How to Unlock Your Body’s Hidden Physical Abilities - With Olympian Liz Gleadle

24:16It can do these things. Let's go do the things. But we're not taught to basically say, let's look under the hood. Let's see basically how this vehicle works. And now obviously we really can overcomplicate this for kids. And And this is where I really like, I have a kinesiology degree and it drives me nuts. The terms that people use are like, use your adductors to do this or use this for internal rotation. People's brains are just like having a hard time with it. Yeah. And it's, it's not hitting. And so I created this, um, basically what I teach is body awareness and I teach a system for body awareness.

24:47I don't just say, you know, um, like use your breath to go into the movement. People actually don't know what that means, which is really fascinating. So I created a video basically saying, this is how I teach kids. This is the very first thing I teach them. I'm like, this is how your vehicle basically works. And I break it down into five pieces. And I say, your spine and your core is like your engine. This is where all the power comes from. This is where the big muscles are. This is where everything connects in the middle. This is where your spinal cord is. I'm not talking about it in terms of like the spinal engine.

25:16Like people talk about it that way. I'm really just talking about in terms of like a vehicle. And so I realized that my spine was always trained to be neutral, embraced, and strong, but it couldn't do this. And I couldn't move it all these different ways. And that's how you move energy and power into your body is how well can you move your spine? And then once you can control that, it's like, okay, how do we connect it to the rest of the body? And I say, your feet are often your anchors. They're the thing that's literally connected to the earth. They're the thing that you have a relative place to produce force from because it's touching something relative to gravity.

25:49Pay attention to gravity. Gravity takes you down at 9.8 meters per second. How do you transfer that energy back up into your body to make it use all these different things? And I say you have your endpoints, whatever interacts with anything else. So often it's your hands. And basically how you move your hands is a really great indicator of how energy will either be pushed out, pulled in, or recycled. And I love rope flow because it helps you understand how to recycle energy first, how to generate it, how to recycle it, and then how to throw it. So you find all these patterns. And that's why mudras are really interesting for how to move power through your body.

26:29And I see your face is your intention point. Where you look is where you go. Your facial expression also dictates the rest of the posture in your body. So if you're happy and you're smiling, you're going to sit like this. And if you frown, your body's automatically going to go down. Now, if I try and smile, but don't move my body, it looks really weird. And this happens in sport. So your face affects the tone in the rest of your body. So your emotions, which are portrayed on your face, are going to affect the way you move. And there's a bunch of other, I'm really simplifying this whole thing. But when the last thing is the breath, and I say the breath is just your hydraulic system.

27:07You breathe in, you create pressure. Pressure increases blood pressure, increases the amount of force you can push through your body. And when you start basically saying, I now teach my athletes to say, these are the five components. We can dive deep down into any of these. But when you start thinking about a movement and you say, what are my anchors doing? Am I grounded? Is my breath helping or hurting me? Is it supporting the movement? Are my endpoints flopping around? You see javelin throwers go to throw and the left hand is doing this. And you can see the energy just spilling all over the place and not contributing to the body.

27:38And so it gave them the kids I teach javelin um for my club and when I start talking to my kids in this language they just pick it up because their body is now just this thing that they can gamify that's very simplified and they really have I've taken all these kids who are not the most athletic and they're throwing a javelin which is considered to be one of the most technical events in the world and they all look like javelin throwers and so that's what I love about them like they go to soccer and they're like I use that trick that we use like for body awareness and all of a sudden I was kicking better.

28:10So it's really not just about throwing. It's about how do you want to use your body? Can you problem solve using a system? And then you don't have to worry about nitpicky technique. It's, does it feel pleasurable? What are these things that I can play with to make it feel more pleasurable, to make it feel more enjoyable? And it makes people love using their bodies.

28:29Shawn Stevenson:A big silly problem that we've created is separating the mind of the body. And so So a foundational piece of this is integration of the two. And real, when we're talking about physical education, this is also a journey into the mind as well and this unification. And so let's advocate for physical education. Again, something a little bit more comprehensive. And over time, it's been getting distilled, shrunk, siphoned out of our culture and out of, you know, kids and in particular informal education. And so we want to see that unlock and improve. And we just share some data on this. We'll put up a study for everybody to see, but you know, when kids have the opportunity to use their bodies to express themselves, to move around and move that energy, they end up performing better on they're what's deemed to be a strictly cognitive exercise, which is like doing math or reading, whatever the case might be.

29:35Shawn Stevenson:We improve because these things are not separate. They're connected. And one of the things I want to ask you about specifically, and it's called rope flow, right? You've mentioned this a couple of times. And this was one of the things that just like blew me away about you, just seeing you utilizing the rope and the way that you were utilizing the rope. and this particular tool, why do you think, number one, can you explain for people who are listening? Because on this video episode, which everybody should be joining us in the studio. I talk a lot with my body. It's worth watching. Right. You see the wiggle of the hand in the spine.

30:12Shawn Stevenson:But if you're, if you're listening, you can be watching on Spotify. We have Spotify video by the way. And also if you're popping over and watching on YouTube, that would be awesome. But you'll see her actually doing rope flow in the video version, but can you explain for people that are listening, what is rope flow and why do you think it's such a valuable tool for all of us to be utilizing? Yeah. So, um, I started doing rope flow cause I saw other people doing it. And then I saw David Weck doing it. I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting, but I like using my own systems. And I was like, okay, I see what's going on here.

30:49So I used my own body blueprint system, so to speak. And I was like, I will figure this out. And the rope is just an extension, any obvious extension of how clean your energy is of whether you're leaking power or not. That's how I think about it. It's really just an indication of whether or not you're moving well. You get really good feedback from it because it is an extension of your endpoints. How well are you nuancing the end of the rope? How well are you transferring energy? And I remember when I was watching Woman King, the very first weapon they give them is a rope. because it's easy. You're not going to hurt yourself, right?

31:24It's just an easier tool to start with. Javelin is a very complicated tool. Rope is a very easy tool. And so when I started doing it, I'd been doing a lot of, I'd been learning to dance and I was just learning how to wind because I was like, man, this feels good on my hips. I'm allowed to move my hips in a circle? Wild. I'm always doing squats. I'm always moving this way. It's always very strong and important. And I'm just moving my hips around and moving my spine. And I was like, oh, this is just an extension of how well I use my feet, work it up my hips and move it through my spine and into my shoulder.

31:52And I started to be like, oh, this is all I'm understanding working the ground. And I love to listen to music when I work out. And rope flow was just another way that I could hit beats. And it was just this game because it's fun to just try and hit the beat. And so I was taking this tool that was giving me this really valuable feedback of how cleanly I was moving. And then I was timing it to music. And there's these really fascinating studies around like, when you hit rhythms, when you hit a beat with your body, like you nail it every time you get a dopamine hit. And when you get a dopamine hit, dopamine is the molecule of more.

32:26It tells us, keep doing this. This is a thriving mechanism. And so your body learns faster. So I started doing rope flow and I wasn't doing like, you can learn so many rope flow moves. I don't even know that many. I don't need that many. The point is for my spine to move well and for my body to move through these different patterns and to hit the beat so that I drop in because now my body says, I love moving. I'm getting the dopamine hit. It's more important for me to hit the beat than it is for me to, you know, do something really complex. And it made it really accessible. And it made it really easy for me to actually want to move and want to actually do a workout.

33:03And so it just became this really easy way to move my body well.

33:06Shawn Stevenson:Amazing. And so when you say rope flow, just for people that are listening, is this like a jump rope? No, so a rope flow rope is heavier. I actually went to a hardware store and made my own. I bought nine feet of rope. I looked up how to tie a knot on the internet. And it just has basically some handles. And you can hold it in one hand. You can hold it in two hands. And the point is to basically allow your spine and your shoulders to be the main driver of the rope. Ropes are often a little heavier. So I think I'm one of the only people that I've seen that is a woman who does rope flow. I don't even do it that much.

33:44I really like, I don't think of myself as a rope float practitioner. It's just an extension of what I do. And I think part of the reason why women don't do it is because the rope is too heavy for them. I am a strong woman. I'm six one. Like I'm right now I'm like one 75 and I could use a heavy rope, but I would get gassed. I would get exhausted. And so I started using lighter ropes and I was like, Oh, this is a better weight for me to learn on. If I want to challenge myself, I can go even heavier. But what it does, again, heavier things give you more feedback. Your hands have a ton of nerve endings in them.

34:17You hold something in your hand, you close your eyes, you know what's going on. And so when I close my eyes and I do rope flow, I can say, okay, I really feel if this is clean or I feel if this is too heavy. And it really gives you this point of orientation of how well your body is moving. Jump rope, it's a lot harder. There's a lot of moving parts. You're leaving the earth on repeat. And it can be hard on some people's body. It can be too much to start. So rope flow is just a gentler way to get into it. And it's a different tool with different skills.

34:47Shawn Stevenson:Great summary, great summary. And you can, you can technically jump over a heavier rope, but generally your feet are planted on the earth and you're moving around. Actually, I just went to the park yesterday. It's one of my things I do to decompress, feet on the grass, rope flow. And it's so interesting how certain things are kind of intuitive, right? Nobody taught me how to do a certain thing. Like for example, I was doing a one-handed move and I just felt like I should step through. And then I put it behind my back. And next thing you know, I'm like, oh, I could just keep doing this and going in circles.

35:20Shawn Stevenson:It's really incredible. But I decided yesterday, like, let me elevate one foot off the ground as I'm doing, you know, I'm going from side to side with one hand. And I put my foot in front of me as far as I could and try to maintain my balance. And then I put my foot back behind me. And I'm I'm just like, I just intuitively felt this and I'm getting these inputs literally from the ground up. But also again, as you mentioned, there's so much going on with my hands. And one of the things, and I've shared this before and shared this with my guys, specifically my left hand, all right? In basketball, like it's a, you know, it's a great asset to be able to use both hands.

35:58Shawn Stevenson:My youngest son is truly ambidextrous. Like he writes with his left hand, but he throws with his right hand. Okay. Okay. Like his brain is unlocked with this stuff. And apparently, you know, my, my, my wife said that her grandfather was the same and this is kind of where it came from, but he just, he has a great left hand. And if I'm competing with him, you know, like he would try to like drive me, give me to go left. Cause I taught him to do that to other people. And so, but doing road flow, like it just really, like it was noticeably affecting how quickly I was able to just more naturally feel like using my left hand.

36:33Shawn Stevenson:So it got to a point now to where sometimes I favor my left hand when, you know, playing basketball. And so it just really, again, it's what you talked about earlier. It's really helping to create this synchronicity through the body. And the rope will give you back this feedback if you're not in synchronicity, because of course the rope can hit you. Yeah. But it's more so just like, you know, if it doesn't feel right. Yeah. And it's so easy. Once you are doing this for a while, it's so easy to find those patterns and to move in different ways and still be in synchronicity. Yep. Right? So, yeah.

37:11Yeah. I actually say rope flow is, like if you want to get into like a spiritual woo version of rope flow, just a way to think of it. I say the rope, if you hold in your hands and you whip one side, you can feel it through the other hand, what the right hand has done, right? You can actually feel the result. And so when you're throwing the rope around, For example, if you're doing a dragon roll, which is basically your arms are open, you're just throwing over your head back and forth. You're kind of just twisting and tossing. It's kind of like you're defining your aura. You can literally feel how much of the energetic field around you you control.

37:43You're like, my arm is moving through this space. I can feel the connection to the other hand. I can feel the edge of the rope through my hands, and I can feel how much I control the space. And that's where it's like, oh, I see how this hand is affecting that hand. I see how moving my hand this way is going to make my foot want to step through. and you just start intuitively feeling how much space you control and where you control the space

38:03Shawn Stevenson:and where you don't oh yeah i love this oh you just reminded me of something you were inspiration for me thank you to give myself permission because you know when i would do a dragon roll it was very much more like kind of slow pace just like flowing with it but i would have these moments of like i I want to do this really fast. I want to rip. You know, like literally as fast as I can. And I hadn't really seen anybody do it. And I didn't know like, is this, is this okay? You know, like, and so then I saw you doing it and, you know, the transfer over to, you know, sports performance and all that stuff, but just seeing the, basically using it in a more violent way.

38:44Shawn Stevenson:Right. And I was just like, oh, wow. Like that is a capacity. And again, you're training your body to be able to handle those forces in this kind of synchronicity. And so I started implementing that whenever I feel it, whenever I feel good about it. And also just, again, you get the feedback of being in certain positions and what you can do as well. And so we talked about this too. It's sort of like as well, like when you're going to the gym, every day is not going to be a PR, right? And so you can do like feeder sets to see how am I feeling today? Should I just stick with this light rope or am I going to do my heavy rope today as well?

39:23Shawn Stevenson:Or just maybe the amount that I'm doing. So I use the rope flow as every time before I go lift, I'm doing the rope flow. And it's like getting my body warmed up and just getting my mind warmed up as well. But there's so many levels to it. And the ease of access is so great. And that's the thing that you brought up too. You don't have to jump over a rope. Literally anybody can utilize this tool and start to feel better and start to find more harmony within your own biology. yeah so i want to ask you about this other phenomenon that happened in your life related to dance and again being one of the greatest athletes in the world and one of the top professionals in your sport and then finding that you couldn't really dance that well like what's up with this like i'm i'm an incredible i have incredible physical literacy why can't i move my hips like Shakira said the hips don't lie and something like it's not adding up for me yeah talk about that phenomenon and how that is now translated over into what you're doing yeah so um I'm from Vancouver Canada and there is no dance culture like there's no pervasive dance culture you go to the bar and you get drunk and you kind of like you know like that's how you like allow yourself to dance to a certain degree or to be free and when you don't grow up in dance culture where everybody learns how to dance everybody learns how to move to a beat like It's part of weddings.

40:56It's part of Friday night. It's once a month. It's a thing, right? If you don't know how to hit a rhythm or you don't feel comfortable dancing in front of people, you don't feel good self-expressing. And I always thought dance was choreography or dance was doing all these other things. And it just seemed so complicated. I'd go to a dance class and I'd say, I feel like such a failure. I feel like I just did, pardon my French, 12 sh**ty dance moves and I don't feel good about it. and then I was on my year of fun. That's what I call my 2022 year after Tokyo. And I went to Trinidad and I went to this party and I'm, you know, training with the Olympic 2012 champion and he's throwing a birthday party and we're all hanging out and people are doing this dance and they're all like, kind of looks like a Caribbean line dance.

41:40It's very simple, just like steps, hips, you know, little movements. And I'm trying to do it and I'm stumbling around. And I was like, this is not complicated. I should be able to do this. And I look at him and I say, why can't I do this? And he looks at me, he's like, just bounce. I was like, I don't know how to bounce in time to rhythm. This is not a part of my life. And I was like, this is so funny, because people say, you've heard that joke when someone goes into the office and they're sick, and the doctor says, when did you stop dancing and singing? And when I started just bouncing, that's a thing.

42:15Soca in Caribbean culture is like, it's bounce. It's not even wine first, It's like bounce to the rhythm. That's how you participate in the song. That's the first thing that I now do anytime I start to dance is I just find the rhythm and I bounce. And then from there, you are participating. So even like you're watching me kind of bounce around, right? And it's like, what's interesting is like now it looks like I'm in a different world. But if you and I, if I start bouncing.

42:35Shawn Stevenson:Yeah, I was doing it. I was already like. But if we get on the exact same rhythm, it becomes really, you can feel our brains get synchronized and the room disappears. And there's a safety in your nervous system to participate. and that you belong and that you're welcome. And then from there, when you actually feel that safety, you can expand and you can do more movements. But as long as you're hitting the rhythm, you're actually getting this nervous system wiring to attunement to sound. And when you bounce, bouncing is relative to gravity. It's about developing a relationship with gravity knowingly.

43:12What's the first thing that babies do before they walk? They bounce. When they stand up, as soon as you play music, they go, ah, ah, ah, and it's because they're testing gravity. They're like, what is this thing that's pushing me down to the earth? And it's something that if you don't keep playing with it, if you don't keep evolving in your life, you're missing out on a major part of what it means to be human and what it means to move. So as soon as I started to dance, I just started with bouncing and whining when I retired. Actually, I blew up my knee dancing in six inch heels in Berlin when I was partying because I retired.

43:44And to heal my MCL, all I did was bounce and whine. I just got good at hitting a beat. And I remember one day I went to the gym like four or five months later, and I was doing pistol squats because I was just trying to get my knee to work. And I've just been bouncing to music. And I get to the bottom of pistol squat, and I think, I think I can jump. And I pistol squatted all the way down, and I one-legged jumped into the air. The girl who couldn't jump, who was made fun of for being unathletic. And I was like, I just needed to learn how to bounce. And I didn't need like, yes, plyometrics are great.

44:19Jumping is great. Like lifting is great. They all give you power, but rhythm is something that when you bake it into your nervous system, it teaches you so quickly.

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47:32Shawn Stevenson:It's like separate categories of dance. And dance was a critical part of culture. You know, it's a ability to share information, to share tradition, to pass down important messages, to obviously again, to heal, to self-express, to connect, right? The list goes, there's all these aspects to it, but for us in our culture today, it's very much relegated to these little pockets. If you get any dance inputs at all right now. And again, like, I think just based on you helping me to go back in time and think about this, I, I think this is like something our genes expect us to do. Our genes are looking for dance, not just of course, walking, carrying heavy things, you know, this and that, which are all important.

48:22Shawn Stevenson:But what if dance is like this very powerful epigenetic controller of our health and our performance and our movement and our connection. And we're missing out on it because we have isolated ourselves or our culture is not prioritizing or giving value to this anymore. One of the things that I saw when studying you was your perspective about gratitude. And it made so much sense. Obviously, there's an emerging field of science around positive psychology and gratitude. But you made the connection between gratitude and athleticism. Can you talk a little bit about that connection? Yeah. So I said earlier, happy people walk differently than sad people.

49:13and that's a very basic thing. But gratitude is the most practiced emotion in the world. You know, people have gratitude practices and it's funny because I remember I've been doing gratitude journaling for years and I was retired in 2022 and then I unretired. But during that time I was writing, I was thinking about different things. And whenever I was writing, I was like, I should look up the definition of this word because that's what you do when you're writing something. And I was going to do a gratitude practice one night. And I was like, what's the definition of gratitude? It's like, it's like appreciation and thankfulness.

49:49I said, no, those are synonyms. Like they mean different things. They're similar, but they're not the same thing. And so I look it up and there's like this enormous amount of body of research on gratitude. And I came down to this one definition that I thought that really hits it for me. And gratitude is the feeling of receiving a gift. And a gift, to look at that word, is something that is given freely. It is not owed to you. You don't deserve it. It's like, here, I get like for you. And they're like, really for me? Thanks. It's like, you don't, you don't expect it. And when you really look at it that way, I thought, oh, like if you have an attitude of gratitude and you go through your life saying everything that's happening to me is a gift.

50:30Like, let's just pretend, even if I'm not enjoying it, let's pretend it's something that it's like, It's a gift for me. And all lessons are gifts. When we're going through life, every experience that we have is a lesson, whether or not we learn from it. And sometimes the hard lessons are like, oh, why is this happening to me? And I was like, oh, that's, I was really, I felt like I deserved a lot as an athlete. I work really hard. I'm doing all the right things. I'm sacrificing everything. I'm doing this. I'm doing this. Why am I not getting this? I deserve this, right? And when you lock into that, when you experience low level emotions or like lower level emotions, you go into sympathetic.

51:06So you go into fight, flight, like you go that direction on the emotional scale versus parasympathetic, which is like rest, digest, creativity, safety. And it's just a different system. There's nothing wrong with either end. There's just a time and a place for them. And so if you were in these lower level emotions, what happens is your thinking narrows, your pupils constrict, you literally see less options. You super focus in on a problem. The problem is, is that that doesn't give you more access to noticing different things, to problem solving, to creativity. And so when I started thinking about gratitude, I was like, oh, if everything is a gift and I pay attention to all these things and I stop dropping into these states of deservingness, I'm going to start thinking more creatively.

51:47So that night I was doing a gratitude practice. I did it differently. And I remembered this really important thing from speaking where when you say something important in a speech, you have to pause after you say it because people take in information cognitively and they take it in emotionally. And emotionally, people need a beat for it to actually settle in their nervous system. Otherwise, you just don't remember it. And I thought, why would it be any different with me if I'm talking to myself with gratitude? And so I started expressing gratitude and I was like, you know, I'm really grateful.

52:17At that time, I was like, I am retired and I'm relatively healthy in a sport that just destroys people's bodies. And I just sat in that and I just felt like this whoosh go through my body. And I remembered facial feedback hypothesis, the idea that you can be happy and it makes you smile, but you can smile and it makes you happy. It can go both ways. And so I'm thinking about this and I'm smiling. I'm like, don't smile. You're like an idiot. I'm like, there's no one around. What do I care? And I smiled and I felt my whole spine just lengthen. And I was like, whoa, my chest opened up like, this is really amazing.

52:49And I'm sitting there and I'm just experiencing so much gratitude. And I thought I've never experienced this amount of gratitude in my life. And you can see me, like I'm talking about, you can see my face change, you can see my posture change in very real time just even thinking about it. And it's a longer story and I keep going into the science behind. I kept experiencing these physical changes to thinking about gratitude differently. And I realized how open my body felt. And during the time that I'd been just dancing and healing my knee, I was also doing yoga. I was doing a shtanga yoga. So same poses, same sequence all the time.

53:22and there's this one pose that you stand on one leg you put the opposite foot in your hip and then you reach behind your back and you try and grab your foot and normally i'm like you know four or five inches away from even touching my foot but my chest feels so open i think let's try this pose and i stand there and i'm just like okay like gratitude like thinking about something that makes me happy smile let it go smile breathe smile just going back and forth between these cues And I reach all the way behind my back and I palm my foot. And I thought, if I got an extra six inches of mobility from simply inducing an emotional state by using gratitude, by simply understanding the definition differently and allowing myself to feel it, what would that do to a javelin throw?

54:06And I thought, oh my God, we don't teach people to understand emotions properly. And it completely changes the way you move. so that was really the moment where i thought this is gratitude is a pareto's law emotion the concept that 20 of the work gets you 80 of the results you don't need to understand every single definition to of every single emotion to experience a huge uptick in physical performance the mind affects the body the body affects the mind the heart is the connection in between um if you're into chakras or yoga they say your upper chakras so throat third eye crown and your heart is your middle chakra.

54:47And then you have your lower chakras, which is like your power center, your sensuality, sexuality, and your safety. And the heart is the bridge between the two. And I thought people always talk about mind-body connection, but it's a mind-body heart connection. And that's what really like, that's what emotions are. That's what gratitude is and can be tapped into. It's evolving that middle center.

55:07Shawn Stevenson:Yeah. You're talking about the essential capacity for feeling of safety, You know, because what would present for you, again, being able to do this particular pose and your body is completely dedicated to keeping you safe and preventing movement that it doesn't feel safe doing. And so utilizing this capacity, your body trusted you more. It felt safer to be able to really express physical literacy. now with that being said what if we started to train with that intention because you know you talk about this as well in this concept of like getting out of your comfort zone in your training that's a capacity of feeling safe to really do that and to do it with some real value and so how important is it how important is it for us to encourage or find ways to feel safe so that we can then stretch ourselves yeah so it's one of my things i hate most people like do one thing a day that scares you.

56:07I'm like, no, like you don't want to be sending yourself into like that fight or flight mode constantly. I think it's good to do that once in a while, but especially in training, I love to say like your comfort zone is a great place to reinforce things. And then between comfort and fear, there's many other emotions. It goes comfort in my mind, kind of curiosity, excitement, anxiety, and fear. And one of the best ways to stretch yourself basically and to get outside of your comfort zone and to learn and integrate it is going about eight to 12 % outside of your comfort zone because you know you're safe but you're taking a risk.

56:43It's like you got one foot in the comfort zone and one foot out and you're like I'll be okay and when you do that you start to expand your comfort zone into your curiosity zone and soon enough the things that would have kind of excited you or given you anxiety are just outside of your comfort zone because it's about building proof. So confidence, I like to say like confidence is also a mathematical term. It's a scientific term. It's like how, what is the percentage that you feel like that you could do a thing? Like, are you 90 % confident you could do something? Do you feel confident taking that risk?

57:16Or are you 20 % confident? And that's built off of proof, off of past experiences. And so when you're constantly working just outside of your comfort zone or even in your excitement zone when it feels like you want to do it, then that's really a place that you build those confidence feelings. You build that confidence number and then you build out your comfort zone. And soon enough, you're doing these incredible things that you never thought you could be doing because you don't have to push into fear all the time. But the things that used to scare you won't scare you anymore because you've grown that zone.

57:46And then eventually when you do have to take a risk, when it is that time, you'll be like, generally, when I try new things, I seem to do well at them. That's how your brain is programmed. And if you're doing a really high box jump, for example, you'll just be excited. Someone who's scared and tries to do really high box jump is going to rip off the front of their shin. So yeah, you probably got one too. And that's exactly because scared people move differently than confident people. Scared people move differently than excited people or curious people. It's a different movement pattern. It's a different coordination sequence.

58:20So it's really like, it's again, it's like, we just want people to improve. And if you're trying to do that with athletes and you want to keep them healthy, like a healthy athlete is going to progress faster than someone who's constantly hurting themselves because they're taking big risks because they have to be afraid all the time.

58:35Shawn Stevenson:We just, we just, we're leg twins, first of all. That's good. Which is amazing. But you know, this again, And unfortunately, this isn't a big part of our culture right now, our lexicon, this way of thinking. And it just all of this really makes complete sense. And there's so much value here. And it's just about getting this message out and also having the social proof, especially today. Like people, you know, the proof is in the pudding, this kind of thing. And so you're teaching, you're teaching these insights, you're teaching these movement patterns, you're teaching, you know, these different skills and skill acquisition.

59:13Shawn Stevenson:Can you share, number one, where can people get more access to your trainings? You have some courses available. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So you can find me on Instagram. My Instagram is very cheeky. It's called Javeliz. So J-A-V-E-L-I-Z-Z. I'm Canadian. So ZZ for you Americans. And my course used to be called the Peak Performance Accelerator, but I didn't like the name and I changed it. I call it athlete cheat codes. And the course is, people often use the word integrated, meaning everything is connected, but I love the word holistic, meaning everything affects everything else, as in there are feedback loops.

59:50And what I teach people is I teach them to see athleticism from a bird's eye view. And I say, these are all the things that can change the way you move. There are some physical things that you can do. There's some mental tricks that you can have. There's some emotional tricks that you can have and there's some social things. And whenever you start to build out the pillars of each one of these areas, you basically enhance the capacity of the other ones. And emotional training and social training are largely untapped. And mental training is something that I think we spend too much time on the wrong things.

1:00:22And again, it's about what is 20 % of the work that's going to give you 80 % of the results, because then you can spend more time and energy on other things that might give you a huge return on investment. So I basically wanted to create something for athletes who, you know, not everybody has access to really great sports psychs or nutritionists or anything else or even coaches. And what as an athlete can you be responsible for that will give you a leg up? Because you can't always just work harder. You have to work smarter. And if you understand a general overview of all the things that you can tweak and play with and you get the foundation down, you are off to an incredible running start.

1:01:03So, um, it can, my course can be found on school. It's called, again, it's called athlete cheat codes, and you can just go through my Instagram and find the link.

1:01:10Shawn Stevenson:The school app. So it's S K O O L. Yeah. And yeah, the, the accessibility is, it's never been easier, but at the same time, it's still an awareness piece. And so being able to share this, and by the way, if you've got a young athlete, this would be absolutely valuable, but this is valuable for all of us, you know, because again, I've seen some of the things that you've been talking about that I've implemented changing the course of my life and how I do things, how I move, how I relate to the world, how I relate to my own body. And so this is grounded in science and practicality, but you know, it's up to us to say yes.

1:01:52Shawn Stevenson:And just to make it easier on ourselves to learn from people who figure these things out. And so, and also what I, what I love about you too, is that you're constantly learning and sharing and experimenting. And this is one of the things that I really picked up just, you know, following you on, you know, Instagram and just some of the insights that you've shared. Like when you shared that video about gratitude connected to athleticism, it's just like, yeah, like I'd never thought about that. It makes complete sense. And so I appreciate you so much for, you know, having the, the audacity to, to share because you've been through a lot, you know, you've experienced a lot you've lived many lifetimes in one and this is in you you're just at the beginning part of this as well of this story and so it's very exciting and you have a ton of value you've been around and worked with a lot of different people the different cultures as well and so you're really helping to bridge the gap for us and so i just want to thank you so much thanks thanks for making it available i appreciate it yeah thanks for having me on it's uh it's really exciting to to have opportunities like this and to meet people who are really interested in human performance and just kind of the human experiences, it's really fun.

1:03:03And we all have a body and we all have the capacity to move. And when you really get to drop into these different levels, it brings people a lot of joy when you get to connect people with other people. So thank you.

1:03:13Shawn Stevenson:That part, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it so much. The one and only Liz Galito, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. If you did, you already know what to do. Share it with somebody that you care about. Share the information, share the inspiration, and let's keep this movement going. You can take a screenshot of the episode and share it on Instagram as well. I'm at SeanModel on Instagram. Liz is active there. She's got an incredible Instagram account. So make sure to follow her and also tag her as well. I'm sure that she would love to see the love.

1:03:51Shawn Stevenson:And of course, you can send this directly from the podcast app that you're listening on to somebody that you care about. And listen, we are just getting warmed up. We've got some incredible masterclasses and world-leading experts coming your way very, very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care, have an amazing day, and I'll talk with you soon.