Barbell Shrugged - A Parasympathetic Approach to Performance w/ Angelo Sisco, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged #561

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

In this Episode of Barbell Shrugged: The birth of the Alpha Hippie Why we need to explore the softer side of fitness What our feet can teach us about performance Breath work and the parasympathetic nervous system When you know its time to start training slower   Connect with Alpha Hippie Connect With Angelo on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Diesel Dad Training Programs: http://barbellshrugged.com/dieseldad   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   U.S. Air Force. Find out if you do at airforce.com.   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   BiOptimizers Probitotics - Save 10% at bioptimizers.com/shrugged   Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://prxperformance.com/discount/BBS5OFF Save 5% using the coupon code “BBS5OFF”

I'm Shrugged Family. This week on Barbell Shrugged, we are joined by Angelo Sisco in a parasympathetic approach to performance. And in this episode of Barbell Shrugged, we will discuss the birth of Alpha Hippie, why we need to explore the softer side of fitness, what our feet can teach us about performance, breath work, and the parasympathetic nervous system. And when you know it's time to start training slower friends, I got to tell you about a project that we've been working on. I'm so excited about like level 12 out of 10, maybe level 15 out of 10, maybe 19 out of 10, maybe 20 out of six. That's how excited I am about the Diesel Dad Diet. Check it out. I have always wanted to put together just a manual, an education system built around starting at zero. Day zero, what does it look like? What's the education that you need to understand in order to

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and get after it. Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash, Angelo Sisco. This is radical. We've hung out in real life. Now we're hanging out on the Zoom. We're going to talk about masculinity, and you're going to teach us how to stand today. Like a man. Like a divine man. With the chest proud, the shoulders

back. No regular deckler man. Like a divine man. Let's jump in that like what does that mean yeah that's like big words why does someone need to learn how to stand but i'm very softball right at the beginning yeah yeah really really great so uh i have you know 10 years or 12 years in the CrossFit game, right guys? So I spent a long time here at CrossFit. It was the gym I had in Chicago before I moved out to SoCal. And as Alpha Hippie was developing and growing, I really wanted to create a physical training program that I really was proud of.

And it was first around a movement practice and not a routine. Because routines, for most people equal good boy, bad boy. And I didn't want you to think about routine. I wanted you to think about movement as a practice where it's fluid, it's fun. You're not punishing yourself because a lot of what I experienced as a crosshitter and training people from regular moms all the way up to the games, is I realized that for a lot of people out there, they train themselves with masculine energy. And what I mean by that is how they talk to themselves when they train, how they treat their bodies, very masculine, very go, very hard. And one day I was listening or I'd love just taking in

information anywhere I can and I was watching a program about opera singers and one of the opera singers the men was talking about his voice he was a tenor and he said in in Spanish, the word voice is feminine, la voz. And so I said, oh, my goodness. So all these other languages are referring to the body in a feminine way. So why am I only treating my body like it needs to go and hit it hard? What if I was learning how to nurture my body from how I was doing things? And so I started playing around with the idea of even referring and my inner dialogue with my body and more of a feminine nature tone, and more encouraging, like your mother would want to

treat you and not just pick this shit up. Right. And that was like my first big breakthrough and I and then my body started feeling more nurtured and loved and wanted to recover and the main reason I thought of it is it's like you could have a wife and you could yell at her every day to cook you your favorite thing for dinner and she could do it yet how about if you inspired her with love how much better would that dinner taste brilliant yeah and then i was like okay so when we develop this physical training program it's gonna be from feminine energy we're gonna it's gonna be about feeling connecting what is getting deeper deeper with the body and i was like man the more i did this the more like areas of my body that i couldn't heal

or felt like i kept injuring myself with started feeling better because i wasn't in like i wasn't treating them like they were stepchildren anymore i was treating them like they were stepchildren anymore. I was treating them like they were beautiful women that I wanted to open up and embrace. And then lo and behold, certain aspects of my body started feeling good. And then I didn't need that nagging knee brace anytime I wanted to squat or you didn't need that extra set of wrist wraps nothing against those things but just needing them versus using them is is is a big thing that i'm about right because misuse for me or just crutches is really what's stopping us and so a lot of my practice first i have a mental side of things but the physical is something really deep. Because for me,

I lost 100 pounds, and that really changed my whole life. So I have a deep love for the body. And then what the physical practice could really teach you is structure, discipline, and consistency. And once you got those, there's nothing in your life you can't really figure out. And then so I tap more into this feminine energy because of that other part and then I wrote this training program that is I'm sorry it's not even a program at first it was a continuum of what we would want our bodies to look and feel like if we were chasing divine masculinity because the pick this up and all this stuff,

if you really look at it and I, and I dislike you using this word, but just for context, it's toxic masculinity. It really is. It's abuse. Right. And so don't be a bitch.

Blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? Show them, show them who you are and all this stuff. And I used, blah. Yeah, you know what I mean? Show them, show them who you are and all this stuff. And I used to do it, guys. You know what I mean?

Put some chalk all over yourself and, you know, strap it on. You know, I'm about that life. You know what I'm saying? Or I was about this. So I really get it. And then as the older I got, I realized that I needed some harmony in my training. And most men, I'm 37, and I know that you guys are, you know, around my age group. Not me.

I'm older, 47. But you get what I'm saying. We're not in our 20s anymore. Not even close. Pounding. What was that orange drink, pre-workout drink? I thought you were talking about Sparks for a second. Ultimate Orange.

With a fedora. Yeah, you don't remember that. The hydroxy cuts off the shelf, and no one's taking Ultimate Orange on this call anymore. Right? That's not true. Mash has it every morning at 6 a.m. I see him do show prep.

He's got an auto-shift to his house every month. Is this like a natural consequence of not competing anymore? Does this reconcile with someone who's also a competitive athlete? Can they kind of take on this mindset in a way that actually keeps them being competitive into the future? Great question, Doug. I find it really great if someone is a competitive athlete and they're in their off season, and then you may go more masculine. You start, so you go off season,

you take your little break, we start you feminine to rebuild, get connective tissue real soft. And then when it's game time, we got to do what we got to do. Right. You know, Achilles jumping and cutting people's heads off. And I dig that. Yet doing it all the time is put you in such a place where you are tilted.

And then no wonder you just keep going farther this way and we all know or most of us know that divinity is one foot on both sides right harmony of both sides and so it's not being too masculine it's not being too feminine yet i would imagine that most people go so far the extreme that spending some time on the feminine there but for me what i've really found even with my crossfit athletes i still train a couple of doug the off season we go feminine for a while and then as we're getting deeper then we get a little you know you get a little cuckoo you know you get a little cross-eyed before you do some stuff spit a little bit i'm about it but just all the time winds up having that constraint.

I agree. I think that you're talking about like if you're all the time being, you know, ultra, you know, masculine, then I feel like you're going to be tapping into the sympathetic nervous system all the time. You know, it's going to be cortisol all the time. I know because that was me. And I know that after long periods of like, you know,

going hard, where my body would start to just feel absolutely destroyed mentally, sleep, everything else. Recovery was impossible. So I get what you're saying, definitely. First off, I just want to say to anybody that's listening right now that is wondering what the other side of what you keep referring to. CrossFit O'Hare was a badass

affiliate. You guys were very, very good at what you did. And I remember like looking up to what you guys did when I had my gym in San Diego. Like I was very aware of CrossFit O'Hare and you guys did a great job. Um, so if anybody's wondering, like this guy's off the rails right now talking about the feminine side of training, like you guys definitely are hard chargers or were hard chargers and ran a great affiliate. I went through many of this stuff, or many of these things that you're talking about coming out of competitive CrossFit, bashing my head on a wall, finding all the injuries and everything that goes into being competitive. And it wasn't until I went to a like many many yin yoga classes and found my uh an actual yoga coach that

I learned from and uh tapped into many of those southern California vibes uh in La Jolla and and the the yoga studio that I actually went to was called uh Trilogy Sanctuary it's fantastic uh I still take classes there sometimes in my living room online um but what are some of the like steps that people can take because i know exactly what you're talking about uh to to like slowly dig into this because the idea of somebody like starting to learn like flowing movement and what may be considered dance and tapping into this feminine side like that's a big stretch for somebody that's trying to set a one rep max back squat and is head butting barbells before they are you know it's just it's so far on the other side of the spectrum yes i agree with you 1000 and that's pretty much how i really found it

too is through yoga and just flowing more um my one of my favorite things that I really got into that I really think it's overlooked is the, you know, there's so many different versions of it now that a lot of people could check out, like the crawling, locomotive, move net, animal flow sort of stuff, where it was really great. I really found Gymnastica Natural,

which was Hicksson Gracie's sort of like secret. Like if you watch Choke, which is Hickson's main documentary from like, what was it Doug? Like 90-something when he was winning Valley Tudor and all that stuff. He was showing that that was

his thing and that fluidity along with that really helps. So for me, the ground-based locomotive stuff is a great way for, to add in recovery, mobility, and also too, you could just throw that in your warmups, right? Like just do some nice joint prep and then spend 10 minutes ground-based and crawling and moving and letting your body just go where it feels like is a great way to connect to your body and also to just learning and experiencing the connection to it because oftentimes when we are trying to push our bodies to such a one rep max and stuff like that, we're disconnecting to our

bodies in order to achieve that such spike of intensity. Yet if you could just let your body sort of dance with some of that ground-based stuff, you wind up being able to open up the pathway of actually connecting to it. And that's more than likely what I mean by feminine energy. It's just not losing the connection. It's creating a stronger one. Do you really need to have a program that's pushed all the way to one direction or the other? You talk about kind of having like an off season, like your whole year should be balanced

if you're a competitive athlete, especially we you have your masculine phase, which is competition, and then your feminine phase, which is your off-season. But during the week, a lot of people have harder days and easier days. Do you have more of a masculine day, and then the next day is kind of like a feminine recovery day, that type of thing, where you alternate? You could do that. What I say, Doug, is first it depends on how long you spent on the other side. And if you have been just ultra masculine for a while,

I would recommend spending some time just, you know, like when someone is just so far this way, you might need a bit of extreme for a little bit just to get them moving because if they're only here, you know, depending on where they're at yet, but once you could appreciate both sides, we play with it all the time. And especially too, with anything that has to do with conjugate method, or if you think about it in that way, right? Let's just say Mondays and Fridays are your high intensity days of training. You could sprinkle that stuff in between the week. And then what I really try

to search for is harmony, right? Because that's what you really want it to be. You know what I'm saying? It could be Mondays and Fridays are the days where you bring that more masculine energy, higher intensity, and then you could sprinkle in, like you just said, those days of doing that once you feel an appreciation and a connection to understanding how it goes. There's no real rule, which I really love about it, yet if you've been ultra, like 2010 to 2020 for me, my physical training was ultra masculine dominant. And that's why I spent a lot of last year, even when I started getting deeper into this, more time being nurturing.

Yet now I sprinkle in both as go off field and how my body's feeling. Is this a mental thing too? Like are the thoughts in your head, like what do you say to yourself to get into this? Like, you know, I guess a flow. Yes. Uh, for me, the self talk is the driver of the energy. Most of the time, Travis.

So the dialogue that I want to use when I want to pick up a heavy barbell to the dialogue that I use when I want to flow. So imagine that masculine energy is love from a slap. Right. Feminine sort of energy from a caress. So how would your mama, how would you want your mom to talk to you when you skinned your knee? And then how would your dad tell you to just buck up and get back in there now? And that's enough of this shit. Got it.

That totally, totally makes sense to me. I think one thing that's really interesting kind of going through this, this process, as I was saying earlier, is like strong is just strong. You don't have to yell at the barbell. You're still strong enough to pick things up. You're still strong enough to do the squat. You can still snatch whatever it is. That whole process of screaming at barbells and bringing all that masculinity into it, it's really just a big – once you understand what's going on, it's kind of a waste of energy.

Because whatever you're doing, you're taking yourself – you're using that energy as an expression like verbally at this external object instead of being love to hear kind of your thoughts on what top end strength means to you and how you prepare for things when you are being challenged or when you are trying to push your limits. Absolutely. What a great, what a great thing to bring up. The more and more that I really dig into this, especially with athletes that I still coach, guys, I still love doing it. I still can't just break away completely from it. It's such a big part of me. The art of going into this feminine side, what it really does, it allows you to have

more than likely stronger lifts without feeling like they're so hard because you could connect your body deeper to certain things. Like when you are able to really feel your body and get in your body, you feel your pinky toe come up. And then no wonder you break it, you know what I mean? You collapse in your squat. But when you're so deeply connected to your body, you could feel what it's like to squat and keep that ankle bone high the whole time. And more than likely, it's because your pinky toe comes up, which causes the whole edge of your foot to come up. That's more nine times out of ten might people fail or collapse in the knee of the squat. It's that outside edge, right?

And then so it's like little things like that that you're able to do. So you actually are able to be as strong without having to use, you know, that adrenaline spike, which leads to a huge dump anyway to actually get there. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, I think many times too, people that are like really hard chargers in the gym are in a way kind of, you know, especially I could say this for myself when I was 20, trying to prove myself to everyone else versus really, I mean, it was for me as well, but I'm also looking at my ranking in the open and judging my own worth by that, or how much do I snatch? And that being an actual like resume item of I'm worthy. I would love for you to hear kind of your thoughts on like judging self-worth

through externalities or how much weights on the bar versus finding that through this process and really almost like the opposites of creating that chaos and the external and actually being sound and stillness and inside your body. Yes, what a great point. I look at the idea of intensity being an inward thing, right? Like you or, you know, we should hope that we are the governor of our intensity. Anytime the governor of our intensity is outside of us, we are at something else's whim.

Right? And that's not good when you're training. And hey, let's be real guys, 2020, if you were, if your intensity was at the whim of something else or anything else, 2020 was the worst year of your life. You're wondering. Just go back and look at your Facebook feed and look at everything you posted. 2021 is on its way, too. You're a loony tune. Go back and look at it.

You'll know. Just scroll right by all the craziness every day. Right. And so the more you could harness that energy, the more you don't get caught up in that stuff. So psychologically, I really feel like you'll last longer as an athlete, you'll feel more satisfied in just your performance, and you will have less dependency on other people or other things to compare yourself. And at the end of the day, that's just beautiful. You know, I think a lot of top, I can speak for strength athletes.

You know, I can even, you know, thinking about some of my buddies who, you know, went on to the NFL from Appalachian, like the way that they present themselves is always in a very calm state. And rarely do you see craziness. If you think about Ed Cohn, when he lifts, he was super calm. Rarely would he yell or scream, never scream. Maybe he would put his fist up, but most of the time he was very calm. And I know when I finally learned that point

was when I started breaking world records and started dominating people is because I would be super relaxed and super happy. Like I would go to, instead of getting these all negative, you know, self-talk in my head about like, don't be a bitch, you know, you're going to show the world. I would be, it would, I wouldn't even think about necessarily the task at hand until it was time. I would, you know, I would think about things as I'm in this huge room filled with people who love exactly what I love to do. So really I'm just hanging out with a bunch of awesome friends. The minute I did that, life changed. And like, and like I started winning and it was easy. And it just, then it started to seem like this is too easy.

It was just, but like if someone, these young athletes could embrace what you're saying, they would last longer, which would, therefore, you know, they would reach maximal potential. And they would do better right this second if they would just chill and just be a little bit more nurturing and not so hard-charging all the time. You could definitely apply this to jiu-jitsu as well. Like, for a very aggressive masculine sport where you're forcing people into positions they don't want to be in and then you're going to strangle them

it's like you you would think that being super masculine super super aggressive etc is like the way to go but um anyone that does jujitsu knows that you want to be super relaxed basically the whole time you can be aggressive but you need to be relaxed the entire time if you get angry you're gonna do worse for sure yeah i remember watching gracie you know back when all mma started and he was always so chill and he literally looked like he was flowing like bruce lee would say like water you know like he was you know because back then there wasn't weight classes so he had his little brazilian guy fighting his giants and he would just be chill. Next thing you know, he's choking them, you know? So yeah. At least could learn from this for sure. Angelo, I'm curious, have you ever done any pool training? This is one of the places that I learned these lessons in a very, very interesting way of staying calm and how much

kind of that overreaction and over hyping yourself up really starts to play against you. Have you ever done any pool training, like lifting weights underwater? No. Guys, meeting Laird Hamilton and doing that whole experience with him is like, please. Just drive up. Yeah, I would love to drive up to him and experience it. But, you know, back to what Doug said, jujitsu for me, that was the teacher of me.

I got into jujitsu around 2018 and realized right away that the water too, Anders, like water, jujitsu, anything that could teach you that aggression yeah is you or not being able to overpower a situation yeah something that athletes the more and more they want to develop should play yeah because the power game eventually will run its course i gotta know what does it mean to stand like a man you get i gotta know like i've been this whole time like sam i gotta know what does it mean to stand like a man you get i gotta know like i've been this whole time like saying i gotta hear what is yeah i know my mom was very big on the way i would stand and try to sit like one right now just because you said it yeah what if it's not what we think they're like i'm actually i'm anxious to see what what does actually mean? Beautiful. So one of the things that I really went big into, gentlemen, when I was developing this training methodology,

I call it a lifestyle training continuum. And it's really based upon, all right, so you're done competing and you want to have a healthy lifestyle. What should be your goal? Because for me, just look, getting abs doesn't do it for me long-term. And I really found that aesthetics eventually get boring. It's not motivating enough and or it actually creates an abusive relationship. I eat a donut. I'm a bad boy. I got to go to the gym. So it's just like not fun anymore. And so when I

was designing this continuum, I wanted to think about how can I create a divine person or divine man, right? And when you think about divine, you think about a God, you know, something very potent and high up there. And so I want to be stable. I want to be open and I want to be confident. Right. And so first, how would I bring that energy if I was standing? And so I started studying evolution of how we actually wind up becoming standing, where's our blocks right now as we stand, and then other different types of programs and schools of certifications that are out there to really gather this. And so stability is with the feet, gentlemen.

It will always be the main stabilizer for most of us, right? Because if our feet aren't stable, we rely on other things to find stability, which would be our knee or somewhere in our hips or pelvis. And then when your hips and pelvis get locked up, you lead to other sort of injuries and things like that. And also too, then we lose the fluidity that the pelvis and hips are supposed to give us, aka the openness. And then once we realize that most of the time that posture is not just a strength game, it's a balance game, you wind up learning that if you have stable feet and open hips, and you can just balance on that surface, you have great posture and stability. That's how a baby could sit up so well they're

not really strong so what do they do first they develop a way that they a mechanism not only so first crawling is the locomotion but then they learn how to sit up right so they learn how to balance their head over their pelvis in a good line. And so you sit your haunches back, you know what's good. Can everyone stand up? You want to play? Friends, we're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. There are infinite chemical and hormonal reactions needed to optimize your metabolisms. Reactions fueled by calories initiated by enzymes signaled by vitamins and minerals that need to work to optimize your metabolism. Trying to understand it all requires a white lab coat, fancy equipment,

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We talk about training. We talk about what it's like when they are boots on the ground, about to go do some badass stuff, and how cool it is. Like their training, I mean, I think every single person that lifts weights at some point in time thought, I wonder if I could be in this special warfare. And the thing is, is that all the people that do it, they're super special human beings, but they have some very commonalities between them on just being consistent, working hard, wanting to be learners. Even when we were done with the interviews with them, they all stayed after the show and just sat there and asked us questions the special warfare division, something you were interested in, make sure you head over to airforce.com. Check it out.

Let's get back into the show. If you're driving and listening in the car, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't stand. Pull over. Just do this right. So what we're going to do, gentlemen, is we're going to stand with your feet about a hands-width distance apart. Right?

We want the columns, everything under our hips. So no pyramids. Okay? And toes, if you can remember this, toes straight is no debate. That's easy. Okay. So, so the six gun, you know, the toes out people, this isn't, we want to work towards that. And the toe that needs to be straight is your second toe. So get your second toe straight. For some of us that may feel like we're even slightly pigeon-toed. Don't worry, you'll be fine.

Now take your pinky toe and spread it out and push it down. Okay, now think about that pinky toe line and draw it all the way back towards around your heel. Now take the ball of your foot and your big toe, push it down and get your ankle bones high. And you should automatically feel like you're standing a couple inches taller. Glutes turn right on. Instantly. Instantly, bro.

Okay? Now take your haunches and your hips and push them back just a couple inches. Okay? in your hips and push them back just a couple inches okay now sit up and let your shoulders balance what you just created my neighbors are loving this right now as they walk around and I'm practicing my standing right now look at your bridge of your nose with both eyes don't stay cross-eyed too long you know what your mother said you'll wind up that way forever but just so your head's in a balanced position and right now what you should feel is that your feet are really attached to the floor you have some good fluidity and access to your pelvis so if I want to move laterally or forward I have the openness and

then with my shoulders and head in this position, I have confidence, right? I'm demonstrating or exhibiting a calm, a strong posture, but calm and steady, like a divine masculine or divine any person that's standing. And this is how you properly stand. And this is a wonderful place to begin any sort of movement, understanding, and structure. And most of the time, when we don't have that, our body will wind up compensating some way, somehow. First, right through the breath, which will be the mechanism when we see the shoulders round. And then the second place where we see a lot of compensation is in a locked up hip and pelvis area, because then the body doesn't know that doesn't have confidence in the

feet. So it uses the hips and pelvis as the end range sort of stability, which is not what we want. We want our pelvis and hips to be open. And so this is sort of the basis of what this methodology really based upon and then helping people get access to where they need to be throughout that. Because once you could do that, you could run better, walk better, breathe better, and then all of your movement is more fluid and more accessible, just very natural how we're born it just gets taken away over time by many other factors and you get better at spreading your toes right oh god oh my goodness i spent so long doing this drivers i can't believe this

question came up all right so the they're like seven or eight bucks on amazon you could buy toe spreaders right squat university was telling. You could buy toe spreaders. Squat University was telling us to get the toe spreaders too. He had them in his pocket. I have the gumming toe spreaders right after, right after we put my son to bed. I wear them for about two to three hours, just hanging out at the crib.

And at first that might be a little bit aggressive. But for me guys, I like to dive into the deep end and see what's going on. And so the toe spreaders are really, really important. The next thing is your footwear and ensuring that I have some of the toe socks. I'm not saying everyone needs the toe socks, but spending some time barefoot and also with a wider toe box shoe. Like, guys, I'm from Chicago. You would slit someone's throat for a pair of Jordans.

They're not great for your feet. I mean, just let's be real here. You know, they just squish you up like that. You can't get that pinky toe. And then also, too, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm sure you guys could appreciate my crazy. I have this really big thing that driving has screwed up people's left pinky toes. And so I'm willing to bet if you took your shoe off right now,

please don't do this while you're driving, you could spread your right pinky toe way better than your left because we have automatic cars. Yeah, for sure. And so there's a lot of instability. What's the mechanism there? How does that happen again? When you're driving a car, Doug, think about this. Your right foot moves back and forth.

You're active with it more. But then what do you do with your right foot moves back and forth you're active with it more but then when you what do you do with your left foot you cock it out and then there's nothing going on there and so your hip develops over external rotation so it's usually a little screwed up and because you're not using that foot that pinky toe just kind of gets squished in. So nine times out of ten, I've really asked a lot of people to do this. If I saw them, I'd go, spread your feet. You'll get a much better spreader on the right foot and a weaker on the left. And then if we're talking about stability, and that is the origin of stability, well, no wonder anything up the chain is screwed.

Already have instability. Well, no wonder anything up the chain is screwed. Yeah. Already have instability. Yeah, that is what squat university, Aaron Horshig, told us about that. You know, I've always heard feet and then ankles. He said toes and then, you know, first toes first, which is to me, I mean, I think it's been around a while, but to me it's a newer thing. So when you wear those toe spreaders, like you wear them all day long and you wear them, like what's the deal with those things? Great.

They can be quite uncomfortable, Travis, if you wear them all day long, I will say at first. They get more comfortable, right? It's just, you know, something that you'll get used to. And then what I like to do too, is just working my toes and things of that nature. Cal Dietz and I had a really great conversation about, you know, spending more time in calf raise positions as well, and getting really strong at just, see the ankle guys need, you know, has so much room for extension, right? And we look at

the ankle a lot of times as, you know, when we're thinking about extending our bodies and using that many of us never reach full extension in the ankle. When we're, when we're lifting, when we're snatching, when we're walking. And so we're not able to use that full thing as a spring. And so for me, spread the toes and then start getting the ankles to really be able to get that extension. And then also too with the ankle, introversion and extroversion training. Like, because most people people what do they talk about you know dorsiflexion you need more dorsiflexion well not really the ankles joystick yeah stop

pretending like it's an original nintendo controller and so i spend a lot of time with our guys just on that area and oftentimes once that gets cleared up and better and they're more fluid understanding you wind up seeing what comes up next and then you could dig into oh well then we we have to spend more time with internal rotation nine times out of ten with people as well in the hip area because that's where a lot of people that is the byproduct of them lacking in the feet and then so there we go up the chain and then meanwhile one day their shoulder pain goes away you know i've noticed a lot with weightlifters and i'm talking about you know if you looked at them watch you know for example sarah one of my she's an amazing

strength athlete. If you watch her do snatch and clean and jerk and you think, oh, her mobility is perfect. The one problem area that Aaron found at Squatting University was internal rotation. Now I'm starting to see it is like in weightlifting, I think, you know, because everything is so externally rotated all the time, internal rotation becomes quite a problem. And it leads to a lot of issues. With Sarah, it led to some major back issues. So this is a really interesting thing that you can start with some toe work,

feet work to help alleviate that and prevent that. Yeah. Along those lines, if somebody, I mean, especially in the weightlifting thing, it's like we're going to take this four-week block and here's where we start and here's where we end. Here's where we're going to be in the first, you know, if you're Travis and you've got Olympians and you've got four years to get them to a specific place with specific numbers, what is like a beginning goal setting system that people can put into place? I mean, they're not going to go into Capoeira on day one and be flowing out on the beach. Like, how do we how do you progress this into some sort of systematic way that people can take four week chunks and work on specific things?

Yeah, for sure. For me, I we have a specific joint prep mobility that we give people and that is the very beginning that that so the the thing that i just took you guys through the standing is where we start every one session you you get in this position and you feel it and then we go neck back all the way down and the goal is to try to keep your feet in that position throughout any sort of regular joint prep that you do you don't have to overthink just do shoulder circles do some hinges from that position and see it where your feet really end up because if your feet could stay there the whole time, you more than likely are in gear, right?

If you could hinge and still hold the connection through the toes and you're able to have full access to your range of motion, I got some movement in my thoracic up here, all that good stuff, you're really good to go. This could just be part of your general warm-up flow. Don't overthink it, right? You could do that joint prep barefoot, right? So then you could actually see how your spreading is going. And then also, too, yeah, this is simple there.

That's, for me, the basis is just do that in your warm-up. And you guys know this, right? The con whatever is convenient and it will lead to consistency. Right. And so just doing your warmup every day, you don't need to become Ido Portal tomorrow. Don't put this pressure on you. Just do this every time you warm up. Or if you're not actively training every day and all

this stuff, as soon as you get out of bed, after you go to the bathroom, brush your jibs a little bit, spend two minutes just flowing around a little bit, trying to keep your feet down and you will make progress, right? Anything that's convenient will lead to consistency and just do it and try not to overthink it because it's a feminine it like we said in the beginning it's just it's feminine right don't think feel and if you're like a crossfitter out there that thinks this masculine verse feminine thing is is too much um one thing that i while i was and and still think about this all the time of the definition of CrossFit is constantly varied functional movements done at high intensity.

And if we were just to eliminate that only high intensity piece, and we just focused on the ability to have constantly varied stimulus coming at us that we were constantly having to adapt to, we would realize that high intensity is just a modality. Yet, where's the low intensity where's the flowing movement side of things and be able to expand your movement practice in a manner that doesn't only involve high intensity high effort where's the low intensity where's the flow and start being able to just move in one of the way i mean i'd love to hear some of the tactics that go into it one way that I found to be super beneficial,

just because I love lifting weights, was lightening a lot of the load and trying to do things with my eyes closed and forcing myself to find balance and forcing myself to go inward to how am I feeling versus what's happening outside of me and what am I picking up? Great. Here's something else though. Oh yeah. What if we just redefined intensity to being the highest available contraction or connection you can make and it wasn't about higher load or higher volume or faster speed? What if your ability to do a push-up was you were more focused on how far you could push your big toe into the ground and keep your entire body contracted and only allow not to think about it as an upper body exercise? I guarantee you, you will find a high degree of intensity, yet it doesn't need to necessarily be on volume or load. Like

we said before, what if intensity was an inward thing? We didn't rely on external score or object to create intensity. And so that was my first big breakthrough. And then I looked up the word strength and really discovered that a lot of strength could be redefined as your ability to withstand. Yeah. And so that was, for me, a big breakthrough and not thinking that it always needed to be faster and more. It's just you could create high amounts of intensity with stronger connections. I assume you've gone into the deep end on some breathwork practices too, right? Yes. I would love to hear you dig into breathing practices and just some of the changes that

you see from people when they start to actually connect with how they breathe. Absolutely. So all training is nervous system training, right? That's the basis of all physical training, all stressing of the body, right? The breath is the governor and also the first indicator of the acceptance of what you're doing with your body. And if you are holding your breath, your body does not accept what is really happening, because you can't really own it. And also too, from a cardiovascular perspective, if you go to your mouth first, and or you're only breathing out of your mouth, you're putting an overused amount of stress on the nervous system. And so for me, when you are learning different breathing practices, you know, I do so many different versions of them and I'd love to play

with them and all that good stuff. Just how are you moving when you're training is a great indicator of how much stress you're really putting on and how much your body really can accept a position. So if I get down at a bottom of a squat and I'm holding my breath or I'm panting, my nervous system is not feeling good here, right? And so if I can get to a certain position and actually breathe more calmly, my nervous system likes it here. And so what I've really used a lot of the Wim Hof stuff, which is over-oxidating or superventilation,

which is hyperventilation on purpose, practice is for is I will superventilate and then I will do a standing position and then do the exhale hold and see how long my nervous system could sit in these positions before I need more air. Because if I know that if I could hold the standing position really great

and my nervous system isn't freaking out, and freaking out usually comes from just how your dialogue is, back to what you said earlier, Travis, about your inner dialogue, then when you could accept that more calmly, you know that your nervous system is with you and supporting you in what you're doing, and you're going to be able to get there easier, more efficiently, less taxing on the body, which means you'll recover better, and you'll be more parasympathetic when you do it, so less expense on any training overall. Awesome. Doug, where is the best literature on breathing? Like, you know, is there some pretty quality scientific-based,

you know, literature on breathing? quality scientific-based, you know, literature on breathing? Because I definitely don't feel like that's one of my strong suits. Wim Hof's got tons of literature and stuff about him. Yeah, Wim's obviously the guy. Andy would know more about this. He's much more into the breathing practice stuff than I ever have been. Bledsoe was more into the breathing stuff too.

Like I've done it a handful of times, but I've actually never really gotten into it. I don't know the literature on all the breath work. I've gone way out there a couple times into some halotropic breathing and holy shit is that a freaking ride.

If you've ever done some mushrooms, you don't even need them anymore. If you can get yourself into a good yoga class, one where the government isn't following because you got a good teacher that's teaching you some halotropic breathing patterns you are about to tumble through the universe in a way you've never done it before are you serious though i swear have you done this god i swear to you every day i'm i'm also skeptical if it's if it's you's truly comparable to doing mushrooms. Or even if it's half. I'd take half.

Yeah. I've had some percentage of what a trip would feel like while doing breathing practices. Where I felt like the universe was vibrating. What? Stuff like that can happen to you when you're tripping. And it happened to me after I did some breath work with Angela. You may even have been there. It was with mckenzie during one of our masterminds years ago so i i can see that there's there's daylight there like something there there's

something is possible and presumably i'm brand new to it i don't know how to do it well but people that are good at it probably can get there i I had, Mash, my whole body went into like a cast in that your muscles tense up. It started in the base of my neck, and it wrapped around my face, and my face got paralyzed. And then it spread throughout my whole body. And then the yoga teacher told me to scream as loud as I could to release all the tension in my body. And on the first one, I was like, whoa, to release all the tension in my body. And on the first one, I was like, whoa, because literally all the tension releases when you scream. And then I went seven minutes back, two breaths in the mouth, one breath through the nose, you're hyperventilated,

everything from the back of the neck, like a big shield just went over my body. And then we went through six more rounds of it. And by the end of it, I swear to you, I was tumbling through the universe. And I was like blown away what was going on. And I had to remind myself multiple times during this experience that I'm just laying on the floor. Like literally I had to tell myself multiple times. There was girls crying in class, like legit crying in the class. One girl, I swear to God, had an orgasm. It was freaking weird.

I remember thinking, like, I remember literally thinking, this guy's in way too powerful of a position right now for a yoga instructor in some random-ass beach town. He should not have the tools that he has right now to do this to people. I'm going to do it to my wife tonight then. If you Google a breathing pattern, it's H-A-l-o-p tropic uh is that right hello tropic halotropic breathing yeah just get after i looked up whim already you just need a little timer i would start maybe but also going back i've done two days at uhaird Hamilton's house, in which they take you really close, but they didn't go off the deep end.

Maybe that's in like the full week-long experience, but they get you really close. And the breath hold stuff that they do up there, swimming in the pool, it's all really, really rad stuff, and you can take it wherever you want to go. Oh, I'm doing this tonight. I just got to – Make sure your kids are awake because you're in your damn bedroom. Every seven minutes, screaming as loud as you can trying to get the oxygen back.

Yeah, they're at the in-laws tonight. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we can't talk about breath work and living in Southern California and feminine energy and yoga and all that stuff without bringing mindfulness and or meditation into this conversation. Is that a component of your program? Yes. walking is go out, you know, for a walk and just be silent and no music. And it can really start there for a lot of people that may have a hard time being still. And that's what really a lot of it is, right? And I'm a really big proponent of it guys uh full disclosure one of

the days of the program is to take a walk with no glasses and no music and just really getting people to move and do that because what i really believe is as humans that's what we do. We walk, right? Before there was extra tech and all these things that we did, right? We walked. There was just a part of our lives and it's a very part that gets excluded nowadays. And I really believe guys like Aristotle and Socrates and Plato figured out some really prolific things because they contemplated things on long walks and just were thinking all day. You know what I mean? And that's how they really went into deeper paths of self-discovery and understanding. And so it doesn't need to always be, you know, you become a monk and sit in the corner kind of thing. It's about finding stillness inside of you because then you learn and understand more and more when the chatter isn't louder than your intuition. if some people take pre-workout to get themselves super amped up for the workouts do you ever

prescribe cannabis to people to mellow out and actually be able to feel their body great great question um the the real thing right now Anders is how people really feel about it right because there's so much do full disclosure do i enjoy cannabis yes cannabis over cocktail all day for me right it really depends on that's what the true gangsters stay yeah like no joke yeah there he is post show yeah okay so Yeah, okay. So, I mean, I'm about, you know, smoking a joint, hanging out on the stoop, you know, just hanging out with the fellas. But anyways, the idea of embracing a more calm state, a more parasympathetic state is super important. And realizing that this is where our bodies heal the most,

replenish the most, and are at our best. And the society and the external environment that we are living in right now is pulling us in a direction where our nervous system is getting hijacked. Now, either you look at what these, see, a lot of people look at like social media and they go, oh no, it's the enemy. I look at all this and go, okay, so they are showing me in real time how to hijack my nervous system. Why don't I use the same things and tools for myself and my advantage now and move away from them and learn how to calm myself down and treat myself better and use all these things where now you could really see the differences a

lot easier. And for me, the idea being parasympathetic is being more human. Being sympathetic is being more animal. where would you make better decisions for your whole entire life definitely you know parasympathetic yeah definitely healthier sympathetic i want to cut someone's throat or do something crazy you know yeah yeah yeah lift a thousand pounds blah blah blah yeah and you only want to do that though, hopefully for a short period of time. And so a few seconds. Yeah. Right.

And so investing time and finding ways to be more into that energy or nervous system state is going to serve us much longer and better over time as humans. No matter what you're doing, if you want to train to be, you know, you're just training to be healthier, you're training for a sport, whatever the case is, is you dip in sympathetic when you need it, and the rest of the time the goal should be as parasympathetic as possible. Meditation, breath work, treating your body with feminine energy, the rest of the time the goal should be as parasympathetic as possible meditation breath work treating your body with feminine energy that's all that that's just under the umbrella

of getting more parasympathetic right gentlemen yeah that is nature's state too like we're talking about being on safari the other day it's like lions are just chilling most of the time then about an hour a day they got to go hunt until they get something then they go back to chilling great home i can't believe you brought this up and i went to london back when you could actually travel across uh to another country and uh i went to hide park just like a central park there, and they have a beautiful zoo there, and they invested a lot in an Indian lion exhibit. The average Indian lion sleeps 20 hours per day, and they're up four. Now think about this.

They are the predator of predators. Everyone knows that they are the baddest on earth. They sleep 80% of the day. And they get right. Right? They're still the killers of killers. And let's not get this twisted. The male lion doesn't even do the hunting most of the time.

Yeah, he's only there for big, big animals. Protection, too, of the pride. He just needs to flex a little bit of muscle sometimes and so think about how much people's lives he's got to breathe proportion important job man that's not a lot going on yeah sorry i had to throw in the breathing thing yeah but that's parasympathetic. Sure. You know, I just reproduce. Starts parasympathetic, then it gets quite sympathetic. Yeah, I hear you there, baby.

But that little shot of sympathetic ain't that long. I mean, let's be real. I mean, I'm not judging you or any other man, sir, but let's be real here. That's a short time out of that. Young men stay parasympathetic as long as you can. Cause when you go sympathetic, you're a few seconds away. It's over.

And she won't be happy. And that's more than likely because you'd lost connection of your breathing. That's the first place. place when once you lose that once your breath is out of control you go sympathetic a lot quicker so if you guys any of my young men that are listening to this close your eyes and breathe baby i'm all about i just i was asking andy i texted him about he was telling me where to go as far as science on it. Yeah, he's definitely about it. He said, you know, just like anything else, you got to like learn to separate what's real, what's not.

But yeah, he's all about it, he said. Yeah. Angelo, I appreciate you, my man. Where can people find you? Sure, brother. Iamalphahippie.com and Iamalie is, uh, our handles and all that really, really good stuff. And there you go.

Yeah, man. That's where I hang out and do my thing. Beautiful. Coach Travis smash. Hey, thanks for being on the show today. That was a lot of fun.

Like, you know, it's something I'm not as familiar with. So that was fun. uh, nationally.com. Thanks. Uh,

yeah, it was fun podcast today, boys. Yeah, man. Uh, yeah, it was fun podcast today, boys. Yeah, man. Doug Larson. You bet. Find me on Instagram.

Doug Larson, Angela. Good to see you, bud. Yeah, dude. My pleasure. We got to get back together here soon.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner. We're barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged. Make sure you get over to barbell shrugged.com forward slash diesel dad, getting strong, lean and athletic without sacrificing family, fatherhood or fitness for everybody in San Diego, LA Palm Springs and Vegas. Get over to Walmart performance nutrition.

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