Barbell Shrugged - Biohacking Your Way To A World Record Bench Press with Emily Hu and Halo Sport CTO Brett Wingeier — Barbell Shrugged #387

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Halo Sport is the first-ever brain stimulator used to accelerate movement-based learning. In other words, it speeds up the development of skill, strength, and endurance, depending on the type of training that you pair with it.   Halo Sport works by applying non-invasive, mild electrical current to the motor cortex (part of the brain responsible for movement), allowing your brain to build stronger connections and learn movement faster. For example: You can wear Halo Sport for 20 minutes before your training session, which gives you one hour of what neuroscientists call “hyperlearning” or “hyperplasticity”. Training with it accelerates gains across skill, strength, and endurance.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged we talk about the advantages of the Halo Sport 2, the research behind tDCS, the technique of bench pressing, how to fix motor learning problems, how to incorporate Halo Sport during competition, why consistency is the difference maker the difference between Halo Sport 1 and Halo Sport 2,  the Halo Sport app, and much more!   Enjoy!   - Anders and Doug   Episode Breakdown   0-10: Talking to world record holder in bench press, using Halo to improve climbing, the advantages of the Halo Sport 2, and the research behind tDCS 11-20: The technique of bench pressing, the sweet spot of benching, why you should strengthen your triceps for bench, and how to fix motor learning problems 21-30: How to use your feet when benching, the process of a powerlifting meet, how to incorporate Halo Sport during competition, and why consistency is the difference maker 31-40: Current training, warm-ups for powerlifting, the importance of a good coach, why the strongest lifters in the gym use the Halo Sport to enhance training, and the difference between Halo Sport 1 and Halo Sport 2 41-50: Brain mapping, the Halo Sport app, data collection, and training age 51-60: The Halo Sport 2 fit, special offer on Halo Sport 2, and where to find Emily and Halo ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-halo ----------------------------------------------------------------------- @perfectketo: https://perfectketo.com “shrugged” for 20% off @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @halo- www.gethalosport.com/shrugged  $20 off an additional $100 for presale orders @whoop - www.whoop.com  “shrugged” for 20% off   ► 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/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Neuroplasticity. Your brain's ability to mold, shape, and grow so that you can learn things faster. Shrug family, two weeks ago, Doug and I hopped on the Big Bird. East coast to west coast, hanging out with our friends over at Halo Sport. We met the strongest bench presser in the world, Emily Hu, and the CTO of Halo NeuroSport. We interviewed them about six, eight months ago. They had the Halo Sport 1, which was a very cool device. I learned all about the brain and how they can open the motor cortex up to help you increase your learning of complex movement patterns. For you crazy CrossFitters out there, you know what that means? Snatches,

clean and jerks, muscle-ups, butterfly pull-ups, all the things that take high-level skill movements, they are creating products, specifically the Halo Sport headset, to help you learn those things faster. Halo Sport revolutionized physical training by being the first-ever product that can increase your neuroplasticity. In other words, speed up how fast you learn.

The headset looks and plays music like a pair of high-end headphones and also sends an electrical stimulation to the part of the brain that controls movement. This puts your brain into a state that neuroscientists call hyper learning. Here's how I use the product. I put it on right before I get in the car to go to the gym. It's that simple. You don't even have to be in the gym using it. As soon as you get out of work, put it on on your commute to the gym. By the time you get there, the program is done, and all you have to do is show up and you learn faster.

It's going to help with all of the complex movements, Olympic lifting, all those crazy gymnastics movements you've been struggling with. But I'm not the only one using it. Just ask the U.S. military, Olympic teams, and players across the NBA, NFL, UFC, PGA Tour, and more. This technology is the real deal. And now, more than ever, it's accessible to everyone. A fully upgraded Halo Sport 2 was just announced,

and it's pre-selling for $279 if you use the code SHRUGGED at checkout. That's less than half the price of the first one. I also have to tell you, when I used the first one, it was super clunky. It wasn't that comfortable. It was kind of annoying that it didn't have a Bluetooth setup. I'm not really a tech nerd, but Bluetooth is really important when you have a big headset. On top of that, it just didn't look that good. The clunkiness of and how it fit on your head, just it wasn't a

long term solution to something that I was able to use. However, they have gone back to the drawing board in the Halo Sport 2 is incredibly comfortable. And after you're done with your 20 minutes, you could just pop the buds out so that the electricity piece stops, and now you have just an incredibly comfortable headset with really high-quality sound, and it's just a really, really nice, comfortable headset. So here's what you need to do. Go over to GetHaloSport.com forward slash barbell. You're going to use the coupon code SHRUGGED. That is going to save you $100 on the presale and just because we love them they're kicking in an extra $20 off the presale so $120 that's over half the price of

what the original get halo sport or the halo sport one was going. So make sure you get over to gethalosport.com forward slash barbell using the coupon code shrugged and you're going to save 120 bucks. I highly recommend it. I got to talk to the world record bench press holders. We're interviewing her. You're going to listen to it right now. But she was super cool and she uses it in her warmups. And anytime you're dealing with like the highest level athletes that are fighting for that

quarter of a percent to be the best in the world, there really is something to this. You are going to notice that all of these motor patterns just come more natural to you. It happened to me with handstands a month ago. The fact that there is a much more comfortable, easier way to use the headset. I'm so excited about, and I'm going to set some new goals and we'll follow it along on Instagram. Also want to thank our friends over at Organifi. They have 20% off for you, just like they do every week. Make sure you're using the coupon code shrug. I have one, two, three, four, five, six of the gold and the gold chocolate sitting on my fridge right now. There's one green one in the fridge because it's the ones I go to the most. But go over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged and also get over to StrongerExperts.com. We're going to Jamaica.

I want you to come with us. The best track and field coaches, strength coaches, speed coaches in the world. We're all coming down there and I'm going to tell the story of what's happening in Jamaica. Kingston, Jamaica, man. That was so weird that I just did that in the pre-roll, but, um, come to Jamaica, get over to stronger experts.com, uh, project stronger Jamaica. We're doing a lot of stuff, uh, raising money, raising education, uh, for a lot of underprivileged athletes. And Johan is going to be in the house. I hope Usain is going to be in the whole house. So I'm going to race gold medalists. Whew! That's

exciting. No, this is a really cool interview. The CTO from Halo is in the house. Emily Hu from the world record bench press holder. She's super knowledgeable. We've got a vlog coming out next week.

Her bench pressing with me. We benched the same amount. And trust me, it was a one rep max for where I'm at. And she matched it. It's not like I was leading the charge. It was all her. But make sure you get over to Halo. Gethalosport.com forward slash barbell.

Use the coupon code shrugged. You're going to save $120 on the presale. I really, really enjoy this product. I enjoy working with them. The people over at Halo are just top-notch humans, and they're really pushing the envelope on the motor cortex and how we can use the headset to further movement patterns. And with that, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson. We're at Project 13 in San Francisco, California. Emily, who? Brett Wingeyer. I nailed that name. Nailed it. Your name has three vowels in a row. In a row.

That is confusing in the English language. We're going to hear, we're here, we're going to talk to the world record holder in the bench press. That's pretty incredible. You're the CTO, Chief Technology Officer at Halo Neuroscience. That's right we just had an awesome interview and uh tour of the office i had electrodes or something hooked up to my brain i felt a little tingle my tapping on the desk i got so much more efficient i assume since you're here we're going to talk about how the the headband the headband how the headset uh makes you a lot stronger prepares

you for events um but can we get a little bit of a background on your your bench pressing career and just how you got into this sure okay my name is emily who i'm a professional power lifter i am the current world record holder in the woman's bench press for a woman under 56 kilograms so 123 pounds before this i also had the world record in the bench press for a woman under 52 kilograms. And before Steffi Cohen, I was the all-time world record holder in the total in that weight class. Steffi, Steffi, come on.

We'll call her. We'll talk to her. Tell her to get less strong. Just relax for a competition or two. Let me have a backward day. She's savage. She really is. Have you hung out with her?

Yeah. We were down in Miami with her. We went to Hybrid. She's awesome. Her show's. Have you hung out with her? Yeah. We were down in Miami with her. We went to Hybrid. She's awesome. Her show's coming out next week. Oh. Right after you. See you beat her in that one.

CTO at Halo Neuroscience. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, yeah. So I'm a biomedical engineer by training and neuroscientist, but spent most of my career making stuff that makes brains work better. Came out of the world of implantable medical devices. My co-founder and I made an implant for epilepsy that got FDA approval in 2013. But then we realized that there was this opportunity to make stuff that's more relevant to the world, that helps

people, athletes, you know, people like you and me get better at what we do. Increases neuroplasticity so you get more out of your training. That's Halo Sport. That's what we make. Yeah. Do you have an athletic background yourself? Yeah, yeah. So I'm a rower and a climber and a cyclist. Sweet. You're a sick person. You do the rowing thing where you have to wake up at 4.30 in the morning and go be really cold on the water.

Damn straight, yeah, yeah. Why do you do that? Yeah, so I realized early on that pretty much my only athletic, like the only way I excel as an athlete is in my pain tolerance. I can put up with a lot of crap for a really long time. You can deal with more shit than other people. Exactly. That's perfect.

Rowing's a good one for that because you're just on the water over and over again. It is, yeah. How did that kind of lead into maybe the technology side of things and then meeting up with Dan? Yeah, I mean, a couple different ways. But so Dan and I are... Just for anybody that's not aware of who Dan is, we did a show with him about six months ago. He's the CEO of Halo Neuroscience, so if you want to go back and get like a company history on like a much broader level, but with

you here, we can dig into the technology piece and how you guys met. Yeah, for sure. So Dan and I, we worked together for more than a decade, and we're longtime climbing and cycling buddies. And there is no better way to know that you want to start a company with somebody than to be up at the top six pitches up on a rock face. Somebody's forgot their headlamp. You're both scared out of your wits. You're cold. You're tired. You're mad.

And then, you know, you get down, and it's just all okay, and you got through that. And then when you're having the conversation, all right, are we going to do something that's kind of hard here? Are we going to start a company to bring brain stimulation to the broader world? All right. I guess we trust each other. We've been through all this pain and fear and we know how we're going to react when stuff goes south.

I feel like with the Dawn Wall and Free Solo coming out, climbing has gotten really popular all of a sudden just because it got pushed into the mainstream with those awesome documentaries. Do you guys have a lot of climbers right now that are using Halo? So there's definitely a lot of climbers that use Halo. There's no big names that we're aware of. But just from my own experience as a climber using Halo, so much of it is mental. And, you know, this is getting more and more well known, but so much of it is technique. But there's also this thing where you have to know what your body can do, and you have to be able to push through the pain and hold your technique, even when you're up there

and you're cold and tired and hungry, especially if you're climbing outdoors and doing multi-pitch. And just nailing the technique, nailing that ability to squeeze that last, like, you know, one or two percent out of your body, that's what's going to keep you holding on to the rock when every fiber of your being is just wanting to fall off and, like, dangle from the rope. So let's zoom out for a second. For people that aren't super familiar with Halo Sport and what it does. What exactly is happening with the neural stimulation and how that affects performance? Yeah, yeah. So the technology under the hood, it's called transcranial direct current stimulation, transcranial brain stimulation. It's an electrical waveform that helps your neurons

fire together. And neurons firing together, that's how your brain learns anything. That's how when you, you know, whether you're working on your backhand or working on your climbing or bench press, whatever output you get from your body, it's neurons firing together to create that output. And it's neurons firing together as you train. There's this thing neuroscientists say, neurons that fire together wire together. That's neuroplasticity. It's how your brain learns. And your brain loves to do that. We're helping it along. If we help neurons fire together, that's the effect under the hood. Then you get more out of your training because your brain is optimizing itself faster. So you get more out of every rep. So it's kind of like the old saying, like, you know, you never forget how to ride a bike or whatever. Like you've done that thing so many

times that like those nerves are wired together at some level and you just know how to do it. Right. What you guys have developed helps that, that learning process happen faster where that, that movement pattern becomes normal. So you can do it automatically quicker. Right, right, right. And, and being able to optimize faster, like, yeah, you get more faster out of your training, but also at the end of the day, you get more because everybody who trains is limited by how much time you have to train. How far can you push your body? You're limited by recovery. So whether you're a weekend warrior or training at an elite level, getting more out of your training, it means at the end of the day you get you get to a higher level because you're because you're you're you're being able to do so much more within your limits. Yeah, and you guys, you've worked with them a lot, and you found weightlifting really, or powerlifting,

at a later age than most lifters do. Yeah, I'm a total geezer. It's true. Just trying to find the right way to say, hey, you're old. But what's a little bit of your background? You have a master's degree from Duke. Right, I have a master's in biomedical engineering. For the longest time, I was a research engineer in the medical device space. I still am.

But at the age of 30, I decided I wanted to start powerlifting. So I started when most people stop. I entered my first competition at 30. Luckily, I won, so I just kept going. But, you know, learning things when you're this late into the game, you don't have a lot of the advantages like young kids have. I don't pick up things as quickly. I'm not as fearless.

I recover slower. So I had a lot of catching up to do. And luckily I had a coach, so I think the first two or three years I was able to cover a lot of space. But then around year two, year three of powerlifting, I discovered Halo. And I actually used to work in a similar space. I did research using TENS, which is electrical current to the nerves,

both motor and sensory. So I understand the research that goes behind TDCS pretty well. And I thought, oh, hey, you know, this would be great. If I could just use this on my brain, this would help me learn techniques so much faster. I think I got lucky winning a lot when I was earlier in my career because I was naturally strong enough, coordinated enough,

but there was a lot of flaws in my technique that were just really holding me back and frustrating me. So I had this grand idea that, oh, if I use TDCS, then I could squat a lot better because my squat technique is still so awful as a relatively neophyte lifter. So luckily, Hag that was a good idea too and we gave it a go and the

squat's been much better these days i think it's really interesting that you come from the power lifting side of things because i know that if olympic lifters like the technique is so much more complicated or perceived as so much they're more complicated than power lifting but your ability to use Halo and really hammer home the technicalities of bent squat and dead, which when you dig into that world is very complicated. Where do you see a lot of people making mistakes

when they get under the bar, specifically in the bench press? I'd say for, actually for all of the big three, most people don't engage their core enough in the proper way so for the bench people have a loose back on the descent for the squat people have a loose back on the descent and then for the deadlift people don't engage their back in the right way when they're starting the lift so in a lot of that it's that's not a strength thing that is a technique thing you

just have to cue your brain to say okay back fire like this and hold like this as i do this yeah and if you're new that's a lot to think about right so you want to get to the point where it becomes intuitive to just kind of do it and tools like this really help the bench press in powerlifting specifically competitive it's a kind of a funky looking movement people look at it they don't really know what's going on right can you walk through a little bit of your process from maybe warm up to getting your back engaged and setting a world record at some point so the bench press the way i do it's a very exaggerated technique it involves a lot of the back i have a very pronounced arch um this leads men on the internet to tell me i'm going to break my back every day it has not happened yet so i'm

still safe men on the internet keep them on the internet they're cool at least they're talking the warm-ups entail you know stretching my back, stretching the rotator cuff, getting that area warmed up, doing a few bridges to practice, and then trying out the technique with just the empty bar a few times, making sure my back is fully engaged and firing properly as I do the warm-up with the bar. Can you explain that position a little bit? Because if somebody doesn't really understand powerlifting or the bench press, they would look at that and say, whoa, she's going to blow out every vertebrae in her back right now.

Okay, so when I arch, so I have an arch that looks kind of like a gymnast arch or like a yoga bridge. But unlike with yoga, I'm only arching my thoracic spine and not my lumbar. So from here up is heavily curved, and from here down is relatively straight. So when people say, oh, you're going to break your back, you're going to hurt yourself, they're thinking of your lumbar spine, which does not like to be bent in that way. Luckily, during that movement, this part is tight and it's keeping the back straight, and just this part is arched, and then I have my lats supporting it and maintaining the arch. So keeping the lats tight while you're rowing the bar down is what really matters in maintaining the arch.

And I think for a lot of neophyte lifters, that's the first thing they forget. When they're bringing the bar down, they think, well, I have the arch, I'll take care of everything, and they'll just drop the bar, and it'll kind of fall anywhere, and their back's not tight, and then their arch gets loose, and then that's when the trouble starts. Yeah, and when you are arched there, your core stability is really the thing that's holding your lumbar spine in place. So how are you capable of, like, focusing on that area and maintaining a good position when there's – what's the record now? 277. Damn.

Damn. Wow. Chick's so strong. 277 pounds on the bar how are you bracing your how do you focus on bracing your core when you're this bar is about to come back down and just crush you yeah so there's a few things and every area has its own function so up here stays tight in the lats that's the thoracic spine for you listening in your car ride to work think of uh bringing the shoulders down and back and just pinning them in place of the lats. And then the lumbar spine and the stomach are straight.

So I think of like flexing my core, keeping the stomach flexed so that area is tight. And then the lower back and the glutes support all that. So at the same time, I'm also squeezing my butt. So everything has something going on. And you have to remember to do all of it. Always squeeze your butt. But the second you don't do any of it, then your arch gets loose and you drop the bar on yourself.

I think there's a big misunderstanding that the bench press is like a pec exercise. You haven't mentioned your chest at all. Right. So for me, this is mostly – Those crazy bodybuilders that get the pump on, they're looking for the big chest. But it's really a back and lat thing. It really is for me. Well, it should be for everybody, right?

You do it better than everyone in the world. They should listen to you. I mean, in theory, they should. Yeah. You're an expert. I like it. What kind of maybe debunked the myth of like it being a chest exercise and why is your back so important in the bench press? So the back stabilizes the bar as it moves down.

And then when the back stabilizes the bar, I can think about keeping everything tight. That way, when the bar comes to the right spot, my chest is already engaged. Everything's tight. My back is tight. And the bar. I can think about keeping everything tight. That way, when the bar comes to the right spot, my chest is already engaged, everything's tight, my back is tight, and the bar just pops up. So pretty much

keeping the back engaged is setting yourself up to have an easy ascent, right? So most of your concentration, most of the work is in the descent. I exaggerate it, but my descent

is probably like 3x longer than my ascent, right? I take my time bringing the bar down. It kind of feels like, definitely looks like 3x longer than the Maya set right I take my time bringing the bar down kind of feels like definitely looks like I'm rowing the bar down and then that gets the bar to the right spot every single time and then when it's ready to go up it just goes up I see another big flaw in where the bar actually hits on people's bodies and they never really think about shoulder positioning and how right the bar supposed to come down anytime I see somebody benching and their elbows start flying off to the side, like,

what are you trying to do? This isn't a tricep press. You're supposed to be benching. Get the elbows in tight. The bar is supposed to come down. Where are you thinking when the bar is coming down? Like, what is that sweet spot for you where it hits? You have your one-second pause and you're like, world record.

So for me, it's pretty close to the nipple line. But the most important thing is when you practice, the bar has to come down on the same spot every single time. And what drives that technique is keeping the back engaged and keeping the back tight. You kind of jokingly a second ago said that it's not a tricep exercise, but that's an enormous component to it. Are you wearing a shirt, I'm assuming, for this? No.

You're doing raw lifts for this one? Yeah, okay. So yeah, you're going to have definitely some pec activation and whatnot, but especially for lockout, triceps are an enormous part of the bench press. So, yeah, you were joking, but for someone who's not interested and familiar with powerlifting, like having strong triceps is an enormous part of the lift. Yeah. Anything above getting that lockout piece is all triceps.

So we've got a lot of seemingly easy movement here. Easy, easy. Something that should, like, everybody bench presses. That's like the question in the gym. Like, what do you bench? But nobody really is taking it to this level. And when you see this problem or see something where it's a motor capacity in a way of, like, how are we wiring movement patterns?

What are you looking at when you see somebody bench press? Yeah, yeah. So the core of so much of what you were saying there is just how important technique is. And everything that goes from the average person like me who just goes to the gym and like, oh, look, I'm benching, whatever. And what you're doing, so much of it is technique. And that's the way you dial in the technique is it's neuroplasticity. It's your brain knowing what to do. And when you start that journey, when you start the journey to good technique, you start by being very analytical about it.

And there's this cognitive process where you listen to your coach. You process what they're telling you. You think through, okay, here's what I've read. Here's what I've heard. Here's how it looks. Here's what my coach is telling me. And you try to reproduce those movements. And the first time, the 10th time, the 100th time, you don't get it right.

So you've got this feedback loop. Anybody who's learning anything in your brain, you've got this feedback loop where you're constantly this feedback loop. Anybody who's learning anything in your brain, you've got this feedback loop where you're constantly analyzing your output. And you're trying to match that up with everything that cognitively you know, but none of it's baked in yet. So that's the first phase of learning. And you're starting this process of every single repetition, not just cognitively, but under the hood in the neural networks of your brain. It's learning to just automatically create exactly the right output at exactly the right time. And one of the cool things about the whole motor system is you've got,

so your muscles don't just fire. I mean, you guys know this. I'm preaching to the choir here because you guys are lifters. But your muscles, they don't just fire. I mean, you guys know this, like, you know, I'm preaching to the choir here, you know, because you guys are lifters, but your muscles, they don't just fire as, you know, as one muscle. You've got a ton of muscle fibers there. They're all individually innervated, which means there's an individual nerve connection to all over that muscle. So getting optimum technique and optimum strength, it relies on exactly the right combination of outputs at the right time and the only way that happens, you can't think through all that with every movement you're doing.

That comes from this with every rep it gets a little more automatic. Yeah. I actually see this so much in beginner to intermediate lifters is they know all the pieces but there's very little system of movement that's going on. Like you,

in a bench press, nobody's thinking about squeezing their butt. Nobody's thinking about the way they're breathing to stabilize their spine. All they're thinking is get it to my chest and push. So how is kind of using electricity and getting to the motor cortex really able to wire the entire body together. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, first of all, the cool thing here is this is what your brain likes to do anyway. However you train, if you're training mindfully and you're paying attention to your technique, your brain is doing this learning anyway. But something, a technology like Halo Sport, it's like an assisted pull-up for your brain. Your neurons, they're doing their thing.

They are firing together. When you have a successful rep, successful output, those connections get reinforced. But what technology like this does is it increases the chances that they're going to fire together. It helps them. It lowers the threshold, depolarizes the neuron somewhat, makes it more likely for them to fire together. So that whole process of firing together and wiring together, it optimizes the neural network faster. Awesome. That's kind of like saying instead of one unit firing

and then the next and the next and the next, you're squeezing it all together while firing at the exact same time. So if you're doing a tug-of-war and the guy in the front pulls and then the next guy and the next guy and the next guy versus everyone pulling all at the same time, you're obviously going to have a stronger contraction if everyone pulls all together. Right, right. Yeah.

And you're exactly right about timing. That was legit. Yeah, that was a tug of war. Yeah, we're going to have a video with that, like animated tomorrow. Like, Justin, can you do that? Yeah, so, but yeah, it's all about about timing and like when you dive down into the neurophysiology of your synapses if you have a certain timing that's almost synchronous between this neuron firing in the next one then that that's the signal for that synapse okay that that was a successful outcome i'm going to get a little stronger here and then it just cascades from there and you just keep getting better and better when you started your career in powerlifting what what was that process like you start a little bit later than most people you've got a lot to

catch up um was there a bunch of hang-ups in the beginning on the form and then yeah once you started to use the um started working with halo how much quicker did that pick up for you so when i first started i had never bench press before ever i mean i i did like bodybuilding like bench pressy type things yeah but not like i never like lift yeah so i actually hired a coach and i said you know i'm not sure what this bench press thing can we just skip that and can i just compete in the other events and he said no i just want squat i was like ah crap so i have to learn all this yeah um so the bench actually took a while to learn that was the whole like arch and leg drive that took forever to learn uh this. Yeah. So the bench actually took a while to learn. That was the whole, like, arch and leg drive.

That took forever to learn. That was difficult. The squat remained the most difficult. Yeah. I would do everything that a neophyte lifter would do, right? I would tabletop, would shoot my butt out. I wouldn't, like, when I would descend, I would descend backwards, not straight down.

So that, for those reasons, my squat lagged all the other lifts as i improved i remember getting very frustrated thinking you know like most people are getting these kind of gains on their squat and i can't so why not and obviously it was my technique but i just kept thinking why can't i do x y and z even though i know to do it why won't my body do it so um i was already working on this when i when i met halo and then when i got a unit i was still working on this but i find that the problems have decreased significantly i don't tabletop the way i used to and i don't shoot my butt out the back the way i used to so it's really helped i mean i think a lot of it was just like

really diligent mindful training to having a coach watching myself lift and just knowing i was doing these things and working against it actively but then doing all that plus the halo gave an extra boost you're not just a bench presser you also do the squat and the deadlift it's happened before pretty well you had the world record total as well right so in your squat and deadlift did you see the same um like i guess growth? The squat the most so. Yeah. And I think it was because that was the pose I was actively working on the most. That was my biggest pain point.

Yeah. I think many people look at the bench press and they think that, like we were talking about earlier, like it's a chest and we're talking about it being a back, but nobody's thinking about where their heels are in the ground and how this is actually a very full body movement. What's going on with your heels? Many people may not be thinking about their feet and where their feet are planted that they're driving out of the ground at all when it comes to lifting maximum weight in the bench.

Through my feet, I'm getting leg drives. I'm using my feet to help maintain my arch. My body is being pushed towards the bar with my feet and I'm squeezing my butt so that I don't slide off the bench the whole time. And if your butt comes off the ground, no lift, right? Or off the bench. Right, right. That's like the specific rule in there that there's no gap.

Right. So I know I'm doing this right because at very, very high and very intense bench workouts, my lower back will get tired. Yeah. One thing I'm really interested in is how you're using this going into meets. Because a powerlifting meet is not, it happens across like an eight hour day. Many times, like you can go,

go do your squat and then sit around for three hours until you're dead, you're deadlift. And then another three hours or whatever it is until bench press shows up. So what is your process during the actual competition? And are you using halo to prepare for this? So I use halo first thing in the morning before the squat, which is the first event. And then after that, my process is, you know,

I like to start the day off with good squats. For me, that kind of sets the tone of how I feel for the day. And then after that, it's keep well fed and keep yourself calm and relaxed. Yeah. But I just use this system once throughout my meeting. Just when you wake up? Yeah.

There's no additional benefit to using it right before each individual lift? You know, I think there think there is but for me the squat makes me the most nervous so from a like mental readiness standpoint if i can have a good squat day then i just feel confident doing everything else yeah is that is that the you guys prescribe so to speak or you suggest once a day but have you guys experimented with multiple times a day with the technology so you know we and others are working on that. Right now, we base that recommendation in the science, and the vast majority of the science is using this once a day. So, and, you know, just to be clear, it's most of the benefit actually comes not on game day, but just from the cumulative effect of combining it with great practice over

time. So, but yeah, it's, you know, I think every, everybody in the science is interested in, well, you know, how, how far can we push this? So this isn't something where if you've never used it before and you've got a competition coming up and you buy it the day before competition and you go on the next day, you're going to like smash this massive PR because you were stimulated that day. It's an accumulative effect over time, but not necessarily like a one-time deal. Right. Yeah. I mean, so under laboratory conditions, we can show an effect in one session, but for competition, I mean, you might just be so excited because you've got this awesome pair of great sounding headphones that, you know, you smash all your records, but yeah, the

real effect here is just combining it with high quality training over time. Yeah. So is it mostly just a solidification of the technique and the coordination as opposed to actually increasing muscle contraction force specifically? Right. So there's like three parts to that answer. So I'm going to give you the slightly long answer. All right. So a big part of it is technique. Another part of it is the fact that actually getting the most force out of your muscle, especially if you're talking about explosiveness and not just peak force. Part of that is it is literally training that neural

network to, you know, again, remember your muscle, it's made up of a lot of muscle fibers, motor units. So you have to train all those to fire within the muscle in the right sequence for optimum strength, optimum explosiveness. And you can see that most clearly if you look at something like rate of force development or explosiveness. The third part of the answer is there is good science out there that just at a very raw level shows increased neural drive to the muscle, which translates to things like greater maximum voluntary contraction. So there's all three of those things going on. And you guys just had some independent studies that you didn't even know about show up.

Right, right. That validated all of the research you guys have been doing. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's one of those looked at power output during cycling. These were great randomized double, triple, in one case blinded sham-controlled studies. One was in cycling power output. Another one was in basically endurance time to failure in a running kind of model. And when we talk about time to failure, that's really interesting. And it's one of the most powerful effects of this kind of technology, I think.

Maybe I'm just speaking from my background as a rower, but Emily, from the way you were describing powerlifting, there's so many sports that when you try to do it at an elite level or at a serious level, you're doing the movements not in the way that a regular human being would come and approach a bar with weights on it or approach an oar in a boat or whatever it's there there's a ton of technique that frankly it's not it's not natural in some ways to you know how the how the human body just wants to move so we have to bake that in and in certainly in rowing and it sounds like in power lifting as well when especially if you're performing at that elite level, it hurts. You know, you're trying to not only execute this precise technique, but do it under crazy conditions where everything is just on the point of failure. And that makes it doubly and

triply hard to keep your act together and keep that technique when when it hurts it stuff starts to break down and the only cure for that is just is just baking it more and more into muscle memory we had a huge catastrophe after i left halo last week or two weeks ago i left my whoop band on the sink in the bathroom so what do i do i get all the way back to Raleigh, North Carolina, and I call the hotel. And you know what? The maid stole my whoop band. You know why? Because she's probably trying to track her HRV, see how well she's recovering. She's probably looking at how much her daily strain is. Well, guess what? I am mad. But lucky for me, I know the people at Whoop. I know that they are interested in my recovery, my daily strain, tracking my results. You know what? They expedited a brand

new Whoop band to me, and now my life is complete again. I love my Whoop band. I felt so naked walking around not knowing where I was in my day, how my workouts were being affected, how my sleep, how my recovery. Do you know what it's like knowing your HRV every single day for months? How great you feel when your HRV is in the hundreds and then seeing your resting heart rate below 45? Oh, so many good feels. And then you lose it. And then you lose it and then you lose it and then whoop comes through and saves the day by sending you a brand new band and they even upgraded a few of the things on the package

they've got a really cool charger now and the band that you actually use is significantly higher quality and completely waterproof get over to whoop.com, people. This is a real story. I'm so happy to have my whoop band back. It just makes my life feel so much better. Oh my gosh. I'm so much, so much happier having the whoop band on. My HRV, the last two days since I've gotten it back, because now that I have it and I'm much more stress-free, has been over 140. I'm the most recovered person you've ever met in your life. I'm sleeping amazing. My heart rate's under 45. Life is so good. For real, though.

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the day. Get over to perfectketo.com. Use the coupon code SHRUG. You're going to save 20%. And let's get back to the show. I think really in the CrossFit space too, where a ton of our audience is, we get to the red line very quick and we still have to go and do these really complex movements, you know, Olympic lifting for time, um, for load and time at some, and some workouts. And then you get into

really high skill, complex gymnastics and your heart rate set near maximal level. You have to have something that's able to keep that technique moving or the entire workout breaks down, which you're talking about. And I think that's why you guys are having such success. I mean, Kristen Holt works with you guys, and she's been in the top ten in the CrossFit Games for the last three or four years, I want to say. Yeah.

Have you noticed anything outside of her or maybe specifically with her in how you're able to, I mean, to be great at CrossFit, there's so many skills olympic lifting um that it it almost fits perfectly because you're able to have a much much larger breadth of movement and really be working on the quality of movement as well right right and you know i'll i'll speak more generally than to just just kristen's experience um but you know just overall um you know this has been it feels like this has been very well received by the crossFit community. And a big part of it is exactly what you cycle in your brain is quantifying results. And part of that quantification is just how did it feel? You know, that's always part of the internal loop.

Another part of it is tracking your performance and being very analytical about what am I optimizing? What did I do right? What did I do wrong? And that makes that whole feedback loop work better and it also it it it better and better leverages a technology like this that that that speeds up neuroplasticity anyway and i think that's you know that that's something that's really great about um about crossfitters is that kind of approach to quantifying and analyzing yeah so if i'm a person who i know that when I do high volume deadlifting, like I'm doing CrossFit style workouts and doing a Metcon,

say I have 225 and there's a total of 50 reps in this workout, and I know that once I get fatigued, my technique is going to change. It's going to get worse. I'm going to start rounding my back or whatever it is. Would it be to my benefit? It would be to my benefit. I'm answering my own question here to just not do that ever. But say that's the case and this person does that on occasion

if i had had that stimulation i wore the headset for 20 minutes before my workout and then now i'm fatigued and i'm doing something incorrect would it solidify the incorrect movement pattern even faster so what i want to if that's, what I want to break that workout up where I'm doing every minute on the minute, five reps or whatever it is, right. But I'm not getting that fatigued. I get the volume in, but they're all perfect reps. That way that technique is solidified in the correct way. Yeah. So, so yeah, so, so that, that does make sense. And that is, that is absolutely true. If you, if you use this technology with poor technique, then you're going to bake in poor technique. If you use it sitting on the couch, then you're

probably just going to get better at sitting on the couch. You know, part of the answer to that is coaching. Part of that is being very kind of self-analytical about when your technique is starting to fail. Part of it is, you know, as you say, you know, being careful that you don't reach the point where your technical work is counterproductive and everything's starting to break down. But that said, there is also a ton of value to training the way you compete. And if you never expose that point of failure, then you're going to get to it in a competition or when you're really trying to push yourself. And you're not going to have the feedback systems baked in to be able to push past that and and have your body and your neural networks understand what it feels like to still execute even when everything hurts so um you got to be analytical about how you

expose that that point of fatigue and failure but but but but it but it does still have to be done when we talk about crossfitters i think it's really easy to see how many different things we do, but when you walk up to a bar, there's a zillion things going through your head. What, when you, specifically, I mean, we talked a lot about the setup points and positioning for the bench press, but when you walk up to a bar

and you're about to do a one-arm back squat and there's all these people in the stands, what's going through your brain? And, like, does Halo, when you're working or have the headset on is it bringing a lot of like just trusting your movement patterns and like that confidence that comes with approaching a one rep max definitely so when i'm setting up for a bench press especially in a competition my biggest concern is always my arch and it it's always, is my arch tight enough? Is it high enough? Is it going to, am I going to be able to maintain it properly on the descent? And then, you know, if I can do that, then I can make this lift.

So it's nice to find a way to be able to train that reliably so that when game day happens, most of the time the answer is yes. So you don't even really think about it much as, like, am I strong enough? No, no. It's about the technique piece for you. Right. Definitely. Because at this point, you know, for me over the years,

I've noticed that, you know, if the, the difference between a good day and bad day for technique is many pounds. So the strength is always there. It's at this point, it's the arch that I'm worried about. What is your weakest part in the bench for us now?

Probably still the descent. It's getting the bar down at just the right point at just the right speed so it pops up very quickly. Well, is it there a pause at the bottom? Yes. And you can still pop it up? It sounds like you're, like, bouncing it off your chest. So as long as I don't get loose during the pause.

That's how I bench press. When me and you bench press against each other, say, I'm going to cheat. You do it the right way, I'll cheat. Oh, yeah, then I'm going to throw my butt up. That's whatever you want press. When me and you bench press against each other, say, I'm going to cheat. You do it the right way, I'll cheat. Oh, yeah, then I'm going to throw my butt up. That's whatever you want. Whatever you want. But, yeah, I'm kind of interested in just the confidence side of using it

and knowing that once you wake up in the morning, you have this mindful time, you're working on, you put the headset on. But what is, like, the mental shift, I guess, that goes into, I mean, using it over time, the confidence on you put the headset on um but what is like the the mental shift i guess that goes into i mean using it over time the confidence that you've had but just a little bit of the story on just the mental aspects of going into a powerlifting meet and being professional power lifter i i think the biggest mental shift is knowing that my technique will not fail me in a competition right so when i was um when i was new to deadlifting when i got nervous i would round my back a lot um that happens far less now which is great and then deadlifting, when I got nervous, I would round my back a lot.

That happens far less now, which is great. And then for squatting, when I got nervous, all would go to hell. What's your deadlift at? 4.30. We're not deadlifting today. Thank God. Go ahead. Keep going.

What's your squat? I think that one is like 357. I got that one, sure. As a ways to go. Yeah, I got that one. You know, that's always the biggest concern. And for that, that's also largely technique-driven. Yeah.

Right? So when I was – Talking shit. You weigh 80 pounds less than me. Keep going. I'm so sorry. But I want to know that my brace is always going to be there, right? So for squatting, my biggest problem initially was the

brace i wasn't bracing correctly if i can brace correctly all the time then it just makes it that much easier in competition when you're using the headset are you able to kind of focus on the pieces like is there a mindset piece that you're using or like almost like a meditative piece of like thinking about your core more thinking about stabilizing more or do you just have it on to you know the nice thing about the headset is it's not like you have to think about it working. It just works. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what is like a normal warm-up, I guess, then? Or like can you walk us through what your current training looks like so that we can see? Sure. So I train about five days a week. I travel a lot for the day job. So sometimes it's four, sometimes it's five.

Does it always get in the way? I know. We're lucky we made this the day job. But most weeks I'll bench about two times, squat about two times, I'll deadlift once. And then warm-ups are pretty simple. It's a lot of foam rolling the area. It's a lot of mobility.

And then it's just doing the actual movement with much lighter weights and focusing on form, speed, and power. Yeah, moving 135 the same way you moved to 77. Do you have a coach now? I've always trained with Dan Green since day one wait where's he out of mountain view out of boss barbell boss barbell it's a good name for a gym yep so he was my first coach and he's been my only coach that's awesome who are your training partners um do you have like a bunch of strong people you're working out

yeah i mean i train at a powerlifting gym so there's a bunch of strong people you're working out with? Oh, yeah. I train at a powerlifting gym, so there's a bunch of people there. Do they all use the headset, or do they look at you like you're crazy? You know, I think three of us have it. Are they the strongest ones in the gym? Actually, yes. Bam! Case closed. Case closed.

So we had, when Dan was on the show, we had the Halo Sport 1, and you guys just are about to release Halo Sport 2. We put it on in the office. It's significantly more comfortable. That was my biggest drawback with the first one was that the thing was uncomfortable. This one's incredibly comfortable. That is fantastic to hear. I put it on, and I looked at Doug right away away and it was like, whoa, this is wildly different.

Just as a user experience, it's significantly more comfortable. The Bluetooth in there so you can get your music while you're training. When you take the nibs out, which is the piece that kind of delivers the shock, it's still very comfortable so you can use it as a training headset. But what were the big improvements and things that you were thinking about in the technology and then having that become the actual product like what were the what were you trying to improve on yeah yeah so we we knew we had a lot of room for improvement in uh in just making headphones um you know we we came in we came into this we're medical device

guys we're neuroscientists umists. We never even dreamed like six years ago that we'd be sitting here making headphones. So we had to learn a lot in a hurry. We learned a lot with Halo Sport, the original, and now we learned even more and we knew that it had to be more comfy. It had to have Bluetooth audio, the audio, we had to level up on the audio quality, and just all the little things that go into usability. Because at the end of the day, if you're training or whatever context you're using a product like this in, it's got to fit into your life. And you've got to be able to wear it into the gym and have people's first glance be, hey, that's a nice looking pair of headphones. And then they look a little closer and it's got

these nibs on it, which we've made a little bit softer. We've made a little bit easier to stay wet. That's one of the pieces of feedback we got from our users. And I feel like we've been very lucky in having a lot of users just straight from early on, like Emily, like TJ Carey, the Raiders, you know, some of our earliest adopters, they used the heck out of the product and they got great results. But also they came to us and said, hey, here's what we want. I think TJ broke like three headsets just using the heck out of it. And it was awesome because we learned a lot from each of those. So all that stuff, it goes into just a ton of little improvements on everything that you hear, everything that touches your head, and everything that makes it not just a neurostimulator, but a product that you can throw in your gym bag and you can put on and it looks good and sounds good and makes you feel good. For the people that just heard you say that those things do better staying wet, that might have been a record scratch for some people like wait they'd be wet my

headphones have to be wet on my head like what's what's the deal with that yeah why do they have to be wet how wet do they have to be am i is i might have like wet drips coming down my face while i'm wearing my headphones right well well you better be sweating so so yeah you got to have some wet drips um but seriously um you know, so the language of the brain is electricity. The waveform is an electrical waveform. And anything that has to do with electricity in the body takes a little water to make it happen. So for the people just listening here, I'm holding what we call the primer band. And it's got some little foam nibs on it.

They feel nice and soft. They're little sponges. And to make this work, you have to get these wet. You run it under the faucet at the gym, under your water bottle, spray it with water from a bottle, and then you snap it into the headset. And that's the part that makes great contact with your scalp. And that's what actually delivers the waveform we call neuropriming. Some people are going to listen to this and go electricity on my brain on a band is this thing safe yeah yeah yeah testing and you guys have cleared all that up clearly yeah one but um just a little bit on the the safety side of putting a little bit of electricity on your brain

yeah no it's it's an awesome question it's an important question um you know so the so this is a technology that's been used. First of all, it's been studied in thousands of published research studies by hundreds of researchers all over the world. And so there's a body of just hard data on the safety. And the outcome of that is it's safe. So that's part one. Part two is our own data. We have thousands upon thousands of users now.

We monitor what they're saying about the product. We monitor what happens with them. That's part two. It's safe. And then part three, if you look at what you call basic principles, what is this actually doing to your brain and your body? Well, you've already got neurons firing together. You know, this is, it's not kind of, it's helping your neurons fire together, which is what they already like to do.

So, you know, even just from basic principles, you know, there's data, the science, it all comes together. Halo Sport is safe. Yeah. We're mostly talking with athletes right now, but for someone who's, they're not looking to be a world-class bench press champion or anything like that, like they're just kind of a regular

everyday Joe, and you said rock climbing, cycling, etc. Even outside the world of athletics, who else might benefit from using Halo? Right, right. So, certainly weekend warrior athletes, but really anybody who lives and dies by

movement. And that's been one of the cool things that we've seen as we've gotten more and more of these out into the world. Musicians. If you're a musician, whether you're a pro or just somebody trying to learn piano, you're an athlete. You're doing amazing things with your hands and your fingers. And in order to communicate with music, you've got to have all those technical fundamentals dialed in so you can let your fingers form that D minor chord or whatever, and then you're free to express yourself. I'm a piano player.

I've used it for practicing piano. We've got world-class pianists and violin players and cellists, flamenco dancer. There are surgeons using, it's actually an active field of research right now, is surgical training with non-invasive brain stimulation to speed up the surgical training. And there's some great scientific papers that are published on that already. What about like soldiers and the military? Right. Pilots, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's some of our earliest adopters have been U.S. Special Forces. Pilot training, that's tons of interest in that. One thing we learned from working with some of these amazing soldiers, especially Special Forces, is they don't want to spend more time in the gym.

They want to spend less time in the gym so they can carve out more time for learning languages and working on soft skills and working on all the stuff that makes them highly trained professionals. So anything that gets them more out of their training, they're all in. It's been fantastic. Actually, on that note, this really is siloed to motor skills.

Like if you wanted to learn languages, this wouldn't apply or would it? So same technology, but not Halo Sport. There's a ton of great research out there in what you'd call cognitive applications. And that's things like attention and focus and learning. It's no secret at this point that Halo is interested in those applications, but that's not Halo Sport. Halo Sport is movement because the motor cortex is right here, right across the top of your head where the band of the pair of headphones goes. I was actually going to get into just playing devil's advocate of there's plenty of people that are could be listening saying why don't i just practice visualization or meditation or some sort of brain focus piece

that can aid in you know better movement patterns yeah there's a big difference between the parts of the brain as you're explaining on that handle that focus and attention piece right um and where you're at can you can you just go into a little bit of the actual neuroscience of why the band hangs out in your motor cortex and what goes on there? Yeah, absolutely. It's called primary motor cortex. Again, it's this strip right across the top of your head. It's one of the reasons when we started the company, we started as a resource organization.

And we looked at all the science that was out there. We studied some of the cognitive stuff. We studied some of the movement stuff. And we decided we were going to make these headphones for athletes because Motor Cortex is right here. And it let us make a product that looked and felt like headphones, which is, it's so huge for when you're trying to kind of bring a whole new technology to the world. So brain's motor cortex,

it's got what's called somatotopic organization. So different parts of your body map to different parts of that motor cortex. Your legs and core are right at the top where it starts to dive down into the interhemispheric, interhemispheric fissure between the two halves of your brain. And then if you come outwards, it's, it's arms, you know, arms, hands, fingers till you get to the, to the, to the more lateral parts of your brain.

So that's one of the reasons. So your brain is actually like core to extremity almost in a way as well. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so, so it's all mapped out. is actually like core to extremity almost in a way as well yeah yeah exactly what yeah yeah yeah so so yeah so so it's all mapped out if you're you know if you're if you're doing if you're doing brain mapping like fmri or you know infrared brain mapping f mirrors you can um you know and you tap your fingers you can actually you can see this part of your brain light up right here because it's specifically that part of your brain that's controlling that part of your body so this is

connected with an app, which you're the CTO of the company, so I imagine you have a large hand in developing the app as well. What is actually on that app? What does it help you do? And then is there any data collected along with that that you guys can use to innovate for future products?

Yeah, yeah. So first of all, full credit to the guys working on the app. That's not me. They don't let me anywhere near that. But we've got an awesome team of developers. So the app, it's a front panel for the device. It lets you start it up, monitor what's going on, make sure you get good contact. At the end of the day, the app kind of gets out of the way and lets you do your thing

with your training. You can start it up. You can leave your phone in your bag and go across the street, go to the other end of the gym, and the headset is still going to do what it's supposed to do. But then at the end of that, the app lets you track your progress, track your usage, and then we get some usage data back so we understand, you know, people want to get, they want to quickly get great contact right when they put it on. So, you know, we've, some of the improvements that we've made in Halo Sport 2 have come from looking at that data and seeing, you know,

how do people fiddle around when they put the product on. Yeah, if I didn't have that app, I would not have had it. I wouldn't have had full contact. Once I had the app, I was like, oh, like, I really had to, like, pull it onto my skull and tighten it down a little bit and make sure, like, I got the nibs, you know, through my hair so I had good contact. But if I didn't have the app there would have been i would just put them on and it wouldn't it wouldn't work yeah yeah yeah so yeah so the the app's vital there

um and you know you you mentioned hair and you know let me just point out that that's one of the one of the challenges that we knew we had to meet with the original halo sport and where we've leveled up here is uh you know for for those of you listening i'm i'm bald i'm baldest guy in the room right now i think um no i got you no i think on your bone uh yeah i i you got more stubble up here than i do but uh but yeah you know not not not everybody looks like me so uh you know we we knew we had to have build something that would get through get through hair get through a lot of hair and and just do that seamlessly. As you progress in your professional career here,

do you continue or are you planning on continuing using this? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I still use it for squats every so often. I sew the bench these days. When you're the best. I did gymnastics for like two weeks last year, so I used it right before gymnastics. Very cool.

And then I was able to do like flips really quickly. Yeah. That was great. Are you still recognizing a lot of the gains as far as some of the movements you struggle with like the squat? I think in general gains are just really hard to come by once you reach a certain training age. So I just don't see that many gains in general. But, yes, I do notice that technique continues to improve over time.

That's the gain. Right. But it just doesn't improve like it used to. You know know better than just focus the weight on the bar right you know better than that um yeah so i guess in a way like using this if your performance or whatever it is if you find that it's maybe i shouldn't say stalled out but um does it change the way that you're kind of using the headset um like in your day really i i just see it as're kind of using the headset? Not really. I just see it as kind of like a tool in a toolbox.

So, you know, I use it along with all my other tools, and I train the same. Yeah. Is your training volume going up, down? Where are you at now? I think it's going down. So I just train less days because, you know, when I first started, on an average day I'd be probably benching 1X body weight per bench workout. Now I'm benching 1.8X body weight every single bench workout. I can't do that three days a week.

Yeah, that's a lot of volume, a lot of beat down. 1.8 every day that you get on the bench? Something like that. How much accessory movements are you putting in? And then maybe like three accessories. Yeah. What are those? So I'll bench maybe like – I much accessory movements are you putting in? And then maybe like three accessories. Yeah. What are those? So I'll bench maybe like. I want to know everything you do in training.

Maybe I'll do like a set of like 240 for like a few sets. And then my accessories will be either my close grip or it'll be incline dumbbells. I'll do some flies and I'll always do one back exercise just to keep the core tight. Do you do a lot of unilateral work? Such as? Single arm? It depends. do one back exercise just keep the core yeah do a lot of unilateral work um such as single arm it depends so i do single arm rows a lot and that might be it that's we need to get you more accessories such as well we'll go over them but you have to teach me how to bench press i'll teach you the accessories keep you healthy then we go 1.9 next year 1.9 every time you touch there we go

all right um so we have you're getting ready to launch this. Gethalosport.com. You guys can get 20 bucks off on the pre-launch. I believe that's right. When you put out the brand new headset, what's going on in your brain right now? You're about to introduce the last year and a half of work to the world. What's going on in your brain right now? Is this an exciting time?

It's an exciting time, and I bet it's a lot like what Emily feels like on that morning of a competition. It's anticipation. We're bringing this to the world, but at the end of the day, we got this and we've done the right things. It's not the day of the competition that decides what's going to happen. It's all the preparation you put into it.

It's the same for developing a product as it is for training. Yeah, once you guys launched the first one, how long was it before you were like, oh, we've got to make that better. We're going to have to come up with a second one. We left a little bit in the tank uh how long was that process oh man like when when you're building something like this um because i wonder if you're already like oh gosh there's five things i need to make better right now oh yeah like like as an engineer i and and as an engineer you know

you look at anything you make and you're like all right that that and now oh geez, that, that, that, and now, oh, geez. And that's, you know, that's, but, you know, and, and, and it was the same way for Halo Sport Classic. You know, we, we, we knew, we knew we wanted to move pretty quickly to make something that had Bluetooth audio. You know, we, you know, make something that made it even easier to get contact with your head. So, so yeah, you know, we've, that's, that's part of, part of, part of how you do product development so yeah you know we've that's that's part of part of part of how you do product development is you know we got to be thinking about the next step ahead the next step and the next step after that yeah how much goes into seriously the thing that i was most impressed with because i haven't used it for on the performance side but you put it on and it's

significantly more comfortable what what is the process for that, for you, of actually designing a headband that people are comfortable in? It seems oversimplified almost, but as soon as I put it on, it was the very first thing that I noticed. It was like, this thing actually fits. Yeah, well, the first step is a bald guy like me putting on a lot of headsets and being like, that's kind of pokey up there. And that actually did drive one of the things you notice here is what we call the proximal pad. But really, it's just the strip of rubber here that makes it comfortable on anybody's head and makes it so it doesn't slip off your head if you're moving around, which is key for athletes. Another thing we knew was on the edge here, we needed to get this edge up out of the way so it doesn't make it soft, get it up out of the way so it doesn't kind of crunch into your head, but still does what it needs to do to lock the primer band in when you snap this in. Yeah, that's true.

Without the primers on for the previous version, I wouldn't wear it without the primers because it would dig into my head a little bit. But now with this newer version, I can actually just use these like everyday headphones. I can wear them on the airplane where I'm like throughout my entire workout because they're comfortable with and without the primers on. I actually really like that it's one piece instead of three as well. Cool. The three pieces. I'm not that responsible.

I'm going to lose something. Who am I kidding? But that one piece makes it a lot easier and much more usable. I think I'm really excited to get it home. Awesome. And try it out. Awesome. We're going to do some get at home. Awesome. Try it out. Awesome. We're going to do some bench press.

Let's do it. World record holder. Where can people find you? At the office or on Instagram. Where's the office? Do you want to come to the office? They will. They're out there.

The people will come. You can find me on Instagram. That's probably a safer place. Ami the Bench Bra. Ami AMI. That's my nickname. Wait, what is place. Ami the Bench Bra. Ami A-M-I. That's my nickname. Wait, what is it? Ami A-M-I.

Cool. Ami the Bench Bra. Bra B-R-A-H. Bra. Right on. Do you have an Instagram account? I don't. I don't.

I'm on Twitter. Wingeier is my handle on Twitter. There you go. How do you spell that? W-I-N-G-E-I-E-R. I had a hard time saying it, so I can't spell it. W-I-N-G, then take all the vowels in the world and pack on an r at the end squeeze them together um and uh and people can it's gethalosport.com forward slash

shrugged um for the pre-launch you're gonna save twenty dollars and it's at a 2.99 price point which is like half less than half of what it was yeah get halo for the um halo sport one you got it classic i like pre-launch goes through it through april is that correct uh pre-launch for the Halo Sport 1. You got it. Classic. I like you saying that. Pre-launch goes through April. Is that correct? Pre-launch goes through April, I believe. But check out the site.

Don't quote me on that. And I've actually heard you guys had two runs come through already. And pre-orders are sold out on a monthly basis. Yep. So people get in there because they're literally selling out before they've even been produced. You got it. Doug Larson, where can the people find you?

Find me on Instagram, Douglacy Larson. I'm at Anders Varner because I'm Anders Varner. Get in the Strut Collective at Strut Collective. YouTube, iTunes. We will see you next Wednesday. That's a wrap, friends. I know you know how to be a better bench presser now. Guess what happened right after this interview?

Your boy went and bench pressed with the world record holder. And guess what she benched at like 130 pounds? 265 pounds. I didn't even have to spot her. Guess how much I benched at 200 pounds? 265. Same that she did. And let me tell you something.

Hers looked a lot easier than mine Doug even made fun of me and he said well yours looked like a much truer one rep max than hers did which basically means it was a lot heavier for me than it was for her but make sure you get over to gethalosport.com

forward slash barbell use the coupon code shrugged. You're going to save $120 on the prelaunch. Yo, the product is super cool. The science is super cool. I got to see their office. I got to meet the neuroscientists behind the product. I got to speak to their highest level athletes, train with their highest level athletes. The stuff's legit. It's going to make you learn movement patterns faster. It's just literally science. That's what they do. They're brain scientists. They learn how your brain works. And it's super cool that your brain is wired in the same capacity that your body is meant to move from core to extremity. That science is built into your brain and that's how they're able to use the headband

to help you learn faster. Increasing the complexity of your movements and the timing, the band really works and you should throw it on in the car when you leave work and head to the gym. But get over to gethalosport.com forward slash barbell. Use the coupon code shrugged. You're going to save $120 in the pre-sale. Also, thank you to our friends at Perfect Keto. Perfectketo.com. Use the coupon code shrugged to save 20%.

Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. Saving you 20% on all the juices. And then our good friends over at Whoop. I got my band on. I got my band back. Now I know what my HRV is every morning when I wake up. Whoop.com. Use the coupon code Shrugged.

You're going to save 15% and you're going to love it. We have the coolest stuff in the world coming down the pipeline to you guys, friends. I'm going to find out how strong you are, not just in powerlifting, not just in Olympic lifting. We are about to create a program that changes the way that you view strength, creating the most fun weightlifting event you'd ever seen in your life. It's going to be so much fun. Travis Mash is involved. There's some big names coming to the network. Yo, we're just getting this party started. We'll see you guys next Wednesday.