Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  — Beyond Macros and Micros w/ Jason Phillips  —  317

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

Jason Phillips has been everywhere and done everything from cover model to professional athlete to founder of iN³ Nutrition. Jason has written for several publications including Men’s Fitness and his own book, Macros Explained: Your ultimate guide to macronutrient prescription for health, performance, and aesthetics, and has been a sponsored athlete in the fitness industry for over 6 years. Jason’s journey began in a battle with anorexia and has landed him in a position today where he has helped thousands of people achieve their goals. His formal background comes from Florida State University where he majored in exercise science with a concentration in fitness and nutrition. He has consulted for reality weight loss shows, traveled with the PGA tour, and has helped several functional fitness athletes improve performance. In this episode, Jason talks about his path in the health and fitness industry, and how he went from being a high level golfer to battling anorexia, and how the journey has helped in his growth and development. He also talks about why it’s important for a coach to connect with and have a genuine understanding of his clients, why it’s important to not just pay attention to macronutrients or micronutrients, but also understand there needs to be a synergy between quality and quantity, and much more. Enjoy! - Mike, Doug and Anders Show notes at: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_phillips ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Shrugged Collective just launched the Program Vault! Looking for ways to diversify your training? Want a specific program to reach your goals? Unlock the Program Vault for 11 goal specific programs to build muscle, get stronger and improve your conditioning!   Please support our partners! Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below: https://thrivemarket.com/shrugged How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try! Organifi is another great company with whom we’ve chosen to partner.  They offer a premium line of health supplements you can use to optimize your body.  Doug and Mike use their products everyday and highly recommend you give them a try. If you’d like a discount you can use the code “shrugged” to instantly get 20% off your order, click below to check out their supplements: https://organifishop.com Code: BBS20 for 20% off Strong Coffee! ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedp... TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, this is Doug from Barbell Shrugged. I just want to let you know that we now offer 11 of our top training programs as a part of a single membership site that we're calling the Program Vault. We used to launch training programs every few months and people were always bummed that they couldn't sign up at any time. You had to be around for the launch. The launch was only 4 or 5 days. If you missed it, then you had to wait 6 months or a year depending on what training program we were offering next.

And it was kind of a hassle, even when people signed up up for training programs to switch to a different program when they got to the end of their current program or they just happen to be in a new phase of training they hit their their past goal and now they have new goals and new goals require different training programs so inevitably it was a pain in the ass for people to switch programs so we took all that feedback and we decided to just put all of our programs together on this thing we now call the program vault that way all shrugged athletes could have access to all the workouts that we have and move from program to program as they saw fit for themselves makes sense so there's 11 programs three of them are long-term very comprehensive programs where there's you know a warm-up and there's mobility and there's nutrition added in there all the workouts are there there's a cool down there's there's stuff

to do on your off days they're super super comprehensive and those programs last for over 18 months if you want to stick around for that long and there's also eight short-term programs these programs are three months long and these are basically add-on programs so if you are already doing classes at a gym and you don't want to stop doing your classes but you want to work on one particular thing maybe you want to like work on your shoulder health or you want to work on your conditioning like your your aerobic capacity or maybe you just want to work on your squatting strength or your pull-up strength or something like that then we have these short-term add-on programs that are super low

volume but they're just like an extra you know two or three exercises at the end of your workout to help work on whatever those very specific goals are that you have so the three long-term programs are flight weightlifting that's a very weightlifting specific training program it builds it builds you from someone who's more like beginner intermediate at weightlifting and build you up to be a more technical professional style weight style weightlifter over the course of 12 or 18 months. We also have Muscle Gain Challenge. If you just want to put on muscle mass and you want a higher volume training program, this, in my opinion, is more of an intermediate program. If you don't have good technique on the Olympic lifts yet, you're going to kind of be thrown right to the wolves, so to speak.

It doesn't ramp you up like flight does flight has very specific progressions for weightlifting to let you learn all the technique over time muscle gain challenge kind of just throws you right into it so ideally you already have some experience with olympic weightlifting before you start the muscle gain challenge and there's a very high emphasis of course with the muscle gain challenge on gaining muscle so that means you got to eat a lot of food so there's a lot of emphasis of course with the musculature challenge on gaining muscle so that means you got to eat a lot of food so there's a lot of emphasis on how much to eat what to eat and your recovery as a part of that program so that way you can get bigger and stronger also we have shrug strength challenge which is more of a traditional kind of crossfit program if you if you do crossfit classes at a crossfit gym you probably do some strength movements at

the very beginning of class you know maybe do front squats for five sets of five, and then you do a Metcon that's, you know, 20 or 25 minutes or whatever it happens to be. That's more typical of the shrugged strength challenge where strength is the goal, but certainly conditioning is a key part of that as well. It has more of a strength bias than kind of a regular generalized CrossFit-y type program. So the eight short-term training programs, again, these are about three months long, and they're kind of an add-on program. So the first one is Boulders for Shoulders. That's a shoulder health and stability program, health, mobility, and stability program.

That doesn't mean you're going to be doing a whole lot of jerks and overhead presses necessarily. This is, again, an add-on program. So you're going to be doing a lot of assistance workks and overhead presses necessarily. This is, again, an add-on program. So you're going to be doing a lot of assistance work for your shoulders, your thoracic spine, etc. That way you can have the healthiest shoulders possible. There's the aerobic monster program, which is adding in a bunch of extra mostly aerobic conditioning. You're going to be on the airdyne a lot. You're going to be on the rower a lot. You're going to be doing a lot of monostructural stuff. So if if you already have your regular workout you do strength you do your metcon and then you know as a very overly simplistic example you do you know 20 minutes of rowing or you do

30 on 30 off for 10 rounds where you're doing a hard 30 and an easy 30 or whatever it is just a little bit extra aerobic work there's the squat the house program where you know we add in two leg exercises three days a week. So you might squat and then do some lunges or something like that. Depending on what your regular classes are like, you might already be doing a lot of squatting. But if you're not currently able to do a lot of squatting and you want to do some more squatting and you just want to add that onto your current training, then Squat the House is a great program. Anaerobic Assault, that is a high intensity interval style program where you're

doing very fast Metcons. So you might be doing airdyne sprints, you know, 30 seconds on 100% full speed and then take a three minute break and do it again. Or even, you know, five touch and go deadlifts followed by, you know, 10 burpees, rest two minutes and then do it again. But you're doing it all 100% speed really teaching how to kick it into high gear and move very very quickly when you're doing your metcons there's my first pull-up which is not going to give you a whole lot of actually doing pull-ups these are this is a program for people that can't do a pull-up yet so there's a lot of assistance work for pull-ups and there's a lot of extra assistance work for just all the muscle groups involved

in doing pull-ups everything from just doing extra extra lat work extra scapular retraction rhomboid lower trap work extra bicep work etc to help get you to the point where you can do your first pull-up there's a strongman accessory program where you can be doing yoke walks picking up stones pulling heavy sleds and things like that and then there's two more programs that are kind of a little bit higher volume. You could do them on your own if you wanted to. And you also can combine these. You could do Aerobic Monster and Anaerobic Assault and My First Pull-Up all together if you wanted to,

if you just wanted to add extra volume. But the last two, Open Prep, is exactly what it sounds like. It just gets you ready for the CrossFit Open or other similar competitions. You'll be doing a lot of Metcons. And the last one is Barbell Beginner to Meet. It's prepping you for your first Olympic weightlifting competition. Each program is scheduled between three and five days per week. There's videos explaining all the programming.

There's demos. There's technique explanations for everything. And then also you have access to the private shrugged collective facebook group that way you can get advice from ourselves we'll be in there hanging out our guests from our shows we also have a bunch of athletes coaches and strength experts that are friends of ours that are in there too to help you out if you're interested since i've been talking long enough you can go to shruggedcollective.com backslash vault for all the information. Again, that is shruggedcollective.com backslash B-A-U-L-T. That spells vault.

Go there, check it out. If you have any questions, email help at barbellshrugged.com and enjoy the show. Now you got to take a look at, this is what we're big on. We call it the triangle of awareness. Do you really know your goals? There's three types of goals out there like it's pretty clear cut are you performance goals are you aesthetic goals or do you want longevity goals and if you're chasing performance let's be super clear you need to be at minimum maintenance calories if not a small

surplus right if you want aesthetics you want body fat loss you have to be in a calorie deficit right but a calorie deficit doesn't yield performance, and performance doesn't yield fat loss. If you look a certain way based on maximizing performance. This episode is brought to you by Organifi. Anders, tell us about it. Oh, Organifi. We're going to talk about the green drink, right? You know why we have to talk about the green drink? Because everybody that lifts weights has no problem getting down all the meat

and all the cheese and all the bacon and all the things that make you big and strong, and they always forget about the vitamins and minerals. And even if you weren't forgetting about your vitamins and minerals, there's a really strong chance that you're not getting enough. Do you know how many red peppers you have to eat to get all of the vitamins you need in your day? There's not enough time.

You don't have the energy to do all that. There's just too many red peppers. However, if you take this sweet green drink, which tastes better than every other green drink out on the market, then you're going to get all the vitamins and minerals. That means better performance, better sleep, better recovery. All the things that you really want all in one sweet little green drink from Organifi. So get over to Organifi.com backslash shrugged. You're going to save 20%.

You're going to make people happy. You're going to feel better. All you got to do, Organifi.com backslash shrugged. Save 20%. Go do organifi.com backslash shrugged save 20 go do it now this episode is brought to you by thrive market anders tell us about it oh thrive market the coolest grocery store and all of the internet actually if you are very interested in eating organic food fueling your workouts for performance and making sure you are putting the highest quality ingredients and food into your mouth to make sure you are putting the highest quality ingredients

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free shipping and a 30-day trial at thrivemarket.com backslash shrugged welcome to barbell shrugged we are at the fitness business summit in san diego california hanging out with our bro doug larson in the house travis mash Mash all the strong people hanging out with Travis I just ruined that sorry guys he hasn't lifted weights ever in his whole life try this working out thing one day from IN3 Nutrition

Jason Phillips in the house this is super cool to have you on following your career over the last 5 years things have been taking off super cool but what I really dig about the message is Following your career over the last, what, five years? Something like that. Things have been taken off. I appreciate that. Super cool. Thank you. But what I really dig about the message is it seems like to me like nutrition is like kind of like an entry point in which you actually really teach people to just think about their lives. Yeah.

And really start kind of putting a lot of the pieces together once you get a hold of their brain a little bit. I think people think that nutrition is the problem. And it likely is the problem, but it's like the fifth problem. There's four problems that precede nutrition that, for whatever reason, you keep skipping over because you think it's the food. And so you try this diet or that diet or this macro or whatever, and you're like, why don't these things work? And, you know, I like to tell people all the time, you know, the nutrition knowledge that we put out, it's all on Google. I just said it on the stage in front of 1200 trainers i'm like i don't teach you anything ultimately new yeah i teach you the reason that you haven't been able to implement

all the nutrition knowledge that's out there i teach you why you haven't been able to fix that or put that into your life or create success with it and really that's where i think we create success right i mean i think that it's know your i mean as a coach's standpoint it's know your client know what makes them tick know like how to connect with them it's it's so much deeper than macros and nutrition so i mean as you said people think it's nutrition but if you're coaching someone in a one-on-one setting like what's preventing travis from from reaching his goals might be different than what's preventing andrews from reaching his goals might be different than what's preventing Anders from reaching his goals. Really not that ice cream. Corona. Why is the ice cream omnipresent?

Or, here's the thing, do you need a diet that keeps the ice cream in? If that's the answer, then we need to build a protocol. I like to, in our certifications, I reference a client that I've worked with in Chicago. She has to have vendors on Friday and Saturday.

And I'm not talking, like, small vendors. Like, I'm talking blackout drunk, like, get so fucked up. And I'm like, and we went. She has to. Bro, no, I promise you, if anyone out there knows me, like, we went six months where, like, I made her cry on the phone. Like, we went hard, and I, like, tried to fix it, and I couldn't. And I'm finally like, you know what? This is you. I need to give you freedom for 48 hours.

So what I need to build you is a plan that allows you to be free for 48 hours. And so what happened was I said, hey, let's have a conversation. The other five days might not be as fun. They might need to be a little more rigid than what I originally wanted for your whole plan. But that rigidity will allow you to be you

on Friday, Saturday. Are you cool with that? She said that she said 100 yes dude we lost 30 plus pounds right it just came down to i don't know why she needs to have that i don't really care i just needed to know she had to have that we went through that process together i think a lot of the stuff that has been really cool watching too is blacked out if you knew the stories i heard oh it's epic i want to meet this lady this is awesome yeah on a saturday she's a lot of fun i promise on friday and saturday on friday or saturday she's no fun on tuesday zero fun this uh this personal prescription that you kind of buy into and not just this one size fits all thing. And that's something that drives me nuts about the macro thing.

It's like just hit these macros and life is going to be great. And it's so – It's so much more than that. It's just as empty as the calories that they're eating. 100%. And kind of what is the progression that you've taken with people in realizing this? It's funny if you talk about macros today, right? So here we are 10 – like let's call it 2007 ish paleo got really popular right and that was the beginning

of the quality based prescriptions so it was like well let's have all the high quality foods which is that even a fucking term like how do you define quality of a food right like let's call it micronutrient dense foods like you had all these micronutrients foods you could eat you know according to gary tobs you could eat all the fucking healthy food you want. As long as you didn't have sugar, you weren't going to get fat. I call bullshit. Alan Aragon has called bullshit several times. 5,000 calories, even if it's salmon and broccoli, is going to make you fat.

It is what it is. Physiological, thermodynamics, those laws haven't changed. But then we got to this macro world. And all of a sudden, it was you can have whatever you want in your macros, and you're going to be successful. And as with everything else Western culture, we went to the extreme. And it was like, well, fuck if I can have everything. Why don't I just eat nothing but pizza, Pop-Tarts, ice cream, and donuts all day? Sounds good.

And so you got people literally out there promoting the fact, glorifying the fact that they're consuming nothing but sugar to get to where they want to be. Yeah. That's a problem. Like, that ignores inflammation. It ignores long-term health. It ignores so many things that... Carcinogens.

There's so many things. So many things, dude. That's, for guys like me, you know, straight-to-the-addition coaches, I mean, at that point, you lose us, and we're like, no. Yeah. Well... This is a whole... This whole industry now becomes a joke if you're not careful.

And, I mean, honestly, macros got super popular. And, listen, we're a, no. Yeah. This whole industry now becomes a joke if you're not careful. And, I mean, honestly, macros got super popular. And, listen, we're a macro company. I make no bones about it. We prescribe macros. But we prescribe quantity with a heavy emphasis on quality. I like it. And so in Western culture now, all the macros and all the quality or all the quantity-based prescriptions are referenced in terms of body fat. Okay?

Or referenced in terms of aesthetics or body composition. So if people are coming to you and they're hiring these macro guys, all they're getting is plans that revolve around fat loss. Which is not good for performance. They don't even care about the performance that you're trying to get, that you care about. Well, that's not a very good mix. No. So now you've got to take a look at, this is what we're big on, we call it the triangle

of awareness. Do you really know your goals? Ooh. There's three types of goals out there like it's pretty clear cut are you performance goals are you aesthetic goals or do you want longevity goals and if you're chasing performance let's be super clear you need to be at minimum maintenance calories if not a small surplus right if you want aesthetics you want body fat loss you have to be in a calorie deficit right but a calorie deficit doesn't yield performance and performance doesn't yield fat loss, you have to be at a calorie deficit. But a calorie deficit doesn't yield performance, and performance doesn't yield fat loss. Like if you look a certain way based on maximizing performance, right? Like I'm preaching to the choir, bro.

Preach, preach. But so many people are overlooking this. But what I love about society and what I love about where we're going, guys like Ben Greenfield that are starting like the biohacking culture, I think you're starting to see the undertone of all the goals. starting to, we're not there yet. We're still probably five, six years away, starting to have a subset, like a subset of like, uh, longevity based prescriptions, right? So the healthier foods, the lack of inflammation, things that people should be looking at are starting to come to the forefront. I mean, as a performance coach, this is what I

want to hear, you know, like the whole just macros fits all. I mean, I need performance coach, this is what I want to hear. The whole just macros, fits all. I mean, I need something that's going to make my athlete. I have athletes who want to get to the Olympics. Absolutely. Or Tommy Bohannon is a starting fullback for the Jaguars. That dude has got to perform on Sunday. Absolutely. And that means millions of dollars to him.

100%. So if he doesn't perform, we just cost him money. But let's keep it real. On that day, you do what you got to do to recover right right so it does that mean we eat sugar if we need sugar for the carbohydrates you're fucking right we do right right on that day right right now the rest of the week we're going to bring down the inflammation we're going to control the gi issues that were caused by that sugar right we're going to fix that and in season our job is to fuel and recover

so if food quality is not as high in season we do what we got to do right we maximize it we get him through but you better be periodizing his nutrition so that coming out of season you're doing full body movement work for restoration right to fix him i better be giving a prescription that allows his nervous system to recover i better be giving him a prescription that allows his hormones to recover and i also better be giving a prescription that allows his gi to recover let's talk about gi yeah yeah let's get deeper like yeah tell me the foods that like uh are going to help his gi so a lot of it like so there's there's some fasting protocols that we use um you know there's some bone broth protocols that we use glutamine supplementation i think a lot of people look at glutamine purely as a recovery agent um actually if you start looking into the pub med studies

you're starting to see a lot of people are using it to heal the epithelial cells. So high-dose glutamine, like we're talking polyquin type doses, 20, 40 grams a day. Poly is my boy, by the way. Yeah, yeah, and he's big on that shit, right? Yes, yes. You know, so things like that, and then controlling food quality, bringing down the sugars, bringing down all of the, like, any, like, GI irritants, right? A lot of higher-end athletes will do, like, MRT testing or Cyrex if they have availability right we'll find out what foods don't agree with them and those are out like

that has to be out in season would you say that's the most important first piece like limiting the damage yes is more important than like trying to put a band-aid on the damage after it's been 100 yeah i mean once it's done you know and this goes the whole periodized model you know coming out of season you know like he doesn't have to perform for 60 days. And 60 days, he's really not training very much either. He's recovering. So those 60 days, you shouldn't be putting a Band-Aid on shit. You should be getting the repair process.

It would be like, oh, I just broke my arm, but for the first 60 days, I'm going to put a Band-Aid on it, and then later I'll fix it. No, you just came out of season. You don't have anything to do. Let's fix that shit. Once that's fixed and you enter your off-season healthy, your job as the strength coach is to build more strength, more power, more skills. Our job is to fuel strength and skill acquisition.

So off-season nutrition has its own set of requirements. Then you start doing more sport-specific work pre-season. I have to start fueling more pre-season work and recovering from more skill-specific work. Then we're back in season. season rinse and repeat every single year you have to periodize nutrition the same way coaches are periodizing training but nobody's everyone's missing this no one talks about any no one's talking about nutritional periodization but it is the crux of doing it properly for an athlete what about hormonal levels like you were talking about that yeah well so when you're in

season you know for a football player or let's talk crossfitter i know a lot of crossfitters are listening um you know you're it's a lot of glycolytic work right the fuel demands are built on carbohydrate right um we know that it's very uh very intensive on the sympathetic nervous system we know there's excess cortisol release we know there's going to be a hit on testosterone levels right and we know there's going to be a hit on the hpa right we know there's going to be a hit on the HPA. We have to fix that. Coming out, they shouldn't be so far gone that 60 to 90 days of proper nutrition doesn't fix that.

So let's get some dietary fat back in your protocol. But let's also prioritize recovery. Let's get some supplements in there, right? Some adaptogens. Let's put that into your protocol. You know, if it's a testosterone, estrogen thing, like even small things just like veggies like broccoli, indole-3-carbinol and broccoli, bring it down the estrogen levels, whatever it might be, whatever minutia you have to go to, to, to get that advantage.

We live in a world right now where performance is at an all-time high. You know, separation is, it's minutia. We need to be living in the minutia. How are you finding some of that? Like, what are the assessments? Or is it blood work? How are you kind of approaching it? Whatever, whatever the client the client can do. Um, blood work would be amazing. But you know, we work a lot on what we call biofeedback. And so I think people identify

purely as physical beings. Um, what is the weight on the scale? What does my body comp in the mirror? Or let's, let's be more real. What is the perceived body comp in the mirror? Um, because as a former anorexic, I can tell you looking in the mirror is not always accurate um so you know how's your sleep how's your energy how's your mood how's your sex drive how's your ability to focus um those are the data markers that are far more important to me yeah um in fact if i suspect any eating disorder tendencies i will eliminate the scale i'll eliminate physical measures and i'll work purely off of those data markers i've actually noticed a lot of that stuff kind of in your videos on yourself,

where you go and do, it's like, hey, I'm going to go into this cut cycle. Two weeks in, you're like, fuck that. I'm done. I'm about to die. Oh, dude, super transparent. Last year, we did shredding season. It was meant to be a vlog, 16 weeks.

I was going to get super shredded. I got halfway into it. We launched our level one certification. Fucking intense writing a manual launching a course like it was hard yeah um you know new family at that point and all the travel being in a calorie deficit and training hard yeah i came home from the first level one and didn't get out of bed for like four days yeah and i'm like i can't do this i cannot do i cannot put myself back fatigue, HPA axis dysfunction, whatever you want to call it. And I pulled the plug and went radio silent on the vlog for like two months.

Everyone's like, what happened to shredding season? I'll fill you in, motherfuckers. But I had to make a video and I had to be transparent. I had to be honest. And I said, listen, shredding season was a success. Not because you guys see a physical difference in me, but because i understand that i need to manage my lifestyle relative to all the stressors and it was

reinforcement to me that i need to gain control of those things that if i'm not 100 i can't create 100 for anybody that's in our network and you know we're chasing impact man we want to create coaches we want to create success for clients whatever it might be i wish it's unfortunate so many of us learned that lesson i remember training for regionals opening a gym at the same time running a business and getting like married and here like getting engaged and you're just like is this fitness thing really matters to me i am just drilling myself as deep into the hole as possible it's hard you come out of that you don't realize it and then the next time you're about to go there and all of a sudden you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa wait a second, I need to back

this thing down. So let me ask you this, so you went there, I have this theory and I don't think that it will ever be proven and I don't think that they, I don't think they'll ever approve a study to prove it, but I call it nervous system adaptation and I think that people that have, and I think like Mike McGoldrick might be a really good example

he went to regionals, he went to the games but I think he did so and in speaking I think, like, Mike McGoldrick might be a really good example. He went to regionals. He went to the games. But I think he did so, and in speaking with him, because I worked with him later, he was very, like, deep into HPA axis dysfunction when he went. Yeah. And so the next year he went to regionals. And I think he was, like, outside the top 20. And so how do you go from games to outside the top 20 without a major injury?

Like, that's weird. And talking to him, he's like, I just didn't have that second gear, which we know is indicative of your HPA being super fucked up right um and so like we talked about his nutrition and like i was doing nutrition for his weight cut for olympic lifting yeah and i'm like he tried so many different things and he could never get his nervous system to light up like it once did i think he was adapted i think his body was like i remember what it was like to go super deep you didn't give me the recovery that i needed so I will never create that level of output again because I'm never going to be able to recover from it.

And I call it nervous system adaptation. It's not clinical. It's 100% empirical, but I definitely believe it exists. Well, that's what happens before someone goes to attempt to test something. You have to figure it out anecdotally or have a theory, and then you can go test it. So just because there's no research to back it up doesn't mean something

like that is happening. Now you can suggest it and then someone can go, okay, we can go talk to Andy and he can go talk to someone who might be able to figure that out. I love Andy.

I love Andy. And it's really funny, like Andy just released things and he's like, everyone's talking about nervous system and how it's not important. And I'm like,

I think that's semantics because I think it's not the nervous system does not create power output but it does allow for cortisol to be released and if your nervous system is not allowing cortisol to be released and allow you to go super deep in that sympathetic nervous system then i don't think you're going to be able to create the power output that you potentially could so is that nervous system directly no but i do think it's an underlying factor um and he's going to come on our stuff next month i can't wait to talk about it and get his opinion there um dude i he and i align on virtually everything like i fucking love that guy i hope so because he's the scientist that proves us all

right or wrong no dude like if you're lined up with him that's a good person no like we're super aligned i know what i'm talking about we had fighters we both had fighters at ufc fresno and we happened to talk on Wednesday right before our guys went to the scale. Man, it was awesome. I love when you talk to him, and you're like, I kind of feel this thing. And he's like, it's this, this, and this. And you're like, oh, smart people.

Thank you. I knew there was something to this. He's such a good dude. You said that you were a former anorexic? Yes, sir. I've never. OK. You're the first male.

Yeah. So I would like to talk about that. Let's do it. Let's do it. Anything you want, man. Yeah. So how did that happen? All right.

So agree or disagree, in 2002, every male's wet dream, every male 18-year-old's wet dream was to be an Abercrombie model. So I was approached by Abercrombie to do some modeling. I was a rehabbing golfer. I was a very highly ranked golfer. I had torn my labrum. I was rehabbing the injury. You don't look like a golfer.

I graduated high school at 5'9", 130. No shit. Yes, sir. I think this is an improvement. I'll show you the picture off air. It's a big improvement. Anyone peep my Instagram, like one of the first ever posts, it was bad. Um, but, uh, you know, so basically the, the recruiting agent, she said to me before I left the store, she said, Hey, when you send me pictures, make sure you send pictures

of your abs. Dude, listen, golfers eat burgers, mac and cheese, milkshakes. I went to Taco Bell every single day after high school. They knew my order. It was that bad, okay? I'm asking around. I'm like, how do I get abs? How do I get abs? You know, I'm in the gym for rehab, so I'm training harder, doing more cardio. And my pediatrician at the time, he was like, hey, I want you to – it's all nutrition-based. You just need to read the magazines, read the nutritional stuff.

You'll be fine. You're young. You've got a good metabolism, right? I started reading the magazines and said, don't eat this, don't eat this, don't eat this. And I never had a list of what to eat, but I had this massive list of what not to eat. Before I knew it, I wasn't fucking eating. I was so afraid of food, but dude, it's mental at that point. You're so fucked. Like I would finish dinner with my family. It'd be like chicken, green beans, and like salad. I'd go to my room and I would do crunches because I thought that the food I ate just went to fat in my stomach. That was my vision of food, dude, when I was 18. Yes.

And, dude, what that brings about as a person sucks. Like, I was depressed. I had no self-esteem. I had no drive. I couldn't stay awake after 2 o'clock. My testosterone levels were off the charts low. I had testosterone levels at 18 years old of a 90-year-old male. That's terrible.

And I know what you're saying. It's no way to live. Everybody used to say, oh, he looks like an Abercrombie model. That used to kind of be the... Yeah, that was the thing, dude. So I can imagine if somebody said, hey, would you want to be an Abercrombie model? Oh, and I was in the store with my mom trying on clothes, right? And the woman comes up to me and she's like, have you ever considered modeling?

Like, would you do it for us? And I was like, fuck yeah, I'll get every girl under the sun. Are you kidding me? Like, here I am. I'm going to be like, hey be like hey oh girl you don't know who i am but look at this magazine those are my abs right like um ironically if you only knew where my abs had been now yeah i'll out myself i was the abs on the cover of that waist belt that shocks you oh no dude that was me in the infomercial that was like oh yeah yeah so that's that's where i went man i went from abercrombie or you know almost to abercrombie i did end up shooting with oh nice oh dude that was me in the infomercial that was like that oh yeah so that's where I went

man I went from Abercrombie or you know almost to Abercrombie I did end up shooting with them so I did I did make it

eventually and then I went to the whole I gained a little bit of muscle and then they wanted me to be the abs on the

belt shocker thingy and whatever the fuck they called it they used to sell that for strength training and now it's like a rehab thing

no one even knows recycle that it's amazing how they do that when a girl gets you know she says that she's um anorexic or whatever there's a lot of you know it can kill 100 dude oh yeah like how far down did you i was 48 hours away from being from a clinical intervention my my parents and my doctor were 48 hours away from taking me to a clinic and um you know it wasn't until several months or even years later that they told me that. And the funny part is when you're anorexic, you don't know it.

So I look back and everyone's like, well, how did you overcome it? I didn't think I had a problem. And honestly, the way I overcame it was I was opening up Gold's Gym. So I said I couldn't stay awake after like 2 p.m. I was opening up Gold's Gym, 5 a.m. to 11. And, you know, this trainer, she saw what I was opening up Gold's Gym, right? So I said I couldn't stay awake after like 2 p.m. I was opening up Gold's Gym, 5 a.m. to 11. Right. And, you know, this trainer, she saw what I was doing to myself. And this bodybuilder would come in every day,

and he was dieting for a show, and I'm like, I want to look like him. Yeah. You know, jacked, lean, like that's what I want to be. And she's like, oh, I do his nutrition. Dope. Can you do mine? Of course. You need to go home tonight, and you need to eat 4,000 calories.

That's what she told me. And I was like, bro, this is 2000. This is 2002. And I'm like, there's no, my fucking, there's no, my fitness pal. So I went to Barnes and Noble. I bought a calorie counting book. I shit you not bro. Fair Oaks mall, Northern Virginia, Barnes and Noble bought a calorie counting book. I wrote out a 4,000 calorie meal plan. I executed the next day. I went from 800 calories to 4,000 calories overnight. Nutrition coaches that are out there that are watching this, please don't ever do that. But I did it.

Did you get fat? Three weeks later, I look in the mirror, no fat gain. And that's when I was like, you know what? I trust this food thing a little bit. I trust clean food at 4,000 calories. Then it was building the trust game because then i transferred to florida state right i changed my major i'm like this whole food thing saved me i need to fix my life i'm gonna pay it forward yeah um and i went there but you know

you're a 19 year old dude you're gonna hang out with other 19 year old dudes you're gonna you're supposed to go out drinking you're supposed to eat food while you're drunk yeah and i was petrified of eating like shitty food while i was drunk for whatever. And I was petrified of eating, like, shitty food while I was drunk. For whatever reason, I wasn't petrified of being drunk. But I was petrified of, like, the pizza while I was drunk. Or the Waffle House. Yeah. So, like, literally.

That's a very Southern comment of you. If you've been to Tallahassee, there's the famous Waffle House on Tennessee Street. Everybody's been there. I've actually been to Tassie. So you know the one I'm talking about. Right across from Guthrie's. We've been to those places a few times. Of course I know.

But I would go home from eating those things, and I would go to bed with the single thought that I was going to wake up in the morning and my abs were going to be gone because that one meal completely made me gain fat. And that was the thought I had. So I would wake up in the morning, I'd go rush in the mirror. You want to talk about a mental battle, dude. And, you know, I take a look back now. And I live like when, you know, in our education platform at NCI, we talk about, we live by the quote, education drives compliance.

I think I take a look back now. And the reason I overcame it and became successful is because I was educating the whole time. I was learning how it worked. I was learning how this wasn't going to make me fat, how to implement this into my life. But more importantly, I was learning the lifestyle that goes into not creating change. I was learning the mindset that goes into not creating change. And so I think what we talked about earlier, the success that we now have as a company is predicated on understanding that.

I think that was put in my life so that I could actually help others. I would never wish an eating disorder on my worst enemy. It is a mental fuck that is so hard to overcome and recover from. But because we've gotten there, I feel like we're in such a position to pay for it. Yeah, now you can empathize with people where other people can't, and that's a huge advantage. We were all just in there talking to Samantha Skelly, and that's what she does. She brought me on her show, and it was the first male that had openly talked about it and since i've done it she said it's like the floodgates have opened so many guys are

reaching out to her and she's so good at helping people overcome it she's amazing i don't know if you guys have talked to her but she's so good i haven't talked to her she's amazing with eating disorder stuff man like she her shit is good so yeah I mean, there is a social stigma, if you will, around guys being anorexic. It's not very alpha. It's not like, oh, I'm a badass because I'm an anorexic. No, not so much. Can I drink coffee while we're on there? Totally.

Got to keep the energy rolling. Okay, good. I'm like, that adrenaline is going to dump after stepping off stage. Sooner or later. At some point, it's got to come down. I'm fired. Let's go. The person that was writing you the meal plan, the person that said, like, I want you to

go home and eat 4,000 calories. Was that person around to mentor you or was that just like a one time deal? She was around because I stayed, obviously I stayed opening golds. And so she was around. But literally the singular piece of advice to this day that she ever gave me was to eat 4,000 calories. And I think as it happened, after three weeks, I became more educated. And I was like, wait a minute, this whole fucking men's fitness thing is wrong yeah which ironically like 10 years later

i wrote for men's fitness but um like does she know that that piece of information like changed your whole life no dude like you got to get that out there so okay so here we go all right we'll put this out right her name is stephanie tortorella in northern virginia if she somehow gets this like that singular piece of advice changed my life and i I don't know if she knows it. Gold's gym, um, Chantilly. Somebody listening to this knows Stephanie. Tell Stephanie to DM Jason. Yeah. Like somehow, man, I would love to thank her. I think it's so rad. And the cool thing is like my wife and I moved back home to that area. So I'm living in Northern Virginia again. And, uh, my pediatrician at the time,

he was always there for me as I overcame it. And he was obviously super happy I did. We remain connected. So that's been pretty cool. I'm curious, with getting back to macronutrients, in performance, like intra-workouts. Now, Charles Polgan used to say, it's not breakfast it's the

most important it's the intro workout it's what you do before during and after it would you agree with that or not i think the studies are really mixed okay i think um so the first person what i heard talked about was paula quinn i think because that i think joe kozemski and lane norton made it very popular um in like the bodybuilding space which i think the bodybuilding space drives a lot of nutritional protocols elsewhere. Yes. Unfortunately,

because I don't always think it's proper, but it is what it is, right? We've got to acknowledge it. So Lane did it for a long time and I followed him when he did. And all of a sudden he stopped and the research on glute four and as to whether it's upregulated or downregulated, and it actually allows to enter the cell during training because of glute

four. I think studies are very conflicted. And so it depends on the sport is kind of who I would be talking about. You know, for CrossFitters, we, like when I put out the fuel strategy for 18.2, I think that some intro workout between finishing the workout and that lift, and we're talking two minutes for a lot of people, I think that a spike of insulin, so something like a highly branched cyclic dextrin,

like that little bit of insulin spike is enough to calm the nervous system to get your shit together and hit a big lift. So at that point, I would say yes. You just mentioned glute for transport. People know what those are. Can you drop some science on us real quick and just explain how that works? Well, so basically, I mean, like when you've got something in the bloodstream, it has to cross into the muscle, right, or has to cross into the cell. are can you can you like drop some science on us real quick and just explain how that works well so basically i mean like when you've got something in the bloodstream it has to cross into the muscle

right or has to cross into the cell um glute four is what allows up regulation or down regulation of that barrier uh of that like barrier of entry so it's you know when you're training like the whole conflict is around like whether or not like that barrier exists or not um so it's essentially think of like you're drinking the nutrients, but at some point they have to end up in their destination, which you want to be your muscle cells for recovery or performance. The question is whether they can get to the muscle cells during exercise while glute force is upregulated.

Right, and if they can't get to the muscle, the natural way of things is if they can't go to the muscle, then they're going to go somewhere else. Potentially. Yes, I honestly think ultimately it will end up in the muscle. I just don't think it's when you want it from the research I've read. I think, I mean, at some point, I don't think you're going to store BCAAs or like the carbohydrates you're ingesting intra-workout as fat. I don't think that, you know, I think that insulin spike is not going to lead to fat storage.

But I just don't think they're as quick um i i really think man like if you're doing everything properly um and we're talking athletics we're not talking aesthetics okay completely different protocols i believe aesthetics you really have to pack your carbs around your training because it's when you're very insulin sensitive right right and i think you need to be trying to lose fat the rest of the time the other 24 hours right or 20 hours um athletics i think you should be taking in enough carbohydrate every single day to fuel your activity right glycogen synthesis happens 24 to 36 hours right so even though you're pounding carbohydrate around your activity you're not necessarily using all of that it's not readily available for x number of hours you know everyone's got different rates of metabolism but it's, let's call it four

or five hours at a minimum, right? You can use some of it, but you can't use all of it. Right. So if you're having enough carbohydrate every single day, there's really no reason for us to have to load up at that time unless it's going to be an effort that is abnormally high when maybe you're using some sugars. Exactly. So there's people in the space, in the athletic space that are like, oh, well, low carb all day and then put your carbs right before.

The only reason that you need those fucking carbs right before is because you're not giving people enough glycogen the rest of the day. All day. Right. So feed them the fucking carbohydrate they need at other times of the day and you won't have to fucking do that. You guys hear it all goes back to can we just, like, eat normal? I mean, do you see what I'm saying? Like, he's just saying's just saying just eat healthy. Eat the right quantity with high quality, and you're pretty fucking safe.

And you're safe. So you don't have to do all these crazy. I think nutrient timing is just a very small piece of the equation, or are you talking about just in a sense it's not a big deal? I think nutrient timing helps recovery more than it helps. I think it helps recovery, which boosts performance. I think people look at it as a performance enhancement tool, but what they don't understand is that it's helping them recover faster.

And that faster recovery is the performance enhancement. But you're not going to get a dose response from having a little extra carbohydrate right before an activity. Maybe, like, okay, 18.4 got announced. I don't know when this will release, but 18.4 got announced last night right maybe a little bit of extra carb before that because you need a deadlift right oh and by the way simple sympathetic nervous system shit show yeah like people don't know right now because we're one day into it they're fucked yeah they're gonna feel so bad after this workout you're gonna finish and 10 minutes later you're gonna get a kick in the dick

and you're gonna be like what the fuck just happened? It looks terrible. And then the next day you're going to wake up foggy, inability to focus, a little bit of a headache, and you're going to be like, what did I do wrong? You didn't do anything wrong. It's just the nature of the workout. 225 is the perfect weight to make you feel like shit.

225 for like three days. It goes 315, bro. Oh, that's an excellent. 315 is the second barbell. Yeah, but 225 is not the scary one. So I can deadlift over six, like my tiny size. And I can, you know, 315 is going to suck. 315 is going to suck for what is like 50 reps or whatever.

It's 45 reps on each side. That was actually the hardest workout I've ever done. 21-15-9 box jumps and 3-15 deadlifts. Oh, that regionals workout? Yeah, it fucking massacred me. I remember I went unbroken on the first round of deads, and I was like, I don't even want to jump. That 10-minute thing you were talking about, I felt that.

We're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to talk about IN3 and how you've taken all these lessons, turned this into training trainers, getting coaches on the right page so they can help their athletes. Let's do it. Awesome. Shrug listeners, incredibly excited to be announcing our recent partnership with Onnit. Onnit is the leading company in clinically backed research and development for nootropics and supplementation. We recently spent a week down at their facility in Austin,

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which is a week-long trial of their best-selling alpha brain neurotropic welcome back to barbell shrug here with jason phillips at the fitness business summit and you guys will be hearing this late but we're going to talk a little bit about some nutrition prescription for 18-4 and how just a little bit of the thought process that goes into this for you on how you would attack some workouts. Everyone knows what 18-4 is. So walk up through it. Yeah, tell them what it is. Yeah, so 18-4 was Diane, 21-15-9, 225 dead, handstand pushup,

directly into 21-15-9 deadlift 315 with a 50-foot handstand walk after each round. And the highest level athletes are doing Diane now in sub 3? Two and a half, I would say. I've seen it done pretty quickly. But the truth is it's not Diane. From a strategy standpoint, it's not Diane because you're not racing at all at that point because the workout starts when you get to the second bar.

And in the announcement, you saw that Panchik was reasonably behind and he destroyed bk um and so yeah let's talk about first before we get to nutrition yeah what strategy would you have i would be breaking right away i would be breaking the first set of deads depending on what your deadlift prowess is at least into sevens um on the first round if you can pull 500, are you going sevens? Oh, yeah. If you can pull 500 or you're going sevens, you can pull 600. If you can only pull 450, you're probably doing

what Scott did, 6, 5, 5, 5. Just so you can see me die tonight, I'm going to do all 21 right off the bat as fast as possible. Well, that would be me. And then we'll get it on camera as I'm just laid out at minute three. Are you going to do it tonight? Yeah, we're going to Invictus. Let's do it. That's so funny, dude.

I'd like to see you do a handstand. I would like to see that. Dude, if you guys get that on video, that would be epic. Well, all right, so let's talk fuel. The key is it's 18.4. It's not 18.1. You're in a recovery debt at this point. That's the first thing you have to acknowledge.

You've competed at a minimum three times in the last three weeks, but let's be real, you've probably competed six times in the last three weeks. All mine have. So you've emptied the tank twice per week. So remember, when you're training, you're not emptying the tank. It's training stimulus. You're not going to sell out for that last rep. So it's a different response physiologically on your body.

Different dose response requires a different recovery response. So with 18.4, you had to understand you're already there. So from a loading perspective, I had all my clients start loading carbohydrates last night. We added a little 40, 50 extra grams of carbohydrate just to make sure they have the fuel to complete the workout, right? Pre-workout, you know, I always break this down multiple times per day. Pre-workout, it's not one I want done fasted. So if my athletes don't have to do it fasted, we're not doing it fasted. If you have to do it fasted, there's really good compelling research that says a high molecular weight carb pre-workout is advantageous for performance enhancement.

So we would use something like a cyclic dextrin and i would recommend an extra 25 grams of carbs on top of what you're used to so if you're used to doing a 50 gram carb shake pre-workout i want you doing 75 if you're used to doing 25 i want you doing 50 if you're going later in the day let's call it midday um you're probably gonna get two meals in the first one i'm gonna want protein carbohydrate and fats present normal quantities for you the second one protein carbohydrate because there's still a breathing component fats are going to weigh you down a little bit we want you to be able to breathe a little bit clearer we want that food to be pretty digested we want you closer to a fasted state the the the closer you are to a fasted state the easier cortisol elevates cortisol super powerful in a competition arena so protein carbohydrate, carbohydrate, about 90 minutes out.

If you're later in the day, we're probably going to get two meals of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, and then that pre-workout meal of protein, carbohydrate. Nothing intra-workout. The only caveat I made in my strategy guide was

if 315 is going to be a PR for you, then finish Diane and do what you did in 18-2. Have that shake, immediately post, compose yourself,-2. Have that shake, immediately post, like compose yourself, step up and rip that shit, right, and get yourself a fucking PR. There's people out there that it's going to happen to. So you've got to address that.

That you're going to PR after that. But some people will, dude. It happens all the time. I see it. I don't understand that. Listen, you know what that is? Well, here's the thing. You know what that is?

They're nowhere near their athletic potential. Right. They're still developing neurologically as much as they are physically. Sure. So that's not purely a physical PR. That's some nervous system or neurological PR. And the cortisol, the burst of cortisol. Oh, dude.

It's like an adrenaline rush, man. It's like the dad that's able to pull his daughter out underneath a car. He fucking lifts the car and pulls. You know, that's going to happen once in a lifetime. Can you repeat that? Fuck no. But it's also going to, what you said earlier, it's able to pull his daughter out underneath a car he fucking lifts the car and pulls you know that's going to happen once in a lifetime can you repeat that fuck no but it's also going to what you said earlier tomorrow the next day done so yeah like you should be consuming all of the carbs and planning on not leaving the couch for two days there's a reason open workouts are on the weekends like let's be real the The recovery element is real. And I honestly wonder if that was done for that reason.

It's because people have more time to complete it multiple times and because they actually have more ability to recover to produce better results. I would love to see a production chart of CrossFitters

through the open at work if they release it on a Monday. It's like Monday through Friday you get to do this. People are hitting it three times. How many people are getting fired from their jobs? Sitting at work, I just can't do anything.

A lot of people are getting fired from their jobs. If they're not fired, they'll for sure get more in. They're getting more write-ups, or they're just using all their vacation. Every February, you're productive. Where are you going on vacation? To the gym. To the gym, motherfucker. What would you recommend, nutrition-wise, to recover from this?

Yeah, yeah. So post-workout's the next piece. I always recommend, in open workouts, you're having at least 25 grams more carbohydrate immediately post-workout's the next piece um i always recommend in open workouts you're having at least 25 grams more carbohydrate immediately post-workout than you're used to so most athletes throughout the year they're doing a one-to-one carb to protein two-to-one carb to protein shake um i'd consider going three to one two to one or even four to one so some athletes are doing 100 grams of carbs 25 grams of protein within 15 minutes following to bring down that cortisol response right because remember just because you the time clock hit nine minutes your body doesn't know that so cortisol doesn't just shut off yeah

let's shut off yeah the shutoff valve to cortisol is insulin so we got to get carbohydrate in there and we need a significant amount of carbohydrate to shut off that extreme cortisol response right now what i recommended that was different this year this week was normally we recommend a meal about 60 to 90 minutes later high like high food quality micronutrient dense I recommended an extension of that recovery window so your meal should be predominantly protein carbohydrate still low in fat to make the ease of digestibility very high right so perhaps simpler carbs than you're used to maybe not as micronutrient dense but more about that recovery piece more about getting those carbs in and then I look at recovery throughout the rest

of the day. So I don't even count those carbohydrates I gave you immediately post-workout. I still want your carb intake to be 50 to 75 grams higher for that day than what you're used to. Now recovery still happens 24 hours later. So the next day, I think your carbohydrate intake should be 50 to 100 grams higher again. Here's the kicker, though. All the people that are listening, they're like, oh, that's great from a fuel perspective. Then they get on the scale.

They're like, fuck, I gained five pounds. That's all right. Inflammation, right? Neural inflammation. And carbohydrates? The scale is going to go up. Who the fuck cares? Yeah.

Did you get a better time? It's like three days of your life. Motherfucker, your position on the leaderboard was not determined by your scale number. I promise. They don't make Matt Frazier lift his shirt up on top of the podium. No. They don't. His abs aren't as good up on top of the podium. No. They don't. Because his abs

aren't as good as Fikowski's. Let's be real. Let's be real. If you're listening. I love you, Matt. You're an amazing athlete, but Fikowski's got you on the abs.

But dude, Matt demolishes people. And Matt's like, I'm getting paid. Listen, I think Matt is so much smarter than everybody. Maybe than everybody gives him credit for, but than everybody at CrossFit.

Dude, he stepped up to that 385 clean and smoked it. Bro, he competes one time a year. Do you realize how powerful that is? I don't think people understand the recovery demands of competition relative to training. I love what Guido does with Guadalupe. If you're a top athlete, I love what Guido does with Waterpalooza. If you're a top athlete, I'm advising you not to do it. You cannot have that, like, cortisol dump, that competition stimulus.

You cannot empty the tank in January and expect to be fresh again for the Open, Regionals, and Games. I totally agree. I think even, like, even powerlifting, like, Ed Cohen would only compete twice a year. Yeah. Nationals, Worlds, and, like and everybody else is doing all these competitions. To look cool, you want to do these competitions, look how strong I am. Yep.

That dude was smart, and he had that such long career. Yeah. His career lasted until he decided to not. Until he decided to finish. Yeah. Well, dude, what's the pinnacle of athletic achievement? We just finished at the Olympics. Yes.

They do it every four years. Yeah. Right? And they shut down the World Cup shit right before that so that they can get ready for the olympics i think i have this theory that crossfitters there's such a gap on the male side i think that somebody like a fukowski an alex vigno somebody like that that's close but not really close but close needs to take at least a year off of competing don't go to the games. Don't compete in the games.

Now, listen, I understand there's financial shit and all that, and I understand sponsor stuff. I get it. But if it was feasible, don't take a year off and build the comeback. If nothing else, fuck the marketing. You could sell with that. Let's be real. It would be really good, right?

Like anybody with a marketing mind, it would be amazing marketing, right? It's kind of like what George St. Pierre just did. Dude, but do you know how good he felt coming back? Do you know how good he felt coming back? I mean, listen, his age showed a little bit in the fight, but do you know how good he probably felt in camp? He probably felt amazing. He probably felt amazing in camp.

Do you know how good you would feel getting to the games? Last year, I worked with Reagan Huckabee last year. I don't know if you guys paid attention to the Northwest women, but she got second or third at regionals, but I'm telling you it was a walk in the park. She didn't compete the year before. She was coming off an injury. Do you know how fresh her nervous system was?

There was no extreme stimulus on it for two years. We walked into that shit fresh as a daisy. You know who I think is going to have a great year is Jacob Heppner. He didn't compete last year. He's like a seven-hour-a-day training guy. But I think Brutes pulled him back a little bit. I hope. I don't think the dose response has to be as high, but that's a whole other discussion.

So that's on the performance side. What are some of the things that are going into the aesthetic side? You broke this stuff down and caloric. Let's be honest. Everybody wants to perform at a high level and look sexy as hell while they do it because you have to have your shirt off all right so i just got a shirt off all the time here i don't i don't blame him we made him put his shirt on before we got the show it's cold out here so he's got a jacket on today but if it wasn't i guarantee

his shirt it's all good hey listen bro i don't blame you it's all good if i were you i would too um you're doing modeling when i was doing abracami i might have but today not so much no but hey we'll submit your pictures i don't have to shave up a little bit um at the foundation of all things nutritional yeah um but especially with aesthetics it's stress and it's adaptation and this is what nobody understands the reason people can't lose like that last little bit of fat or why they can't lose fat in general especially in the crossfit space the abundance of stress is offsetting the ability to adapt

fat loss and adaptation right your body using fat as the fuel and creating that fat loss is an adaptation but if there's an abundance of stress and let's talk about Western culture stressors, like my fucking second Americano, the lack of sleep that I've had for three nights, CrossFit, which is super intensive, plus Western culture, family, life, work, business, whatever it is, you have so much stress going on that now you're in a deficit. You can't recover. If you're not recovering what does your

body do it defaults to survival what is survival it's it's fat storage we're not meant to live six percent body fat with abs we're meant to survive and thrive that's who we are as human beings it's innate to us so if you're not giving your body the ability to adapt to the stressors or if you're not controlling the stressors you're not creating fat loss so i would argue crossfit's not gonna like me for this 90 of people that want to lose a significant amount of fat need to pull back on the intense exercise do some bodybuilding get a little pump bro speaking of brian vorstein earlier right we talked about brian and i think you guys are gonna have him on yeah but brian works with a lot of people in my camp because he's really good at understanding just how much intensity you can have.

And him and I work very closely together on that. We have one of our coaches doing a whole series right now. It's called From Performance to Aesthetics. We pulled her out of all of her CrossFit to achieve her peak cosmetics. Dude, I'm telling you, she's going to shred it. I can't wait to post those pictures. Well, one of the things that happened to me when i kind of got out of the competing thing is you know finding like what my body was supposed to look like or feel like or feel like i have a

question do you feel like you didn't know anymore towards the talent of your competing and like when you shifted do you think that was eye-opening to you as to like holy shit i forgot what it was like to feel good yeah no completely my body was so wrecked and it's it took me two years to get healthy and now two years bro like i want everybody to hear that yeah because so many people think they're gonna come to me will it cut out crossfit last week that must mean i can get lean this week no motherfucker you're probably so overdone you're probably a year away from your body normalizing so with amanda it was about four or five months before i really saw a normal response relative to fat loss yeah it's wild you know openly and honestly it's less intense it's less

caloric output you do get to consume less food um but that's what's needed for extreme fat loss if you want to be super ripped you're gonna have to get into poverty calories poverty macros at some point to get those extreme levels i don't think everybody should be chasing that that's like stage shit. You can't stay there. It's not maintainable. No bodybuilder does. No bodybuilder does, man.

They have off seasons. And the natural bodybuilding community, they're learning. They understand it. They compete like once every four years. Because real gains can only be made at such a rate with no exogenous hormones. Natural gains can only be made. It can only be made so fast, man. I mean, the pinnacle. And this is like, oh, I'm not gaining weight super fast, and I'm trying to gain muscle.

A natural bodybuilder from year to year, they define their success. If they're one pound heavier on the stage from year to year, that's a success. One pound of muscle in 12 months, that's insane. That's reality. And people are like, but that's reality, dude. And people are like, that's not sexy. Well, take your drugs. Roll the dice on your health.

When you get into the body weight thing, it's a really interesting thing. If I were to think about how hard it would be to put on five pounds of muscle right now, I have no interest in that because I know how hard that is. Do you know how much food you'd have to eat? It's not even fun. It's awful. And you'd have to eat quality foods. Yeah.

Because, like, obviously, man, more and more research is coming out that high protein does, in fact, win in the off-season. Yeah. Which, you know, I think there was this big movement towards, oh, you don't need as much protein if you've got the protein-sparing nutrients. The research is actually very clear that high protein will win. I bet Charles is just like, my God. Yeah.

He's been saying that since the 90s. I mean, I think you have to have the subsequent carbohydrate and fat, but high protein is a necessity. You know, muscle protein synthesis for muscle building, super important. Like, let's be real. Is it not the basis of building muscle? Come on. People never think about, like, oh, what is this chicken going to do?

I just have to eat the chicken. It's like, no, no, no. You're consuming muscles to turn them into muscles. Yep. So clearly you have your stuff dialed in with the actual nutrition stuff, but it's led into coaching coaches. Ion3 Nutrition, dude, how many people are you? We have 15 coaches.

Yeah, that's crazy. We have 15 coaches under us. You know, we always have a farm system because we're always uh you know we're always growing yeah we're always open to growing and and i believe that you know what we're chasing is maximal impact man and i want to touch as many people as possible but the truth is man if we see four or five thousand clients come through our doors a year that's a lot um that's only four or five thousand people dude like there's millions if not billions of people in this world that need our help. And so that's actually what's led us to building our education platform. And that's why we're certifying other coaches and helping them do the right thing the right way in the world.

I think it's been really cool to watch it too because it comes from a place of your own story. And the coaches that are drawn to that suffer from the same crap. And we come from this performance world, and you want to help people get better at what they do so much. And then all of a sudden it's like, I'm just beating the shit out of people. And we've got to find better answers for people. And that was something I struggled with so much in the CrossFit world. It was like, how do I keep preaching this to people? Because it's fucking wrong.

It's not authentic anymore. Yeah, it's like, I can't make you better. because if you do what I tell you to do in two years, you're going to be just run down and we have to take this better approach. And that's why I actually think somebody like a Fikowski is so smart. He's come up so slowly. His rate of improvement has been steady every single year. And if you talk to him about it, he understands the long game. I remember I had a conversation with him like the first year he made the games i had had a conversation with him three

or four months prior at guadalupalooza and i said to him i said i think this is your year and he said no i think i'm one year away and just that statement alone i was like holy shit like you see the big picture that's like you're totally playing the long game and he was so adamant about it he was like no like i got this hole and this hole, and that won't get me through this year. And he fucking won every event or something. He walked away with the regionals and got second in the games. Or no, he got fourth that year.

But to me, that's the intelligence you have to have, and you have to have the patience to play the long game. We live in a Western culture of instant gratification. You want it right now. Yeah, I don't know. Instant gratification, gratification dude we want yesterday not even right now right now it's too late like we want yesterday but the greatest athletes like you know in weightlifting they're thinking you know we think in four year blocks 100 you have to i think i think crossfit as a culture i think the best athletes have to start thinking at minimum in two year blocks yeah

i think it would be i. I really believe so. Because you can't do that much in a year, especially if they make the games. I mean, it's not very long. There's no off-season. We talked about the recovery. Let's say they take the necessary time to recover. What are they going to do in terms of an off-season

to make improvement? There isn't one because they're back in the preseason. They're back in the preseason. So They're back in the pre-season. So there's no time for that strength or skill acquisition you need as an athlete to be successful. I think a lot of them are missing just getting that aerobic base. That would help them so much. Have you really built your oxidative system up?

If you look at some of the top athletes in CrossFit, I don't know if you – you spend time in local boxes. Some of the best athletes I've ever been around, even at just a small level, are former swimmers. Yeah, of course. My niece has cystic fibrosis. What they prescribe to her to keep her lung capacity very high is frequent swimming.

Of course. If they're doing that at a medical level, to keep lung capacity high with somebody that naturally has no capacity, what the fuck do you think that's going to do to you? You're starting to see more swimming in protocols but i don't think you're seeing it use i think you're seeing it more uses active recovery i think are you seeing it uses for like the aerobic base that i think it can deliver it should be um and it's very low impact on the body so the

nervous system stress is very low um but i just don't think it's the time every single year so i think if you go you have a great year at the games even bodybuilding got into this man like back in the day in bodybuilding it was like the arnold and the olympia every year yeah and all of a sudden jay cutler one year he skipped the arnold he's like i'm putting all my eggs into the olympia basket and he won yeah and it's like oh maybe i need more time to recover well why are we as athletes any different yeah you know those guys are in a tough spot too because if they have if they have multiple photo shoots to do they have like these kind of mini competitions that they're not really competing but they gotta look good and so they can't put on too much body fat they can't put on too much muscle mass they have to stay lean

year-round and then that that just fucking just destroys them for hard for the olympia or whatever it's gonna be within like a four or five weeks you tell me i gotta shoot and four weeks i'll die yeah i mean and then i mean that game's completely different i've lived in that world for a while it's so hard. How does that change kind of for the female population as well? We're talking about clearly male bodybuilders right now. But the female side of things gets even more complex. Well, that's why you're seeing so many female physique competitors that are ruined.

I mean, the HPA dysfunction, the hormone dysfunction, the thyroid disorders, the sex hormone disorders that are happening with female physique competitors, it is alarmingly high. A female physique competitor can't stay close to stage shape more than two times per year. I will not work with a female physique competitor, and I don't really work with any anymore, but I wouldn't allow my female physique competitors to compete anymore than twice a year. And there was a minimum of like seven to eight months between preps, meaning we finish a prep, you have eight months, then we start prep. So it's probably a year and there was a minimum of like seven to eight months between between preps meaning we finish a prep you have eight months then we start prep so it's probably a year between shows yeah and trying to hold that peak i mean let's be real like we talked about poverty calories

poverty macros 12 14 1600 calories maybe right because you have to do it like a female is not designed to be eight percent body fat it's not supposed to happen it's not innate to your physiology and you're manipulating that yes right and I think that the science is starting to come out studies like the Matador study studies that cite periods at maintenance will not impede fat loss. And you can use them to elevate metabolic activity. Like those are out there and we're learning more and we're staying healthier long-term, but I still don't think it's healthy to be there, man. Like it's just not the right way to go long term. I don't like it. So how do you peel back the layers?

You say a dude comes to you. Yeah. Say that, hey, I'm coming to you. I'm like, hey, I'm going to start. I want to win the CrossFit game. Yeah. How do you peel me? Like, what do you start with? So it's really funny.

I just got asked on stage, like, I come to you. What's the first thing I'm going to get? And I was like, you're going to get 50 questions. Right? I'm going to learn about you. Right. But that's, I have to, right? Your age, height, and weight.

Well, fuck, I'll go to whatever macro calculator online and you're going to get the same shit. Right. Right? I want to know what have you tried, what have you not tried, what's been successful, what hasn't been successful. I don't need to reinvent the wheel. I need to take what's worked and I need to maximize it.

I need to know where are you at in your performance, where can we really get, what's realistic, and then based on that, let's build an implementation. Now that implementation, super transparently, is our best educated guess with the information available to us. The real magic then comes in our work together. Because now we're addressing feedback from your body physiologically and physically moving forward. If we read that data and we interpret it correctly, make the right changes moving forward, now we can create success. That's where the magic happens.

Same as like in programming. When I program, it's a guess. It's always a guess, dude. And I think so many experts, we'll use that with air quotes, are so afraid to admit that from insecurity. I think your insecurity just shows how bad you are. I think to be a real expert, you've got to admit the truth.

I tell them. I tell them up front, like, you know, this is a starting point. Yeah, it's a starting point. You're learning. Right. It's an assessment phase.

I used to call it that. I used to call my first two weeks with a client an assessment phase. It takes... Because that's really what it is. Unless you're lucky. I've had, like, in my career,

I've had one person, the very first work I gave them was money. Yeah. Other than that, it's taken me six months to a year. And I've worked with... I mean, I've had one person, the very first work I gave them was money. Other than that, it's taken me six months to a year. I've worked with people for 15 years now, and I've probably had three or four

clients where the prescription I gave them worked for six months straight. We're constantly tweaking, and the truth is your lifestyle has to be on point for it to work for six to eight months straight. Life's going to get in the way, man. We've got kids at home. I've got blackout drugs, you have now you have four kids at the house we had our fourth kid three weeks ago man and congratulations your stress levels are uh up

and down all the time yeah and that's so i was just sitting over here thinking you need to you need to patent your five day a week 48 hour binge, 48-hour binge diet. No, man. You just got to understand, dude, because, you know, I could build something to physical Travis, right? And then all of a sudden we sit down and we have a deep discussion and you tell me that you've got children and that your children like to act out three times a week, right? Three times.

Three times a week. That would be the best scenario, right? I'm killing it. I'm killing it. But that's going to change the prescription. Because what we talked about earlier, stress and adaptation, that's an additional stressor. That's compromising your ability to recover.

So I need to build in more recovery into your protocol, regardless of whether you want fat loss, performance, or anything else. Because it's changing. It's changing that whole stress adaptation axis. How many people do you guys train per coach? Like you've got 15 coaches? It depends on the coach and their comfort level. So I've got some coaches that are like 40 people, I'm capped.

I've got some coaches that are like give me 100 and I'll grind. I will openly and honestly say I've said it before. When I did this, before I scaled and I was a one-man show, I had 167 clients. It was my peak. Now, here's the thing. Stressor. You want to talk about shit. That's 160 stressors.

Physical me was a shit show, dude. You have to delete your phone number after that one. Hey, dude. No. You know what, though, man? It's this. And you hit it on earlier, man. We are where we are because it's a passion project.

Yeah. Like, I love it. I don't know how to tell people no. And so people come to me and they're like, I see poor advice out there. And I'm like, I can't let you go to that. So, yes, I'll take you on and I'll help you. And that's what led me to that 167. And I was working, like, no shit, man, 12 a.m. to 4 a.m.

Or, you know, like, I was literally going to bed at midnight. I was getting up at 4 a.m. And I was sleeping 12 to 4. 4 that's it and i would spend 20 hours a day on the phone if i had to i would do what i had to do and then i started scaling so you know i've got some like uh i've got some coaches that are like i'll grind me personally i'd take on a very small amount because there's obviously you guys know scaling a business you have so many other obligations i mean just travel alone guys i'm on the road for like four weeks. And you've got to coach the coaches that are coaching you. Yeah, I've got to make sure that the implementations that are going out are correct and that we're building the right business systems.

And it's cool, man. As soon as a coach feels overwhelmed, we cap it, and we build a waiting list for that coach, and we continue to scale, and we bring another coach into our farm system. We build them up as an amazing coach. And one question i get all the time is how do we hire our coaches and it's uh i don't hire skill sets i hire people right and so if i if i see you and i'm like you're an amazing person and you express any interest in nutrition coaching i'll hire you and i'll teach you the skill set but if you're a douchebag and you're the smartest person in the

world i can't teach you not to be a douchebag. That's just not in my skill set. Sorry. I know exactly what you're talking about. You know what I mean? There's some really high – and one of our coaches, I'll shout her out on the podcast, Jess Durando, she came to me.

She started as a client. And two years into it, she's like, if I go through your mentorship, do you think you would hire me one day? And I didn't even let her finish her sentence, and I said yes. And she's got a background in clinical psychology and clinical counseling i'm like you understand people fuck yes i will hire you let me teach you the food stuff yeah you're so good at connecting with people yeah right and and so we've been very fortunate but you know we touched on it earlier so many of us are where we are because we're fucked up yeah our whole team jokes we're the 15 most fucked up people

in this industry but that's why we can lead we keep looking for answers somewhere through the shit like we can empathize with you we know where you're at we'll meet you on your level and we'll crush it so where and how does the certification kind of fit into is it your hiring process or is that so people go on their own it's for them to go on their own it's not designed in any way for us to hire people um i think some people ask that question and they hope it's that um but you know and listen i mean if you're fully transparent with me on the front end that that's what you're doing with it i'll be i'll be honest with you and tell you where we're at in our hiring process

um but no it's it's more designed to to give people what they need to go out and serve man that's it man if i i said it at the very first cert like if we take a hundred people and they each touch a thousand people in their lifetime which is reasonable over the course of your lifetime a hundred thousand people got help because of that yeah and that's just a hundred people dude we're at by the end of this year we're gonna have put over a thousand people in now we've touched a million i love that wait till i put ten thousand people through and then we touch a billion fucking people like now we're talking. I want this impact that's, like, through the roof, dude.

Like, I want the nutritional knowledge that's in this world to be executed properly. I want people getting real help. What will define my legacy? I believe we live in a world right now where nutrition coaches are fixing. We work in a world of repair. The last 10 years has been a shit show dietarily. Paleo, fasting, keto, all this shit, shit right and all of it misapplied battle right we're living in a world where we're repairing the damage that was done with those protocols 20 years from now i hope we're living in a world of optimization

i hope that the new baseline is that we've done things so properly for 20 years that now the nutrition nutrition coaches that come in are getting clients that are not broken and instead they're optimizing them. They're taking them to levels that we've never seen possible. So if we go from repair to optimization, my life was all lived. That's legacy, dude. There it is. That was awesome. That was the perfect way to close out the show.

Where can people find you? Dude, IN3Nutrition.com for coaching. If they're interested in the cert, it's NCICertifications.com. I know you guys have a huge audience, so I shouldn't do this, but I will. Reach out to me on social media. Send me DMs. Send me messages. Jason Phillips or JasonPhillips underscore IN3 on Instagram.

I answer everything. There it is. Personally, I don't have an assistant that does it. I will 1 million percent respond to you. It may not be the same day. I've got a newborn. I try to limit my time on social media. As you should.

But I will 1 million percent reach out to you because I know what it was like when I was in your shoes. I know what it was like when I just simply wanted knowledge, when I wanted to connect with people, and they didn't right back. I don't ever want anyone to have that feeling with me, so I will always respond. That's cool. So, Travis. MashedLeague.com on Instagram, MashedLeaguePerformance.

Yeah, yeah. Follow me, Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. At Anders Varner, come to MovementRx.com, shrugged.thelowbackfix.com. $20 off your first program. Come and hang out with us. Strength and conditioning and PT to get you healthy.

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