Barbell Shrugged - Doug and Anders Catch Up With Bledsoe - Episode 325

Episode Date: July 28, 2018

Struck family, Anders Varner here. Yo, super awesome show coming to you on a Saturday. What are we doing on a Saturday? Thing is, me and Doug, we love hanging out on the microphones. And we have so many people to talk to. And we have so many shows waiting for you guys to hear them that we're just going to start putting out to a week. It's not going to be every single week, but we have shows, audio-only shows,

filmed out through, like, September. And once a week, we're going to put one of them up, maybe every other week. But with some really cool guests, most of the time, we're bringing a full film crew with us and putting everything up on YouTube. But sometimes it's also awesome. It makes it a lot easier for us to just hit the road, put the microphones in the back of the trunk, and show up to random people's houses. Not really random. They're all strength and conditioning people.

And talk to them. And, um, we really don't have any like time commitments. Um, and we can take some really deep dives just on audio only. Um, so this one kind of kicks things off and it's really cool for me cause I get to interview Mike Bledsoe, who was the original host of Barbell Shrugged. Um, anytime we get to hang out with Mike, it's so cool. He's always got some really cool things to say on just a wide array of topics. But this is really our progression, you could almost say. A lot of times these things come across as interviews. I think this one comes across very much as just a conversation on strength and conditioning and the things that we are learning in our training and how they kind of relate to the training that we give you guys.

Most specifically, the one that I want to talk about is the muscle gain challenge. As we have added this to the vault, we have basically given everybody access to the muscle gain challenge at 50% off, plus 10 additional programs. The number one thing that we are hearing is people are getting very strong. They're learning how to move better. The goal of this program, the muscle gain challenge, is to get you big and strong. We are building strength, building muscle. You're going to put on 26 pounds in 26 weeks, and that's really exciting.

I think so many people, as they enter into the strength and conditioning world, really struggle with understanding proper movement mechanics. It leads to injury, and you never actually get to the goals that you're trying to get to. All of the programs, specifically the Muscle Gain Challenge, are designed to get you moving better so that you can actually gain strength and muscle in the right places, avoid injury, and really be reaching your goals. The only way that you're going to fail reaching your goals on these programs is if you're doing things inappropriately or you're not progressing well, you're moving poorly, which leads to injuries, and then you have to stop training. And that sucks. One thing that's so awesome about these programs inside the vault is all the video demos, all the written instructions for these things.

It makes it very easy to comprehend the programs. Muscle Gain Challenge, 26 pounds in 26 weeks. Get strong. If you go over to MuscleGainChallenge.com, we have a free guide. It's literally called How to Get Strong now. This is our best selling program. And this guide, how to get strong now is going to lay the foundation for the muscle gain challenge. So you can get into the muscle gain challenge, download how to get strong now at muscle gain challenge.com. It's a free ebook. You're going to be able to see tons of

testimonials, people getting bigger, stronger, faster, and most importantly, doing it well with good technique, proper coaching, proper progressions. That way, you understand the mechanics. Then you can start to build muscle appropriately. Very balanced program is what we want to be a part of. If you start moving poorly, you're getting bad muscles strong. And then that leads to, you know, nicks and dings, you end up fighting through that injuries, you have to slow down, you have to stop training, you're at the physical therapist, none of that stuff's fun. Get into the muscle gain challenge, download the free ebook how to get strong now. Get into the muscle gain challenge, download the free ebook, how to get strong. Now get into the muscle gain challenge inside the vault. You're going to get the muscle gain challenge for 50% off plus

10 additional programs, muscle gain challenge.com free download the free ebook, how to get strong. Now enjoy the show with Mike Bledsoe, a guest on Barbell Shrugged. That sounds interesting, huh? We'll see you guys at the break. About metaphysics and fucking light in your eyeballs. You're going to interview. Perfect. All right.

Rolling, by the way. Do you want to intro this? Do you want me to intro this? It's you. You're the host. Are we doing Barbell Shrug? Yeah, let's count it as Barbell Shrug Show. All right, cool.

Just post it as a bonus maybe this coming weekend. Are we going to what? Go ahead. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. I'm Anders Varner. Hanging out with Doug Larson. Yeah. And the most sexy man on the mic over here.

You just got the Barbell shrug sticker on for so... It's been a long time since we've seen you with the barbell shrug sticker on. Mike Bledsoe in the house at Stratum Fitness, Solana Beach. This is like our little home away from home here. They got a little CrossFit fitness class going on in the back.

Lindsey Renteria making things happen over there. It's good to be home in this place. It's good to be on the microphone with you again, dude. Yeah, I'm excited. Mr. Strong Coach. Yeah. We're going to talk about what the hell goes on in our fitness world.

How long have you been doing this fitness thing? 20-plus years? Yeah. Doug, 20-plus? Easy, yeah. I'm 20-plus. 22. So you've got at least 65 combined years of athletics, coaching,

and fitness knowledge going into this. And still learning. Still learning. When do you consider the start of your fitness journey? Because I have trouble saying, like, well, was it when I met my strength coach when I was, like, 14? Or do I count, like, when I was a little kid and I did gymnastics? Or, like, was it when I, like, decided I decided I wanted to do like Navy SEAL workouts?

I started looking for that stuff up online. Like where's like the beginning for you? I count it when I was actively trying to smash kids in my court when I was playing like street hockey. They were like out playing and I was like, no, I'm going to fucking win today. Like we're going to play some home run derby in my backyard and I was like, no, I'm going to fucking win today. Like we're going to play some, uh, home run Derby in my backyard and I'm keeping score. And then I found a barbell at 13.

So that's kind of like the strength and conditioning piece. But this, this, whatever this strength and conditioning thing is, it's just an extension of that same attitude and same, I don't know. I want to be good at things. Do you ever go to one of those bigger,, Faster, Stronger seminars back in the day? They had a book. They used to do seminars. I went to one like my freshman year of high school.

And that was like my first real introduction to squats and cleans and all that. And before that, I had just done primarily almost all bodyweight exercises. So I feel like that's like the beginning of my weightlifting career was that day at that gym before I went to baseball practice my freshman year of high school. My dad was like, I was shipping out to school, and I was going to be really small, and I hadn't hit puberty yet. I was going to go try and play hockey at a really high level. He was like, we're going to find a squat rack, dude.

Luckily, he kind of knew what he was doing. It gonna find a squat rack dude luckily he didn't kind of knew what he was doing it's pretty awesome that's good i count mine is when i picked up my first book or magazine or whatever when i started reading about it yeah i was about 14 but the stages of it like i didn't i didn't i was just working out for the first five six years because i was supposed to and then when i met brian and he was like really dialed in i was like oh i gotta up my game like he really knows what's going on he can like talk about nutrition talks about training protocols he like was dialed in on body for life and i was like oh there's like a next level to this thing so that's when i started learning what the hell was going on.

Is it a total coincidence that you had two separate business partners on two separate occasions that were both body for life? Champs? Like champions? Well, that was like the stage of, I mean, did Bill Phillips invent the 30-day challenge? Did anybody do it before him? I was reading a marketing book last week and uh joe polish so he's one of the best marketers on the planet he worked with bill phillips yeah during that challenge and so uh joe was the one that suggested that he put the before

and after pictures as a uh the before and after pictures that wrapped the books when you bought the book there was just yeah and the book you know joe talks about the book is nothing but testimonials so it's yeah it i remember getting that book and looking at it and it was i remember doing less when i got that book yeah if i followed the workouts i was doing less than what i was doing before which was likely a good thing yeah and the uh but it was it was just testimonials to keep you hyped up buying eas supplements myoplex i didn't know so i didn't even know what a supplement was much less myoplex being a meal replacement so i remember in college i would go we'd go train and then i'd come home and eat a full meal. And then I would drink the Myoplex directly after the meal as if I was taking something that was extra special.

Not really. It was just calories coming out. I went to GMC and got the weight gain 2300. The big number. It was like 44,000. You remember the biggest number was? I remember putting it in my mom's blender, dropping a banana in there and some other shit and blending it up and then it not mixing at all and trying to get the powder swallowed it was terrible yeah i feel like anytime you try to swallow like a big thing of powder

that's been coated in water so it kind of has like this like like chocolate if it was chocolate like a big chocolate like thick coating on it but then you break into it and just explodes dry powder into your mouth you're like fuck i need i need new supplements i remember thinking i might die you know i'm gonna choke on this this weight game shake and the funny thing i wish i would have been i wish i would have been uh tracking my shit back then because i bet it was tearing up my stomach and i didn't even know it it's like it's like oh i think i'm getting more, but I'm not digesting shit. Yeah.

Gut health was not talked about. But, yeah, that's just like the time when we all – if you're 35, if you're like 33 to 37 years old, how old are you now? 36. Yeah, you're in. That was like the hottest thing in fitness was Bill Phillips. He was running out in the middle of traffic on that thing. I still have the book sitting on my bookshelf right now. I can go flip through it. I saw it yesterday at your place. It was like the hottest thing in fitness was Bill Phillips. He was running out in the middle of traffic on that thing.

I still have the book sitting on my bookshelf right now. I can go flip through it. I saw it yesterday at your place. Check out my 40-40-20 diet. Super sets. Yeah. Super sets. In all honesty, if I'm at a hotel and I need to work out and I don't know exactly what kind of equipment,

I know in the back of my mind I can always go do that conditioning workout that 20 minute interval training workout and it's perfect increasing intensity it's 2 minute warm up, light jog, walk a minute run faster, run faster, run faster on increasing minutes and then go back to walk

4 rounds you're one of the first people that really popularized interval style training like that. Yeah. Like some people were certainly doing it beforehand, but he was one of the guys who really like launched that into the mainstream back when like cardio, like low intensity, high carb, low fat 80s, long runs was like the way to do things.

He really popularized actually putting some intensity into your cardiovascular training. I love that workout. I still love it. Get it on a treadmill. See how high you can get. If you can get up into like 11, 12, you're going to get a good workout, get a good sweat. You know, traveling around, I went into a lot of globo gyms, and Equinox is one of these. And I went in, and they have treadmill running classes now.

So if you want to go run on a treadmill with 20 other motherfuckers while someone yells at you you can do that they're like it worked for spin just put treadmills on there it's true it's true well yeah soul cycle on a treadmill you can do it i still want to do one degree more elevation i've heard i've heard soul cycle is a lot of fun it's basically a nightclub on a bicycle. With some self-development mixed in. Is it? Yeah, that's like the whole thing. They're like, you got this! It's like the highest

level of screaming at you that you're a champion. It's like Tony Robbins on a bicycle. You need to go do that sometime, just for the experience. You should eat mushrooms and then go do SoulCycle class. That's what it sounds like. I'm in. Everyone just got quiet and thought about that.

Chaga, Reishi. Blindsman. Give me a blanket. I'll cuddle up in the corner while everyone else. I could see the appeal in some ways where if you like to run or you like to cycle, but maybe you're not in that great of shape, and if you try to go do it with a group of people you're just gonna get left behind yeah like if you're you're doing it on a stationary bike or on a treadmill you can run at your own pace but

still everyone's around you so you can still you can still talk and like be a part of the group without feeling like you got left behind really why are you out here by yourself that's probably that's probably a big concern for a lot of people like back when we used to run fundamentals, we always made sure that the first couple days at least were AMRAPs. That way everyone starts and stops at the same time. Because we've done it before. We're like, okay, everyone finished the rounds for time workout in 12 minutes. Except for that one person who took 32 minutes because we didn't have time cap. And it was like, as we're all sitting around waiting for an extra 15 minutes for the one person who's totally embarrassed

to finish, we're like, okay, we need time caps or AMRAPs. This was a bad idea. And they've got 17 people cheering like, one more burpee. And the worst feeling. Stop. I think it was around 2010 is when people who weren't in great shape found CrossFit. So it was too intimidating or too fringe for anyone to know about it.

And then people who were out of shape started finding it. And then we had to change everything. I remember thinking was, you know, everything we were doing in the beginning wasn't great. And as the fitness level declined over the years, we go, oh, we actually have to cater. Okay, we're changing everything. We're having to make this easier in some ways.

It's interesting how the CrossFit audience, the people doing it, how it's expanded over the years. What would it look like if you were to start a class now like start a crossfit gym where where would your fundamentals class be i wouldn't do a fundamentals class i would do one-on-ones only i would do i would do one-on-one intros yeah and i i think a dozen of them before they got into a class environment and then the class yeah and then i the classes would be a lot more movement-oriented in regard to – I wouldn't let people away with shit anymore. I actually really – I used to let people slide way too much on poor movement.

We are in Stratum Fitness. So if you're in Del Mar, come hang out here. But I really dig the way they do these things. You get people crawling on the ground here. They do a lot of just – all the boring things that actually make you really healthy they do a lot of that stuff here and it's that's good it's a good vibe that's good the whole industry's not heading that direction well and you were talking about it has to um how you how you would beat people up it's like well after a year i have to go to physical therapy

yeah that's a problem but you were talking about talking about how the person that turns an 8-minute workout into a 32-minute workout, isn't that what the majority of these fitness, these new chain box stores are kind of, or fitness places? That's what they're doing is they're doing all the CrossFit stuff. They're doing the high-intensity stuff, but there's no whiteboard, and they make everybody feel good by putting 45-second rounds, 15-second rest, and putting six rounds, eight rounds together.

And here's the thing. It's all the same, though. And I'm sure Greg Glassman is thrilled about it because I think all he wanted to do was revolutionize the fitness industry. When I see battle ropes and kettlebells and group fitness class where people are doing functional movements, then they won. So I think in a CrossFit gym, a lot of times people, you got to go, that battle was won, so now we got to take it to the next level

if you're in a CrossFit box. I think this is a really interesting thing though because the journey that i'm on i don't know how you would ever be able to get that into a group fitness class by any means like what well i the things that i feel like i'm learning in the gym i don't recommend many people try unless you've been at this thing for 15 years. So like how the stuff that you do and you're getting into clubs and maces and just kind of exploring movement versus snatch, clean and jerk, back squat, and all those pieces.

So working with the barbell is much easier. Teaching somebody how to flow with a mace is going to be a or an indian club is a much more difficult conversation because somebody has to have a real connection with their body before they can even start to anybody can go put a bar on the back and then try and sit down whether it's pretty or ugly is is a different story but when you start having somebody with an indian club and they have to flow and they've got to find space behind their head, how would somebody even try and scale kind of where you're at so that they could put it into a group class?

I think the only way it works, and I think this, I've seen it, and what they're doing is they're bringing it into yoga. And so it's, you have to get out of non-comparative training in order to feel yourself. And so you can't feel yourself if you're comparing yourself to others. And so getting, which means you can't compete because competition is comparative. Yep. And so when you're in a comparative environment, it creates a focus on how you are not as good as the other person. Yeah. So you'll do anything to cover that gap in the short term. So it's technically short-term thinking. And so someone has to have the mindset shift of I'm going to consider my health in a long-term approach,

which means not the next five minutes, the next 50 years. And then so you have to have that conversation first, which is what is your – what are you doing with your life? And if somebody doesn't have that answer, they're going to do a bunch of dumb shit over and over again. So once they understand what they're doing with their life, now you can have a conversation about, okay, this is important to – let's have a conversation about what progress means. And what progress means for you is different from every other person on the planet.

Yeah. And then realizing that the more you focus on anybody else, the less you're able to focus on you. And you'll never get progress in comparative training. You will experience gains until you don't. And so the other thing is letting other people set the standard of fitness. And so when we're trying to reach a goal of back squatting a certain amount of weight, if no one ever told you that that was a thing, you would not pursue it for the most part. There would be very few people pursuing Fran times under three minutes and back squats over 500 if you'd never seen anyone do it

before you may never be inspired to do it in which case you might find yourself exploring things that are more in alignment with what would make your health improve and your fitness improve but now what you're doing is fitting yourself into somebody else's box yeah so chasing somebody else's fitness standards is uh is really living in my opinion uh if you want to find true alignment and true health it's it's a great place for people to start when they're doing nothing but that's something to mature out of yeah i feel like my journey has led like clearly competing and trying to be as strong as possible but i find the gym to be like a therapeutic place now and when i start that conversation every day there is no better performance enhancing drug than going and take a hit of weed and getting inside your body oh yeah and starting to move and stretch and have that conversation and i

i have an outside thought at times of how could we combine some of these like core principles of the yoga world of slowing down, starting everything, breathing, and really doing some good movement quality. And then somewhere around the 20-minute mark of class, why aren't we just picking up a couple light dumbbells and not moving them fast, but just doing the same movements. We just happen to have 15, 20-pound dumbbells in our eight. It doesn't matter.

If you can do these things. But taking the idea of yoga and the slow flow side of things, but let's just put some dumbbells in our hands. There's something new that you have yet to discover. Well, that's why I have you on the show, bro. You're a week ahead of me always. There's a, at least. If I had said five years, he would have said at least. You're a decade ahead of me.

I know. Call it two. It's not measured in time. There's steel mace yoga. Have you guys seen this? No. So steel mace yoga have you guys seen this no so steel mace yoga is new um some of the one of the trainers that on it they came from a yoga background and then you have black swan yoga which is a very uh unconventional yoga practice uh they're in aust, Texas. They have two or three. Really cool in that I think it's all donation-based too. So you show the class, pay whatever it is you feel like paying.

So they're implementing that. And then there's also a woman. Her name is Summer Huntington, and she has steel mace yoga online, I want to say. If not, they're coming out with it and then leo savage the guy that uh posted uh recently uh he works with her on some steel mace stuff so there's uh that yoga concept with a weight has uh come out come about with the mace what's cool about the mace is it's cheap as fuck it's cheaper than kettlebells so uh you only need a with the mace. What's cool about the mace is it's cheap as fuck. It's cheaper than kettlebells. So you only need a 10-pound mace, I promise. And then so that's happening.

The interesting thing you're talking about is really feeling your body, right? And improving the sensitivity in your relation to what's happening in your body. And yoga, what I've, in my research, what I've found is yoga's actually in the middle of that whole spectrum. You know, CrossFit's very on the non-feeling side. And then on the other side of the spectrum is something like Tai Chi. So Tai Chi I've been practicing because even with yoga yoga there's a lot of resistance against the floor and so with tai chi there's a lot the only resistance is the air or yeah and and at first tai chi to somebody who doesn't feel their body very much doesn't it doesn't it won't jive yeah it won't you won't get it it won't make sense but

if you keep doing it every day wake up every morning i do tai chi every morning now when if you wake up every day and do tai chi like those old motherfuckers by the way if someone's old and they're doing something gangster something's up yeah they they've been through it they know why there's a reason i want to ask them there's a story they're in the park yeah pushing the air yeah so um so yeah learning to to move energy inside your body is something that exists but only if you're tuned if you're sensitive enough to it yeah so uh for me i've learned that i have to balance my training i still lift heavy i took a break from lifting heavy for that reason i lift heavy now but only if i'm doing tai chi every morning yeah now i'm allowed to lift heavy

three days a week play at the end of the spectrum a little bit yeah exactly so if i if i don't feel if i'm not getting better at uh being sensitive to my body and i also do some feldenkrais are y'all familiar with that do not know that yeah i do um yeah i was with you the first time that we did it and i did not know what i was getting myself into no idea we walked out of there like okay that was not what i thought we were gonna be doing that was like 10 years ago 25 yeah 25 year-old Mike and Doug go and do Feldenkrais. We're like, what the fuck was that? We rolled around on the floor for an hour. I was so bored.

I thought we were going to work out. Okay. But I do that every day now too. It's really firing your muscles in the right patterns from the core. There's like integrating your spine with the rest of your body and getting those really small muscles that initiate movement, really getting them worked and building neural patterns. But that's one of those Feldenkrais and some of those movements

and then things like Tai Chi, smoke a bowl, then do that. And you're going to, you'll feel the difference. So I do, the majority of the time I do any of this stuff, I'm stone cold sober. And then every once in a while I'll smoke some weed. Do some movement because it will, it will feel different. I can feel lines of fascia so much so much better when i'm in that state and so when i'm not in that state and i'm first thing in the morning i'm doing some tai chi or doing some some feldenkrais type movements i'm really trying

to get back to that place where i could feel the lines of fascia in my body dude it's so interesting because when i anytime i i do which is, let's be honest, pretty much daily now, but it's, you think like, oh, my program, I have to go and do pull-ups. Well, if I can get really into my body and really slow things down, hanging is just awesome. And I can feel like my lats open up. And then breathing becomes like a really important piece of that and you can feel just everything my shoulders have never felt better and i just hang and swing and try and and then if i want to do that like everything like i can't follow a real program because when i jump on the bar to do a pull-up i want to just hang

and then once i feel like everything's opened up then i do a pull-up, I want to just hang. And then once I feel like everything's opened up, then I do a pull-up. But when you come down, it's like, how are we doing that? Are we doing it with perfect hollow body? Are we pushing the bar away a little bit? Are we trying to do some sort of front lever progression? And why are we doing that in sets and reps? Why aren't we combining all of those things together, all in one set, and then progressing that with each additional set every time we jump on the bar i don't know how i would ever try and get somebody in a personal training session or in a group class to understand anything that's going on in my head when i jump onto a pull-up bar because they just probably look at it like let's knock out some kipping pull-ups. And I'm like, man, why don't we like hang? Why don't we chill?

Beginners don't really give a shit about like feeling the muscles contract and feeling the fascia and like all that stuff that makes sense after you've been doing it for like 20 years. Like I was saying to you yesterday, like I was in my gym and a very beginner person walked in the other day and they just walked in and they were like, how long does it take to get rid of this? And they grabbed their belly and kind of shook it around and I was like, whoa, like that's all

that person gives a shit about. Like, can you make my belly go away? If not, then I'm going somewhere else. Yeah. They don't care. One of the monologues I did on the beginning of Shrug the other day was about like, it's literally the most terrifying question you could ask me. It's like, so what do you do for working out oh like i i'm either gonna freak you out or i'm gonna be so bored by this conversation because it's like someone asked you yeah somebody just comes up and is like all right people ask me all the time like oh what do you do must work out a lot you're so fucking fit and you're like oh i really don't want to answer this question like oh like how many pull-ups can you do? Well, I do like four.

But I hang from the bar. And then I do like two. And then I do like a push-away. And then I try and do like a front lever. You're playing in the gym. Yeah, like I go there to just screw around and see what it all feels like. And I just happen to have what looks like a gym equipment and heavy weights to move around. And it just, yeah, it's the most terrifying question ever when someone's like what do you do because they want

this like super specific like go do this this will work i'm like well well you have to have a lot of structure before you get to the point where you can play yeah and the i think i think for when you get to the point we're at, when someone asks what do you do for working out, they want to know why you look the way you look or why you're strong or why girls find you ridiculously attractive. Insanely attractive. Insanely hot.

This face built for the radio. I had to go on YouTube lately just so people are aware. So when people are asking that question, they don't give a shit of what you're doing to work out. They want to know what it is you do to be like who you are. Yeah. And for me, a lot of times, realizing that, I may give a quick but it's it's all the things that aren't happening yeah everything is happening outside the gym that's that's the real answer of why you would be in the kind of shape you're in or you're able to do what you're able to do doug and i were

training in the gym yesterday he was telling me that story about the lady was like i just want to lose this belly fat how do i do that can i do that in two months and i was having a conversation with my neighbor who i was outside running hills and walked by him and he was like how far are you running and we literally went on this like 20 minute conversation where he had zero clue that I might have an idea of what I was talking about and much less that I may talk about fitness professionally and he was just like you know I was doing some hydroxy cut back in the day, and, like, I really think that stuff works. Like, you know, and I was like, you know, I think, like, a steak,

maybe some rice and potatoes and, like, a bunch of vegetables would probably do a little bit more than hydroxy cut. He's like, no, man, I really saw the difference. And I was like, no, man, I actually know. I live the difference. And I was like, no, man, I actually know. I lived the difference. Yeah, whatever. Do people ever, I mean, when was the last time you had a conversation with somebody that was like clearly had like they just had zero understanding

and how far down that rabbit hole? Have you had one of those lately? No. Are you around fitness people? I was so far outside my bubble that I just didn't. I'm around fitness people or where I live, I'm famous. There it is. The hyper local celebrity.

I'm a local celebrity. Web-lebrity. I can't go to a party without, you know, having to run away. No, I'm just kidding. But people do know what I do. I don't go to a party without having to run away. No, I'm just kidding. But people do know what I do. I don't go many places. There's a lot of people taking Bledsoe's picture, specifically his wife. I sent her to Encinitas a couple weeks early to go spread the good news.

Yeah, it was the first time I had one of those conversations of just like, oh, man, we're at level zero right now. You think the hydroxy cut thing is working. Just go take the meth, dude. It will suppress your appetite. You'll be cool. What are you doing for working out these days? For me?

Yeah, we don't get to train together all the time. We're not training together anymore. It's slightly different than when me and you were training. I've been having an issue with my upper back. So I haven't been putting a lot of heavy barbells on my back lately. Or doing heavy deadlifts. So I've been doing a lot more high rep stuff and a lot more single leg work just to keep the loading on my upper back a little bit lower.

And I've been trying to gain weight. I have a very beautiful graph for the last year. I was going to say, you've been doing that for a while now. Yeah, it's been almost a year. I thought you've been graphing your weight your whole life. Well, I haven't graphed my weight for a long time, but the last year is a very clear progression from 192 pounds to about 205 and a half. Wow.

As far as monthly averages, I've been trying to put on weight. For a while, I was floating around that like 192 193 and like i just don't feel i don't feel good like i feel like almost like my body's less stable like i feel like i'm like frail or when i'm smaller i feel i feel like i feel like i'm just gonna break all the time but like when i whenever i've been like 205 which i used to spend majority of my life like through through college and graduate school i was right around 205 ish i always felt really really good so so i set the goal of getting back to above 200 pounds as a monthly average for two months in a row and then once i got there then i was like okay i'm gonna i'm gonna do 205 and i've been 205 for for a month or two but it's a very clear linear graph from last August at 192 to now July at just over 205.

After July is over, I'll probably post the whole year on Instagram. But so I've been doing a lot more hypertrophy training. I've been doing a lot more single joint, like just bodybuilding type stuff, more like functional bodybuilding stuff. And my body feels fantastic. My joints feel really good. That upper back thing bugs me you know i aggravated that jiu-jitsu which i still do you know one or two days a week

and being 205 and being a little bit stronger really helps with rolling around with other full-grown aggressive well-trained men but i love jiu-jitsu so i want to keep doing that for a long long time uh you know get my black belt someday and then the whole deal so uh as far as weight room goes though three four days a week um doing mostly kind of like an upper lower split why why'd your weight drop because you haven't stopped training i was really i was really beat up there for a long time like when i when i got towards the end of my mma career which is about five years ago like i just had a lot of joint problems like i just couldn't train very normal at all and not being able to train very normal When I got towards the end of my MMA career, which was about five years ago, I just had a lot of joint problems. I just couldn't train very normal at all.

And not being able to train very normal, I just wasn't putting on and keeping on weight the same way that I have been able to for over the last year or two where I've been a lot healthier joint-wise. There's always a problem here and there, but I'm never all the way healed, but certainly a lot less than in the past. What's the caloric intake these days? Are you, so what is... Hang on, I got a more important question. Well, who are you jealous of on Instagram?

Ooh. Oh, man. Always Ben Pekulski. That's a good question. Always. That's a really good question. Steph Cohen. Yeah, no shit.

I'm totally jealous of Stephie. She smashes. She just posted a hip thruster, like, 405 or something for, like, five. I was like, fucking freak. I can't do that. I actually think that's a really good answer for jealousy. It's like, she's, like, 125 pounds. Deadlift's, like, 500, well over 500 at this point.

Perfect femurs. She fucking smashes. So it took you a whole year, though, to put 10 pounds on? Yeah, 14. I don't have that kind of – I have to try and eat less. Do you always burn calories like that? If I don't think about my body weight, then I'll naturally lose weight. I'm naturally pretty dang thin.

Same. I am not't i can just go that was actually really nice for for that's part of the reason that i was like floating in the low 190s there for a while was that once i got done fighting mma and competing weightlifting and all that was like it was really nice to just not have to think too much about just eat the highest quality food that i can find don't worry about how many calories i'm getting and just kind of let my body weight go to wherever it wants but after a while i was like okay this it was fun to be able to not like worry about how much i'm eating all the time where it's like a chore and to just get back to to lifting weights more like i did growing up and and you know eat enough food to where i i'm floating at a body weight that

that i actually feel really my best yeah you said you're lifting heavy again now what are you doing where are you doing it at why am i not there a lot of people that don't don't follow you probably after just hearing you a second ago think that all you do is like tai chi and yoga now and you don't lift weights where are you that's not true uh right now i i i got back a couple weeks ago to socal so uh the gym i was training at is no longer open so so now i'm at i sucks i'm building a home gym right now and in the in the meantime i'm at eos eos fitness old Gold's Gym. I think so. Yep. Yeah.

Ashley went and joined, and she said, here, you can go too. Can you believe the amenities you get for like $30 a month? Towel. Towels. Cold water. I train a lifetime. Fucking clean as a whistle in there. As soon as you sweat, someone wipes it up.

Yeah, the locker rooms. Global gyms are nice. You're at Lifetime. Those Lifetime gyms are like a whole city block. They're fucking huge. They have everything

and it's for my entire family. It's like free daycare for my three kids. Me and my wife have memberships and it's like less than $200 a month. It's less than the cost

of most CrossFit gyms and they have all kinds of great stuff. I train with at least one or two days a week. All the CrossFit gym owners are about to kill us. Dude, I like going to those places. The gym that I'm at now... It's convenient for us because we already know what the hell to do.

You're paying for a CrossFit membership for the social aspects of it and because you don't know what the hell you're doing. You need someone to tell you what to do. If you already know what to do, then you don't need to be in a CrossFit gym. If you've been focused on training and better movement for 20 years, go to a Globo gym. If you're under, I would say, 5 or 10 years,

if you don't have multiple certifications, if you haven't been studying this, if this hasn't been your life for 5 or 10 years, then you need a coach. By the way, I have a a coach and i've been training for over 20 years wait who's your coach alexander ribchinsky oh the guy from uh check yeah thing you interviewed him i interviewed him so i what are you learning i'm interviewing him and we hang out for about two hours before the interview so uh it he serves before the interview. So, uh, it, he serves me before the interview. He serves me lamb chops.

So he starts winning me over for lamb chops, lamb chops and butter coffee. He's like, Oh fuck bro. You got me. Then we sit down the podcast about coaching and I really enjoyed what he had to say. Uh, during the show. And then after the show, I asked him, what's an assessment cost?

What's that look like? So assessment was, I want to share this because, well, A, I have friends that encourage me to share more of these personal things. And to give people some perspective is you know an assessment was a four hour assessment eight hundred dollars and so I said done let's do it and uh I have never had such a thorough assessment in my entire life from a medical doctor from anybody nobody in the navy looked at me this closely nobody no trainer no coach ever did an assessment that was so thorough in my life. In fact, we're a month into training, and I still haven't finished all my assessment paperwork.

So there's all sorts of things about my life as well, not simply movement. But the assessment where he's measuring all, you know, where my joints sit and looking at my crawling patterns and all these types of things these were that was a four-hour assessment so um so i after the assessment i thought well now i'm gonna hire him and so um it's been a really enjoyable process and he's he's the guy who will say you know he looks at the entire life and goes okay this is how much you're working entire life and goes, okay, this is how much you're working. This is how much you're sleeping. This is how much you're dancing. This is how much you're singing.

This is how much you're getting social time. This is how much play you're getting. Okay, this is the type of training that you need. Oh, you can't feel your body as well as you'd like to. Okay, Tai Chi. And then also writing my workouts that happen in the gym i've never felt uh i've never felt better so i've been progressively feeling better over the years but i feel very strong and healthy right now and uh and yeah i lift heavy

three days a week training under him is he actually programming workouts or kind of like guiding your experience? Programming the workouts. Is he really? So what does that look like? It's pretty – Are you under a barbell? Yeah. Compound movements.

Compound movements. Compound movements. Doing a lot of things that are more multidirectional versus only sagittal plane only. Doing some circuit training, like slow-paced circuit training with brakes. Doing a lot of, yeah, it's compound movements. I'm going to do a pull, a push, and a lot of working in a lot of corrective stuff in the middle. So a lot of corrective stuff in the middle so a lot of corrective training in between sets i'm super setting you know some of the corrective movements with the a deadlift i'll

deadlift and i'll do some corrective movements right afterwards and i can really see how they're complementing each other and and um in less than a month on my body i can tell it's shaping differently my shoulders are finally sitting further back I've been working on that for a long time. Couldn't figure out what it was. They're finally getting back where they need to go. I can get bigger breaths of air now. I feel more stability throughout my entire body. So, again, I bring that up because I spend real money on a coach

because I've been in fitness for 20-something years. I may be going to EOS, whatever 20 something years i may be going to eos whatever fitness i might be going to a globo gym to do something but i i'm doing somebody's somebody's writing a program for me um and am i knowledgeable enough to write a great program yes yeah am i am i objective enough to do that for myself no No. Yeah. So it's, I think it would take a true enlightened master to write their own program and do it well. Yeah. I find that, I mean, I can't follow anything specific, but I think that my program right now is like, it's really just, I'm trying, I don't know where it's going. And I feel like an assessment of that is like

someone kind of writes it up. Cause you were telling me whatever he was doing, doing like inside your rib cage it was the first time you actually felt like you were breathing well oh yeah he does uh very aggressive manual therapy as well so yeah uh cranial adjustment i mean he was pulling his fingers in my eye sockets while i'm pulling down my ears and it was one of the more painful sessions i ever had in that regard uh just my pelvis to where i thought oh this could snap didn't felt better Yeah, pried my ribs out, kidney, liver massage. Those are all things that, you know, I think that when someone starts training, they go, and this is likely true, what's the biggest bang for my buck? What's the highest leverage item I could be doing to improve my health?

Five sets of five back squat. Okay. And then over time, that's not true anymore. And so when I started looking for what's the highest leverage item that's going to improve my health or take me in the direction that I want to go with my fitness, sometimes it's a kidney massage. It's not fucking seeing how much I can lift. In fact, that was one of the conversations i had with him which is try moving less let's let's let's do more resting

sitting so now i work from a hammock you know things like that because he goes you're just burning so hot your organs are i might when we did the assessment it's like your liver and organs and gallbladder these are all hot for you right now these are things that that um you've you've cooked them over the years and i go yeah makes perfect sense i've been i've been really i i spent a lot of life force in the first 35 years of my life we never know what we're burning out until it's burnt out. Totally. And then you have to get to the end. And I think that more people are looking for answers.

Shrug family, hope you enjoy having Mike Bledsoe be a guest on the show that he created six years ago. So freaking interesting. Love this guy. Love being around his creativity. His forward thinking. Everything's so cool with this guy. MuscleGainChallenge.com. Make sure you get over there.

Free download. How to Get Strong Now. Your guide to strength and muscle building. How to Get Strong Now. The free download at MuscleGainChallenge.com. We're going to make you bigger, stronger, faster. Proper progressions. And you're going to do it in a manner that's safe and effective so that

you do not get injured all you have to do is show up work hard follow the program you're going to get bigger stronger faster and healthier 26 pounds 26 weeks that's the goal of the muscle gain challenge make sure you get in there to musclegainchallenge.com and download the free ebook, Strength and Muscle Building Guide called How to Get Strong Now at musclegainchallenge.com. We'll see you guys after the show. And if there's something that you can take away, like nutrition to me is the perfect example of this, or even kind of what I do in the gym now is it's like i can squat and deadlift and do all those things perfectly if

you need me to but i'm not interested in that i want to go and do these like really awkward slow movements and bad positions and see if i can still move with these core principles. I mean, bad positions. Well, I mean, they're probably not bad positions, but in stances, like, can I press the same? How much weight can I press overhead in the split position? Oh, okay. So positions that are hard to stabilize. Yeah.

The stability is the challenge. Gotcha. And just exploring taking a simple press, but changing something in it that makes it very challenging. Not so much in am I going faster or slower or more weight or less weight, but how do we just reshape in your brain what pressing actually needs to be? And that's kind of the piece of the journey. And I think on the nutrition side of it for me as well, it's like, man, I look at a sandwich,

and I think, oh, there's the protein, there's the carbs, there's some fat, whatever. I can look. You see those macros super easily, but that conversation, and we're interviewing the dude on mushrooms tomorrow, or on mushrooms, about mushrooms. The dude on mushrooms. This guy guy he's always on mushrooms but

like i i feel like those are the things that yeah those are the things that really geek me out now is it's like how does your gut fit into this well that's like you find these new levels where it's like everything you knew before was is now kind of like discredited because you realize your gut health is so important. Or I've always hated mushrooms. And now I'm reading this dude's book and we're going to go interview him. And I'm like, man, I probably wasted the first 35 years because I wasn't eating the fungus outside. But there's these like pieces that you on this journey that you continue to uncover and you're like fuck why was i wasting my time why didn't i just start with the gut bacteria and and nobody

well you go and find a guy that's been through checks thing and does a four hour long assessment and you're like oh i gotta learn what that guy that guy knows. He's on the next level of this game. Like he gets it. Yeah, there is levels to this whole game. Like maximizing your muscle mass, minimizing your body fat percentage, like maximizing your VO2 max and your cardiovascular fitness. Like these are all ways to improve your health, but it doesn't stop there. There's many other things to do. And it's not just about like getting into the gym and working out

and doing all the basic movements. Doing weird things like you were talking about a second ago, doing a wide stance, basically middle splits, and then reaching dumbbells all the way through your legs and then bringing them back up and pressing them overhead like you posted on Instagram the other day, which I'll ask you more about that here in a second. Doing quote-unquote weird stuff like that,

psychologically, you might not want to do more deadlifts yeah you just need something new after a while and so like for me i do a lot of weird shit but like part of it's just like i just i'm just looking for something fun to do to keep training fresh and new and like keep me motivated to go back in i'm always motivated to go back in because i fucking love training but like i don't want to just go back and do this the exact same thing we've always done like more one arm one-arm back squats and Fran workouts. Like, it just gets old after a while. You want something new.

Yeah. I cranked out a 320 Fran last year after not doing it for, like, three years. And I was like, okay, I'll never need to do that again. Yeah. Like, that hurt and my time is still pretty okay without ever doing it. Yeah. I think we'll be all right. Well, like you were saying a second ago about, like.

I'll do it right now. Now that I've said it, I think we'll be alright. Like you were saying a second ago about I'll do it right now. Now that I've said it, let's go. For you having trained for 20 years, if you take your time from 3.5 minutes down to 3 minutes or down to 2.5 minutes, is that going to be the thing that makes Anders a healthier person? No. It very well may not be. There's many other

things. Why could it make you worse? It very well could. Being as fit as possible isn't necessarily the healthiest thing to do. It's like other things. Life will make you worse. Yeah. It very well could. Being as fit as possible isn't necessarily the healthiest thing to do. It's like our friend Lauren used to say, weightlifting is good for you unless you compete in it. Yeah. Well, you can take things too far. It's an inverted U-shaped curve. Somewhere in the middle is the healthiest place to be.

And once you get out to the extremes, either by never training ever or training way too much, then it becomes an unhealthy act. It depends on how you define fitness. Yeah. Well, actually, so you look at somebody. I'd love to know what everyone's definition of fitness standing here right now is. Do you have one? Well, to your point from earlier about the external things that are validating you, if you're competing, you're not training for fitness.

You're training to win at something that oftentimes being fit can help you win it but you're not training to maximize fitness you're training to to maximize some external yeah right measure that's why that's what i'm thinking is fitness like peak fitness should be peak health but i just like to your point if you're comparing yourself to others you're no longer achieve you know you're no longer chasing fitness you're chaving chasing somebody else's standard yeah right i mean that's that's kind of why the crossfit thing took off because people were they were classifying fitness as very siloed reductionist thinking of i'm very fit because i'm a good power lifter and i have a very high back score i'm very fit because i can run marathons in a certain period of time and then and then greg came in and said like okay if you want to be fit you can't just be good at one thing

you have to be good at all these different things and if you're good at all these different things then we can count you as fit yeah i think that just my relationship with my body and the things that it can do is just the definition of fitness for me now it doesn't have to be measured but it i need to know how i feel every day and when something pops up i no longer view that thing like if i have an elbow that gets weird or shoulder that gets weird that's my fault and complete ownership of my own health is i know the the cause and effect of why things happen. And there should never be a day where that gets out of line. Like I feel like I have control of my own health so well.

And if I go to the gym and do dumb shit, the effect of that is going to be I'm going to get hurt. So why would I put myself in a position where I'm going to live a more unhealthy life and more a life filled with jacked up joints i'm in a probably the healthiest i've ever been say ever probably in the last 10 12 years not trying to be the biggest and strongest and the ability to just know that when i wake up in the morning, like, I can cure on my own without somebody else's help. And I have full control over my health as far, unless something out of nowhere happens very, very freakishly, which I, you know, can easily happen. But I feel like I have control, like 100% control of my own health. Yeah.

No one's actually answered your question yet. What do you think? How are you defining fitness for yourself these days? You know, it's a moment-to-moment thing, and I want to be able to do things. Like, being fit means I get to do things that I want to do. Like, oh, I want to go do that, but I can't because, you know, because like you were saying, my shoulder's out of whack

or I don't have the stamina or I'm not strong enough to do something. When I go out and do real-life things, I am the first one out. I don't have to double. I don't have to double. I don't have to second guess double. I don't have to second guess myself on whether I can do something that everyone else is doing. I go do a Spartan race. I go, oh, I can finish that. Or I'm going to go surfing.

Okay, I can go surfing a.m., p.m. It doesn't matter. I could have worked out. I could still go surf. It's not that big of a deal. I can go out a.m., p.m., doesn't matter. I could have worked out. I could still go surf. It's not that big of a deal. I can go out dancing all night. I can fuck for an hour. I can do all these things.

An hour. What kind of times this guy got. Well, I did that instead of working out yesterday. It was on the program. Great cardio. I have a coach. Interval training. I have a coach.

He told me to do it. One hour of sex, one hour of swimming. That was my the program. Great cardio. I have a coach. Interval training. I have a coach. He told me to do it. One hour of sex, one hour of swimming. That was my workout yesterday. And then last night I got high and did about 45 minutes of mobility. There you go. That's the best. You know what? That's being fit.

That's something I consider more and more as I get older. Like, for people that are really out of shape, like, what is their sex life like? I get tired during sex. I get tired during sex sometimes. And are really out of shape, like what is their sex life like? I get tired during sex. I get tired during sex sometimes. And I'm in good shape. I'm in good shape. I'm like, babe, you're going to have to get on top. This is...

I got to take a breather. I'm going to go wear it out. Oh, yeah. So do you do nose breathing only? Have you tried nose breathing only during sex? No. No. Okay.

So do this. Educate me. Okay. This is... Nose breathing only. No, it's breathing only. It's so good. Here we go. Let's hear it. Well, this is what's funny. I started doing this tantric sexual practice, and then I brought

it into my workouts. Nice. And then I take it to seminars. I take it to seminars, and people don't even know. Back it up. Tantricsexworkouts.com. You want to know if you live in a bubble or not. You're doing the strong coach. Like, what? That sounds like second tier to the tantric sex coach workouts.

It's harder to sell. We got to back it up. People are so busy comparing themselves to others that sex workouts are way too intimidating. We could find a market. Yeah, we're going back. I found the market. Tantric sex going back tantric sex they're not paying with dollars

Eric's overhearing us in the background they're talking about tantric sex on the CrossFit podcast or the fitness podcast tantric sex before we get too deep into your nose breathing sexual practice tell the people what the hell is tantric sex unless they've seen American Pie 2 your nose breathing sexual practice, tell the people, what the hell is tantric sex?

Unless they've seen American Pie 2. Tantric sex is a very... Your bubble is insinuitous, so it's too far outside that. I don't know if tantric sex is a real thing, but tantra is being with whatever it is that's happening right now.

So you could have a tantric eating. But it's extended orgasms or postponing the orgasm. Well, that's a benefit, right, of practicing tantra is that you're so with what is happening right now. So you could practice tantra when eating a meal. And so what you would do is you would take small bites and you would close your eyes. You would smell the food first and you would put it in your mouth

and you would taste it and chew it and then you would swallow it. And it might take you an hour to eat a meal that would normally take you 10 minutes. So is it like experiencing pleasure without the end thing? I wouldn't say pleasure. Experience. Yeah, experiencing what is. Cool.

And so attaching pleasure to it is optional so uh it's like a similar process to meditation where you're you're having thoughts but you're putting no judgment on them tantra is a type of just being mindfulness meditation what do you want to call it and so it's i i think i think in the western world people have uh widely associated with sex specifically. And so because there is tantric, you know, there are tantric pujas, a ceremony in which there's a sexual practice if you want to go there. But you could be, I know people who have studied tantra for a decade and haven't applied it. And well, in a group tantric puja setting but um the the idea is to breathe um

through your nose and what you do is you you take the roof of your the tongue to the roof of your mouth and then your perineum so you're the taint area folks and so what you have is the pelvic floor and so everyone's gotten really familiar with the pelvic floor. It's gotten really popular because if you don't have pelvic floor strength, then you lose core stability and it's connected to your breath. Now, if you build up this pelvic floor strength and you're able to contract that perineum, and then you're also able to put the tongue to the roof of your mouth, you create a circuit of sorts. And so what you do is, if you're doing those two things, what you're doing is you've got a nice line of energy going,

I guess you could say. And when you breathe through your nose, that air is passing right over your tongue. And then what you do is you imagine, you can imagine it going down the front and up the back or vice versa. It does not really matter. I like to imagine it when I pull the air in, it fills my belly. So sex advice real quick. Try this out. Nose breathing only. Tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth.

Soft belly. So you don't want your belly to be tense. Soft belly. You don't want your belly to be tense, soft belly, and then imagine that energy running through you as you're doing your thing. And what I found is if I open my mouth during that, my mind immediately begins wandering. And I may end up fantasizing about another woman or about a situation or something like that.

I bring my presence back to my breath and all of a sudden I'm with what is right now and I'm in my body and I'm having a full body experience that feels much better than the experience I could be having in my head. And so I pull myself into my body with that. Now, if you're being really, really really present with what is you get to choose your orgasm you get to choose whether it happens in an hour or in five minutes you get to choose it and the um i've actually i've gotten in this practice where i might be doing something for

so long that i get so tired that i don't even finish because i go, I'm too fucking tired. I'm bored. But I've enjoyed this whole hour. It's been extremely enjoyable and being okay with not having that. Now, there's a benefit to that too. So say you do choose to orgasm. When you orgasm, keep the breath, keep the soft belly, and then contract the perineum if you can do that. There's a lot going on. There's a few moving parts, and it takes some practice.

I highly recommend practicing on your own before with a partner. You know, so, and what my experience has been is if you can hold that, and you can actually stop, not have, you can have an orgasm without ejaculation gotcha and so instead of it coming out it shoots up your spine so you'll have an experience where it shoots up your spine and it feels like you're getting your bell rung in a really good way and so the uh and so that that's a thing i actually know what you're talking about with that like with the getting your bell rung piece where that happened to me one time where i i forget i had i had eaten a certain amount of cannabis and like was having great sex and and i had i had like a head orgasm

yeah and i was like i got done i was like i think i just had a girl orgasm yeah like it wasn't like so like like genital focused it was like i just had a total like full body orgasm is that what happens for girls and and and i i cannabis is definitely good for that because i really think you know when cannabis uh when people talk about cannabis they think that um it may make you lazy it makes you hungry it makes you all these things people what i not for me dude it makes my fucking dick really hard and my orgasm really hard. The first time it happened, I was like, how come nobody told me this before? I was angry almost.

I was like, someone's been hiding this from me. If you just do it to just get high, you're getting a very small percent. Yes, that's fun. Right. If you're not getting the almost like soulful medicinal piece of coming into your body and experiencing all the things, you're missing out on the massive, massive benefits of it. I think it puts you in touch with your body. It puts me in touch with my body.

I think it puts other people in touch with their body. And I think a lot of times when people get put in touch with their body it says rest and it says eat yeah now what you eat is probably you know you have a lot of unnatural food hanging around your house you can eat a bunch of junk food but if you had only really good healthy uh stuff you would eat a lot of that and then you would rest i think most people are overworked overstressed whatever and so when they smoke weed they chill out and i think that's bringing more into your body and I think most people are overworked, overstressed, whatever. And so when they smoke weed, they chill out. And I think that's bringing more into your body and out of your mind.

And different people, different strains, different everything. Nothing is for everybody all the time, for sure. But I think that's what's happening. A lot of times people go, oh, it makes them lazy. I'm like, well, they're probably not getting enough rest. And the message is coming in, rest. And to the outside onlooker, it looks like being lazy. It's a judgment thing.

Like there's pros and cons to anything. If you're a person who is always on the go, like for myself as an example, like when I get home, I have a very hard time just like sitting on the couch. Usually my kids are on the couch or my wife's on the couch and I'm like taking up all the space and I'm pacing. I'm like pacing back and forth thinking about shit. And after like, it's like a process for me to like try to like be present in the moment, not thinking about work, not thinking about other things and just like being home for family time. But like a little, a little bit of bit of cannabis, like two or three milligrams, like a very, very light amount will make a ride just fucking, I just chill out. I'm super present in the moment and I can fucking sit on the couch and relax. And it's really, really nice.

So if you're a person who's already not doing much with your life and all you do is sit on the couch anyway, and then you just pile cannabis on top of that and now you just watch Netflix for eight hours a day, well, that's probably detrimental to your life and your health and all these other things but if it's the opposite if it brings you down when you're when you're trying to get brought down then i feel like it's really beneficial you talk about having that like tiny little bit of cannabis that like and parenting i mean i just had a first kid and i will look at that thing in the eyes and you can just like look at its eyes regular you have just a

little bit of weed you look at it you're like oh my god like you are learning so much right now tell me about it like i need to know what is going through your brain like your dad is just staring into your soul right now it is so wild i don't think the kid has a soul yet i think that's maybe around age five or six developing one i'm telling you i'm injecting it depends on uh which uh which tribe we ask find out when the soul comes into the body um what's um are you still on the psychedelic train a little bit here and there what's that mean well i mean how how frequently like mdma um i um i do less i've noticed less that's why so the the well i do from what i talk about i talk about it less the reason i talk about it less is because i notice that most people don't know what the fuck they're doing with

it yeah um and so I don't like being a huge proponent of something irresponsibly so well I'm a huge proponent of um setting up practices for integration so the the trouble is people do psychedelics and then they tend to uh they get a message they they it puts you in a perspective where you get a blind spot highlighted you go oh wow I didn't see that in my life before wow if I change this thing in my life it would improve drastically and it's usually a blind spot because that's something you were avoiding and because you were avoiding it it's not an easy action to take or it's a habit to break or something like that and you go okay why don't i do that and so what most people do is they think that the psychedelic is the answer or they got the answer during the journey but the real work happens afterwards you go okay

i intellectually i cerebrally received a message i would say the uh the there's certain psychedelics where it's um that does impact you on a physical level for instance uh like ayahuasca where uh integration is still very necessary but i think you would get a benefit from some physical level of healing uh with without as much focus on integration however it's such a strong psychedelic that the Western mind is not prepared to unpack that conversation or that experience. And so I'm a much bigger proponent now of people, most people without having a psychedelic experience know that there's something

in their life that is not serving them and they're not changing it anyway and i don't recommend psychedelics until they really have already started making some progress in their life and then you layer in psychedelics into a conversation that's already happening about improvement yeah and so and sometimes a psychedelic experience can be the thing that wakes you up to, oh, I can improve. And realizing that, you know, someone asked me the other day is how can I don't have the personality for being assertive? How, you know, if I'm not an assertive person, how do I navigate life? The problem is, is that you're you're viewing being assertive as something you have or you don't have.

It's something that is developed when someone is being't have. It's something that is developed. When someone is being assertive, it's because it was developed. They may have developed it when they were a kid, and so now it looks like it's part of who they are, which it is. And for you, it's a challenge to be assertive because you haven't practiced it yet. And so it is a skill just like anything else. And those are the types of things that people may realize in psychedelics but then fail to bring their practice and this is why things like yoga can be really helpful because it is considered a practice and you could make crossfit a practice if you wanted but it would

be with the intent of taking your um being aware of why you're there and why you're moving and why you're taking every single breath and that becomes a practice and why you're there and why you're moving and why you're taking every single breath and that becomes a practice and when you're integrating an experience where you go wow I want to be more of this and I am

going to focus on this during my practice during my yoga session during my crossfit session while I'm fucking these are the things that will cause transformation and the psychedelics session during my crossfit session while i'm these are the things that will will cause transformation um and the psychedelics are something that are a really good facilitator for it but i i'm not as they're not the answer it's a it's a really interesting time right now with pollen's book coming out because when that guy starts talking about it it instantly gets

thrust into the mainstream and it it's going to go both ways in which a lot of people are going to be wildly benefited that have done a little bit of the self-work that you're talking about. And then it's like, oh, it's okay to do the drugs that I've been told are going to kill me my whole life and see the medicinal properties to them. And it's also terrifying because you've got a whole bunch of people that have no idea what's going on. And then Michael Pollan just wrote a book on it. Yeah, there's a couple experiences that I've been aware of with people in my conversations.

People who experimented in their teens tend to have a completely different view of psychedelics even when they get reintroduced when they're older. They associate it with partying, tripping, all these things. You'll know, I'll know who they are because they'll say I was tripping. And the people who I noticed get the most benefit, they waited until they were older to play around with it, myself included. I know you guys too. When was the first time you smoked weed

uh i was 19 the first time i smoked weed oh wow um but i'd smoked weed less than five times it was always i had always smoked weed with alcohol so i i chose to smoke weed after i was already inebriated with alcohol and i go oh it's okay now it's just getting passed around every time i regretted it every time i hated it because it gave me the spins or it took me in a different direction than alcohol. They're opposing drugs. And then when I got in my 30s and I smoked it without anything else, I found how enjoyable it was.

With mushrooms, I didn't start until I was in my 30s. I was about 30, 31 31 had a really enlightening first enlightening experience with that I was very primed in that experience and that I had just attended a conference where there were conversations about empathy and big vision and all these things and so I was really primed to have a great experience there um what does i want to say the uh oh i find people that did it younger don't have the same appreciation as people that do it when they're older and so i think that uh there's a lot of people who partied in college or partied in high school and now they have this view of it where they want to keep it far away

and they don't think it's any good because they associate it with doing really dumb shit yeah and that definitely happens yeah um the first time i did it i was like 15 and it was pure like the when i when i did it the first time or even just in high school in general was always just to get high and now it has some to do with that, but it's much more of like a transitional thing or slowing the fuck down so I can get into a much more present space, think about things in a different manner. I think that there's just like getting past the getting high part is just a massive leap in your ability to understand how to use that as,

I really believe it's like performance enhancing drug most of the time in my life. Just having a problem that I'm stuck on all day, taking a hit, moving for an hour, and all of a sudden you see everything in a different light and you're able to just really like change the angle in which you're approaching whatever problems or where you're at and being present yeah there's um my my my big journey doses i do way less frequently now because i find that if i go on too many big journeys too frequently i mean even as as frequent as every three or four months, I find that the messages I get now during those journeys take me a lot longer to integrate than they used to. So I was an integration king for a while. I would find something and I would just get after it and be really aggressive about it. And then I would go on another journey and find something else and now it's gotten to the point where it's there's it's like fitness

there's not as much low-hanging fruit I've done most I picked all the low-hanging fruit now I'm having to climb higher in the tree which means that I need to have a big experience less frequently because when I do get a realization it takes me six months to a year to integrate this thing. So right now I'm not touching anything that's in big doses. And in fact, I think the next thing I may do is I'm looking at Iboga as the next experience to have, which is, you know, it's a. It's like a month. which is, you know, it's a three-day experience where you have to have help to go to the bathroom. You're not in your body for a few days. You need to be watched very closely.

You can't do it in the United States. It's something I think I'll go to Costa Rica for. Yeah, a lot of times they'll be hooking you up to medical machines to be watching you. It's not dangerous if you're healthy necessarily. It's dangerous if you have health issues. If you have heart arrhythmias or something like that, it's taxing on you. That one's interesting to me because everybody I've talked to that's done it reports being able to look at every point in your life. You spend the entire time reviewing your life from a very objective and kind perspective. And so you get to go, oh, this is where I've been an asshole.

This is where I let people down. This is where I was out of integrity. And you go, okay, I can now be different about this. A lot of, it's one of the most effective things for people who are addicted to opiates. And part of it is the way it interacts with the cells in your body that kills withdrawals because it binds to the same receptors as the opiate receptors and it changes. If you know anything about receptor sites in the cells, it's like a lock and key and the lock changes so when iboga or ibogaine gets in there it changes the lock i don't need that but um it kills withdrawal symptoms and you see how the use of drugs over your life has impacted those around you yeah and you go oh wow i've been a dick i feel really bad

about how i treat my friends my family and all this stuff because of this drug use using things like opiates which are overly prescribed in the united states we know we all know even trump knows it's an issue right now so uh it's uh it's an epidemic where iboga and ibogaine could be really great solutions and people still have to leave the country to get that. I'm interested in it because I feel like it's the last stone to be turned when it comes to psychedelics for me, so I'll go do it. I've had friends go and regret it and said they would never suggest anyone do it, and I've had friends that have done it 30 times

and said it's the best thing they've ever done. I don't know anyone who's died so uh might as well well I did have a couple friends that took them two or three months to get their shit back together yeah but they're better than ever now so what happens on the in the in the mainstream approach to this stuff I mean it exists and in California there's I believe there's a vote or they're discussing having a vote for psilocybin mushrooms becoming recreational where you can just like go to the store and buy them. Was it recreational? Maybe it's.

I was assuming it was medical. No, I didn't hear anything about medical. I think they were making it, what's it called, when it's not a crime. Just decriminalizing. Decriminalizing it. Like, if you're selling it, there's a problem, but if you have it, it's not a problem. That's usually how decriminalization laws go. So I think what we're seeing is everyone's seeing how ridiculous cannabis is being illegal.

Well, I mean, this is a dead horse that's been kicked, which is, you know, cannabis versus alcohol. What the fuck? Never got high and tried to get in a bar fight.

I know that. No. And so then, so then, everyone I was around was just so high. I'm going to be really nice to everybody.

So, what we'll see is MDMA is going to be the next one. They're in. You think that one goes before mushrooms? Yeah, because. They're already in stage three clinical trials.

Yeah, MAPS hit their, they got the funding necessary. They're already in, yeah, the stage three clinical trials. I know one of the researchers that's leading all that up, and it's going, it's going really, really well. What you'll see with MDMA is, is you'll see, I'll be able to go to a medical facility where I can have an experience with a couple of facilitators. It's a man and a woman that facilitates always. And that'll be how it's, how that gets introduced first. So you won't be able to take MDMA pills home.

You'll be able to do it with a practitioner, which is beautiful. Then what we'll see is psilocybin, because psilocybin is right behind MDMA with the clinical trials. And so the difference is psilocybin can be used in two ways mdma can only be used in one way it's for a therapeutic situation you're you're going to take it right now and that's good psilocybin can be used in two ways you can be taking a high dose what's considered a therapeutic dose uh where you have insights into your life and into how you know things in the universe work and all these types

of things which are highly beneficial and then the second use for psilocybin is in small doses what people would commonly refer to as micro doses and um i already um yes you can get these things you there are ways to and the way psilocybin can be delivered into the body it there's so many different like like anything else you would ever take it you can get in liquid form you can get in pills you can whatever yeah um i even found somebody that was creating uh psilocybin vape pens so yeah and the slightly terrifying yeah so some like 16 year old in the car with his vape pen you're like oh no what's he doing so medically i think what we'll see with psilocybin is it'll be it'll start getting prescribed instead of things like xanax and so it'll be an antidepressant

because what it does is it it acts a lot like serotonin in the body, and it will heal those receptors with serotonin. And then it's one of those things that you can't take so much that it's going to fuck anything up. So Sidemen is the safest thing you could be taking. It doesn't cause any toxicity. It heals the nervous system. It is, in my opinion, it's 10 times more safer than even cannabis. Yeah.

And about a million times safer than alcohol. So it's the safest, healthiest thing you'd be doing. The trouble with it is if you take a therapeutic dose and then you go out in public, you're not going to have a good time. Yeah. So that's something where you have to control that. So, yeah, you'll see MDMA go first and then you'll see in public, you're not going to have a good time. Yeah. So that's something where you have to control that. So, yeah, you'll see MDMA go first and then you'll see psilocybin. And then I think what we'll end up seeing is, and what we are seeing is some research chemicals and some designer drugs, which would, I mean, all pharmaceutical companies are creating designer drugs.

If you're taking a statin, that's a fucking designer drug. So what we're going to start seeing is designer drugs that are psychedelic in nature, which I have limited exposure to. I went on a trip out of the country recently and tried out a couple. One was very LSD-ishh and another one was um terrifying so it's one of those i wouldn't recommend still working the buds out yeah uh so the it's you know i i don't recommend people do what i do um i'm an experimenter yeah and i i'm not uh a proponent i'm a i try a hundred things and i'll recommend three so if i recommend it it's it's tried and true by me well it's not even your recommendation

the recommendation is to spend some time getting to know yourself get inside your body and explore ways whether that's through these simple steps of hey let's sit still and learn how to meditate or just sit still in general and don't worry about that big crazy word and then maybe let's go to a float tank and then maybe have some cannabis in your life and see how all those things kind of just change your mindset and then a few years down the road maybe you can uh tap into a yeah something that takes you to a different place it all comes down to the nervous system to me is what why is it that someone can't sit still why why is constant action always needed why is um why can't i sleep at night why when i do sleep i don't wake up rested uh why why can't I sleep at night? Why, when I do sleep, I don't wake up rested?

Why can't I work out and not be hurt? These are all issues of the nervous system, and the nervous system has static on the line. And so if your body is really performing and the nervous system is super tuned in, and there's not static on the line, then you do, as soon as you get done lifting, you stand up and you're relaxed. Yeah.

You can relax very quickly. But the issue is the things that are causing static on the line are, you know, it's connected to your breath, it's connected to all these things, why breath work is important, this is why. But psychedelics a lot of times can give you insights into something that's stored in your nervous system. There's trauma from something that happened maybe last week, maybe two decades ago. There's some type of trauma and so anytime anything that looks like that in your life

happens, which is constantly, you're being put into an excited state and now it's hard to relax so i really think that most people's uh the if you're i i think it creates nervous energy and then it also uh if you're if you're somebody who has a hard time recovering and i also think things that are the nervous system not being in good shape is what creates injury because it also creates comparison. The nervous system, I don't really separate it from the brain. The brain is out and the nervous system is going out, and this is all working with each other.

And things like breath, work, meditation, psychedelics, these are all things that give you insight into things that are impacting your nervous system. And so when you clear them up, things get incredibly easier. And the ability to relax becomes very easy, too. Yeah. You just launched Strong Coach. Yes. How's it going?

Really good. I decided, so one of the things I've been up to is looking, going back to the conversation of finding the thing that's the most high leverage item. And one of the things I'm doing with Strong Coach is I'm building it as slowly as I can. Because in the past when doing things things I've done things quickly and aggressively and I recognize that things there were gaps left and so what's cool about the strong coach is right now I'm working with six people two gym owners two personal trainers two trainers that don't have a book of clients and three men three women and then really figuring out what type of information,

what type of, of, uh, what, what process would be most beneficial for them to go through to get to the next level, to become the next best version, the best coach they could be for other people. And, um, we're on week six of eight. It's an eight-week. I'm committed to making an eight-week program, and everyone's gotten incredible results already. So every coach has improved the relationships they've got with their current clients. They're getting more of the clients they love the most, and they have a real vision for what their future looks like. I think most coaches have no idea.

They go, well, I'm going to coach. I'm going to go to this gym. I'm going to start coaching, and then I'll be happy. And then they get there, and they start coaching, and it's not what they thought it was going to be. And now they want to be, you know, now I want to coach CrossFit Games athletes or I want to coach football players or I want to you know I want to have a thousand clients and help them lose weight or something like that and so one of the things that we do is get people very clear on what kind of coach they are and exactly what they're committed to you know what type of impact

they're committed to making in the fitness industry. And so it's going really well with the six, and we got them very clear on what they're doing, and they each have a really solid plan that they're executing. And I'm opening up the – so I had six. I'm now going to take 12 in a couple weeks. Well, by the time this airs, I may even be closing the cart down. I'm only letting 12 in a couple weeks. By the time this airs, I may even be closing the cart down. I'm only letting 12 in. I'm going to let 12 into the next iteration.

What I'm doing is I'm growing it slowly so that everybody that goes through can get a really good result and so no balls are getting dropped. That's what's going on with Strong Coach. Part of what you just said is getting people dialed in on exactly who they want to coach. Who is it that you want to coach? I want to coach the coaches, the strength and conditioning, people that are in fitness. I want to coach people who want to coach more than movement. I want people who want to do more than right workouts and tell people how to eat.

I want to coach coaches who go out in the world and have real conversations with clients and make such an impact on the other 23 hours of the day that they're having with somebody. I want people to have, I want coaches who want to have, who become very effective at communication. I want them to be able to meet with somebody and find out what's really motivating this person to be in the gym in that moment and connect with that. And, yeah, and really I want to work with people who are interested in creating culture that is really really strong yeah they get

where can people find you did they can't find you we're not doing our job well yeah anyways the hell you know got the blitz oh show yeah always Monday always posting on Mondays really loving the conversations I'm having right now with that so and then I have the strong coach podcast eight show series it'll be coming close to a close here in the next month and I've really enjoyed doing that show because it's so it's so niche it's such a so focused and uh it's it's been really enjoyable you can find me there and uh yeah what i'm working on right now is thestrongcoach.com if you go visit that site who knows what'll be up there

application process yeah 12 it's application process for the 12. It's an application process for the 12 people. Maybe close. We'll see. By the time this airs. Nah, it'll be open. We'll get these up. Because this will post in a week. So it'll be open and ready to go.

Yeah, follow me on Instagram. I'm loving Instagram more than ever. Instagram's crushing these days. And now they have IGTV. So now I can do an Instagram Live, answer people's questions, and throw it up on IGTV. So I've been doing that daily. I never thought I'd like Instagram, and I'm back in love with it. I'll hate it again, too. Who knows?

Douglas E. Larson, where are you at? That's it. At Douglas E. Larson. Go hang out with the guy. He's so Douglas-y. I don't even have to do my promotions. I try and take Von Rothfelders all the guy. He's so Douglas-y. I don't even have to do my promotions. I try and take Ron Rothfelder's all the time. Oh, yeah?

I try and steal his strong coffee. If you let him start talking, he's just going to take over. Well, and he doesn't. You've got to step in. Ron Rothfelder tells you all the things that are going on in the strong coffee, and I just want people to know that it's delicious. Strong coffee is delicious. He's like, oh, the L-theanine.

No one knows what that is. It's fucking delicious. Go get your cafe latte on right now. It's good for them. It's delicious. It mixes well. It's good for you. I love it, man.

I'm drinking it every morning. That's my strong coffee. I drink my Organifi green juice. Love it. And then I do about 45 minutes of movement. Then I make the strong coffee i always mix it all together i put my strong coffee my green juice my alpha brain and i just mix it up i i actually the the the green juice here's how you've ruined strong coffee and

organifi all at the same time i really dig the the Organifi juices. I dig them every day. Every day, man, for me. The big one. I take a break from caffeine a couple days. I'm peaking on caffeine. Two, three days a week. I've been taking a break from caffeine since 11 o'clock this morning. I do the red juice.

That's when I stopped. I do the red juice instead of – that's the pre-workout. Just so you know. I'm going to text Colton to bring more caffeine before he gets here. You can find me at Anders Varner. Just get to the Strug Collective. Bledsoe Show on Monday. Real Talk Tuesdays.

Barbell Strug Wednesdays. Feed Me, Fuel Me Thursdays. Strong Coach. We have some big names coming in to the Strug Collective here soon. I'm going to go ahead and drop her name because we're going to make it happen. Yeah, we were early in talks currently with? Christmas Abbott. Yeah, she's a sabbath.

Here's the deal. We had an awesome talk with her last week. She's going to do an eight-show season for the Shrug Collective. She's about to burst with a baby, so I'd like to get her to record these shows before that happens. Christmas, if you're listening. We had a talk with her last week.

It was awesome. She was, I think she was a little lost in what we were looking for. And anytime we talk to anybody, they usually think we're looking for something more than themselves. And all we had to do was say hey christmas just go be you and all of a sudden she just started writing eight

shows down and filling in an outline and by the end of it she was like i got it let's go yep so we'll be uh christmas will be coming in here what i want you to do is i want you to hit christmas up on instagram and tell her how much you're looking forward to her show yeah just say christmas we are ready for you on the shrug collective we want to hear your life story shit is wild dude she's lived a life yep yep um and then man we just launched a whole bunch of stuff on youtube. Techniquad's back. It's back. At Douglas E. Larson. Mondays, we've got Traincation coming out. One of these days, right?

Anybody? I like to drop Traincation. It's an annual event. It's an annual. You're not even vacationing anymore. Now you're back to work. Hunter said Traincation just got turned into Train my normal fucking life Hunter and I

When we were first doing it We go we could do this every week And then we made a couple And I'm like Nah this is way more work So I'd like to drop a traincation every month Right now it looks like every quarter But we'll have another one drop

ASAP And I saw the raw edit It looks good every quarter, but we'll have another one drop ASAP. And I saw the raw edit. It looks good. And we'll do more this year. So he and I are working on different projects. So all it takes is us to both fly to somewhere cool and have about three days to shoot, and we're good to go. Yeah.

Mondays, every other Monday, proof. Viviana and I i it's doing pretty well super fun we've got max shank coming up ryan fisher doc gen fit i don't know drew cannoli be pretty sweet real talk vlog watch those two monkeys run around town causing problems they're hilarious i i don't know what this vlog is going to be about. They're perfect for it. Every week I take time to watch them do shit. Yeah.

It's hilarious. Yeah. And if anybody's wondering what goes on at the Shrug Collective, we went from one show to, like, releasing five podcasts and four pretty consistent YouTube shows in about a three month period. So this thing's growing. We've got Christmas Abbott showing up.

Um, lots of creativity, lots of fire coming out of this. And, um, the vibe is right. Stoked to have, uh,

this little trio back together in SoCal again. Exciting. We'll see you guys next Wednesday. Shrugged family. Hope you enjoyed hanging out with Mike Bledsoe again on barbell shrugged final time want to just remind you to get over to the muscle gain challenge.com download the strength and muscle building guide how to get strong now muscle gain challenge.com free download free ebook how to get strong Muscle Building Guide, How to Get Strong Now. MuscleGainChallenge.com, free download, free ebook,

How to Get Strong Now at MuscleGainChallenge.com. Make sure you get into the vault. The Muscle Gain Challenge is in there, 50% off that specific program, and you're going to get access to 10 additional programs on top of that inside the program vault. ShrugCollective.com backslash vault. If you would like to download How to Get Strong Now, your free copy of Strength and Muscle Building Guide, go to MuscleGainChallenge.com,

and we will see you guys on Wednesday.