter, and he's trying to address doom scrolling. And so the thing is, the phone's so accessible, you end up just looking at things, and then you're in this total doom scroll.