Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  -  If You Can't, Then You Must w/ Ben Pakulski  -  315

Episode Date: May 16, 2018

Ben Pakulski a.k.a. Pak-Man, is an IFBB professional bodybuilder and winner of the 2008 Mr. Canada competition. In the IFBB, he finished 2nd twice in 2008. He also placed 2nd in the 2013 Arnold Classic competition, and 11th in the 2012 Mr. Olympia contest, which was his first-ever. Ben began his interest in nutrition at 12 years old, when he read about vegetarianism and experimented with it for two years. At 15, he started lifting weights in Macks Gym in Toronto. Today, he is an accoladed athlete, competitor, coach, and creator of #1 Muscle Building program, MI40. In this episode Ben Pakulski takes us through his mindset shift as he went from being a high level competitive bodybuilder, to an entrepreneur, and father. He shares with us the story of how he was initially successful in bodybuilding by accident. He also explains how he developed a competitive mindset, why he treated everyday like he was going to be on stage, and more. Enjoy! - Mike, Doug and Anders Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_pakulski ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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

There's no such thing as strong and weak body parts. There's different shape, but it's all the same muscle composition, right? So I started to realize, okay, well, what's the difference? The difference is, well, my body has decided to put tension through this muscle real easily and doesn't really do a good job with this other one for whatever reason. It could be mechanics. It could be athletic history. It could be whatever.

So I started to realize, like, hey, I can actually change this ownership. I was like, I took the internal locus of control. Like, I actually have the ability to do this. So it's not just about hard work. It's about hard work guided in the right way. It has to be specific work first, smart work first, then hard work second. And when I started to attach to that, I had some really great role models, really great mentors taught me this process. And I just started to evolve it for my body. And, uh, and every body part just started to come together. And every, every month, every week, it would just get better and better and uh and every body part just started to come together and every every

month every week it would just get better and better and better and better i'm like oh my god like why didn't somebody teach me this 10 years ago Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner here with Doug Larson, Dr. Andy Galpin. We are at the Fitness Business Summit 2018 at the Hilton in downtown San Diego, joined by Ben Pukalski. Did I get that right? It's all on those lines. We'll get that right. Close enough. We'll probably just do it a few more times.

We've got an hour or so. We've got a whole day. Host of the Muscle Expert podcast. You know it. Giant. Really cool story here. So you came up through the bodybuilding world. As anyone that's watching this on YouTube, we can see this pretty clearly. But came across some issues, and now you're slowing things down a little bit.

No issues, man. I just, like you're referring to my exit from bodybuilding yeah i don't know issues at all man i feel fucking great but um just was time for me to go i had done enough i had nothing else to accomplish i had no other purpose yeah when you're going through bodybuilding it's you know to be the best in the world it's something you need absolute clarity of purpose i didn't have that anymore i'd accomplished a lot of things and then i had children and my children changed my life so uh by no means did i leave because i had injuries or illnesses or sickness or any deteriorating health it was just it was time for me to go man i couldn't get that

killer instinct anymore in the gym because i didn't have that desire to be the greatest in the world anymore because it's so selfish right obviously as a bodybuilder to be the greatest in any sport you guys get this it's not like oh i can go like you know two two toes in the water i gotta dive in at first yeah after you have kids it just changes your your motivation man it changes perspective um i really wanted to be a great dad still obviously is my number one priority so um you know so being so selfish as a bodybuilder which wasn't in my wheelhouse anymore was that a quick realization for you or did you fight that at all i fought it man i fought it so um you know i met my current wife in 2011 and uh you know i was so focused on being mr olympia that i said to her that listen when we met i was like listen here's my life i'm a professional bodybuilder um i'm i go to the gym

i eat i sleep by train and occasionally i read some books and if you can make that better, you could stay. Otherwise there's the door. And she stayed, I'm being, I'm being completely honest. She'll tell you the truth. And I was like, so she stayed and, and, you know, we had a long distance relationship for a while. Um, I was so focused on being Mr. Olympia that nothing was going to take, take me off track. Um, I was learning this process. I was mastering the process. I was experimenting with everything I was learning. Literally everything I could from anyone I could. And, you know, getting better, learning so much, developing weak body parts.

2012, I believe I was well on my way to be Mr. Olympia. I started placing really well. I got fourth at the Arnold that year. I did the Olympia for the first time. Didn't do all that well. I got 11th, but at least it was like... Yeah, 11th at the Mr. Olympia. Right. That's terrible. right that's terrible well i mean it's not you know i wanted to do better and i knew i could do better and then she got pregnant uh and life changed yeah um you know life changed so uh first

time i had my son i i it it was a sidetrack but i was like no i could still keep doing this and then you know less than nine months later, she got pregnant again. And that was my daughter. And from that point on, I really believe that God sent me two angels, man. The first one was enough to smack my stupid ass back into place. But as soon as I had a daughter, I couldn't be the same human being anymore, man. I'd never felt love for anyone, to be honest, in my felt until I felt the love for my daughter and now when I did that I just couldn't be that same driven you know uh killer instinct like killer in the gym I couldn't be that person anymore man I didn't want to be that person because you're

going home to this beautiful little angel uh and you know going to the gym and trying to be this other person it just wasn't possible for me um and I truthfully believe they saved my life because I was so focused on um you know tunnel vision I'll be Mr. Olympia I didn't care about anything else I didn't care about the side effects I didn't care about uh what I was saved my life because I was so focused on tunnel vision on being Mr. Olympia. I didn't care about anything else. I didn't care about the side effects. I didn't care about what I was doing to my body. I was like, I'm just going to win this thing. I don't care how many times I win it.

I'm just going to go win it. And then I can think about what happens after. And so many athletes get caught in that, right? And it's like they get caught in the tunnel vision of this is what I'm going to win. You ask an athlete if they would win an Olympic gold medal and then dying 10 years later, 90% of them would say absolutely yes. And I was that guy, man. I was completely okay with it. But now I realize I have a higher purpose in life, and my kids have brought me that opportunity.

Without them, I probably would be – I wouldn't be dead. I'd probably be Mr. Olympia and be very short in my life. We were talking with Dominic Cruz, former UFC bantamweight champion. Yeah, I know he is. He was saying a lot of fighters, especially guys that are at the top, they retire for one reason or another, but then once they retire, they don't have a purpose anymore. And so that's why a couple years later, after going through a depression

or whatever, they'll come back and try to fight again when they're a little bit too old, they're not in shape. That's all we know. And then they get their ass kicked, and then they retire again, and then they come back again. It's like they don't have that thing. So that seems like a very special thing to be able to have that greater purpose to to be able to retire and still like feel very good about you as a person well so

i think the greatest thing that happened was my wife got pregnant for the first time and like i said in 2011 and she or i just like man i need to create a business because like as a bodybuilder i was doing okay man i was making six figures i was great to live by myself um but as soon as you have a you know child coming into the, all of a sudden things change. So I realized I had to become a responsible human being and create a business. So that's how my business started because I knew I had a unique skill set. I knew I had a unique knowledge base. Well, unique, you know, different than most bodybuilders.

So without having my wife get pregnant, I wouldn't have initiated that business. So that was, you know, the catalyst for that. And that business has continued to grow. And it business is, you know, continue to grow. And it's just basically focused on, like I said, we talked about earlier, it's just like helping people understand exercise for your body. So that's it. So, you know, it's all come from there. So that kind of is my new passion.

The kids are obviously my greatest purpose is being the best dad I can become to raise these little wonderful human beings. Subsequent to that, now I've got this passion of helping people and, you know, empowering them with a skill set to actually develop their greatest body so people attach to man i have shitty genetics you don't have shitty genetics you just don't know how to train you just don't know how to do it for your body that's just the bottom line right like some people have is there obviously a variation of genetics of course everyone has a varying ability to build muscle but everyone can build a world-class body for them um if you just have the

right skill set. So that's what I've learned to teach, and I've got a very unique way of doing it. I've simplified the heck out of it for people, so there's very few things they can understand in a short amount of time, and it's empowering hundreds of thousands of people. When you are 11th at Mr. Olympia, and you know your goal is to be number one,

what does that process kind of look like, and do you believe you can get to number one? Or is that a two-year, three-year road? Without a shadow of a doubt, I knew I could do it. Anybody who wants to watch the process, I've got a personal movie that I did called The Debut, which is my debut in the Olympia. I was expecting to do it every year after that. And there's also Generation Iron.

So it kind of follows it a little bit. Generation Iron is the greatest. No, it's a movie. It greatest. No, it's a movie. It's a follow-up. It's a sequel. Yeah. Generation Iron 1, I was in.

Generation Iron 2, I was not. But Generation Iron 1, it's a movie. It's not a reality TV, like it's not reality. It's a movie. But there's a bit of,

you know, backstory there. But yeah, I mean, there's no question in my mind it could have been Mr. Olympia. You know, people may think that's arrogant,

eccentric, whatever. But I just, I believed him in the process. You know know i believe that i could develop any body part to any amount it's just a matter of incremental progression um and i had the focus and nothing was going to stop me man i would do whatever it took um but yeah i mean the process was probably three years away from me i know it wasn't going to be one that what you know i had some pretty big weaknesses uh and it's just like hey and you're not going to be one that had some pretty big weaknesses. You're not going to go from 11th to 1st. You're going to go from 11th to 7th, then you're going to go to 5th,

then you're going to go to 1st. I've heard you talk a lot and I've looked into a lot of your stuff. I would agree, actually, that when you said earlier your program is pretty unique. It actually really is. It's extremely logical and it's something that is, when you say it here in a minute, people are to be like oh that's it yeah but like that's the best part right yeah because any no matter what your fitness level uh from a 70 year old mom to a 16 year old boy like and everyone

in between pro athletes but i feel like based on what i know or i've heard of you now you have that unique thing because you had such big holes. Exactly. And you're okay, right? You're actually right. So I would maybe just go there. Sure. So, you know, I was very successful in bodybuilding by accident. I trained really hard. I had no intention of being a professional bodybuilder or anything like that. I went to college, went to university in Canada, got a four-year degree.

When I finished, I got a great job. I wanted to look good in my suit. So I decided, you know, I need an external goal. I competed in the bodybuilding show. I won the show. Somebody goes, hey, there's another show in three weeks or six weeks. Let's do it again. Sure. Won that. Another show six months later, won that. People started paying me to bodybuild. I retired from my job. I'm getting just as much money to work out as I am to get this job. So let's retire from that job. From there, it's like, you know, year and a half, not even year and a half, about a year and a half later, a little less than a year and a half later, I won my pro card. It just kind of went from there. It was purely on hard work.

And I did well genetically. Don't get me wrong. I had, you know, genetics to build aesthetic muscle, big muscle, whatever you want to say. And I attached to, I'm just going to be the hardest working guy in the room. So when I was a kid, I was lazy. Heard this before? Yeah. I know some of these people. Yeah.

They're very successful. Right. So when I was a kid, I was very lazy. I was fat. Everyone in my family was an alcoholic. You know, just not their best upbringing. But I attached two middle fingers to the world. I'm going to do it myself. So I just were like, I hated being lazy. So I would work harder than everybody else. And if you came in the gym with me, I would die before you beat me. That was always my focus. So I was like, well, as long as I keep working hard, I'm going to win. I'm going to do well. I'm going to keep working

hard. I knew I'd work harder than anybody. So 2009, I do my first pro show. I did really well. I got third place at the Tampa Pro. I thought that was really great behind one of my mentors, Dennis James. You know, I felt great about this. So the next year I decided to do the New York Pro 2010. I committed everything in my life. I literally stopped doing everything other than eat sleep train i trained twice a day for eight months i put on 17 pounds of stage weight and i was lighter in a span of eight months i just grew you know 17 pounds in eight months is absurd um because i was so focused obviously i was enhanced um and i got i was that was the best i've ever heard that i I was enhanced. God, that was good. I'll talk about that too.

Oh, let's skip over it. Oh, no. You're a pro bodybuilder, to be assumed. Sure. So I'm going into this New York Pro in 2010, on top of the world, absolutely shredded. Glutes are in. Everything's great. Get to the show, and I get seventh.

I get crushed. And I literally said, fuck this. I'm going to retire because it's politics. Because growing up, everyone in bodybuilding goes, oh, it's politics. It's the judges. And I didn't even look at the pictures. I was like, you know what? I'm going to retire.

Fuck this. I'm done. I don't need this bullshit. I've got other stuff going for me. Fucking ownership. Right. Ownership. God, that's crazy.

You're absolutely right. And two weeks later, I decided I finally got back. I went for a two-week vacation to Mexico. Came back from Mexico, and I looked at the pictures, and I go, wow, I look like shit. I deserved seventh. You know, maybe I deserved fifth or sixth or something. But I got seventh, and I deserved it. And that was the first kind of catalyst for me to go, it's not about hard work, man.

You can keep working hard, and what's going to happen, right? Your body is organically going to use its strong body parts. The analogy I always use is if you're moving, I'm going to move houses tomorrow, and you've got five friends, which one are you going to call? I'm going to call the big ones, right? The ones that move the big furniture. So your body works the same way.

Your body goes, I've got this really big muscle right here. Let's use more of that because it's more efficient. Your body's built for efficiency. So I started learning, okay, if you can build any muscle in your body, you can build them all. There's no such thing as strong and weak body parts. There's different shape, but it's all the same muscle composition right so i started to realize okay well what's the difference the difference is well my body

has decided to put tension through this muscle real easily and doesn't really good you do a good job with this other one for whatever reason it could be mechanics it could be athletic history could be whatever so i started to realize like hey i can actually change this ownership i was like i took the internal locus of control. Like I actually have the ability to do this. So it's not just about hard work. It's about hard work guided in the right way. It has to be specific work first, smart work first, then hard work second. And when I started to attach to that, I had some really great role models,

really great mentors taught me this process. And I just started to evolve it for my body. And every body part just started to evolve it for my body and uh and every body part just started to come together and every every month every week it would just get better and better and better and better and i'm like oh my god like why didn't somebody teach me this 10 years ago and that's ultimately where i am now is um you know that's how it started is it started with a massive pain where i was a little like fuck this i'm giving up my my life dream of being a professional i'm gonna walk away because i thought it was politics and then when you take it on yourself

it changes one of the first things i teach every semester in my classes is that exercises don't determine adaptation right it's the application of the exercise that determines everything and so going with that uh one thing that i heard you talk about this on jay farouk's podcast a lot and i've heard you elsewhere that just because we're both doing a bicep curl or the same exercise it doesn doesn't matter what it is. It's not necessarily going to do the same thing because our anthropometrics are different, the way we move. If your biceps femoris is stronger than mine, I'm going to use a different hamstring muscle than you're going to use during the same exercise or whatever it happens to be. So even the exact same exercise between two people. Right.

Muscle lengths, limb lengths. Exactly. Pelvic structure, yeah. So you can explain that really well of identifying an exercise that you've got to figure out what you're trying to get to, but then you've got to find an exercise that works that thing, and you have to let go of the exercise, right?

Yeah, so people don't realize that exercise is this thing that was created however many decades ago, and people are attached to exercise. I do a bench press for chest. I do a squat for quads. It doesn't fucking matter. If you're trying to build a body, the only thing that matters is applying load to a muscle,

applying tension to a muscle, and then taking it through a range of motion under tension, right? And that's it. And, like, so if I can create this internal focus where I attach to, I'm just trying to load this muscle as much as possible and then take it through a range of motion under control using specifically that muscle, well, it doesn't matter what the external mechanism looks like anymore. It's just about this internal response that I'm after, right? So exercise is there to create an internal response. And without that, why else am I doing it?

Obviously, CrossFit is different. Power lifting is different. Strength training is different. But hypertrophy, if I'm trying to build a muscle, the only single thing I'm trying to do is challenge a muscle. And it doesn't matter what it looks like and how I do it, right? It's not such a thing as a shaping exercise and a building. It's all the same thing.

It's all just forces in the body. There's no toning? Well, yeah, you know. Oh, come on. Toning happens when you do butt clenches 12 hours a day. On it. Beat that dead horse. We're all doing it. This is why we do them standing. You don't even know what's going on right now. I see those faces you're making over there, man.

One of the hardest things to do in in many different categories whether it's fitness or business or being being a husband or father anything is is objectively looking at your situation in identifying those weaknesses and then and then admitting that they actually are weaknesses like how do you stay objective and like identify those weaknesses anyone who's a professional athlete is probably their own worst critic right because you have to be you can't't rely on other people to give you their opinion and go, you need to get better at this. The reason I was able to get to where I was is because I was my own worst critic.

I got off stage. I already knew what the judges were going to say. I didn't need to go up to the judges and go, could you tell me what I did wrong or what I could do better? I fucking knew better than everybody else. I can look at my body and objectively say, hey, man, that looks like shit. That needs to be better. You weren't in shape.

Your glutes weren't tight. Your back was weak or your biceps are small whatever i knew more than anybody else um and that that was it man is like to become successful at anything you have to be your own worst critic in business you have to be able to objectively look at the whole picture and go well where can i fill in the gaps and that's the best approach to anyone building their body you're only as good as your weakest link and that sounds like a cliche but that's such the reality of it it's like i can't build every muscle if there's something that's holding me back if there's something that's weak if there's an injury you can't build the muscles around there because

your body will always down regulate your nervous system so it's objectively looking at what are the weaknesses and how do i make them strengths and it's not just like how am i going to make them good enough it's like no no how am i going to make this my best body part right because that's where people go wrong is they go i'm just going to do just enough to get by. Well, who is that ever served, right? Like that's not going to serve you. If you want to be good at anything or great at anything, you take your weaknesses and you make them absolute strengths. You know, like I did with my hamstrings.

So you'll laugh. Here's a story. The reason people said that I wasn't a professional bodybuilder, I had no legs. My legs were too small and my shoulders were too narrow. And if you've ever seen my body, Shoulders? Yeah, my shoulders were too narrow. And my legs were too small.

Yeah, and my quads. And people go, you'll never do it because your shoulders are too narrow and your quads are too small. I'm like, okay. So I internalized that and I go two middle fingers to the world. And I obviously went the complete opposite direction. I wish people had said my back was too small. But, yeah, so, yeah, no, man, I mean, being your own worst critic

and not just doing what's enough, right, always doing ten times more than anyone else would ever do because that was my attachment, right? I saw a picture of Dorian Yates when I was, like, 17 years old and I was like, I need to look like that and until I look like that, I'm shit. And that's the honest truth. And, you know, people are like, dude, you're getting so big. I'm like, no. Like, literally,. And until I look like that, I'm shit. And that's the honest truth. And people are like, dude, you're getting so big.

I'm like, no. I literally probably held the picture in my wallet, right? I'd be like, when I look like this, then you can send big. Until then, I'm shit. And that's just standards, right? World-class standard. Like any athlete you talk to, you guys interview tons of great athletes. Any athlete you talk to is not going to be like, oh, I just did enough to get by. I wanted to be the fucking best.

Yeah, there's actually at the end of that movie, I think Heath and Kai Greene are standing on stage, and there's like a voiceover that's like, they all look the same when they're on stage individually, but when you put them side by side, it makes so much sense. And I've literally just carried that with me, that line there, because it makes so much sense when you put the two best people together, and there's so many differences. They'll be standing on stage stage and it's just you're like oh my god how could you

look any better than that and then you put those two guys together and you're like it's just so obvious right now it's so obvious and in the reality in every sport is that it's oh it's it's that one-tenth of a second right and that's the same in bodybuilding it's not like you know couch potato compared to a mr olympia it's literally like you know the the equivalent of one- one tenth of a second it's like hey man you fucked up on one meal or you didn't hit that muscle hard enough it's one thing yeah and yeah you have to pay attention to that's why i love bodybuilding man one it was all me too it was like 24 hours a day i needed everything i was obsessed yeah and i love that about it you know people are you obsessed absolutely i'm obsessed i'm completely okay to admit that if you want to be great at anything fucking become obsessed it's not a bad thing to

be obsessed about something if you really want to be great at it i truthfully believe if you've never ever met anyone that's great they're probably obsessed with what they're doing yeah you know that's just that's success a lot of that stuff carry over into kind of the new direction and realizing i have kids now and you can't focus on that and i think that's like a massive transitioning factor for a lot of people. I'm learning right now. I'm learning a lot. So because parenting is just about me.

You go right back to zero. You're brand new. Yeah, and it's not just about me, right? And there's other people that can influence my kids. And that, like, you know. Yeah. Andy had never considered that. Could you imagine someone on on the playground like messing

with his kid you're like dude don't do that there's actually there's memes all around the internet right now so when my daughter was born i got i got a hundred memes being like oh so you've come from my daughter i can't even imagine yeah um yeah yeah i mean um parenting's a whole new ballgame especially because it's not just about me. And I have a lot to learn, man. Even just interacting with my wife, we have very different parenting styles. And I have to just let go. I have to like, hey, she's going to parent how she parents. And I try to kind of steer the boat a little bit.

I try to influence in a positive way. But the only thing I can control is me. And I want to be the rock in their life, right? I want them to go, you know, who's your favorite person? Who's your superhero? It's my dad. It doesn't matter what anybody else does. The only thing I control is me. they're rocking their life, right? I want them to go, you know, who's your favorite person? Who's your superhero? It's my dad. It doesn't matter what anybody else does.

The only thing I control is me. And that's a hard thing to realize because through my whole life, I just cut everybody out. Like, as a bodybuilder, you just go, fuck you. I'm going to do it myself. Get out of my way or I'm going to crush you. Either you're making me better or you're out. I can't do that anymore. So I'm learning, man.

I'm learning. I'm a student of life. But, yeah, it's fun it's learning what's your training look like now um minimal um well so for so many years man I was attached to being the biggest guy in the world being the hardest working guy um and now I just kind of like having fun you know I like um i still train not nearly as often because businesses and my family is my top priority so i probably train three or four times a week um but because i'm so efficient and effective at training and contracting muscles

i get a lot done in a small amount of time yeah and that's ultimately what i'm trying i'm experimenting now with it with a nutrition and a training plan that's like what's the absolute minimum we can do to get a great result? So I'm playing with stuff. I'm playing with extreme ketogenic dieting. I'm playing with extreme different types of supplements. So just trying to play. And I do blood work once a month and check what my blood is doing.

And it's just this one big science experiment. But yeah, training is kind of whatever I fit in. So I train. I try to train hard. It's usually pretty small volume, pretty strength-oriented, right? So I'm trying to be – the word I use is resilient, meaning I just want to be able to do everything. I want to be able to sprint with my kids.

Yesterday, you guys see my beautiful red face. I did a 10-hour hike up a mountain, so 10,000 feet of elevation. Yeah, so they call it cactus to clouds. So we went from ground zero in Palm Springs to 10,000 feet of elevation. Just about 10 hours, about nine hours. But that was... Can you imagine ever doing that in your bodybuilding days? I just did it.

I didn't even know I was doing it, to be honest. I just did it on a whim. I heard this is cool. You want to walk up there? Yeah, let's go there. I have a buddy who lives here in San Diego, and he's an ultramarathon guy. He's a triathlon guy. And he goes, yeah, man, we're going to do this thing.

I did it in three and a half hours. And I go, okay, sweet. But he didn't tell me he did it in three and a half hours running. Thanks, prick. So he totally undersold it. And I would have done it anyways because I'm like, yeah, sure. Like, what's the worst that can happen? Like, I'm going to get to the top.

It's going to suck a little bit, but I'll i'll get there uh but yeah i just kind of didn't train for it just started going and it was a great experience i'm limping a little bit today i'm good yeah you uh you mentioned some of the nutrition stuff what in in that transition period like what were you doing before in the bodybuilding stuff that i'm always amazed at how much how dialed in the nutrition is for you guys um and then a little bit of the transition into finding what the hell healthy looks like and you mentioned doing some extreme keto stuff like right i'll tell you the hardest thing that i've experienced so far from bodybuilding it's one of the questions i get a lot is how hard what's the hardest part about tradition transitioning out is

trying to break the psychological paradigm of 20 years of being trying to eat to be the biggest human being on the planet still ingrained in my unconscious. What is that? What is just eating to be the biggest human being on the planet? What does that look like? Well, it's highly focused on consumption. And that's a big mistake. So if the people out there are attaching to the calories, the macros, I don't know, Andy, we could have a fight about this, but I don't know what your opinion is,

but it's not just about what you eat, right? There's so many guys, I don't know what your opinion is. It's not just about macros, right? It's about what you absorb. You've lost me already. Oh, I'm sorry. We'll hug it out later, man. We'll hug it out.

Maybe we won't. I don't know. But, yeah, so as a bodybuilder, you're attached to I need to consume X number of calories or this massive amount of protein and carbs and fats. And I realize that's not what it's about. It's about absorption. It's about utilizing. It's about utilizing what you know, how much what's the most I can absolutely get out of this. You know,

it's about quality first, and then it's about making it make sure your body's actually absorbing it, make sure your body's utilizing it, make sure your autonomic nervous system is in the right place to actually absorb it. And during my career, for at least for the first five years, I didn't know, I didn't think about that stuff. It was just like, I'm reading the magazines and reading the books. It's just like, hey, man, here gotta hit your macros i think that's the most ignorant suggestion possible like it's not about macros man it can't be about macros it's if you're not balancing your sympathetic parasympathetic autonomic nervous system it's not the same thing your body doesn't just digest because you put it in your body doesn't

just absorb because you put it doesn't work like that so you know now obviously so throughout my career my biggest error was just focus on mass consumption were you the classic chicken breast brown rice for a lot of years man for a lot of years i was i was um man i now have an allergy or it's not an allergy maybe a sensitivity to chicken because i ate so much chicken sensitivity to egg whites like so many years so now i'm very attached to just eating the highest quality meats um yeah meats. Everything is the highest quality, grass-fed, and less because what my body uses is more important than what I consume. And that's a paradigm shift for most fitness people. It's like, I've got to make sure I hit my macros.

Hitting your macros is, I think, at some level important. But before that, it needs to be – right, we could talk about it. I love to talk about it. But before that, if you're in a sympathetic autonomic nervous system state, you're not digesting anything So if you're stressed, you're not digesting anything. So just because I ate it doesn't mean my body uses it So I'm really attached now to getting people parasympathetic before they eat. So it's breathing. It's meditation five minutes, man Calm your shit down even after you train five minutes You got you got like I literally say put your phone over there

Go sit on the couch close your eyes and be by yourself for five minutes you got you got like i literally say put your phone over there go sit on the couch close your eyes and be by yourself for five minutes calm down your sympathetic response and people are so attached to these pre-workout stimulants tons of coffee guess what your body's not digesting food when you're sympathetic and most people are so highly sympathetically aroused that do digestion shit they got gas they got bloating like man i ate so little and i still get fat of course you do i mean i have a hard time putting on muscle of course you do because all those things require you to be in a parasympathetic state. You're not. So as a bodybuilder, you have such an opportunity to put on a tremendous amount of muscle.

If you do these little things right, it's not just about the big picture shit. Like how much did you lift? And did you do progressive overload? And did you hit your macros? Those are important. But these other things that you're not thinking about are way more important than you think. Breathing, meditation, parasympathetic uh digestion man microbiome like all this stuff is everything your brain your brain governs everything right without your brain you're in trouble so so how how would you know is there a tangible like feeling or or outcome or something where

if someone's listening to this and they're going god i wonder if i'm not digesting as well as i should be like how would someone know that they're not digesting as well as they could be? My statement is if you can't, therefore you must. So if you're someone who can't sit in meditation for five minutes, you're the one who needs it more than anybody. So if you're not someone who could sit down and put your phone down for five to ten minutes or if you can't meditate for half an hour, you're the person who needs it more than anybody. So most of us live in the society we live in. We live in a really high state of sympathetic arousal. So we wake up in the morning.

First thing we do is check our phone. We drive to work. We're getting cut off. We're getting pissed off. We get to work. Our boss is yelling at us. We open our emails. We got stress on our way home.

The wife gets pissed off, whatever it is, right? All these things are stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, driving our sympathetic nervous system up. And then you go to the gym and you add more sympathetic stress on that. Most people digest like shit. If you're feeling gassing gas bloating indigestion if you're not hungry between meals you're not digesting your food so you know as a bodybuilder i ate so much man my stomach started to get blown out and i'm like god i didn't understand

why these other guys could eat so much or so little and and not have the stomach and i just man i was stressed like my brain was always running. I was, you know, as far as bodybuilders go, I was a very type a personality. You've never meet a bodybuilder as a type of personality, man. My bodybuilders are very chilled out, you know, smoking weed,

hanging out. I'm going to be an hour late and that's, that's my time. I'm not going to be stressed. Cause I got to be there on, you know, like it's just, huh?

Yeah. No body. I wouldn't have thought that. Yeah. I would've thought that nobody was a type of personality, man. Every guy you meet, Hey man, I'll be there at six, seven 30. They roll in. Sorry, man. I had to eat. I'm chilling. You know, like nobody's. Yeah. I wouldn't have thought that. Yeah, I would have thought the opposite. Nobody was a type of personality, man. Every guy you meet, hey, man, I'll be there at 6, 730.

They roll in, sorry, man, I had to eat. I'm chilling. You know, like nobody's – yeah, they go on their own schedule. They work on their own time. So no stress. The top guys in the world you meet are chilled out, man, chilled out. And I was the opposite. So I was always this high state of sympathetic stress.

And this is why I needed to learn it. Yeah. So if you can learn how to relax and eat higher quality foods then that that's something that sets you up for better digestion man to start calming down your mind um and yeah even it's just five minutes of breathing deep breathing with with a really uh focus on that exhalation um you're really slow methodical controlled extended exhalation some breath holds you know i do like a box breathing type thing which a lot of people are attached to yeah yeah we're gonna take a break i love this conversation because i think that this down regulation piece is something that someone that like everyone is missing in their

training and finding ways that we can start to get into the parasympathetic is really like gonna we need to have systems in people's training to be able to do that so we get back from the break let's talk parasympathetic thanks for watching the show if you'd like to learn more about how to improve your snatch clean and jerk we have a free 55 page ebook you can get at flightweightlifting.com has sample programming specifically for weightlifting weightlifting how-to technique videos and other tips on how to improve all of your lifts go to flightweightlifting.com and you can download that e-book for free. Download it now. Welcome back to Barbell Strug. Where's Ben Pakalski?

Come on, man. God. I want to get into this parasympathetic, this balance thing. So I think all of us, I mean me specifically, and training very hard often, all the time, eating as much food as I could possibly shove in my face to put on weight and then one day i was like i am burnt the fuck out and obviously you're well before that your body stopped building muscle oh yeah yeah yeah the all of those things stopped i mean look

at him instead of yeah instead of um thinking like hey maybe i should chill out it was like i need more gas pedal yeah and that's when people start resorting to steroids. They're like, oh, I just don't have the genetics, so therefore I need it. No, no, no, no, no. Like before you should even think about that shit. I tried to dissuade everybody from doing that now, to be honest. Because you have so much in the tank, so many things that you can do to move the needle

before you ever would ever want to consider that stuff. And nobody in fitness, nobody in bodybuilding is talking about this stuff. Maybe in fitness, but not in bodybuilding. Just because, you know, as a culture, we attach to work harder, work harder. You know, we're always attached to these external mechanisms. We're attached to, you know, run faster, jump higher, lift more, score more goals, whatever it may be. It's fucking bullshit. When it comes to changing your physique, what happens on the outside doesn't matter, except if it creates the internal response you're after. So what I'm focused on is teaching people about the internal focus. What's happening inside your body? Is this stress you're subjecting your body to on the

outside creating the internal response you want? And if it's not, why are you doing it? So if I'm trying to build muscle, I'll make sure the stress you're doing every single minute of that stress, every millimeter of every rep is contributing to the stress that I'm trying to accomplish, which in this case is I'm trying to challenge this muscle. If it's not contributed, don't do it. Right? So all these things, like everybody's so attached to lift more, lift heavier, that's going to get you better results. Well, no, it's not. Not necessarily.

Just because I put more weight on the bar doesn't mean my muscles are actually doing my work. Yeah. This is a very clear example of if you had three sets of ten at 70% on your workout, it didn't matter the exercise, right? And you focused on contracting the muscle more or didn't focus. So did you execute the same exact repetition, the same volume mode, right? Standardized, yeah. It could be two totally different outcomes if it's focused on quality of muscle contraction, for example,

focusing on a mind-muscle connection. You can get completely different actual adaptations after six, eight weeks. You would have a lot more muscle than somebody else, even if they did the exact same volume, right? So those numbers are sort of important at some level, but at some level, like what you're saying is just make the muscle contract very hard. And it doesn't really matter if that's the exact same exercise, what the rep load is, because it's the internal stress you're trying to get to,

which causes the adaptation, right? Absolutely, yeah. And that's where people go wrong, is we're all attached to, I'm going to bench for a chest, I'm going to squat for quads. Or the numbers, getting super attached to the numbers, right? Right, yeah. Like how many reps I do, sets I do. None of this stuff matters, man.

What matters is am I subjecting my body to this specific stress that I'm trying to subject it to? And then a deeper level than that, then we start getting into, okay, well, what's the actual biochemical response that's happening? But even before any of that matters, before the sets and reps and the type of biochemical response matters, you've got to standardize that stimulus so you know you're actually doing the thing you want to do.

You've got to make sure that the right muscle I'm trying to train is actually training. Your body has all these different solutions when you're exercising. Your body can use any number of these different muscles to move a load. That doesn't mean it's that one you want. It's not always the case, right? I can show you how to do a bench press

without ever using your pecs at all. Like, what? But I mean, I thought that's a chest exercise. No, it's not a chest exercise. Unless you set it up properly to be a chest exercise, it may not be a chest exercise. So let's figure out how to do things for your body because you guys are all built differently than me

and then challenge the muscle. And then once we've standardized the stimulus once it always looks exactly the same now i can quantify and go okay i know exactly what every rep is giving me now it makes sense for me to manipulate sets and reps then it makes sense for me to manipulate x's and but before that if i can't standardize the stimulus how the hell do i know you know if it's actually doing what i wanted to do how many many bodybuilders are actually getting into the depth of this? Is it everyone at the top is, God, their own specific exact way they're doing, their own specific bench press to the rep schemes exactly like they need, or is this just something that you've dug into?

Nobody's talking about this stuff. So here's the thing, man. If you want to be a 100-meter sprinter, chances are you're not going to be a 100-meter sprinter. You're never going to be as fast as Usain Bolt. Just not Usain Bolt. So why is Usain Bolt Usain to be as fast as Usain Bolt. Just not Usain Bolt. So why is Usain Bolt Usain Bolt? Because he's Usain Bolt. He's built that way.

He's got this beautiful mechanics to be a great sprinter. All the guys who are in the top 10, 20, 30 bodybuilders in the world could do anything and build muscle, right? It's mechanics. Their body just naturally fits in these exercises really, really well. Not everyone's like that. So if you want to learn how to build muscle for your body, you've learn how to do it for your body and the worst thing you can do is go watch other pro bodybuilders like it doesn't matter what they do they just accidentally fit

into these exercises yeah when you watch me squat everyone goes man ben's a great squatter i should he's got great quads therefore i should squat it's a terrible terrible thought process right no it's like no you're not built like me so let's find what works for you to challenge this muscle and don't be attached to what it looks like on the outside. Is a leg press better than a high squat? Is it better than a squat? I don't fucking know. It depends what works best for you.

How does that play into, I mean, are you coaching people? And how do you talk to people about exercises? Because it's, I mean, so you talk about Usain Bolt. When he talks about running the 100, he knows exactly how many steps he's taking. He knows when he's picking his head up. He knows how many steps he's in. And, you know picking his head up he knows how many steps he's in and you know he gets to the last 15 meters whatever it is and then he's you know at that point i'm probably winning the gold medal and i can look around i've got three steps left whatever it is how are you able to train people because i mean

to sit down and find what is the best for each person um you know it's actually how do you it's not as complicated as it sounds because there's there's a very few things that if you just start observing you can figure it out really quickly so you know we were speaking about this earlier um why were the bodybuilders in the 1970s better because they didn't have anybody before them to model so they actually had to learn they had to watch so they'd come in the gym in these string tank tops and really short shorts and they would watch the muscle contract so they do an exercise and they'd go oh when i do this that contracts i need to build more of that so let's do more of this so rather than being

attached to watching some dude on on youtube and go oh that guy's got huge pecs therefore i should do that exercise they just observed and people did that if they just go oh man and when i do this exercise it looks like that's working i need to do more of that life would be so much easier they would actually have better bodies just by observing like when i do this this happens that's great rather than mindlessly now watching youtube watching whomever on you know social media and going oh i'm just going to do it exactly like that because that must be the right way to do it that's not the reality right um so that this is the disconnect that people are having is not watching anybody else and just figure out what works for you.

So what does a muscle do? Contract. Contracts. That's it. And here's the reality. Every muscle has two ends. It pulls one end closer to the other. That's it.

Yeah. Like one end is stabilized. How dare you make this so simple? Right. I've been doing this forever. Fuck. Trying to figure it out. You just.

Well, so let's talk about this. So simple. So every muscle has an origin and insertion. Origin is typically closer to the midline. Insertion pulls closer to figure it out. You just. Well, so let's talk about this. So simple. So every muscle has an origin and insertion. Origin is typically closer to the midline. Insertion pulls closer to the midline. That's it. Now, there's some levels on top of that. I want to stabilize the origin as much as possible. No extraneous movement because, you know, the analogy I give is if I have a rope in my hand, both ends of the rope are moving.

How much tension am I creating in the rope? Zero, ultimately, or less. If one end is anchored and I'm able to pull on the other end, I can actually create some tension in that rope. So we need one end completely anchored. So in most cases, that's going to be your pelvis. For if you're training your lower body, it's going to be your scapula if you're training your upper body. You need to have those completely anchored in order for you to actually create a substantial amount of tension in the other end of the muscle and tension in motion. So that's it, man. Like learning some very basic things

about stabilize this one end, now pull this closer to here. Now slowly using the muscle to resist to decelerate this load, now take it the other way, now take it as far away as you can and find the length in that muscle. Now bring it back the other way.

And the reality is muscles don't move very far, right? So people watch a range of motion, you're like, hey man, well, your arm moved like 24 inches. Yeah, but the muscle only moved three inches or sometimes two inches. So how much a potential for loss force is that right? Like if I, if I move a centimeter in the wrong direction, I could be losing 20, 30, 40% of potential stimulus just by ink, you know, maybe just a little bit of extraneous movement unnecessarily. So, um, locking your body in and then just watching

the muscle contract and if i'm trying to train my lower pecs it's literally like bring the insertion close to the lower origin if i'm trying to train my upper pec it's like bring this insertion on my shoulder closer to the upper pec and that's it and that's where we all failed so much when we were learning this thing in the bodybuilding magazines because it's like yeah bench press but all of a sudden you realize like this overextended yeah but shoulder position before that the angle of the sternum like we all have a very different angle right some people are very flat some people are very uh broad completely different exercise for you and for me you lay in a bench press you're

probably using all upper chest and no lower chest i lay in a bench press it's almost like a decline what most people would think is a decline i literally most of you guys probably all you guys would do a flat bench press and work more of your upper chest because it's just the way your body sets up. Right? But most people, if I said, hey man, that's an upper chest exercise, they'd think I'm crazy. But for 80% of the population, this is observation and completely anecdotal,

80% of the population, a flat bench press is an upper chest exercise or not even a chest exercise. Sometimes they don't use any chest because it's... It's all shoulders for me. Yeah. All shoulders. I have no pecs. In five minutes, we could fix it, man. Literally five minutes. Sold. Done. When you talk about numbers, we're classically

and we still teach in class. It's 10 to 12 reps, 70 to 80 percent or something like that. Do you find that still true? Because the textbook says so. What? We read in the magazine. They said we're right. You said bench and you did this number.

Right. Is that in the ballpark? Is it completely wasteless? Dude, I don't disagree with X's and O's. I call them X's and O's. Sets and reps.

I don't disagree with them mattering. But ultimately, your body doesn't know if it's eight, if it's six. All your body knows is, I break it down

for people in a simple way. You have four phases of muscle contraction. You have concentric, eccentric, isometric, and and rest and how much time you spend in each phase is going to determine the type of biochemical response you get in your body right so if i spend a lot of time in concentric we know it's going to be a little more calorically demanding maybe a little more metabolic stress um eccentric is going to be substantially more muscle damage isometric maybe more neurological adaptation getting your nerves to fire up a little bit more. And then rest just allows me to determine

how much of this metabolic stress am I going to allow to accumulate. That's it. So that matters more than sets and reps. So the way I measure these things in my member site is like every set and rep you do, you're just going to enter number of reps and the tempo. So now I can tell you exactly how many seconds

you spend in concentric, exactly how many seconds you spend can tell you exactly how many seconds you spent in concentric, exactly how many seconds you spent in eccentric, exactly how many seconds you spent in isometric, and then how much rest you spent. And then by that, I can deduce what the stimulus was that you subjected to your body. Was it a high amount of concentric, high amount of eccentric, high amount of isometric, high amount of rest?

And manipulating. And then we can give you a score based on how to manipulate those things. That's the easiest way. To me, that makes sense. Sets and reps is is great but the only thing that ultimately matters is time in each of these phases do you have a ballpark idea of how much time i maybe i'll ask this different way you've got most people in the worlds that we live in uh weightlifting for me and crossfit a little bit more you know for you guys and bull are now coming to the realization that all right maybe maybe some of this bodybuilding stuff we need to put back into our program because

we're either getting broken or we have a huge weakness in our movement because we have an underdeveloped muscle tone. But a lot of them are implementing that in a way where I'm like, I don't think they really understand how to build muscle. One of the ones, so basically what you've talked about is feeling, right? Like you learn to feel the muscle contract. That's what matters. But how do they work some of the stuff into their CrossFit

or their weightlifting programming and not either do way too much and blow themselves out? Could you have a guideline at all? Sure. So, no, I mean, what are we trying to create, right? We're trying to create resilience. And we're trying to make a body bulletproof. We want to make it absolutely so we're strong everywhere.

There's no weaknesses. We're strong in absolutely every range. So that means getting strong where you're weak. So whatever that means for you, let's identify that and make it strong and then find the exercise or the mechanism, whatever it happens to be, to challenge the muscle where you're weak and get strong where you're weak. So people attach to – most injuries happen because people are going outside of what they can actively control.

They go outside of their active range of motion, muscle's weak there, your body starts relying on passive structures, so then it gets this inflammation thing. Passive structures being tendons and – Right, yeah, tendons, ligaments, joints. So if we go outside of what we can actively control, the body has no choice, can't use these muscles, it's going to rely on the passive structures. So what we need to do is we need to increase our active range of motion somehow by increasing what most people would go, oh, you got to increase flexibility.

It's not flexibility. It's mobility. So I want to be, and the only difference is my definition of mobility is what can I actively control? And that comes as a result of increasing stability, right? So most people go, I want to get more range of motion, therefore I should stretch. No, because stretching is going to increase your passive range of motion, which you can't actively control. What I need is a range of motion I can control. So how do we do that?

Well, we need to challenge those ranges that we are weak in at the extreme of the range with a little bit of tension. Just what we're capable of doing there, man. Sometimes it's bunny first off contractions, right? But eventually I'm going to become incrementally stronger. And my body goes, oh, I'm'm actually strong here i can go a little bit further right whereas if you keep attaching to i'm gonna i'm just gonna force this like i'm gonna you know put more weight on the bar to force me into position what's your body gonna do your body's go shit this is hurting me i need to tighten up and inflame more and more inflammation

here tighten this muscle up more because i need to protect it so most people are doing wrong is they're they're trying to get strong with just the wrong progressive load. It's still a means of progressive overload that we should be implementing, but it's got to be like incrementally improving where I'm weak. I can agree with this because I've recently started doing a seated horizontal pec fly machine. Nice. Oh, it's great. I love that.

And I went to do it one time after one of my grad students had been in there and i had to take the entire stack off of his thing and put like seven pounds on there because i was like god i got so sore doing that i had to go way down on my load because like when i got to the very end of the motion i was horrendously weak there at the back yeah very so bad yeah the thing that most people are missing there is is why you know why if you're weak in the back, it's probably because you have, quote, unquote, tight pecs. Yeah. Why are your pecs tight? Oh, yeah, weird, huh?

Right. So most people go, well, my pecs are tight, therefore you should stretch them. And the reality is, no, you shouldn't stretch them because your brain has decided to make them tight for a reason. Your brain is smarter than you are. Your brain is taking inventory. Hey, I'm tight because I'm trying to keep something stable. So the reality is to increase the mobility at your pecs,

you've got to increase the stability at your shoulder joint. So oftentimes that's... So I don't get to do my flies anymore? Well, you can, but I would suggest you pay more attention to trying to stabilize your scapula, right? Because if my scapula is moving around, my body's got to tighten up all those muscles extra to try to support this massive amount of load

that I'm trying to put through it. The judging eyes you're giving me right now are killing me. Yeah, I'm killing you. He's just judging me so much with his eyes. Yeah, you know, I thought you were pretty cool before today. You thought your peck deck was cool. No, no, listen, peck deck's great. He just took away my invitation to do his podcast.

Sometimes the best exercise for chest is to create back exercise while executing. So your ability to stabilize your scapula back and down is going to be the number one limiting factor in your ability to contract your pecs. So if you have poor pecs, if you have poor upper pecs, it's always a weak scapula or a weak mid-trap, your weak ability to stabilize your scapula. How much of your training, I guess, even when you were competing, is more just kind of structural maintenance

versus getting large or muscle building? Unfortunately, not enough um i was so attached to the data like i my definition of my brain was every single day is the olympics every single day is the gold medal race and i need to perform 100 every day if you got in my way i was going to squash you and i was not a very nice person when i was training and competing but it wasn't nearly enough so you know i thought you know getting more body work getting you know getting more therapy getting more massage getting more muscle activation stuff, that was going to be enough to create this resilience, and it wasn't.

So, man, I wish 25% of my training, at least to begin every single workout, was focused around creating stability. And for everyone listening, this is what I would do. If you're training either upper body or lower body, you've got to create a stable pelvis and you've got to create a stable scapula. You have to. So people go, create a stable scapula. You have to. People go, why does my scapula matter? Well, every one of the muscles in your upper body originates in the scapula.

Every one. So if you're not stabilizing your scapula, you don't have great control and strength and able to get your scapula into that really retracted and depressed position, you can't build those muscles effectively. It's a literal impossibility, or at least you're not contracting them maximally. When it comes to your lower body, you've got to have a stable pelvis, man. You can't fire a muscles effectively. It's a literal impossibility, or at least you're not contracting them maximally. And when it comes to your lower body, you got to have a stable pelvis, man. Like you can't fire a cannon from a canoe, right? You got to have a really stable base. And if both ends are moving, because we know if I'm training hamstrings or quads, my knee is moving,

has to move. The other end has to be locked in stone, completely anchored. If it's not, you're not building your quads. So unless you have a really stable pelvis, and that includes pelvic floor, that includes pelvic floor, that includes glutes, that includes rectus femoris, rectus abdominis, all those things need to be very, very active and consciously and then eventually unconsciously controlled. So without that, you don't build muscle, man.

What movements are you doing? Kegels. Yeah, what I have. What I have. I just did a kegel. That was I have, I just did a key goal. Everybody just did a key goal. Check out my, yeah. So, I mean, hopefully you're watching that. What kind of implements are you using for the, for stabilizing?

It's just as simple as going to where you're weak and spending time there. Yeah. So at the bottom of the, what does people do at the bottom of the squat? They bounce. They try to get out as fast as possible because they're really weak there yeah the load is very challenging there uh and they just get out so like go there isometrics sure and as much as it's funny like just getting the way you get a muscle strong and stable is by taking it to its weakest or to its shortened position and getting stronger there and sometimes it's lengthened position and getting stronger there so how do you get strong at something spend time there yeah it's so simple man there's nothing

complicated about exercise we just complicate it because we're so focused on the external like i'm gonna do this exercise it doesn't fucking matter what exercise you do it matters the results you get so i don't give a shit if you squat or if you do a sumo squat or if you like just fucking stay there and find some stability and strength i've started doing yoga people go man you're trying to get more more flexible yoga is not about flexibility yoga is about stability and strength. I've started doing yoga. People go, man, are you trying to get more flexible? Yoga is not about flexibility. Yoga is about stability and calm mind, right? Like, so my pelvis is way more stable, way more, quote, unquote, flexible. My shoulders are way more stable.

I feel so much better from just doing yoga a couple times a week because now I'm like, oh, I actually know how to move these muscles. I'm paying attention to the pelvic floor. I'm paying attention to breathing. You know, all these things are but and huge correlation outside of uh fitness yeah how do you know when to take a very direct approach like that just spending more time in that length of position like the example that andy used with the pec deck like being very weak in that that horizontally abducted position and then you came back and said well the best exercise for that would be a back exercise you have you

have scapular stability issues it wasn't just spend more time in that length of position like is that in his in that example is that still a viable thing just to spend more time hanging out at the end of his range of motion yes theoretically if um the best way to understand tight muscles man is as i briefly tried to say is is the reason something is tight or weak is because it's it's not stable so we have to find the reason this is tight and usually it's because of a weak antagonist. So I'm sure 90% of the listeners go, I have tight hamstrings. Why do you have tight hamstrings? Most people

have tight hamstrings because they have weak hip flexors, particularly the quad muscles. So the quad muscles across the hip. So if you can strengthen that, all of a sudden my hamstrings work a lot better. My hamstrings are a lot more mobile. Is one solution better than the other? I honestly don't know.

Nobody's ever tested it. Maybe Andy can do this in his lab. But which is better? Do I want to get stronger in that position where I'm weak by just getting strong in that position? Or do I want the antagonist to get stronger, thereby allowing my brain to let this muscle relax? I don't know the answer.

Anecdotally, I would say that strengthening the antagonist will give you a better result in improving mobility. So is this something where just a balanced training program, like well-designed, will handle a lot of these problems kind of automatically, so to speak? Yeah. Yeah, just getting, like I said, just getting strong where you're weak and maybe both, right? So if I improved my mobility at, you know, if any improved his mobility as pecs and he's got this greater range of motion well the first thing you should logically do is go there and start getting it stronger because if it's weak and you're just giving yourself this range well

that could be it's a problem too yeah when you have years and years of this experience and you're kind of looking forward now we have have the Instagram account, the podcast. How are you transitioning this into kind of an education platform and how are people able to implement this stuff into their own training? So I've got a member site. Just, man, my goal is to empower. Now I've shifted my focus from a million to 10 million. I want to empower 10 million people with the skill set to take control of their body. That's a little it. And so I'm not teaching you exercise. I want to empower 10 million people with the skill set to take control of their body. That's a little it.

I'm not teaching you exercise. I'm teaching you principles. I want to teach you really simple principles, which you guys see you can grasp on in a short period of time. I've got a member site, MI40 Nation. My business is MI40, which stands for muscle intelligence. Some people know it as muscle intelligence.

Others know it as MI40. Just trying to empower you with the thought process, man. I don't want to teach you like, hey, man, do a bench press because, you know, bench press worked for me. That's just stupid. So that's my focus is, you know, the more I can get this simplified for people, the more I can get it to more people. I mean, I love doing it. You guys can see like my sincerity, the altruistic desire to actually help people. So I travel the world now doing seminars.

I do a lot of camps at my gym. So I get three-day training camps at my gym where you can come in. I coach them all now. There was times where I tried to bring other coaches, but I just love doing it, man. I love being able to connect with people. I feel like I can really change their life. So on top of that, and this is the new evolution of my brand and my business, is you realize you can give, let's say you can give 1,000 people the best program in the world

and 5% get a world-class result. I'm like, well, what's wrong with the 95%? You get 20% who get a good result, and you get 80% who get no results at all or very little results. You go, why is this? So there's a huge, as you guys know, psychological component. As we talked earlier in the podcast, it's like you've got to manage stress. You've got to learn how to manage this parasympathetic thing um all these things are huge the gut the you know inflammation insulin sensitivity um so now you know as of july 1st coming up in july 1st i'm launching i'm changing my website so it's almost like the

operating system for muscle it's like if you want to build any amount of muscle i'm going to give you a module based around how to fix that your limiting factor. We're going to try to figure out some type of algorithm so you can choose, or you can decide, or at least we'll help you decide what your limiting factor is right now. So, you know, is it parasympathetic? Is it your digestive tract? Is it whatever inflammation give you something to try to mitigate that? And then we'll give you, you know, the X's and O's, the great programs for you to actually benefit from. Because you guys know this, man.

You give somebody the best program. And usually you're struggling to manage their psychology more than you're struggling to manage the program. So there's definitely an evolution there. Nothing like battling someone sleeping four hours a night. Like, this program sucks. You're like, dude, what is wrong with you? Go to sleep.

I had 17 scoops of pre-workout today. I can't sleep. Actually, that's a good point. I'm going to guess here that you're pretty much against all sort of stimulants now or mostly for training? Man, I'm not against anything. If you like it, if it makes you feel good, it makes you happy, go do it. But I think psychological response is more important.

So if you like it, if you feel good, go do it. But now let's figure out and make sure we're putting our foot on the gas pedal. Let's make sure we're using the brake. So I'm attached to what happens after the workout way more than what happens pre-workout. Because that's like replenishing your stores, man. We've got to turn down your nervous system. We've got to make sure we're mitigating cortisol. We make sure we're replenishing glycogen.

So all these things are so important to making sure our body's prepared tomorrow to do it again. Um, so that, that's where my attachment is, is what's happening, you know, in those hours after workouts, what's happening in those hours before bed to prepare your body for sleep, to prepare your nervous system for sleep, uh, make sure your body's ready for that. So I don't even attack like pre-workout. I'm more about nootropic stuff. I'm more about focused stuff, non-stimulating things, things to help replenish your brain post-workout. It's like, okay, what are what are we doing you know post-workout to make sure my body can be uh in this rested state calm down brains calm down nervous systems calm down muscles are being replenished and tomorrow i can crush it again that's what everyone's missing right everyone's so focused on gas pedal nobody's

focused on uh slowing down for the workout nootropics have been something that have gotten much more popular over the last couple years like what are you what do you like right now like what what are some things that you use that you think there's real research behind that beneficial i'll give you my exact stack i'm i'm the world's biggest advocate of alpha gpc if everyone like i think it's amazing um i actually use 600 milligrams three times a day so i actually started using it before bed i'm doing a little experiment to see what this is my growth hormone. So not a stimulating thing at all. It's more just supporting brain's choline, acetylcholine. So alpha-GPC, huperzine in a cyclical fashion,

which is a acetylcholine esterase inhibitor. So we're going to prevent the breakdown. I've actually just recently been doing like a four-week dive into aniracetam and oxiracetam. So I was for the longest time against these racetams because I don't like effing with my brain, man. I'm like, no way, man. And then I actually heard someone

who I really respect say he's been doing it every day for the last 15 years. I was like, okay. I think you're smart. I'll do that. No, that's exactly what it was. I was like, okay, well that tells me that it's worth it. I'm going to try it. And it's unbelievable. Uh, it's really unbelievable as far as keeping you calm, keeping your brain straight,

uh, you know, calming down the underlying stress and anxiety. It's great. So aniracetam, not a high dose, 500 milligrams. Um, so that's awesome. And I don't even know if that's so much of a pre-workout. That's like you do it at six in the morning and you're chilling for the whole day um i really like uh n-acetyl tyrosine for driving dopamine i like n-acetyl carnitine um i've been doing some lion's mane some some four sigmatic lion's mane big fan of that stuff um that's pretty much it man uh keep it really simple right like i'm not trying to do all these different, you know, I know there's companies out there who are putting 30 different products in there and, you know, who the hell knows what that's doing to your brain chemistry.

I'm just not about that stuff, man. Like, you know, everything you do, there's usually something that happens on the back end. So it's always minimum effective dose. Like if I know something is working, do that. So the only thing you're trying to do pre-work is you're trying to influence dopamine and acetylcholine. That's it. Like how can I get my dopamine levels elevated? How can i get my acetylcholine levels elevated so dopamine is going to give me a little more drive so the colon is going to give me a little

more focus greater ability to contract my muscles so you know dopamine we're going to talk about aldopa we're going to talk about tyrosine and acetyltyrosine uh and then choline we're talking about you know gpc and hyprosine so and bacopa is a great product too bacopa mineri is a great product but uh a little more calming, but really great for focus and studying. If you guys are writing or anything like that, I love that stuff. But, yeah, keep it really simple, man. I think there's, you know, everyone's jumping on the nootropic bus,

and there's 300 things that you can make nootropics. And even just B vitamins, man. If you're not taking a methylated B vitamin, like, that's huge. And I actually notice a difference. Like, I'll intentionally cycle on things and cycle off. B vitamins, when you're off, you notice it. I notice a difference like i'll intentionally cycle on things and cycle off b vitamins when you're off you notice it i notice the difference yeah any other supplements that you like is that pretty much it um or any that you hate that you'd like to suck the rest everything else no any company that i don't work with anymore boom here you go smash uh well man

i'll tell you what i try to um like i, I focus more on what's happening post-workout more than the pre-workout. So I'll give everybody my post-workout cocktail, man. Look at that. So I'm using taurine, theanine, magnesium, every workout. Dose range, I don't even want to give a dose, so let's stay away from that. So taurine, I would think everyone should be taking taurine after the workout and before bed.

I think everybody can benefit from L-theanine, but it's not necessary. It's one of those things that it's, it's a really great serotonin agonist. And I don't know that everyone needs it. Magnesium, I think everyone is underdosing magnesium. So those three things post-workout and then electrolytes. So if you're not replenishing electrolytes, your body can't perform. So that, that to me is massive. And then then i take i'm attached to a lot of greens i'm a big fan of taking some type of super greens product that's it man like i try to keep it so simple like i'm a natural like i'm kind of turning into a hippie man to be honest as much as that but you originally realize like i've gone through my whole life doing all these these mindless

meathead things and you're like god it's fucking dumb like all this synthetic shit i'm putting in my body my body's you can't live forever putting synthetic shit into your body if you actually want to live a good vigorous rigorous life you gotta be healthy man so for me it's just like food the highest quality food obviously you know fish oils and things like this as well are in there probiotics but really just eating around you know, focusing my nutrition mostly around food rather than supplements. You mentioned some of the dieting stuff you're playing with right now, some extreme keto.

What are some of the things you've seen? What's that look like? I'm just seeing how high can I push my fat. And I'm not using exogenous ketones. I'm not even using ketones. I use ketone meter. But how high can you push your fats without seeing a negative effect so like you know andy and i are talking off

halfway here but macros how much do they matter do they matter uh so i'm just playing with it man you know i started a couple hundred grams of fat a day and push it up as high as i can until i start to get fat and see what my body can adapt yeah where are you keeping your protein again experimenting with it like so i I usually base it around training. So if I, like yesterday, I told you this 10-hour, 9-hour hike, so my protein's high today because I feel like my body's in a big hole right now. Whereas normally protein's relatively low, like 20%, 25%. Okay.

I don't know if that's relatively low for most people. You're like 200 grams-ish? Yeah. Yeah. But for me, being 265 pounds now, that's, I mean, I'm a little under 200 grams. I'm usually about 150 to 180. Oh, okay. Yeah.

And, dude, some days I'm at 60, to be honest. Some days I'll have one meal of protein, but just manipulating, seeing what my body does, seeing what my body composition does. And the objective is always, like, what's the smallest amount I can train and lose body fat? What's the most i can eat and lose body fat and then playing with it right like yeah so awesome one of the coolest things about this job is i get to sit down and talk to you and learn from one of the best thanks man i appreciate it it's uh dude this is an honor i anybody that's got the brains behind the body that you see on stage and knows way too much about this stuff is just a pleasure to talk to.

So I appreciate it. I appreciate you, man. Um, where can people find you? And my 40 nation.com, uh, social is,

um, uh, I have BB Ben pack, uh, muscle expert podcast, man. I'm like you guys, I have this amazing opportunity to interview really awesome people.

And that's cool, man. That's, that's really it i'm leveraging this platform like i don't i don't claim to be special i just claim to be really cool people who make me smarter and uh share awesome information man we're all trying to do the same thing right empowering people with this great skill set and dude i think everyone really deserves to know that they can they can build a great body they can be confident they can have

a great life if you start taking ownership like Andy mentioned. Take absolute extreme ownership for anything giving Jocko Willink a shout out. If you can take extreme ownership for absolutely everything in your life, you'll change it, man. If you can't take ownership, you can't change it because you don't think you can. Giving people the realization that you can

build an awesome body. You can build muscle. It's not your genetics. You just don't know the steps. If you want to build a world-class cake, go to a world-class baker and get a rest get a recipe you can do it man you can do anything so i'm trying to give the recipe to build your body you know the blueprint for your body i love it uh last name p-a-k-a-k-u-l-s-k-i uh just that's why that's why i abbreviated on social it's just i-f-b-b-b-n-p-a-k- P-A-K. And same thing on YouTube is if you go to Muscle Intelligence, you'll find that. Awesome. Cool.

Andy. Booyah. Where can people find you? Oh, geez. In the lab. Yeah. Find me in the lab. AndyGalpin.com.

You can check out the podcast, The Body Knowledge. And Dr. Andy Galpin, everywhere else. I thought you were going with 50 Cent there. Andy, where can you find me? You can find me in the club you can find me in bed at 8.15 sometimes at 20 exactly

Doug you can find me everything barbell shrugged of course and then also Instagram Douglas E. Larson get to barbellshrugged.com. All kinds of articles from MovementRx, Dr. Teresa and I, and Anders Varner on all the socials.

Get into iTunes, YouTube, subscribe, like, give us a comment. If not, he's going to come squat with you one day, and you're going to be in a lot of pain. So leave a nice comment. We'll see you guys next week. Can we get a group hug? Oh, huge hug. On film. On film hug all right nice thanks for making it all the way to the end of the show if you like the show which

i know you did please go share it on facebook instagram or whatever social media channel you happen to be loving at the moment pinterest twitter tumb Tumblr. Share it on Tumblr. I'll do it. Next on Barbell Shrug, hanging out with Kenny Santucci from Solace, New York, talking culture and creating kick-ass gyms.