The Missing Key to Our Fitness, Athleticism, and Ability to Move Well - With Nsima Inyang

27:06I didn't necessarily feel that I needed that, but seeing when we do that made me truly happy because I'm like, okay, now people can see that this stuff isn't just, it's not just a circus trick. There are things that are going on that the elite can notice that are going to be beneficial for themselves. And like, you know, when you think about the idea of juggling, it's not just you're juggling, your eyes are now tracking. You're learning how to, because when people start juggling initially, what happens when I told you, people hold their breath because these balls are moving all over the place.

27:34So the tendency is going to be like, you're going to hold your breath. But now when you learn and you build a level of proficiency, you can breathe while you're doing that movement, right? You can get calm. You can look around. You can go do other things while your body is doing this other thing, right and in sports and even in life we have to think about our awareness and our focus how skilled are we at being able to have an awareness of what's going on around us and take the necessary action intuitively to not go off of a curve and have our calf tweak because our body didn't know how to respond you see wendy's building the ability to be able to handle multiple things at once and i know people are going to say well they're through three one right now and the knicks are winning okay, either way, the ability to have this broad level of perception, pretty much be an orchestrator on the court is broadening by just these simple skills that he's building, which are things that all of us can do.

28:30And it's helping him on the court in that type of situation. But these are things that can help you out in life. When you come across a situation where generally your tendency, let's say you have a conversation with somebody or something stressful happens, your tendency is going to be, you're going to start holding your breath. You're going to start getting a little bit tense, but you understand since you've done multiple activities where you've learned how to keep your breath going, you don't hold your breath when you're doing everything in the gym anymore. You're not holding your breath when you're doing martial arts and you're having your breath be the fuel for things.

29:00You understand that if I can just keep breathing, have a longer exhale than my inhale, no matter what the situation is, I can stay calm in a sympathetic environment. Something I want to touch on real quick. And before I continue, I want to give a quick shout out to Cador. I'm sitting on the ground right now. Everybody listening, Cador has this amazing book called The Seven Postures on Amazon. It's not a crazy expensive, but it's something that he put his IP in that book. And it's a great book to like learn these capacities that allows that man to move the way he does. So quick shout out to him.

29:31Now I want to actually -

29:32Shawn Stevenson:Keep that same train of thought. Cador is what, maybe 5 '10, 5 '11? Yeah, yeah. And he's renowned as the greatest dunker of all time, all right? That's where he is. The first too. First professional dunker. First professional dunker to be a superstar at this particular thing. And dunking barefoot and dunking, you know, I think he's 50 now, you know? And just like the things that he can do. Plus, 50 plus. 50 plus. It is extraordinary. Extraordinary. And again, he's teaching like, oh, you see this one thing. These are the things that I've implemented throughout the years to make me as physically literate as I am.

30:13So as you were saying, as you were saying, I was being able to having Kador come over here and being able to sit with him and talk with him and learn from him as it was was so great. Helped me, you know, again, he showed me certain things which brought awareness to areas that I was weak. I added those things in. I had the level of friction. I worked on those things. Now those things, I don't hold the amount of attention I had before. You know what I mean? And all these things work together. But there's a broader idea that I want to bring people to because everyone, people that listen to your show are active.

30:48They want to have longevity in the things that they do. Some of them are like professional level athletes. And the thing that I think about is, you know, how can we have a level of calm in a typically sympathetic type of sport or activity? How can we have calm control over it? And it goes back to when I used to power lift. I wasn't the kind of guy who would breathe heavy and hype myself up and use the nose torque. I would breathe. I would calm myself down. I would bring myself down. And then I would do the lift so that it wasn't something that stressed me out and so that it was something that was repeatable.

31:27I'd do my heaviest lifts that way. And when I started doing jujitsu, I started noticing that, like, my breathing was a factor. I was gassing out. I was breathing super heavy. and my recovery wasn't great. So, you know, I read The Oxygen Advantage by Patch McKeown back in 2016 and a bunch of other breath books, which turned me on to the idea of nasal breathing during exercise. And the thing is, is when people hear about this idea, because some people have probably already heard about nasal breathing during exercise, some people will have the immediate knee-jerk reaction of saying, no, that whenever effort gets hard, you have to breathe through your mouth.

32:03So don't even bother with that nasal breathing stuff. And I find it unfortunate that people don't kind of peel back the layers of seeing what that could teach them and seeing what that could bring them. Because when you breathe through your nose inherently, you're supposed to be breathing through your nose most of the time, outside of very high effort exercise. So a lot of people have the tendency of, let's say they start sitting in front of a computer screen and there's actually this phenomenon called screen apnea. A researcher called Linda Stone, I believe in 2006, there was an observational study where she was watching people and when they had their phones in front of them or they got behind screens, they started either holding their breath or their ventilation increased, meaning they started breathing faster because they were in front of a screen.

32:44There's a few things that could be a cause of that. Number one, the increased focus on a screen and then the posture and compounding effects. But the underlying issue is that many people have the tendency of breathing through their mouth at rest these days without realizing it. And when you breathe through your mouth, it doesn't do the things your nose does. Your nose helps you produce nitric oxide. It warms the air you breathe. It humidifies the air you breathe. It allows you to breathe slower and deeper into the diaphragm when you breathe through the nose. And then you'd think, well, again, when you're doing something like exercise and ventilation, which is your rate of breathing increases, of course your mouth has to open.

33:18That's not the case if you train yourself to learn how to breathe through your nose as effort climbs. Doesn't mean that it's going to be at the highest levels. It's going to still all be nasal. But the question is, this is the main thing to think about. how long and how high can I take my effort before my mouth has to open? Because most athletes, most athletes, once effort gets to around 50, 60%, the mouth drops open. Okay. So we lose all the benefits of the nose. We are, we're now getting rid of even more carbon dioxide. But if we can keep breathing through the nose and increase our carbon dioxide tolerance, that's going to allow us to stay aerobic in higher thresholds of stress.

34:01And that's going to allow us to make an activity that typically is more sympathetic, sympathetic coded or has more sympathetic tone, we can make that activity more parasympathetic and a bit more calm. Because this is the thing, it doesn't mean that the activity is now parasympathetic. It just means do we have more parasympathetic tone within this sympathetic activity? So for me, these days, I rarely have to open my mouth when doing jujitsu. It takes a very specific type of grappler where I'll even have to open my mouth. But even so, I'm able to usually breathe through my nose, even in the worst of situations in jujitsu.

34:39And the byproduct of this for myself has been that it doesn't beat me up nearly as much because I leave the mats feeling chill and relaxed a vast majority of the time. So I can train multiple times a week doing this sympathetic activity of biting people, and I can leave feeling pretty chill because I barely had to open my mouth. It's actually, I use it as a metric for myself. Can I beat you without having to breathe heavy? Right? That's because I trained my ability to continue to keep nasal ventilation as my heart rate increased. And this isn't just me. I've shared this with a lot of people and other people have done this on their own.

35:15I mean, there are athletes who do this on the court without people really paying attention. Like Roger Federer is a great example of this. If anybody watches Hodger Federer play, I called him Hodger because I watch so much jujitsu, Roger Federer play tennis. You'll notice that a lot of times he's on the court, usually his mouth is closed. There are times you'll see his mouth drop open a little bit. But Roger has this composure that I haven't seen almost in anybody when it comes to tennis. But he also happens to barely ever open his mouth when he's breathing. I've also shared this with a bunch of people in The Stronger Human, and I've told them, I just want you guys to mess around with this and tell me what you notice.

35:49and the thing is this is the thing with the nose because it can be very frustrating to shift and try to cap your to stop your workout or to slow down your workout by just breathing through the nose because what's going to happen is you're not going to be efficient at doing this there's a few things which i it's going to take a long time to get into but some people have very stiff rib cages which doesn't allow them to breathe as deeply so learning how to get improve the tissue quality of the rib cage is going to be important so the rib cage can move better and some people don't have the greatest mechanics when it comes to breathing at higher efforts.

36:22Some people will tend to breathe up here as effort increases versus keeping the breath continuing to be pumped by the trunk and the diaphragm. So that's one thing. But if you use your nose as kind of like a governor, okay, and you tell yourself in my next workout, I'm going to limit myself to see how hard can I go until I feel the need to breathe through my mouth and then I'm not gonna go harder. I'm just gonna keep my intensity at that level. If you have that as your governor, first thing you'll notice that after that session, you'll feel more recovered. You're gonna tell yourself, well, I feel more recovered because I didn't work as hard because I wasn't breathing through my mouth.

37:01That is partly true. But the thing you're gonna notice is as you keep that over time, if you just continue to try to work and sometimes if you're in a martial arts or you're doing something where you have to increase that intensity and you find you have to open your mouth, allow yourself to do it, right? But try to have the intent of, I'm gonna see how hard I can go and what I can maintain by breathing through the nose. You're gonna notice that your aerobic capacity, right? Or your ability to be able to pretty much keep a low heart rate at high intensities is going to improve, right? And lastly, an interesting thing right now in fitness is everybody's going crazy over the VO2 maths.

37:39There's a study I'm gonna send you after this show. It was done on 14 cyclists, and I forgot the name of the researcher, but they all had comparable VO2 maxes. The only difference between half of these cyclists, right, was that half of them had a higher lactic threshold, okay? When your body uses lactic acid, your body's continuously, when doing aerobic work, clearing and reusing lactic acid. And lactate's a reusable resource. You can clear it and use it. It's more aerobic in nature, right? So the athletes that had a broader lactic threshold, those athletes, they all did, I think, a 60-minute workout.

38:18All the same VO2 max. But the ones with a higher lactate threshold were able to go double the amount of time in that workout, even though everybody had the same serum. The only difference was the floor. The only difference was the floor. And everybody right now is saying, do your Norwegian 4x4s, do this multiple times a week. Everybody's chasing VO2 max and they're neglecting the floor, the aerobic capacity underneath it. And that's what has allowed me to now like I can do high intensity workouts. But the thing that allows my heart rate to come back down fast is my ability to nasal breathe and calm down quickly.

38:57My broad, my aerobic base is broad and I still have a decent ceiling. So that shift, I think, can help a lot of people when it comes to what they're seeking in terms of their cardiovascular capacity.

39:07Shawn Stevenson:Summer's here and it's time to play. Growing up, this was my favorite time of year to have fun outside for hours and also to enjoy some homemade lemonade or iced tea. And today we can enjoy these same summer vibes, but with upgraded purpose. What if you can experience the thirst quenching power of lemonade and iced tea and give your body an infusion of key electrolytes to fuel your performance? And what does it even matter in the first place? Well, electrolytes enable optimal muscle function. Electrolytes like sodium and magnesium are essential for nerve signaling, allowing our muscles to contract and relax properly, which prevents cramping and fatigue.

39:48Shawn Stevenson:Sodium also helps your body and your brain to retain water, preventing dehydration that can lead to cardiovascular strain and decreased strength or power. Things we don't want to happen. Well, if you don't know, now you know the number one science-backed electrolyte drink designed to support active hydration, cognitive performance, and a healthy lifestyle is the electrolytes from Element. Element has a science-backed ratios of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to help you to feel and perform your very best. No sugar, no artificial colors, and nothing dodgy. The best performers in the world utilize Element.

40:24Shawn Stevenson:I'm talking about Team USA weightlifting, NBA and NFL teams, the Navy SEALs, the list goes on and on. And right now, Element has just released their brand new lemonade iced tea electrolyte drink mix. The signs back ratios of electrolytes, a light lift of caffeine from black tea, and that summertime flavor that hits perfectly on a summer day. And right now you get to try Element risk-free with their no questions asked refunds if you don't absolutely love how it makes you feel. Just head over to drinklmnt.com forward slash model to take advantage right now. And you're also going to get a free bonus pack of their most popular flavors with every electrolyte purchase.

41:11Shawn Stevenson:Again, go to drinklmnt.com forward slash model. Now back to the show. Phenomenal, phenomenal. I wanna talk about how we can train this practically. And for this, I wanna speak from experience as well, because obviously so many years as an athlete, so many years lifting, we develop these habits. And as you mentioned, just racing, it's a form of like just this protective mechanism. And for me, what really helped to kind of unlock and transition to be able to breathe more fluidly is doing isometrics, right? So having a stressor, a stressful position or situation that I put my body into, that's getting all these muscle inputs, tendon inputs, ligament inputs.

42:01Shawn Stevenson:So it's a stressor and it's even challenging, but now I'm literally proactively breathing through this. And that started to kind of unlock or unglue my capacity to breathe doing other stressful movements, in particular, again, lifting. So what is your perspective about isometrics? Do you think that that's a great kind of on-ramp for this? And what are some other ways that people can utilize? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you had a question about isometrics there. You also had a practical question about how people can get that nasal capacity in terms of their workouts. So let me just give a quick idea.

42:41This one actually came from, I learned from Chris Hinshaw, aerobic capacity a few years ago and started applying it to myself and people I work with and just anyone I give some of this advice to. If you're using a salt bike or any type of cardiovascular implement that you have at hand, it could be a skier, it could be a rowing machine. You could even jump rope because you don't need something where you can see your wattage, but it's nice if you have some type of piece of equipment that you can see your power output. The goal would be within a workout that's like 15 minutes, okay, maybe you do two of these types of sessions a week, all nasal.

43:15The goal is keeping all nasal. One workout will be 10 to 15 minutes. The other workout will potentially be 25 to 35 minutes. Again, all nasal. I'm going to use the assault bike as an example here. Your first session will be figuring out the peak wattage that you can have while breathing through your nose. So you're figuring out what's that threshold that I can maintain nasal breathing, right? And once I go over this wattage, I'm going to end up breathing through my mouth, right? So what you can do is a test. You can go to like, let's say 150 watts or 170 watts. Do that for two minutes. Increase your wattage by 10 watts.

43:53Do it for a minute. Increase your wattage by 10 watts. Do it for a minute, right? Just keep increasing your watts by 10 to 20 watts for a period of time until you find the place in the wattage where you're like, oh gosh, I have to breathe through my mouth. And then go down about 10 to 15 watts below that and do the workout for another 5, 10 minutes. That's going to give you your baseline, your baseline wattage for your power output while you're breathing through your nose. Now, understanding that wattage, you're going to have maybe one to two workouts per week. One of those workouts is going to be a shorter duration, 10 to 15 minutes.

44:26The second workout is going to be a longer duration, 25 to 35 minutes. For the shorter duration workout, you're going to work towards the higher end of the wattage that you tested. So let's potentially say that when you tested, you were able to maintain 240 watts while breathing through your nose. So now when you do your workout, that's 10 to 15 minutes, you're gonna do a 10 to 15 minute workout at around 230 to 240 watts. If you find yourself that like, as you're doing that workout, you're like, oh, I have to breathe through my mouth, lower the wattage, just lower the wattage and keep doing the workout, okay?

44:56No reason to increase intensity and breathe through your mouth, okay? Your second workout, 25 to 35 minutes is longer. So for this longer workout, we're going to lower our wattage just a little bit. Your threshold that we mentioned was 240 watts. So maybe this 25 to 35 minute workout is going to be around 225 watts for 25 to 35 minutes. Because as the duration increases, you're going to get more fatigued, right? So the goal is to do this duration all through the nose. So we're going to have to have a little bit lower output. Now, the goal is this. Those workouts are going to be aerobic in nature.

45:32Your heart rate's going to be lower. That's the why you can do them twice a week and not absolutely feel tanked or killed. It's something that you can maintain for a long period of time. But our goal over time is to be able to increase our power output while breathing through our nose. For me, what this looked like, it took me about a year to be able to do this. But I started out and my wattage, breathing through the nose, was around 250, 260 watts. It took about a year, but now I'm able to maintain around 330 watts for 20 minutes while breathing through my nose on the exercise bike. For my size and my weight, that's a lot of wattage without having the heart rate climb and having to beat myself up.

46:14So what that does and what that tells me is now when I'm going and doing something like jujitsu, it's going to take a lot more for someone to make me breathe heavy. and when I do breathe heavy, I'll be able to hold on to that longer than they do and if I find moments of the fight where I need to bring my heart rate down, when I come back down into a lower heart rate, that's just allowing me to recover way more than they can. Okay, so that's a practical way and you can take this type of idea onto any machine and even if you like jump roping, for example, I do this when I jump rope a lot, I'll just do a session of jump roping and just not allow myself to open my mouth, right?

46:50I'll see how fast can I go and what can I, now for me, it's just like, I'm just pushing the boundary of what my body can do without having to open the mouth. It does not mean I never open my mouth. Once a week, I'll have a session that's just disgusting in terms of my cardiovascular output. That will make me want to throw up. That's once a week. Sometimes once every two weeks, right? But it's not common because those workouts really, really thrash me. Okay, and they thrash most people. But when it comes to cardio, that's what most people seek. and I think that you don't need so much of that input to get the benefit.

47:24You need a taste of that. But most of your cardio should be within the range that broadens the base. And everyone right now is reaching for VO2 max and we're reaching 4x4s. So I'm going to push that now to the side. And I want to mention the isometrics things you talked about or you were mentioning. I think isometrics are, I think you actually had an NBA strength coach that came on here talking about isometrics recently. But they're so powerful. And I think it's unfortunate that more people don't pay attention to how powerful they are. We actually just had Keith Barr on the show. His podcast isn't out yet.

47:57But a cool thing about isometrics is that they've been proven to be one of the best things to reduce blood pressure, which is really interesting to me because a strength training movement being something that can vastly decrease blood pressure and increase the strength of your tendons, right? And let me also mention this. This is another cool thing about isometrics. you when you're doing an isometric type of work and i think keith barr he has this thing called low duration or long duration low intensity isometrics okay when most people do isometrics and most of the strength training most people think about high intensity um short duration so i'm going to do this this um max push into the squat rack for five seconds as hard as possible right?

48:45And that's not necessarily bad. But the thing that Keith got from long duration, low intensity isometrics is that it helps you develop more of something we call creep, okay? If I have this kettlebell right here, right? And I hold this here and have a level of tension here at my wrist, okay? This kettlebell isn't crazy heavy. It's going to take a while. But the longer that I hold this kettlebell here, the strongest parts of my muscles right now are working to keep this in place. Over time, the stress is going to slowly creep deeper into the weaker parts of my tissue the longer I hold this kettlebell in place.

49:27Okay, so if I hold it out here, right, this is a heavy kettlebell, but my bicep tendon, the longer I hold it there, I'm going to be able to creep into the weakest parts of my tendon. So that's why first off doing isometrics for 30 to 45 seconds at maybe not, not a hundred percent intensity, but, and by the way, what I did right there is called a yielding isometric. I was yielding from the kettlebell going down and overcoming isometric would be the isometric where let's say that there's something on a squat rack and you're pushing into it and you can't push anything that is overcoming an immovable object.

49:59Back to creep. That long duration, low intensity allows me to get into the weakest parts of my tendon. And most people right now, when they think about isometrics, they think about the highest amount of intensity. So I want us to switch that there. But the next thing is, when you do an isometric session, you only need to spend, and as Keith has shown, you only need to spend about 10 minutes doing work on that specific tendon. And then past that, it's nothing but diminishing returns. So you can get 10 minutes of work on any tissue you're trying to work doing overcoming or yielding isometrics. And the amazing thing is, especially if you're a natural athlete, you can recover from that session, your tendons in six to eight hours.

50:40So thinking about this, you're able to get high muscular tension. Yes, the muscle isn't moving through a range of motion, but you're bringing tension to the muscle. You're bringing stress to the tendon you're trying to work. Because the thing about isometrics that makes them also so powerful is, for example, when we're doing bicep curls, we're going through a range of motion here. We're working the bicep, the tendon does get work at this long range, but it doesn't get as much work at this long range as if I held a yielding isometric right here. Now, all of that stress is at that tendon for the period of time since I'm not moving it through a range of motion.

51:19So we're able to also get more stress onto the tendon than we are with dynamic work, and we're able to recover fast from it since we're not moving through dynamic ranges of motion. It doesn't mean that dynamic ranges of motion aren't good, but we're now able to strengthen our tendons over time, get muscular stress without the fatigue ramifications of dynamic training. And most people right now, when they think about training in the gym, it's always dynamic work. Three, five, no, not even three, just five days a week, four days a week, dynamic work. What if we shifted some of our focus instead of doing dynamic work five days a week?

51:53Maybe we did dynamic work two days a week. We did isometrics on multiple other days of the week because when you're doing isometrics, Yes, you're hitting your tendons, but you still are getting a good amount of muscular tension. So it's not like your muscles are doing nothing. I think sometimes we think that we need to just keep doing the dynamic training to keep our muscles or to grow our muscles. But you got to realize you don't need that input so much to get the effect. I'm trying to think of the minimum effective dose to be able to get the best potential outcomes. And for our aging population especially, okay?

52:23Isometrics are, I love as a jujitsu, as a grappler, I'm not even going to go into it here, but isometrics have been transformative for my hands and my grip. And the people I've shown it to, especially grapplers, because they do so much stuff with their hands, isometrics have been amazing. But the biggest thing too is that with a lot of people, their tendons get weaker as they age. And if you can recover fast from this, it doesn't stress you out too much. You can do it from the comfort of your own home. You can get into a wall sit. You can get into an isometric horse stance. You can get into all these.

52:53You saw, you said Wemby was doing a juggling in a lunge, right? He was doing juggling in a lunge isometric position. What do you think that that was doing to the tendons of his knees? These things have massive effects and you can recover from it quickly. And we're totally sleeping on it. This is the one last thing I'm going to mention. Apparently, blood pressure medication actually weakens the tendons. So this is an interesting thing. As people get older and they start taking blood pressure medication, the blood pressure medication makes their tendons weaker. But what could be the thing that could help all of this?

53:27Maybe by adding in some just body weight isometrics or some yielding isometrics, your blood pressure could improve. Isometrics have been proven to be amazing for grip strength. And just maybe also your tendons improve without having to need medication.

53:46Shawn Stevenson:Like what? All right. All right. So first and foremost, we've got yielding and we've got overcoming that he's unpacked for us. And just to understand the value, multiple levels you've already broken down. Like this is where you said it, we're sleeping on it. We're sleeping on isometrics. Just yesterday, I think when I was leaving you a voice text, I just finished training my son and his friend and they're basketball players. And it was a nice day. So we went, I took them to the park and I did both types of isometrics. It was pretty much the entire workout. We did a couple of other things. We did some banded pull-ups and, you know, a little of this and a little of that, but yielding position, they got into a lunge position, holding a kettlebell in one hand and just holding that position.

54:34Shawn Stevenson:And today they're sore, but not like so sore that it's just like, oh my gosh, they're going to be probably, again, you recover faster, especially with these inputs. They never did it before. That's why they're sore. right? And so the same thing happened with me, right? I could do, I could do hundreds of lunges, but holding that lunge position with a kettlebell in my hand for 30 seconds, I was sore the next day. But after I did it a couple of times, it really, what I, what I see personally is isometrics help us to adapt faster. And so side, sidebar, so yielding isometric there, lunge position, strong lunge position and holding that kettlebell can be in either hand.

55:14Shawn Stevenson:And then we, the, the final set, I had them get in a rack position with the kettlebell holding up close to their body just for a different little input. So that was one. And later in the workout, they did an overcoming isometric. There's a, a sign at the park at this little area where the workout, where we're doing the workout that has little workout instructions. And I had one go on one side and the other on the other side and so basically this is an immovable object somewhat i'm saying like if you could probably push this shit over to be honest you know um activate because somebody said that you have like when when you're like five and seema has like dad strength all right it's just like you know multiple times stronger than you could imagine but so they have this sign but with each one of them pushing on each side of it.

56:05Shawn Stevenson:I'm just like, it's a competition between you two. This is actually immovable, which you're going up against, but try to move the other person. And so I had them going up into it, into a lateral isometric calf raise basically. So the outside foot is turned and they're up on their toe, inside foot is elevated and they're pushing into that wall. They've got the contraction with the core going on. They've got the, obviously with the legs, is just really powerful. And so, and that's a movement that you see very frequently in basketball, this lateral movement up against a player. And just to think again, like if they need to give somebody a bump and they're going against this immovable object and they can bump into somebody who can move, they're going to be a problem, all right?

56:51Shawn Stevenson:And so sprinkling these pieces in, along with, again, maybe some jump squats are in the mix, maybe some pushups, some chin-ups, that kind of stuff too. but we're really leaning into the isometrics. And it was thanks to, again, you mentioned earlier, Coach Mike Guevara, Coach Mike G, who's worked most recently with the Houston Rockets and being able to have this programming for my son, his teammates, and also again, seeing what they're doing has already integrated itself at the highest levels of sport. But the crazy part is, this has been around for centuries. We just been sleeping on it. You know, there's a, there's a few things I want to mention.

57:35The beautiful thing that I think of what you mentioned there is you can use a tree, right? If you have like some type of a stiff band in a tree, you can use a tree for certain aspects of itchymetrics. You can use a sign like you were using. You don't need special equipment. You could, I mean, it makes you wonder in within Tai Chi and certain cultures, getting into like a horse stance is a very important thing for the longevity of the body. Why though? When you get into a horse stance, it's quite uncomfortable and you realize how weak your hips and your adductors in these areas are, the tissues in these areas and the tendons in these areas.

58:09And they will just sit there and hold that position, right? So you realize they're doing a yielding isometric within that position. And you can do that in any position to strengthen your ability to maintain your structure as you're breathing. And I want to mention this. People have the tendency, just like we talked about earlier, when lifting weights in the gym, holding their breath. Well, when doing an isometric and you're not putting consistent force through something, you mentioned that it helped your breathing. That's so important to make sure you realize and you do while you're doing isometrics, not holding the breath.

58:44But I actually want to ask you, why did you notice that that helped your breathing? What did you

58:50Shawn Stevenson:notice because you know the way that i conditioned my body was the valsalva maneuver right and hold that tension and to breathe out on the um uh the explosive part of the movement and to breathe in as the weight is coming back to me and so i've just really trained my body to do that without any real awareness it was just like kind of built in getting into the isometric position so i'll just use an example of that lunge position, right? Or maybe a single leg elevated split squat position. And now I've got a target amount of time. So maybe it's 30 seconds, 45 seconds. And so now I'm in this position and knowing myself, I have a separate breathing practice, separate lifting practice.

59:41Shawn Stevenson:Now I get to integrate them together. And so coming into it, I know that I'm going to have to breathe because I can't hold my breath. Well, I can technically, but it's not necessary for me to hold my breath in this strenuous position. And so it was just a conscious switch. I just flipped a switch in my mind and it just made me, I was shocked at how comfortable that I was breathing deeply, even under load, under stress. Right. So this is, this is so key what you're mentioning here because you're able to find a level of ease within something stressful that's that's the broad thing here typically when we're doing these types of things whether it's isometric type work you see people they're making all the they're they're everything is like stress stress stress jujitsu stressful uh sprinting stressful right whereas when you see some of the elite athletes do these things like you see uh i mean shoot look at sha 'Carri Richardson her face when she's sprinting Usain Bolt.

1:00:41There's this Jamaican sprinter. She's the oldest sprinter right now, actually, who's still competing. I forgot her name. But you watch these athletes do something so stressful and they're so relaxed. They find a level of ease within what they're doing because they're breathing while they're doing it. And most people, when they start doing any of this type of work, and let's talk isometrics, they hold their breath. The one thing I really like about isometrics is that they teach you, just like jujitsu has so many isometric positions when you're fighting an opponent, same with wrestling, isometrics teach you how to find your strongest anatomical position against a load, whether you're pushing.

1:01:21I have this device called the ISOFIT, I-S-O-P-H-I-T, that allows me to get my body into different positions to funnel force, right? So I have a handle that I put on this bar that doesn't move and I can adjust the length of the bar or the height of the bar. And I can get into different types of positions, but I can find the best structural position for my body to get into to now funnel force through this object, right? But I'm also breathing as I'm funneling as much force as I'm able to funnel, right? So inherently, you learn how to create these strong positions with your bones, with your structure.

1:01:56Because a lot of time when people are lifting, when people think of bad form, like bad form on a deadlift. What happened is that person found it and got out of the right form of leverage. When you see people deadlifting and their form is bad, it's because they lost the anatomical position of their structure to efficiently lift that barbell off the ground. Isometrics teach you how to find all of these positions and then find the best anatomical structure to get your body into and maintain as you're funneling force through whatever you're doing. Like your sons were pushing through the signpost, et cetera.

1:02:29And now when you're on a court and somebody wants to produce force against you and your body can literally just become a statue and pop right back at them with minimal effort. There's an NBA player. His name is Steven Adams. He's so amazing at this. When he's playing basketball, he's on the Houston Rockets. When he's playing on the court and he's under the rim, he looks like he's just he looks like he's like fighting people so fluidly because he'll get his body into positions. and he does a lot of these types of things, but he'll get his body into these positions of just rooted strength because he understands how to use his structure and his breath against people.

1:03:04And he looks calm while he's doing it. And that's what isometrics teach you how to do. He looks calm while he's doing it. He looks calm while he's doing it. So again, isometrics are so slept on and there's something that you can do right now as you're listening to this episode. You can get into a lunge, a wall sit, a horse stance. You can do this as you're listening to the episode if you're not driving at least.

1:03:24Shawn Stevenson:amazing yeah and that sprinter that you were referencing shelly ann fraser price yeah yes yeah i love the reason i mentioned shelly ann many sprinters you'll notice actually there's some sprinters that have they look like they're holding their breath a little bit like i think of justin gatlin but there are certain sprinters that i've seen like usain um shelly ann fraser price shelly ann and this is this comes back to the breeding thing and it's a it's an even higher concept that I want people to now start even paying attention to. I've talked to a few different sprint coaches and I've asked them, I've just wanted to see what they say.

1:04:01I'm like, what do you have your athletes do about their breathing when they're sprinting? And then, and some of them have been like, I don't really have to worry about it. I just tell them to like, just breathe however they need to breathe to do it. And I found that interesting because when I've, first off, the most efficient way that I've been able to move well and sprint has been when I've been able to find a rhythm with my steps and my breathing. And then when I watch some of the top athletes and I watch their ventilation along with their steps, it looks like their breathing matches up with their movement.

1:04:32Because when you're able to find a movement that rhythmically matches with your breath, you don't have to think about it anymore. Less effort is taken because your body knows when the breath is coming on each stride. So now there's like less effort when it comes to movement and ventilation. and you would think that people would then try to think about, okay, how can I teach people how to have a level of rhythm with their breathing as they're doing these activities? Because that could potentially improve their movement efficiency, allow them to get into a better flow because their breath is moving in rhythm with their body.

1:05:09So that's another thing I want people to start thinking about when it comes to their own personal movement practice. Maybe you're doing the thing I mentioned on the assault bike and you're breathing through the nose. can you find a rhythm with your inhales and exhales and how much you're cycling right so it's not just random inhales and exhales but there's there's a cadence to it and your movement you'll find that when you're able to find that rhythm and that cadence and i want to loop back to what we mentioned at the beginning the belief some people just don't believe that they have rhythm i that's like that's such an interesting thing to me when people are like i can't dance or I just don't have rhythm.

1:05:43You automatically block yourself off from something that I think runs underneath many amazing athletes. Their ability to control the rhythm of the game and their ability to even see the rhythm of their opponent. So there's a, okay, you watch basketball, right? Yeah. Okay, Boston Celtics. What's the name of that really amazing defensive player on their team? Right now? Yes. He didn't win defensive player of the year. Let me just type this in. Jalen Brown? Jalen Brown. Jalen Brown had this amazing video. I think he was on the show Hot Ones when he was mentioning this. And he was saying, he was talking about how as a great defensive player, he learns how to understand the rhythm of his opponent.

1:06:30He was talking about how Luka Doncic has like this herky-jerky rhythm on the court. And if you want to be able to play defense against him, you have to be able to understand that. and he said how Kyrie has this super slow and fast rhythm that like you can't really tell what Kyrie is going to do because it's like so it goes all over the place. I think he also might have mentioned Jokic, but he mentioned how like these players have these distinct rhythms and when you tap into the rhythms, they become easier to defend. And that right there, that's not just a genetic thing because I think some people just believe that certain people just have better rhythm.

1:07:00It's an exposure thing. It's maybe Jalen, he's been playing basketball for a long time. He's tapped into this. He now inherently understands rhythm and he can apply that to his game and the way he moves. And that's something that we can all do. Hicks and Gracie also talked about this and has talked about this. He's, again, if people don't know why I'm referencing Hicks and Gracie, he's like one of the greatest grapplers of all time, historic fighter. And he mentioned and he talks about learning how to develop a level of rhythm with your breath and movement as a fighter, right? So that's something I want you to think about.

1:07:32Can you, of course, when you're going through the day, you don't have to be thinking about the rhythm of your breath. You want to keep it through your nose. You want to keep it calm. But when you do certain activities like running, cardio, even when you're doing an activity, can your breath, can you figure out a way to have a level of rhythm with your movement? Because that might improve your efficiency of breathing, your efficiency of movement, and your level of feeling of ease with how stressful this activity is.

1:07:58Shawn Stevenson:Amazing. This is amazing advice, man. this reminds me specifically of an athlete who believed that she didn't have rhythm and that was encouraged or fortified that belief with the people around her as well Liz Gleetle and this is somebody who has a parallel track with you you know having this kind of integration with rope flow in these parallel universes where you are doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu and she's competing as an Olympic athlete with the javelin, right? And so again, she is the world record holder, I'm sorry, national record holder in Canada, all right? Best to ever do it in her country.

1:08:50Shawn Stevenson:All right. That's incredible. And she could do all these incredible, and by the way, this might be the most technically demanding movement in all of sport. It's so violent. And it's this, this one thing you have to do it, you know, execute this thing perfectly, a high degree of difficulty, high degree of injury. And so doing this, but then being told like, yeah, Liz is a great athlete, but she can't dance. She can't move well, right? It's just like - She's dancing all over the place. Right, now she's dancing like, she literally gets paid for it. You know what I mean? And this was just one of those things where she decided to investigate and to experiment and to unlock this capacity because it was just locked up.

1:09:38Shawn Stevenson:It was just glued up. Every culture around the world has music, music has dance, you know? So again, this might be attributed to, you know, your content of melanin, for example, that is just going to come to you naturally. But every culture around the world has rhythmic sound and this connection with music. And also even with the melanin content, there are people who, you know, they can't really move that well, you know what I'm saying? And so it's something that we can unlock and train and unglue. And what tends to happen is just conditioning, right? What tends to happen is lack of exposure. What tends to happen is lack of experimentation and moving our body.

1:10:25Shawn Stevenson:Like I think dance is such an undervalued tool to unlock athleticism. And, you know, and also of course the piece of, again, and here's a big underlying reason. and you said this earlier, this is why we're talking to the Jedi, is that even though it might be a sympathetic thing that we're doing, tapping into that parasympathetic tone. All right, so, and I'm saying all this to say, I wanna, we can put a bookmark on that potentially, but in this conversation, in this parallel universe with you and Liz, utilizing rope flow, you mentioned the rope earlier. This is something that you brought into my life and I utilize this practically 360 out of 365.

1:11:14Shawn Stevenson:I'm using my rope. There's a couple of days here or there that I don't end up using my rope, but it's a big part of my daily life and my practices. Especially like the time that I always use it is before I train, before I do the intensive like training session. It's just one of those things to kind of tap in. It's a self-assessment tool for me now as well. But what it's done for me, one of the biggest things that is unlocked is the symmetry all right i don't it's again now here's here's the great thing it's like it's an asymmetric thing but it's made me more symmetrical if that makes sense can you speak to that so first of all for those who don't know what is rope flow and then talk about some of these compact capacities that it unlocks with our athleticism and just with our movement overall?

1:12:04Yeah, okay. So Rope Flow, it's a movement practice that was developed by David Weck. He's the guy who created the BOSU ball. So I always appreciate David, you know, when he showed it to me years ago, because it's helped me figure out a lot of other things and find similarities with other things. But you take a rope, right? And you swing it from side to side. And Sean, you mentioned it's asymmetrical as a practice, but it's symmetrical in practice. So what that means is when you're swinging the rope on one side of your body. One shoulder's forward, one shoulder's back. There's a level of rotation in the spine.

1:12:34So not both sides of the body are doing the same thing, but when you take the rope to the other side, the other side just now mirrors what your dominant or non-dominant side did. So this is the powerful thing about rope flow, the aspect of symmetry, non-dominance and dominance. We all have a hand. I'm right-handed, right? So you guys have been seeing me do whatever this thing is through this show with my left hand and I take to my right hand and maybe it looks a little bit easier, right? Rope flow helps you build a level of movement symmetry between both sides of your body because as you do it on one side of your body, and the breath also comes into this because as I mentioned, when most people are starting rope flow and they're trying to do new moves, they try to force it.

1:13:13They hold their breath. I always have to remind people, breathe as you're doing it. So now it's a practice that also incorporates fluid breathing as you're moving, okay? So you're doing it on your dominant side. The whatever movement you do feels good. You do it on your non-dominant and it doesn't feel good. So now your brain, what your brain's trying to do is trying to solve the problem. How can I make the thing that I just did really well on this side, how can I make it work well on this side? So you do those reps, you do those reps, then the problem solves, it clicks. The symmetry aspect is an amazing thing about it because now you learn how to make certain aspects of coordination that you're doing so well on the dominant side of your body.

1:13:55You learn how to build that coordination on your non-dominant side. Many people don't have practices that do that. Many people will do things mostly on our dominant and our non-dominant. We won't really work on its coordination. But this practice inherently helps you build that. But then the other thing I love about this practice and many of the practices that I was mentioning, whether it's juggling, rope flow, etc., is the problems that it brings about and the awareness that it forces you to now see. because as you're rotating on one side or as you start moving through space with the rope and maybe doing things overhead and doing throwing patterns with the rope, I know Liz probably talked about throwing patterns since she's a thrower, you notice, wow, oh, I really never tried throwing something with my non-dominant side.

1:14:38So now you work that throwing coordination, which isn't just a coordination of the arm. It's a coordination of the spine, the hips, the feet. It's a full body coordination to throw. And the brain. And the brain. And you develop that on your non-dominant side with breathing. and with rhythm and if you put on some music right and you now flow to the rhythm of the music you're now doing this coordinated practice pretty much you're dancing and the funny thing i think is so interesting is so many people in the straight training world they look at this and they're like i'm not gonna go dance like why am i gonna go do that i'm just gonna go spend my time training in the gym and it's like that's why you're so stiff you don't have anything that's developing your rhythm and it's fun.

1:15:20You know what I mean?

1:15:25Bro. Oh my God. So, um, and like, it's, it's also something that you can pretty much do anywhere. That's one reason I love it. You can microdose the activity. So I don't tell people to look at it like a workout. I tell people to look at it like a, you just take a break, do some road flow, get some fluid movement and get the brain going. maybe even try a new pattern, put it away, go do something else. Because now, whether it's rope flow you did, whether it's juggling, whether you're sitting around, you're messing with something in your hands or whatever, there's something that's building within the, like I think even juggling has been shown to increase the gray matter in your brain because of all the things that it, like it's your center for, there's a part of the brain that I forgot what exactly it controls, which whatever, we can maybe have something there.

1:16:12But that's not something we work often. You know what I mean? Our levels of coordination to throw and see. But rope flow and these practices will kind of seep into all the other things you do. Whether you're someone who plays basketball and you're cutting one way and another way, you might find that, wow, okay, when I do this movement, it now just feels a little bit more fluid. I found that with my jujitsu. The odd thing for me that I found, and other people in the Stronger Human have mentioned this for themselves too, so now I know it's not just me. is that as I've learned and developed my ability to do these different coordinative practices, my ability to now just like learn more things and like learn certain things in jujitsu or take up something new and actually get the hang of it has kind of increased.

1:16:59It's like the learning that I've developed in certain areas because now I've learned so many things, learning new things is just easier. Like, I mean, I picked up the didgeridoo recently because I wanted to see how it would affect my breath And I wanted to learn this thing called circular breathing, which has been shown to help people who have sleep apnea and snore. I was able to learn circular breathing pretty darn fast within three days. But it's because I think the things that I've been learning have kind of just made learning easier. So there's a lot to it. I tried to kind of speed run that.

1:17:33But, you know, one thing I think is that you Ropeflow is a very, I have a free tutorial on YouTube. The Stronger Human Community is free. Like I have areas where you guys can just take up and learn this stuff. And it's just something that you can do. It's fun. It can be decompressive. And it's not something that beats you up, but you just, you want to go do it. It's just, it's fun, you know, but it does so much for you.

1:17:56Shawn Stevenson:And I'll leave that there. A lot of the Model Health Show community is in the stronger human community as well. I'm so happy to hear that. So what's the URL or how can people get access? Yeah, it's school.com slash the stronger human, or it's like school.com slash about slash the stronger human. Well, one of those. We'll put it in the show notes. It'll be there. We'll put it in the show notes. And by the way, that specific thing is one of the coolest things that I found. So one day, of course, so you got the dragon roll is one of the movements with the road flow. And one side just came pretty quickly.

1:18:35Shawn Stevenson:The other side felt wonky. It just didn't feel right. and then one day maybe this is a week later two weeks whenever it was suddenly I didn't know which side was my dominant side like I switched and I was doing it and I was like okay which you know what I mean it just like yes it was such a cool moment where I didn't even know that this was my non-dominant side and so for years you know playing basketball I heavily favored my right hand in all of my movements and finishing at the rim. Very rarely would I do anything with the left hand, especially in a layup situation. I got to a point, and the thing was, again, I would try, I would try to work on doing little drills to try to, but when I started doing rope flow and then I went back and started doing some of these things, all of a sudden, there are many times in competition and also, of course, just doing drills that I will actually favor using my left hand in these situations.

1:19:38Shawn Stevenson:And it just like happens so quick. And so again, what this is, of course, this is a unlock for our tissues, for our movement patterns, but really what we're doing is working on our brain. And this has been said many times, we have these hemispheres, one side controlling one side of the body, one side controlling the other side. there is so much whole brain integration patterning. And it isn't this black or white thing with the brain. There's so much about the brain and our capacities that we still don't understand. But what we do know is that when we are using our non-dominant side, it is firing up parts of our brain that are hella sleepy, if not just kind of dormant.

1:20:24Shawn Stevenson:This doesn't mean we don't have the capacity. And what we have here with Ropeflow is the capacity to literally grow connections in our brain, to grow and develop our brain. And so it's a special tool. It's a special movement practice. And so I can't recommend it enough. The ropes that I use are from you. Can you share where people can pick up a rope full of rope from you? Yeah, thestrongerhuman.com. There's a bunch of different options for ropes there, along with like juggling balls and different types. But anything that I use and I think is great, I have over there at thestrongerhuman.com. So any of you guys can get all of that stuff there.

1:21:06Shawn Stevenson:Phenomenal, phenomenal. And by the way, you know this is why I shared this with you recently. But I give Rope Flow Ropes as gifts very frequently, very frequently to guests that come into the studio. Just people that come by my house. I give them the rope and I'll start doing stuff. Bro, and some of these people, these are athletes. and then I'll show them a couple of things, like how this might translate to their tennis game or pickleball or boxing. And then I'll do like some more, like I'll do a dragon roll or just something a little bit more, some of these sneaks. And they see it and they're just like, okay, let me, and then they'll try and do it.

1:21:42Shawn Stevenson:And they're just slapping themselves. Like, it's just like, this stuff is not simple. You make it look simple because of the practice. And then once it's like locked in, it's like riding a bike. and then so what I found too in taking your training as well in the school app was certain things I would happen onto and then I would see you do it later like I was just like I felt like doing this particular movement with the rope right that's why it's called rope flow I would flow it into certain things other things I had to get instruction on you know but it's just it's such a great tool to have. It is obviously super easy to travel with.

1:22:21Shawn Stevenson:I got one in my bag at all times and something I'm very passionate about sharing and you shared it with me and I appreciate you for that. So my man. Absolutely, Sean. I've gotten a lot from you over the years too. So honestly, I'm happy that I know you. I'm happy that I can learn from you consistently. And so thank you for bringing me on again. Of course. Same, same. This was the trilogy. This is the trilogy, all right? But we still have so much more to come. Sometimes we want our stories to continue on and that's what we're gonna do. But we had the honor of having on the Movement Jedi himself.

1:22:56Shawn Stevenson:Insima, I appreciate you so much for hanging out with us today. Thank you, Sean. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. I hope that you got a lot of value out of this. Definitely check out Insima's Stronger Human Community. There's so many free resources to take advantage of. Again, that URL is school.com forward slash the stronger human. And school is spelled S-K-O-O-L. So it's school.com forward slash the stronger human to get access to some incredible resources, fitness, mobility. And also he just has an incredible ability to communicate and to help us to understand concepts and to integrate things.

1:23:46Shawn Stevenson:So I was able to follow along with the road flow course, for example, and just be able to pick up these tools. And surprisingly, the way that he would describe things is just like, for me, surprisingly, I was able to pick stuff up really quickly. And so again, great resource to check out, school.com forward slash the stronger human, but just follow Nseema, Check him out on Instagram. His YouTube channel is fire. He's just doing some incredible things and doing it at a very, very high level. And I'm so grateful for you sharing your time with us today and hanging out with us and learning and being a part of this conversation.

1:24:24Shawn Stevenson:Let's keep this conversation going. Share this out with somebody that you care about. Share some of the stuff that you've learned. Implement stuff. That's what it's all about at the end of the day. And we got some epic 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.