Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged — Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reece, and PJ Nestler: Underwater Training — 335

Starting point is 00:00:00 Truck family, welcome back. Another Saturday bonus episode with me, just me this week, hanging out with Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reese, and PJ Nessler. These guys have thrown together the XPT experience, and I was lucky enough to get invited up there, not once, but twice, to go hang out in Laird's pool, Gab's pool learn all the fun things so we got invited up for an XPT industry day then scheduled an interview with them got invited back up to go see day one of the XPT experience just had a blast really enjoy hanging out and was lucky enough to sit down got an hour to interview them and brought our boy Colton on the cam with us. So if you are interested in watching the video that goes along with this interview,

Starting point is 00:00:51 make sure you get over to the Shrugged YouTube page. The YouTube video is called Underwater Training with Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reese, and PJ Nessler. Had a blast. Learned a lot. There's so many big things coming together at XPT, and I feel like the certification, the experience is something that all people should go take a look at. The science and the practical side of breath work, the hot sauna training, the ice bath training. I've hung out with Andy Galpin a couple times talking about ice baths. There's just a ton of information and science coming out about how important this stuff is for recovery. And then there's very few times you're going to be able to be in a pool lifting weights and understanding some of the principles of down regulation,

Starting point is 00:01:44 staying calm and all doing it in a performance setting. So it was very cool to get up there, and I am incredibly stoked for you to hear this interview. Make sure you get over to the Shrug Collective program vault, shrugcollective.com backslash vault. We've got 12 programs in there ready for you. Anything from Olympic lifting, mass gain, weight loss, food, prep, grocery, shopping, flight weightlifting. We've got it all. There's mobility programs, strongman programs, 18-plus month long programs,

Starting point is 00:02:22 and then we've got eight three plus month accessory programs that you can add to your training get over to shrug collective.com backslash vault and enjoy the show welcome to day one of the xpt experience we're in malibu california gabby crease i'm gabby pj nestler there and we're hanging out with larry hamilton we're at their house this beautiful pool back here and i'm lucky enough that this is my second time to be swimming in this pool, kind of experiencing what's going on. A lot of pieces have come together for me and my journey through fitness. I've been through a lot of sports, a lot of training methodologies, and just starting to understand how down regulation, mindfulness, breath work, and performance kind of all play a role together.

Starting point is 00:03:09 And the first time we were out here, I kind of went home and knew something happened to me, but wasn't really sure exactly what it was. We're back again. We get to talk to these guys and really hammer this thing home. We're going to start with you though. These two chose you to be here to figure out, take this brain and turn it into kind of an experience and a certification so we can start to put some real methods to kind of the madness and understanding how we can roll this out to the general public and understanding what are the real core principles of this. What's a little bit of your background and how you got to this point? My background is all in sports performance. So I've been a sports performance coach for 11 years. I've worked in the college setting, the private setting, primarily with athletes. And then I got connected with XPT a little over a year ago.

Starting point is 00:03:51 And my career started to transition from training athletes to the education side. I was running a few sports performance facilities. So I was running internship programs, running coach education programs. And then I started my own business, which was geared towards educating coaches and trainers and building systems and curriculums is really what, what I've specialized in the past six years, because it was something that none of the facilities I worked at really had in place. So it was kind of the way my brain process information as I look for something and say, how can I progress this, regress this and break it down. So that's what I've been doing for the past six years or so. And then it just worked out perfect timing with XPT. Uh, when they reached out

Starting point is 00:04:30 to me, they were looking for somebody to do exactly that, uh, what I'd been doing with my own business. So I got to come up and meet these guys and do some training and felt how amazing this stuff was. And I was like, I gotta, I gotta dig deeper. Yeah. Well, you start each of these, we've been to two of these now and you start each of them saying, we all know your alphas and your own right. And in your own place of business, yet I sit in this pool and you stand on that and you manage the alphas really well. I feel like I've been a really lucky person to have great coaches around. I assume in your athletic career, it's been the same, but that athleticism doesn't always transfer into coaching. And it seems like you have found a nice little home in the coaching world here.

Starting point is 00:05:15 Where does that come from? Well, I think what you said is I've had great examples of coaches who had the ability to simultaneously make me feel respected, to push me and to make me feel safe all at the same time. And so my whole thing was how do I drop off information, honestly, especially as a female with nothing attached to it except a matter of factness, but a kindness and a firmness so that I can get you outside of your comfort. So you're not going to make excuses to me and almost get you out of your own way

Starting point is 00:05:47 and just create the environment for you to excel and to thrive. And I do want to say one thing, though. We'll get into how good you've done in a second. Please don't. Don't blow them up. It's already hard to live with. What PJ does for us and has to do for us is so difficult and so complicated, and he executes it on the highest level. So I know he's like, oh, I've been doing this for six years.

Starting point is 00:06:11 But when you look at his training manuals and curriculums, it's almost like art in itself. So both Laird and I, and I mean that genuinely, really acknowledge that because there's no way we would have the capability, and there's not many people who would. So I really, you know, you can only do so much without people that i mean there's very few people who can do what pj does now back to you your first time because you're kind of a go-get-it person yeah clearly they know this already and what was interesting for me was you took your usual way of doing something and you adjusted you adapted and that's something we talk a lot about here life is about really it's about adapting yeah

Starting point is 00:06:49 and so you you were attacking attacking and then all of a sudden you decided we had a conversation okay I'm going to try it differently and to watch you exponentially improve your performance this is for me what is so exciting about watching people, you know, make that progress. So it was, it was really great. But I, for me, as far as coaching, it's, it's from being around all I've had great coaches. Yeah. Where does this come from? We're in the pool training. You clearly, I don't think there's anything that you aren't kind of bringing the highest level of intensity to that you do in life, or at least when it comes to the athletic side of things. But you've been up here in this pool experimenting. Where did the idea of

Starting point is 00:07:30 maybe XPT and the pool training, the kind of the principles of the cold and the heat, but when did it start to turn into like, we have to bring this to the general population so they can understand a lot of the physiological and mental changes that are going to happen with this training you know i i think like any good uh idea it's it's there's like a natural evolution that it kind of has a life of its own and you know again what gabby said you know being surrounded by great people pj great people yourself great people i mean that's you know i was saying you are the company you keep, right? So being surrounded by these people, but out of a necessity, I think to, to try to keep evolving as an athlete, try to keep surviving as an athlete, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:14 being injured. Okay. How do I recover from the injury? How do I sustain performance? How do I keep evolving? What is sustainable training? What, you know, at the end it becomes sustainable lifestyle. Like what's a lifestyle that creates sustainable training, what, you know, at the end, it becomes sustainable lifestyle, like, what's a lifestyle that creates sustainable training, like, all of these, trying to answer all those questions, and I, and then being exposed to, you know, all of these different modalities, and, you know, take a piece from this, and a piece from that, and, you know, we have a saying, there's nothing new, it's just a new application of an old idea, so, okay, heat's been around forever, okay, guys are doing ice, they've been around forever, combining them and you know pool training has in forms have been around forever

Starting point is 00:08:49 but how do you and then and then feel the response that it has on you and be like okay well i can be selfish and just keep it for me and my buddies or i can try to share it with other people and i think that's you know what i think what we find through all of this is that really it's about sharing with people and you know it's the selfish act of giving we call it where you share information you see the transformations they have it helps it it makes you feel good because you then you're not completely out of your mind like I'm I the only person that feels this way but the fact is is that it's it's uh it's really kind of almost an obligation you feel obligated to to want to share with people things that are benefiting you yeah but laird has one

Starting point is 00:09:32 thing i know because i'm more linear than laird and we've lived together a really long time yeah his natural curiosity and willingness also not to be good at something and just give it a go uh and and to be creative i think i always say la a go. And to be creative. I think I always say Laird's the motor behind so many of the things that we all try and he'll go first. So he'll be like, oh, try that. You know, and you're like, he almost died on that. And then we're all like-

Starting point is 00:09:56 Mikey likes it or Mikey doesn't like it. We found the end point. Hey, I'm really good at this one thing. It's like the willingness to go, well, let me try all these new things. And so I think it's an interesting way to approach training And you know this from even you know doing your job is sometimes we get so good at something And we don't want to move out of that yeah, and that's where we first of all get hurt

Starting point is 00:10:16 We stop making progress all these things. That's where we stop We stop ourselves right when we decide that this is what I'm good at and this is what I'm gonna This is how I identify myself people know me as this and so i'm gonna just keep stay in that you know we call that the the harbor of safety you just you're in there you know how to do it everything's great and no one wants to be a beginner no one wants to look foolish no one wants to be embarrassed but that's only for a moment get over that shit stuff like you'll be good like be embarrassed fall on your face let Get over that shit stuff. You'll be good. Be embarrassed. Fall on your face.

Starting point is 00:10:46 Let people laugh at you. And then pretty soon you'll be sitting back and you'll be watching them fall on their face and you'll be going, oh, that wasn't so funny after all, was it? One of the very first times and to begin this entire day, we go through an hour-long breath work and I owned a CrossFit gym,

Starting point is 00:11:01 competed at regionals, did the whole thing to find out that I'm going to be totally fried at the end and unhappy and exactly what you're talking about like where do I go I have to start over and the very first thing that I did was I learned how to breathe properly and we lay down here and you take it people people throw an hour-long breathwork session there's real stuff that goes on in their brains and there's like an experience. Have you always done this breathwork piece in your training? Well, I mean, I think because the nature of the environment that I do my sport, I'm in the ocean, I'm in the water. And

Starting point is 00:11:36 so you better have a relationship with the importance of air. Like I have a good idea of how important air is. There's air above the surface There's no air below and when you're down there All you want to do is be up there and so I think I established kind of that relationship early now I didn't and I and I've been exposed to pranayama and apnea and some a bunch of free diving techniques You know, there's a Hawaiian rock carrying Technique that you do for training where you run along the bottom of the stone and then you you go up and your buddy grabs it and he runs and you take turns until you can't do it we do that in the summertime to kind of build breath you know a lot of our pool work here is

Starting point is 00:12:13 kind of based on that concept now we just have dumbbells instead of boulders and and we can you know throw them over our head but but I have had a long-standing relationship and then I've you know had the fortune to be exposed to you know exposed to Wim Hof and great pranayama teachers and tummo techniques and all these different breath kind of. Patrick McCune. Patrick McCune and hypoxia training and all these other things. So I started with a real, you know, I started with a good relationship with my breath because of the ocean and because of drowning and then the threat of drowning. And I think we all have a, you know, a built in DNA downloading on the fear of drowning. I think a lot of humans drowned in our evolution.

Starting point is 00:12:58 And so that brings a lot of psyche to that environment. People are like, hey, I'm not good with this under here. This is danger. And that's a big transformative uh place that's why there's so much transformation in that environment because you're going over some deep-rooted genetics you know when you put together a curriculum for breathing what is what is what are you looking for and we're here with a lot of people that have maybe not experienced any breath work whatsoever and yet they live in highly stressful environments

Starting point is 00:13:25 they're working in incredibly stressful environments they're all breathers yeah so how do we how do you when you're putting the curriculum together kind of start to piece piece this puzzle together to get people to connect with one their breath and two maybe a little bit of the the mindfulness side of things yeah so the we really look at breathing from from three different categories like three-dimensional there's a biochemical which we're talking about your co2 your oxygen and we can test that we can see where people are with their co2 tolerance and that's a big thing that patrick mccune talks about and a big influence from him we also look at the biomechanical so actual ventilation mechanics and is there dysfunction there just like we look at movement

Starting point is 00:14:04 you know when we look at movement you know when we look at someone from movement we don't look at how well they can move under a bar at at a 1rm we look at how they move normally during the day and then we start to add intensity and add load and add different kind of elements of chaos so we do the same thing for breath work and then the the other aspect of it would be um psycho physiological which is really just you know how your mind is kind of influencing your breath your emotions because our breath is associated with different things you know we we have specific patterns that we go into when we're stressed or when we have anxiety or when we have fear so we we create these associations with breath so it's kind of looking at it from

Starting point is 00:14:43 those three pieces and then we can assess it and And then what I teach is, you know, we're trying to correct overall breathing because we breathe 14 to 20,000 times a day. So, and people who over breathe are breathing 30 to 40,000 times a day. Um, so we look at it for how you're breathing during the day, how you're breathing when you sleep, how you're breathing for overall general health to build that foundation and then we can build the next pieces on top how you breathe during exercise how you when you do intense breath work that's used to create adaptations hypoxic training all those other pieces can be added on top but it's really starting with the foundation of breath and understanding where there can be dysfunction and then identifying that

Starting point is 00:15:25 dysfunction and trying to correct it where do people start because we went through that hour and there's a lot of like up regulating and then a lot of the down regulating and we kind of go through this wave of just emotions and breath and everything else um when you go when you're when you're how do people start getting into kind of that upregulatory side of breath work and what can they expect? Usually once they've established a foundation. So we always start with downregulating because that's the thing that people struggle with with everybody in our society. A lot of the people, you know, your viewers are probably high strung, like to train hard,

Starting point is 00:16:01 like to push hard. Everyone who comes to XPT, that's, that's who they are. So we like to teach people like to push hard everyone who comes XPT that's that's who they are so we like to teach people how to down regulate and then when they can control that foundation then once we've got a good foundation of breathing mechanics we can breathe into our belly we can breathe through our nose then we can teach them how to do it faster how we how to do it more intensely and that's where the up regulation comes in and we can do that stuff like you did today in the breath work before you train when you wake up in the morning and really it's just about increasing the intensity of the breath so we do super ventilation

Starting point is 00:16:32 which you can do just really fast breathing there's a lot of different patterns to do that or you can do it through breath holds if you do maximum breath holds anything that's providing a stressor is going to start to up regulate the system so it's kind of we look at it for if we're doing a maximum breath hold it's gonna be more up regulation if we're doing sub maximal breath hold will be a little more down regulation so we can incorporate that stuff in awesome the pool it's like your domain out there all of all the people well it reminds me it's just funny because we've all been laird's crash

Starting point is 00:17:05 test dummy for 10 years literally yeah and somehow and i don't know how it started i don't know how did it start that i ended up like i think laird's like yeah go for it because again my linearness you know and also maybe well i like to bring guys that are a little bit puffy and just be like hey babe can you help me what i gotta do and then she takes him and the guy comes in oh yeah here we go and she just goes and just puts the screw down on him that's what he did on my first oh yeah just oh yeah your gabby will help you in the shallow pool and show them some stuff and i was and then they dropped their guard yeah like like i was doing the shallow end i was like oh good they're gonna do the beginner intro with me no yeah i think the depth has nothing to do i'm not as good i'm pretty decent in the pool yeah but i'm not as good as laird so also my

Starting point is 00:17:56 understanding is in a way i look at it just a little differently because maybe things that i've struggled with he didn't so i can can not only articulate it, I can understand it. And, and I- And things I struggle with, she doesn't. And I, yeah, that's true. But the, but I think, and also I teach another class, I have a high X class. And so this kind of like on task is really where with Laird,

Starting point is 00:18:23 he's like, let's do this and let's do that. And then you'll show up one day, like once you're ready really where with Laird he's like let's do this and let's do that and now you'll show up one day like once you're ready to train with Laird then it's like Laird's like all right this is what we're doing you know on the exhale like today when I had you guys run through the exhale I would never have you do it I had them do just they're ready yeah one set combined on an exhale and just how that changes everything so well she's good at telling people what to do so like her youngest daughter said once when asked like what are you good at ideas and telling people what to do but but also her background I think in team sports plays a big part of that she's used to having a team of you know five four or five other girls and then you okay hey we're you know hey here we go

Starting point is 00:18:59 and this is what we're doing and we're all in it so I think there's some some piece to that that makes her very good at kind of the the overseerer all of the pieces that you do here there's going to be these big breakthroughs but i really feel like the pool is like this spot because nobody's in water like you can find an ice bath everyone's sort of been in a sauna but you have access to people's brains because they're in a very vulnerable spot there yeah Yeah. And what is some of the, I guess, kind of the process if somebody shows up to XPT that's never been in the water and is terrified of what may happen, and now all of a sudden we hand them a 15-pound dumbbell and they find themselves stuck on the bottom? What is that kind of the mental process, and how do you coach people through that? It's a huge transformation.

Starting point is 00:19:42 We've had that a lot. And what you do is you never put them in a situation under your watch that they're stuck at the bottom. You only put them in situations that it's an okay bottom for them to be in. So, for example, you keep them in the shallow. You can see it very quickly when you're around people. You sort of understand where they're at. And so it's about bringing them along. Laird and I talk about this a lot and pj is a great example of a trainer who knows how to do this we're bringing you along yeah i'm not you're not doing what i'm doing we're bringing you along so really it's about individualizing each experience for that person and being conscious

Starting point is 00:20:20 enough and aware enough of like hey where is this at are they uncomfortable or are they afraid are they scared yeah and there's a technique there's a technique with helping uh someone learn about having time yeah to learn about that there's time and there's there's small techniques that we can use in the beginning to make them start to understand that there's always time and no matter what there's time that You're going to have time to put the things down. You're going to have time to get up to the top. I always quote this military quote, which is, slow and smooth is fast. What we find in the water is if you try to use aggression,

Starting point is 00:20:56 which normally works very good in most land-based things, you add aggression. You can't make it. You just grunt a little harder and push a little more. This thing, when you can't make it you just grunt a little harder and push a little more this thing when you do that yeah it just wants you it wants you i i've always everyone that i talk to that you know we we have access to a lot of people that are really smart and

Starting point is 00:21:17 it feels like the conversation has gotten away from intensity push go to let's see how far we can push things but only while we're in this parasympathetic state and the pool really does that because it's efficiency of movement it's how calm can you stay and you're if you get to that point you don't realize hey i've got an extra 15 seconds it's not a big deal that may have been one of the biggest things just getting to the end of it and realizing I don't have to drop the weight like you can just go to the bottom and set it down come up and when you're in there for the first time you freak out you have no idea rip the mask off it was literally the first thing why'd you

Starting point is 00:21:57 throw your mask like why would you do that well I didn't think I had any air she's like we clearly had enough air to throw your mask across the pool like you're dying like hmm makes a lot of sense you know the other thing too is and when you have somebody who's a who's afraid is you remind them how brave they are yeah being there and you and this goes back to if you're doing real coaching if Laird's helping me or PJ's helping me when they reminding me that they respect me and they're taking care of me and I think that's what you have to do with people here it's like oh no you're not vulnerable you're we're taking care of you and the fact that you're here and you're uncomfortable I admire that and I

Starting point is 00:22:38 want you to know that so what you're trying to do simultaneously is like build them up push them up and and support them um because listen if you haven't if you're not a swimmer or you like when we had a guy here radical uh i don't know special ops or something just an incredible guy didn't really start to swim until he was 13. so not really intuitive not happy about the water at all and just did it he said he used to do things because he he had to for his training yeah but and i and it's like that reminder of like hey what you're doing is well you're not alone and doing that's another thing you're not alone you're not alone you're not the only one that's feeling that has felt like that that that's that's that's a big part of it

Starting point is 00:23:21 too is it and you know when we first started we doing, we had like Velcroed on weight vests and stuff. And like we'd be treading next to the edge of the pool so you could just grab the edge. Now you come in and as a student, you come in to an environment where you can see every different gender, size, shape. My 10-year-old daughter, a 7-foot guy, a woman, a man. And everybody's doing it so you're coming into this environment getting to see how it's done which is a big advantage you're not coming into an unknown and you're the only one by yourself and here i'm going to throw you in the deep end with a giant weight so you so there is that benefit too that they're coming into this kind of environment where it's the normal that's normal you take those weights you

Starting point is 00:24:02 go down there and they somebody you can watch and be like, wow, that guy just did that and he did that. And so that makes a big difference too in building confidence in people. In some cases. Hope you guys are digging the show. Make sure you get over

Starting point is 00:24:17 to MuscleGainChallenge.com. We've got a free e-book over there. How to Get Strong. What do you think you're going to learn when you download that e-book? Yeah right how to get strong uh musclegainchallenge.com all a part of the short collective program vault this mass gain program was designed to put 26 pounds on you in 26 weeks if you're doing the math that's one pound per week if you're also doing the math that's a lot of food that's a lot of lifting weights that's a lot of getting super yoked um mass gain challenge.com

Starting point is 00:24:51 get your free ebook come and hang out with us the people are getting strong they're in our private facebook group posting videos i get to see all the results i love it make sure you get over to musclegainchallenge.com. Let's get back to the show. Your first day, you may not believe the shallow. Yeah. And that's still a success. Sure. Yeah. And I think that's one of the big takeaways that I learned with these guys was when I first came here and seeing how they set everyone up for success and they provide everyone like, here's your wall. And all we want you to do is get over that don't worry about what they're doing and I think when I first started doing pool training I trained fighters so I expect these people to just be able to run through a wall and I saw a lot of fear in

Starting point is 00:25:33 the pool and I had one one of my athletes who she came over to she said she just wants to do the ice pass she doesn't want to do the pool because she almost drowned when she was little and she does not swim and I said then the pool is exactly what you need and all she did the whole day was walk along the pool putting her face in the water and she hadn't done that in you know 20 years and she had the biggest breakthrough of anybody that day felt the the biggest sense of accomplishment and all she was doing was walking with her face in the water and I had athletes who were doing crazy stuff and I think that was really powerful for me to see

Starting point is 00:26:05 you know how these guys do that how they coach that feel it myself and then you know feel comfortable to be able to push through that barrier and understand where everyone's kind of levels are it's really important just the scalability of everything the ability just to walk across with your face underwater you don't have to go to the deep end and jump up and down in 12 foot water but there's a trickle-down effect that that has she has that experience she walks with her face down comes out of it has this whole has a whole kind of evolution when she goes into the rest of her life yeah that stuff's spilling over it's gonna it's gonna when she goes into a situation that she's

Starting point is 00:26:40 good at that she has a lot of confidence in i think she's gonna have another gear that she's good at that she has a lot of confidence in I think she's going to have another gear that she didn't have because she had this barrier that she didn't even know was in her that this thing was holding her back this is important I know that it's the most important piece besides being ballistic and not pounding your joints okay and all the advantages oxygen compression okay great it's putting yourself in an environment where you are working and you feel uncomfortable. And you say to yourself, I recognize I feel uncomfortable. I actually feel overwhelmed. And I'm okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:27:14 Because then you can bring that to real life. I mean, what are we really training for? Are we all professional, you know, crossfitters or pool trainers or, you know, Gold's Gym? It's like, okay okay a few people make a living at that but can we also use this time to enhance our performance in life yeah our sleep our our everything our just our overall wellness it's our overall wellness yeah and you do a lot of coaching on the ice bath and the sauna side what in doing those contrasting pieces i mean everyone's probably seen a youtube video of

Starting point is 00:27:45 jumping an ice bath and the person jumps out like they've never felt anything cold before a socal people it's a good hot spot for good youtube videos of people getting an ice never what's what's going on with the ice well Well, again, with the, the mindset piece, I think the biggest thing when we take people through the ice and the experience, it's really step one is, is understanding we put them in a stressful situation. They're going to get panicky. They're going to feel pain, but understanding that these are all just emotional and sense. These are sensations, you know, you're not, cause you have have pain in your foot we're not doing any damage to your foot you're not gonna there's nothing

Starting point is 00:28:28 long-term happening but you're feeling these sensations so can you overcome those and we saw some people today who immediate response is and they can't get the tension out of their face they can't slow their breath they just they're overwhelmed so i think and that's again where we see people who have major breakthroughs is when they realize I get them to focus on the breath whatever the breathing it is Laird says just through the nose just breathe through the nose that's the only goal just breathe through the nose I like to get them to start to elongate the exhales and just even if it's two seconds okay keep going three seconds and once they start to get that and then they're able to relax their

Starting point is 00:29:03 shoulders and then they're able to relax their shoulders and then they're able to relax their face. And then all of a sudden they finish three minutes in the ice when they were thinking the first five seconds, there's no chance I'm staying here for more than 10 seconds. And that's where that's step one for people. And that's something that helped me a lot with the pool and with the ice was that has transcended into other things from for my life. I have extreme claustrophobia. I used to have panic attacks on the airplane couldn't do mris and and in the past year i i don't take any anti-anxiety medicine when i fly i've had a few almost panic attacks that i've been able to overcome and mitigate

Starting point is 00:29:35 with my mind and my breathing exactly like i do in the ice bath and exactly like i do in the pool which again was just something started clicking for me like that there's so much more power to this stuff than just the science that we have, which there's plenty of, but there's so much more power to this stuff than that. I think the science stuff is kind of catching up, right? Like we hung out with Gallop in a little bit and his, and he was like, here's all the things that we're seeing. We know it works. It's working on professional athletes. It's working on people with anxiety. It's working on everyone everyone but it's working in so many different areas and on this like just such a wide spectrum that it's hard to pinpoint which everyone loves like if i get in the ice bath i'll lose 10 pounds like it's probably not going to happen like yeah but we can talk about like brown fat yeah and and you and it

Starting point is 00:30:19 could have some other metabolic yeah there's a fact that we don't know or but we know one thing when you get in there and you come out, you feel better. You feel... It makes you... It does something to you that, for that reason alone, would be good. Short-term and long-term.

Starting point is 00:30:31 Yeah. Immediately and then two, three days later. Yeah. Expose yourself to something that isn't 75 degrees. I have a heater and air conditioning in my house. I never get below 65. That's ridiculous. But I have it.

Starting point is 00:30:44 Yeah. I have to stay comfortable all the time or my life will end yeah um that's the downfall of humanity right seriously comfortable the light has to be perfect not too bright not too dark wouldn't want to be not too hot not too cold everything just perfect and then we just everything gets caught smaller and smaller yeah and that's one of our big goals is creating more vulnerable. I tell people at the certification, one of the underlying things that we're trying to create is the most versatile and resilient human beings possible. And you only do that by constantly finding these different ways

Starting point is 00:31:14 to stress your system and getting out of the convenience and the comfort. Cause that's what our whole society has gone towards. Modern society is comfortable and convenient and everything is temperature controlled. So the more we can get outside that box the more versatile and resilient we're going to be and on one side that's catching on is the ice but the sauna's also turned into like a pretty uh i wouldn't say mainstream but it's starting to get a lot oppressive a lot of what the benefits of being in very hot conditions um Um, where, where's your brain at that and understanding kind of the, the contrasting temperature pieces. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot of emerging science on, on saunas, ice baths, and the contrast.

Starting point is 00:31:55 And I think it's because more people are starting to do it. So now they're actually starting to look at it and they're, they're starting to look back at societies who've been doing this all the time. We're seeing research coming out on, you know, the Finnish people who do it. And they've seen that the more often they were using the sauna, the lower risk they had for strokes, heart attacks, all-cause mortality. That's my favorite word, by the way. All-cause mortality. I just love that word. But as soon as I heard that word, I go, that's one of my favorite words in the world.

Starting point is 00:32:20 It means pretty much any way you can die. Yeah, any way you can die, you're less likely to do it if you spend more time in there so you know it keeps coming out and people have done that for a long time because it feels good the ice bath doesn't feel good when you're in there which is why there's probably a lot less research behind it because well in our program people weren't doing it we have a lot of programming on on the cold side negative you know you're going to catch a cold you have a cold these are all very negative things so we connect negativity to cold heat is warmth yeah so that's where we the cold that's why i think the ice is and the intensity you know 15 20 minutes in a sauna three to five minutes in a cold i mean this is you know three to five times more intense and it has a bunch of negative things that

Starting point is 00:32:59 programming that we're going against we're going against a lot of a lot of programming in here not in here not but in here and so we're we're overriding that one of the easiest and most obvious ways i've ever kind of seen the body adapt is just going to hot yoga classes the very first hot yoga class you go to you're gonna die you're like the sloppy kid in the corner in your own sweat and it's gross and like there's some like 130 pound girl that's going to come over to you and be like are you okay you're slipping on your own whatever and then two weeks later yeah it's it's okay and you can show up 10 minutes early like do some breath work before you start it's really not a big deal um there's a lot of kind of research and talk about like heat shock proteins and Rhonda Patrick's

Starting point is 00:33:47 doing a ton of work in this stuff. Performance enhancement. Can we simplify some of that stuff so that heat shock protein is just a way out there term for a lot of people? Yeah, I think that a lot of the stuff with heat shock and cold shock proteins is that we have these things that are activated by being in extreme heat or extreme cold and they help us deal with those temperatures but they're also responsible for a whole bunch of other really really important things in the body a lot of them are like cleaning up damaged cells and damaged proteins and damaged dna so cell autophagy is a word that gets thrown around a lot now with intermittent fasting and stuff like that and that's what a lot of these different proteins are responsible for in the body, as well as a

Starting point is 00:34:28 whole bunch of other things like immune system function. So the theory behind it, and it's not proven yet because we just haven't studied it, is that by activating these things more regularly, they're going to be better at doing all the other things. And we've seen some of that in, you know, animal studies and stuff but the the human trials doing this stuff regularly is just not there yet but that's where a lot of this is really promising because we know it works we've been doing it for a long time we've we have people who swear by it and the more research that comes out the more we see it but it's just it's not there yet but we feel it we know that it's doing something and i'm sure that the more this stuff

Starting point is 00:35:04 comes out we're the more we're going to see benefits that we don't even We know that it's doing something. And I'm sure that the more this stuff comes out, we're the more we're going to see benefits that we don't even know yet. That's one thing that I think is so awesome about here. Like when I found CrossFit 11, 12 years ago, it was like, this thing's combining a lot of things that I really need in my life, whether it was the teamwork, the sport, the fact that I just love strength conditioning, and it just kind of combined it all into this cool little package where we got to go play every day. And I feel like all of the pieces of my training that I've kind of siloed in breath work, down regulation, strength conditioning, performance training, this kind of combines it all into this awesome little spot. And we have a pool to kind of test how far we can go and get into the ice bath and really put ourselves in an

Starting point is 00:35:44 uncomfortable spot. And how much can you chill out when you're really uncomfortable it's like very important how much of the strength conditioning piece is still going on i know everyone's at a gym right now but what do those training programs look like and in relation to using the pool heat and cold and the breath. Regular strength and conditioning is a big part of it. Our pillars are breathe, move, recover. And movement to us is pool training, but it's also foundational strength training. It's also different types of energy system development. So when we do our daily training, we have it set up where it's really kind of an entry level.

Starting point is 00:36:22 It's free on our website. It's an entry level where people, if they just want to see what XPT is about, they can follow along with this. And they'll get two days a week in the gym that's primarily focused on strength training. They'll get one to two days that's intensity days. And that can be low-intensity aerobic work, high-intensity interval work, anything across that spectrum. They'll get nature workouts. And then they'll get nature workouts and then they'll get exposure days. Uh, and we can kind of piece all those things together. So it's a huge

Starting point is 00:36:49 part of it. And it's something that we don't teach a ton at the certification because we don't, we're not taking a stand and saying that you should exercise this way. What we're saying is if you exercise that way and that's what you love, if you love CrossFit, you probably should also do some maybe agility work because you're doing a lot of sagittal plane stuff if you want to be the most versatile and resilient person possible then you need to understand that there's ten different buckets here and you need to understand that your favorite one is probably great we love yoga we love endurance running we love CrossFit we love powerlifting they're all pieces of

Starting point is 00:37:23 the puzzle but if they become the only piece you're going to sacrifice your versatility it's one of the things that i i really struggled with for a long time was it was like we kind of got to a point where it's like you're going to stand in this box with two feet on the ground and you're going to look straight ahead and just pick this up and stand here and suffer it's like there's so much more to athletics and training um and we have to understand like full concepts of movement and how it applies to sport and training and we have to really start to incorporate so many more domains than just speed intensity and and learning how to breathe

Starting point is 00:38:01 is a really really important piece when we start to bring this out to the public, how we've got kind of two pieces, what we're here for, the experience and then the certification. How did you guys start to roll that out and present this to the public? Well, we had to do the experiences first long enough. First, we did it long enough ourselves. And subjected our friends and family other guinea pigs other yeah anybody who happened to show up one day come to the game the mailman a system names in place and and things where it's like no we could create a curriculum i can run you know larry can or i or pj or anybody could run you through a workout um and give you those tools

Starting point is 00:38:43 then it was like okay now we're going to do certification because this man hours, there's only so many man hours. And we can only touch so many people. And Laird loves to surf, really. So, you know, it's like he's not going to be like, hey. Just that. There's always that. Work.

Starting point is 00:38:55 Yeah, exactly. Very hard. You know, PJ, like we were saying, is the one who really helped put it. We knew we had to do pen to paper and do the certifications and and to be really clear who is going to be certified in xpt breathing and uh thermoregulating not all of those people will be certified to train the pool because the pool is dead serious yeah and so one thing that we're really going to be on is the dead seriousness of the pool and making sure that uh who's executing the information is can it's a reflection of us too like is there because because at the end we want it to be yeah we want it to we want to protect the people we want to

Starting point is 00:39:37 make sure that they have a great experience and this is something they can continue to do indefinitely yeah so so so these certifications will sort of have these dimensions and levels to them and and um so we'll always have the experiences and then now the focus is also obviously on the certification so even for example we'll have uh xbt certified trainers that do one day experiences so if the householder says yo i appreciate your two and a half day experience i have time and money for one day that we figured out ways to condense the experience and there's a limitation if we if we if we can only do the experiences that means we can only touch so many people and at a certain point that's not that's limiting that's limiting there's a limitation to that and and we and this information is i would say is too

Starting point is 00:40:18 important yeah for people to at least not have access to make their own decision to and so at the end we want to be able to expose it to so that they can come and experience it and be like actually yes that's what i need or oh yeah i like this but i like you know they can make they can sift through it and decide what they want for themselves honestly honestly even if they come away with the breathing exactly yeah exactly perfect and now the heat and ice're seeing is people are doing like ice parties where their friends come every once a week and everybody brings ice. So you know, and let's be clear. I have more friends with freezers in their backyard now than I've ever would have thought.

Starting point is 00:40:54 That's a thing. But think about this. What's really happening? People are getting together. Or it is. Yeah, exactly. It's what you liked about CrossFit. It's actually a time for people to say, Hey, we're getting together or it is yeah exactly yeah it's what you liked about crossfit yeah it's actually a time for people to say hey we're together yeah and and that when we talk about this this puzzle

Starting point is 00:41:11 these pieces of self-care and wellness and happiness that is a very big piece yeah hey i'm you're going to show up to my house and help me be better yeah and i can actually tell you about like my day and you can say oh well okay these things are this gets so overlooked and it's this is the invisible modality within within xpt yeah within crossfit within every single thing is the invisible modality of community of of the of the friendship of the hey you know what today i'm kind of tired i don't really feel like training but the guy's like knock knock knock knock Hey, what are we doing today? Like I guess we're doing something here we go, you know Yeah, exactly. It might be and you build you build bonds and stress like the stress bill box Talk about it later the conversation

Starting point is 00:42:01 Yeah, yeah the conversations that go on in the sauna as soon as you've gotten out of the ice you're in the sauna you're in close quarters there's there's no phone there's no nothing it's hot you're sweating i mean people we were just talking about earlier the conversations you have in there are just amazing not a lot of lying in there you can't really lie in the sauna it's like we call the truth barrel like you get in there and you just start reciting about thing and i've done but some people look over like well I didn't really want to know all of that, but that's fine. Okay. Keep on. But that, that, that feeling, that community really, when you walk away from it, when it's said and done, you have a, you know, you have a transformation, but spiritually too, you have

Starting point is 00:42:38 something that we need spiritually. We need this. We need this bond. And I think it's a, sorry. I think it's a paradigm shift. It's something that I heard from Gabby when I first came up here, and I've been telling it to everybody, is just her kind of approach to community, which is what could be a better way to spend your time with your loved ones than taking care of your health. So it kind of changes that mindset of, like, hey, we can get together and train in the pool and hang out in the sauna and catch up.

Starting point is 00:43:02 We don't have to go to the bar and, you know, have eight drinks just for the sake of getting together. You know, we can just get people together to do things, to explore. And that was something, again, just my friendships, the people that I surround myself with at home now are the people who see videos of my freezer and like, hey, I want to come over and do that. Come over. We'll hang out. We'll talk. We'll get to know each other.

Starting point is 00:43:23 And I look way more forward to that than like let's go out for drinks you know that's and there's not a lot of i mean you might you can agree or disagree but i feel like there's not a lot of well i did four laps with the 50 pound dumbbell how many did you do yeah like and i did it in two minutes how many minutes did you so we leave some of that out i think at the end of the day it's like hey it's cold you stayed five minutes i don't really care. I only stayed three minutes. I'm good. I don't, you know, so we don't have some part of it is these modalities don't kind of necessarily breed that immediate, like competitiveness amongst us. And I think that helps everybody also kind of relax and be cool with just the community part of it. Like, Hey, they're suffering and I might be able to do one thing a little bit better and you can be, and one day I'm not so good and you're

Starting point is 00:44:08 better. And one day I'm a little better and you're not. And I mean, I think that's a big part. It's kind of like, we're going through it together instead of where it's combative while we're going through it. Cause I think that can hold us back a little bit. The experience of getting in a cold tub will definitely override any confidence because it's so humbling the second you jump in that you're getting any shit you were about to talk to your friend is done because you don't have enough air yeah to say anything to them you're too busy trying to think about just surviving um when you're piecing together uh the certification though because coaches are going to be going out and taking these concepts and applying them.

Starting point is 00:44:46 How do you build that curriculum? So taking somebody that's never been here and then walking out with at least some of the tools to be able to help others in this process. Really the goal of the certification is to give them the principles. Teach them the principles. What is the breath work rooted on? What are the foundational components of all the different methods? People want to know what was the breathing Laird did this morning. And I'm like, that's not the goal. The goal is understand. I want you to be able to listen to Laird's breathing, go, okay, this is what he's doing. This is what's

Starting point is 00:45:18 happening physiologically with those people. If you can understand that, you can create your own breathing sessions, your own practices. So that's the goal. So it's a lot of foundational theory to understand the principles and then practical application. Now let's get together and let's coach it. There's a lot of them coaching each other. They coach me. So it's a lot of just practicing to go through these things so they can experience it. And then so they can practice coaching people through it as they're experiencing it. So that's really what it is it's the principles behind stuff and then they can start to then we'll

Starting point is 00:45:49 give them the methods as well but we the another really cool thing about xpt is it's ever evolving yeah so we're going to have a network of certified coaches that are going to change the face of what xpt is in the course of the next couple years because they're going to go take it and do it with their people and bring their own unique spin to it and say, Hey, have you guys ever tried this thing? I mean, we had, I was telling Laird, we had a pair, um, pair of rescue men who came and took the certification and him and I hung out for an hour afterwards.

Starting point is 00:46:17 And he was telling me about stuff they did in their training to become special forces. And I was like, that's a really cool drill. And I told Laird, he goes, that's XPT. We need to start doing that stuff. So it's, it's ever evolving. Um, so we want these people to understand the foundation, the principles, the philosophies, and then continue to change it and evolve it. Not like here's our structure. You coach it this way, or it's not XPT. You say it a lot at the beginning just in the breath work if we can just get people to recognize how basic it is to breathe through your nose and we could solve so many problems just in teaching people this is the proper way to just get air and if you go through a coaching experience and I would bet that

Starting point is 00:46:58 even half the trainers don't even understand this it took me forever to learn like I just wanted to lift all the weights. Like that's all of them. Cool. Yeah. And, and then it was like, maybe there's a little bit more to this and you start kind of chipping away at this big problem or the thing that you're passionate about or just whatever it is in this, in this endless, I can't like a pursuit of learning about it. And who knew that you could just breathe properly and change your life. Um, and I think that when you go to a certification, you're not going to walk out. Like, I think people think that you go to a certification and you could just, I'm going to go open a gym and I'm ready. It's like, no, what you did was you just let somebody fill your brain with ideas. And now you have to go practice. You got to figure out how to talk to people and you have

Starting point is 00:47:41 to figure out what those ideas are and how they relate to the people that you're working with. Like you can't teach a 60 year old that's injured and whatever, whatever she's dealing with or he's dealing with in a specific way that you're going to talk to a 23 year old athlete that is going hard every single day. Um, but what we can do is take principles and apply them to people and start to really change the way people pursue wellness and even performance, which we can push that a little bit further along. Where can people learn about the certifications? XPTlife.com. XPTlife.com slash certification.

Starting point is 00:48:22 And then the experiences, same thing. Yep. I believe it's slash experience. Everything's on XPptlife.com just call pj directly yep give my cell phone number call me any time of day link at the bottom 1-800 any questions you have on anything just call me um where are the upcoming certifications you guys have one in chicago coming up chicago next week edit that one out uh we'll be in new york in september awesome we'll be in uh houston in october we'll be back in la and then possibly australia in november very cool and then we'll be uh probably miami in december that one's not confirmed yet awesome so we're doing one a month and we're

Starting point is 00:49:03 trying to we're just starting to take them around the country and hopefully out of the country as well. Very cool. People want to learn about Laird Hamilton. Where do they go? Look at Laird. He's like to the ocean and just look out. I made him watch the video on the way up. I was showing him the spot in Malibu. We shot the pier four years ago. He had never seen it. He calls himself a surfer he wears no clothes he's got blonde hair he doesn't even know he doesn't even know is it the perception of danger that's right yeah perception of danger perceived danger perceived danger yeah because it's all about the perceived danger people make such a big deal about that and we joke because laird what laird's doing on a regular basis on kawaii yeah in hawaii is much more dangerous but that like oh he shot the pier, yeah between two telephone poles

Starting point is 00:49:46 What are they talking about? I feel bad for the guy that was behind you. He was doing fantastic He got no credit again again just one inch out of the you know out of the light Laird Hamilton calm but Yeah, Laird Hamilton calm XPT. Yeah Look out at the ocean. I know he's out there somewhere. Yeah, exactly. What do you got?

Starting point is 00:50:09 A lot of my stuff's on XPT, social media and website. And then I put a lot of stuff on my own social media, which is just Coach PJ Nessler. Very cool. Yeah, awesome Instagram stuff. Teaching people things. And Gabby. That's the goal. Gabby?

Starting point is 00:50:22 Gabby. I'm here. I'm good. GabbyReese.com. Go good go find her yeah Reese with the C I really appreciate you yeah coming here and like it's fun because the first day we had we didn't have that much time yeah yeah and I thought you had an incredible breakthrough and then now it's like you can do some of the work now we can go okay let's let's see how we can turn it into work and that only took a day so if you it, it's a short period of time.

Starting point is 00:50:45 The things that roll through my brain when I do this stuff, it's like I want to learn and then go sleep and then wake up tomorrow morning and do it right away. Yeah. Because just the progression after day one and then the next morning I woke up and i was like i need a pool i need to go do that again because i need to hardwire whatever that was that that calm get that groove yeah understanding and and until you're just in it and hardwiring that stuff

Starting point is 00:51:18 yeah um it's true it's it's like this fleeting thing so coming back is very cool well and i said to kenny kane because you guys were doing some pretty rigorous drills today, I said he was trying to accomplish a task that he was there, and we were talking about it, and I said, when you come on Friday with other things, now your brain's kind of worked out all the stuff, because it's a lot of information, then you'll just go. And sometimes I think people don't give themselves enough time or credit to go, wait a second, I'm processing a lot of stuff right now. Give myself a break and then I'll work through it.

Starting point is 00:51:51 Yeah. Well, learning is the most exhausting process that we do. So true. Yeah, just general exposure to it. Anytime there's something new, and like you were talking about at the beginning, like we get weird and we get scared to go out and try something new because we're going to suck at it. I think that I try and find those experiences because the learning curve is awesome.

Starting point is 00:52:12 When you're already good at something, it totally sucks. Getting better at something that you're already pretty much at your genetic potential for is terrible. You just waste a lot of your time. What's the point? Just put me in a pool. The curve is just leveled off. That's also why you look happy. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:52:35 If you are an athlete, if you're a CrossFitter, if you are looking for the next phase of your training, make sure you get to XPTLife.com. I've had a blast up here the two days that we've been able to train thank you guys from the coaching to just the the leadership the people that we're working with here it's been phenomenal and i'm very grateful that you guys aloha let us into your home yeah to do this thank you yeah and um we will be doing a lot more with these guys in the future so i'll see you guys next week

Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged — Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reece, and PJ Nestler: Underwater Training — 335

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