Barbell Shrugged - Earn the Day with Functional Mover Adam Von Rothfelder

Episode Date: March 21, 2018

Adam Von Rothfelder is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin Native and a former professional MMA fighter currently living in Venice, California. He developed himself through family tragedy, learned primal movement from Ido Portal, sparred with Brock Lesnar, and was featured on NBC’s show Strong as one of America’s top 10 trainers. Von Rothfelder currently coaches some of America’s top CEOs and corporate executives to sustain success in life by building physical strength through movement. When he’s not coaching clients he’s operating as the CEO of Strong Coffee Company, a new venture that allows him to connect the things he loves most: creativity, movement and motivation. Fun fact: Von Rothfelder became a good friend of Barbell Shrugged, has co-hosted previous episodes, and is co-hosting some future shows. In this episode, we look into what it means to Earn the Day, why bodybuilding is the best entry point for most athletes, why eating carbs before bed is good for you, and much more. Enjoy! -Mike, Doug and Anders ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! Thrive Market is a proud supporter of us here at Barbell Shrugged.  We very much appreciate all they do with us and we’d love for you to support them in return!  Thrive Market has a special offer for you. You get $60 of FREE Organic Groceries + Free Shipping and a 30 day trial, click the link below: https://thrivemarket.com/shrugged How it works:  Users will get $20 off their first 3 orders of $49 or more + free shipping.  No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so why not give Thrive Market a try! Organifi is another great company with whom we’ve chosen to partner.  They offer a premium line of health supplements you can use to optimize your body.  Doug and Mike use their products everyday and highly recommend you give them a try. If you’d like a discount you can use the code “shrugged” to instantly get 20% off your order, click below to check out their supplements: https://organifishop.com Strong Coffee: Code: BBS20 for 20% off Strong Coffee! ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Barbell Shrugged helps people get better.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Barbell Shrugged here: Website: http://www.BarbellShrugged.com Facebook: http://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged Instagram: http://instagram.com/barbellshruggedpodcast

And the same casting agency called me up six and a half years later and was like, we have a perfect TV show for you. And they're like, we've wanted to call you every year about Biggest Loser, but you never totally fit the bill. But this one you do. And we need your character, they said. What the fuck is that? I know I had one. I'm just me. We'll see you next week. We're going to barbell shrug. I'm Mike Butzer here with Doug Larson, Anders Varner,

and we're hanging out here at Deuce Gym in Venice Beach. If you're ever in L.A., you should definitely drop in here because this is one of the coolest gyms that I've ever been to. They've got stones, they've got kegs, they've got sandbags. They got stones. They got kegs. They got sandbags. They got all this shit that your gym probably doesn't have. So check it out. Your gym sucks. This gym's awesome.

Sorry, guys. Our guest today is Adam Von Rothfelder. Hey, what's going on? And been wanting to get you on for a while. You're one of the best movers I've ever seen, and you're one of the best instructors on how to move from the movement culture, whatever you do the animal shit

yeah, something like that you're one of those guys on Instagram that make us feel ashamed about our bodies and I want to dig in to your story a bit and then just what you're up to and we worked out with you and you had some coaching stuff for us.

Yeah. It was pretty unique, stuff I'd never heard of, or I'd seen someone do at one point but didn't really describe how it was done. Cool. Yeah. Every time we train together, you always have cool, like, animal flow type stuff. I know you worked with Ido Portal for a period of time, and it's always unique stuff that we don't get with other people.

So it's very fun for us to come up here and do some shit that we don't do on a daily basis yeah yeah and i mean and you know and in movement like ito is just a such a sprinkling of it i mean it so much of uh you know when i think of uh like animal flow i'm almost thinking most of my movement came from this culture it was cultivated in mma you know so it was how to move and evade and roll out of something and get my hands up as fast as possible so I can defend the attack. So it becomes animal-like because

that's one of the things that we can compare it to the most. We are animals. We are animals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of wrestlers, a lot of grapplers, MMA fighters, they get into the animal flow stuff because it just seems to make sense. The the crossover is so high. Yeah. Well, yeah, Genasta Natural, Genastica Natural, you know,

was a big start to that. And, you know, with the Gracies doing these kind of ground flow movements. And, you know, Mike Fitch, who does animal flow, is, you know, an amazing mover. I mean, the list could go on and on. Rafe Kelly, you know, there's a lot of great guys that are doing some amazing stuff out there that is unique and individualized and totally accessible yeah i want to get into your background first we're going to mention our sponsors first being

organifi oh yeah i love organifi yeah i mean what do you do yeah yeah yeah they uh they uh i was like yo i need to try some of this. I'm a big believer. I have been for a long time about supplementing with vegetable proteins as much as possible. And Organifi honestly has the most delicious chocolate protein on the planet. I mean, and it mixes so well. Like usually like a plant-based protein is kind of gritty. And it's so smooth. A little peanut butter little banana little ice

little goat's milk or almond milk whatever you know boom dude you're making my job so easy right now sorry that's awesome no take it you use the uh coupon code no i'm just kidding actually shrugged no that's good yeah you shrugged for 20 off yeah yeah totally not 20 off shrugged um and that's not bullshit i i take that every day. I'll even throw a photo up on my Instagram. Oh, yeah. Make sure that they speak the truth. There you go.

And also we have Thrive Market, which we just came from. Yeah, they're like right down the street. They're right down the street. I hung out with Gennar and had a really nice conversation. I liked what they were doing beforehand, and I've been a member of Thrive Market for a couple years now. But talking to him today made me want to support that business even more. Totally. Me too.

I mean, they actually supported me. I mean, they paid me to come in for a month and do group fitness classes and these movement classes in the park. And, I mean, any startup that's putting dollars into their corporate wellness program at that stage, I mean, shit, they got my vote. You know, that's a good way to cultivate, you know, an amazing company that will probably be around for a really long time. It's nice when you have a company that you really like and then you meet the owner of it and you're like, oh, now I love this place. Right, right, right. And he's got such a cool name. Gnar.

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I got this special link I'll text it to you after the show super secret that's hilarious Adam where do you come from man Milwaukee Wisconsin I was born and raised

right in the Midwest I spent the first 26 years there, just doing the Midwest thing. Freezing my ass off in the winter and hoping for longer summers. You didn't even know a place like LA existed. Yeah, I mean... I figured you were SoCal native, personally.

Yeah. I had no idea. Oh, thanks. I take that as a compliment. You should. You fit in here. Yeah. Just enough no idea. Oh, thanks. I take that as a compliment. You should. You fit in here. Yeah. Just enough asshole to make it.

This guy's really pulling. LA sounds perfect. Sure enough, I'm Hollywood. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know. Damn it.

That's like Homer Simpson, like the next day with the comeback you know i uh i was growing up in milwaukee and uh i had a really interesting uh you know exposure to my brother was 13 years older than me and uh you know i'm listening to nwa i'm watching endless summer you know i'm getting into this whole like 70s kind of 80s culture and seeing this and i remember probably like my 10th birthday asking for a subscription to surf magazine trans world surf and i mean i'd never even seen an ocean before first time i ever saw an ocean i was 22 years old wow you know what i mean lake michigan looks like an ocean i mean you couldn't really tell the difference i mean people surf lake mich all the time. Sheboygan actually is pretty well known for like longboard surfing.

People travel all up there and they surf in the wintertime with total like cold suits, you know. Oh, yeah. I mean, see the Coast Guard, the actual centralized, like, where they're monitoring everything, every buoy, everything. And they were showing me that they have, like, 25, 30-foot waves in the middle of Lake Michigan. Really? Oh, yeah. I have a friend that won the surf competition that they have there every year. That's amazing. Yeah.

That's cool. He walked in, and he was one of our coaches at my gym. And you half hire him to be your surf coach, and the other half of the time, let's coach some fitness. And I was like, dude, where'd you learn how to do this? You're from Wisconsin. He was like, yeah, hopped on a surfboard in the middle of the lake and won a competition. Thought I was pretty good at this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's some big ways of surfing in Lake Michigan.

Who knew? So, yeah. Put another stop. Stop. I can't talk. That will happen. Another stop on the list. Yeah.

It was Sheboygan. Yeah, that's Sheboygan, which is about, you know, like 45 minutes an hour away from Milwaukee, somewhere around there. You owned a gym there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I grew up in Milwaukee, and, you know, I had an older brother, you know,

who passed away. And that's kind of, you know, in many ways, that's kind of what I say, like where my tale starts. That's the, if you look at like a hero's journey, that's kind of the tragedy. I created the hero's journey. If we're all on a journey and we're all heroes, which I believe we are. So I had an older brother and I have two older sisters. And then I have a little brother who's adopted, who is a paraplegic that we adopted when he was one years old. And he's 22 years old now.

So I grew up in a house where, you know, my mom, I swear she had like a, I don't know if Mother Teresa complex is a real thing. But if it is is she has it and uh you know i had foreign exchange students and foster siblings and random pets that my mom would nurse to health and you know so it was really interesting i was always surrounded by the health and wellness world of some sort because my mom was a nurse and then my other sister became a nurse and then my other sister became a nurse and then i went to nursing school so um you know i was 21 and i was uh i I went to nursing school. So, um, you know, I was 21 and I was, uh, I was going to nursing school. I had, uh, been playing, uh, collegiate soccer and, uh, found out my brother was having issues with alcohol and I dropped out of school at the time, which I was

going to school for nursing. And I started working for him as a construction worker, which I had done almost every summer since I was 12 years old. And I thought of it as like my brotherly duty to, you know, pull in the reins or something, right? You know, so I started watching him and, you know, things went south. But during that time, I actually applied for a union electrician apprenticeship. And I was working construction. I was doing some personal training on the side. And I got this union electrical apprenticeship. And about one week before the apprenticeship started, my brother passed away from a drug overdose.

So I was that 22 years old. And I heard an ad on a radio for the Milwaukee Rumble, which was the Wisconsin, it was like this show that traveled around and these guys just all out one-minute brawl rounds of, you know, just there's no sanctioning. It doesn't matter what experience you have. Just come in and beat the shit out of each other. Like the old tough man competition?

It was the tough man competition. Okay. But they had to rename it. Like they had to rename it. After they got sued? Yes. They had to rename it. Different names like the X Rumble, the This Rumble, the That Rumble.

Yeah. So I went in and signed up after hearing of my brother's passing and going and seeing the situation and signed up for the fight. And two weeks later, I fought my first fight. I didn't really think it was going to be like more fights after that, but I didn't win the tournament, and i promised my brother that i would uh so i came back the next year and cleaned house and so that's that's when i started thinking about getting out of milwaukee so i think that's uh that's when uh that's when shit got real because

i i started getting approached by people and mma was at its infancy in some in some areas like it was just getting sanctioned and this was you know not 10 years ago you know 13 years ago something like that so it uh as it got as it got popular you know you now it's like everybody's been training since they were like 10 but i mean i got into it at you know 22 doing jujitsu and I had martial arts experience prior to that but it was all Taekwondo and Karate and gymnastics type shit. Not fighting. Yeah, not fighting. I mean I never fought a day in my life and the first guy I fought, man, I felt bad for him. I mean I

fractured his orbital with 16 ounce gloves. I mean I knocked him out in 15 seconds. He put his hands up. I literally stuck my left hand over his hand and I just unleashed something that I didn't even know was inside of me at the time. about in 15 seconds he put his hands up i literally stuck my left hand over his hand and i just i mean i just like unleashed something that i didn't even know was inside of me at the time i mean that was scary so how do you get that was your introduction to fighting was that your introduction

to conscious movement or is this something that no no no there yes i mean you know i think we i don't i can't speak for everyone but i mean most kids that grew up in the 80s you know they saw arnold schwarzenegger and sylvester stallone and muscle magazines and i wanted to be jacked you know i wanted to be huge i i mean jay cutler to everybody like i was looking at the muscle magazines i you know the internet was booming and i'm like googling steroids just because i just want to know what the hell they are because like i'm interested in anabolic activity because i'm like reading about how protein synthesis does this and you know just whatever i could absorb at the time is really

where a lot of the movement began and i remember reading something about uh dave drapier and uh putting your mind in the muscle and that was something that really resonated with me because I wasn't the strongest kid I wasn't the fastest kid but I had this incredible imagination and ability to visualize things and see pictures so I would look at pictures of anatomy by the age of 12 and I would do bicep curls and chest presses and squats and deadlifts in my bedroom with this 65 pound rusty barbell that I got from my uncle Bill who passed away like the year prior and he left it to me in

two little hand weights. That's kind of where, you know, this thought process of like looking at it intelligently actually started really young. And I was fortunate enough to have parents that made me work for my money. And I had a paper out and I hired a personal trainer and he was an Olympic weightlifting coach for Dan Jansen and Bonnie Blair at the Milwaukee Pettit National Ice Center those are two Olympic gold medal speed skaters that came from Wisconsin so Dan Wiktorik is his name he still coaches today and he was probably still to one of the smartest men I've ever met when it came

to the subject of movement and he made made me do certain Oli movements and he made me, before I could even lift weight, I had to do 15 pull-ups, strict chest-to-bar. Scapular retraction. All these things that I'm processing by the age of 13. Then through a series of

hard hits in soccer and some shit benching too much weight and throwing around too much weight as I was fighting. I, uh, you know, I go through my years of fighting and I, I mean, I trained with some massive dudes. Um, you know, I mean, from Brock Lesnar to Brett Rogers, I was at Minnesota martial art, the Minnesota martial arts Academy, you know, sparring with, I mean, like literally heavyweight champions and Matt Hughes and Sean Shirk, like the names, the names that I was rolling with and getting blasted with and blasting back. to that age, you know, just like understanding the craft of being more intentional in my movement to become a better athlete with isolation or understanding angles or whatever it was.

And right when I won a tournament for a Strikeforce contract, three days later, I separated my shoulder and it was the first serious injury I'd ever had. And, you know, I lost my brother, you know, and that's like what sparked a lot of it because I had this anger. The minute my shoulder snapped, I like woke the fuck up. And I was I was like, where the fuck am I? Like I was with somebody I didn't want to be with. I'm living in a city I don't want to be with. I'm living in a city I don't want to live in. I'm living in Minnesota now. It's cold all the time.

I'm trying to say it's great, but it's only great because the training's great. Everything else about it is just not for me. Nothing wrong with Minnesota people. It's beautiful two months out of the year, but it's balls, and through that injury, I started meeting some really interesting people and through the guys that I helped by letting them beat the shit out of me, I met some really interesting people in the fight world and in the sports performance world at kind of a young time before the social media was, you know, showing us who to follow or who to listen to right and i found this guy named jay schroeder you guys ever heard of him yeah yeah

i don't know why but i've so he uh he did this thing called art wave and what it was is they would find the source and the reference and they worked with a guy named um uh adam archuleta do you remember that that name? Oh, yeah. NFL player. Yeah, from ASU. Yeah, yeah. So this kid was 5'11", 182 pounds. Actually known because some of the stuff he did in the weight room was actually super, super impressive.

5'11"? Yeah. He was just stupid. I know more about his training than I know about his football career. NFL, not at all. I mean, on single lifts and overall athleticism, I think to this day, he was probably one of the most impressive combine athletes that ever stepped into the combine. I mean, like 5'11", 185 pounds, running like a 40 and 4'2", squatting 500 pounds,ostimulation that helped like source and reference and like get the right fire patterns and all this type of stuff. So they started using this on me to correct my shoulder because I thought I still wanted to fight.

And then I realized, you know, over time, I really didn't. And but that's kind of where the training picked back up for me to dive into something completely new. So, you know, I'm 28. I retired from fighting. And I moved back to Milwaukee. I got a call that my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I was literally on set shooting a commercial. It was the first job I booked in California.

Because I was like, I got to find a way to make money. I can't fight. I don't want to be a fucking waiter. You know, like I'm not the tragic tale here. Like this is not happening. So I moved back home and got a job. I feel like that's the opposite of what most people do, by the way. Like you came to California and you're like, oh, I don't want to be a waiter. I guess I'll do TV.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do the opposite. They're like, I'm going to go do TV. And then they end up being a fucking waiter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true.. They're like, I'm going to go do TV, and then they end up being a fucking waiter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I did it backwards. It was like winning the Super Bowl the first time out. What made you- Yeah, interrupt me. I don't mean to hijack the show. What made you think to even do TV? Because I think most people aren't thinking, well, TV is an option for a job. So I was dating someone in the fitness world that is, you know.

There it is, folks. Yeah. It all comes down to a check. Her agent was like, you're totally perfect for this role that they're looking for in this ab commercial. I was like, I could use $6,000. I've been training for this my whole life.

You're going to pay me to have a six-pack? I've been doing it for free forever. Someone finally saw it. Yeah, exactly. It was huge. It was $6 know six grand for you just undid like 200 shows of us trying to tell people not to worry about that now you tell them they can make money with it yeah yeah yeah well you know it's such a rare scenario and i mean the funny thing is is i'm not somebody nor have i ever been somebody who like sat there and did crunches you know i'm not uh i'm not somebody, nor have I ever been somebody who like sat there and did crunches.

You know, I'm not, uh, I'm not training for aesthetics. It's always been more like I wanted to be faster and stronger. And then I always wanted to eat better because I had really bad ADD. So, and then eating for ADD made me leaner. And then like the by-product was this like, what's eating for ADD look like? Is that that just no sugar low inflammation foods and yeah just you know no refined sugars um you know just uh i i if i if i fast if i fast i am socially a little like high wired you know if i'm like in a fasted state like i'm a little too fast at all time yeah every time i meet you i know man i i got a lot of energy but if i'm fast and i'm like i'm way i'm too laser focused so it's like i kind of need to eat uh a little something in the morning slows you down yeah it kind of slows me down a little bit i mean a little bit of weed every once in a while helps out too you know so that's why the

show is where it's at right now yeah so eating a little something every once in a while no no no so what was uh where did we leave off before i derailed you with the ad but you're talking about eating for add and i didn't yeah yeah yeah yeah so i mean the the the the modeling the commercial so you know i mean i got the i got the commercial through you know just knowing somebody and they were like hey you know what i mean i had auditioned through it i didn't like just get it you know but it was um it was kind of an interesting thing that happened there because i was when i was fighting there was a moment in my in that time where i remembered when i was a kid wanting so bad to be a stuntman and to like be an actor maybe you know and that was kind of something that I had

a lot of dreams about when I was a kid. And I was, and when I started being around some of these people that were like in movies, right? Like the earth, like when some of these MMA fighters started getting in movies, all of a sudden I'm like, yo, this could be a thing. And I didn't know that my training and my, you know, thirst for fitness was going to be what would put me on TV eventually or get me out there in some manner. But the ab commercial was kind of what started it. And then I moved back home. You know, I wrapped up the commercial. And I remember I stopped in Vegas and partied for a night.

One of my buddies was there. And just silver bullet driving my toyota yaris all the way i think i'm one tank of gas too and uh got to milwaukee and uh yeah i remember seeing my mom and dad just shocked i hadn't seen him in like seven months eight months since i went to california and uh i was like i need a job and uh i got a job as a doorman, which is where I met my wife. And yeah, she was, and you know, Araceli. Did you guys meet her? I don't think I've met her yet. No, no, no. We, we had dinner together. That was, that was really nice. Yeah. So that's,

so I met my wife there and that's where I opened my gym. And that's a, that's a good one. All of these stories, there's like a lot of loss in there and yeah you're kind of lost all at the same time and it leads to opening a gym how are all of these kind of pieces changing your mind along the way and are you where are you figuring out like where are you going in this like is there a clear direction because you've seen a lot of things and dealt with a lot of things that most people don't have to deal with. And you were under 15 years old. Yeah.

I mean, I, you know, it was interesting. I mean, I was just at an audition in New York City yesterday. And if I have some bags under my eyes, it's because the flight was delayed like three hours and didn't get home until like 2 in the morning. Still woke up for 6 a.m for my client and um you know through that time through that question they asked me like how do you handle stress and i was like well when your perspective of stress is completely changed at a young age well then you tell me what you think is stressful. And, you know, like, I promise you, I've seen something worse. And, you know, a lot of us have. I'm not special in that manner. But I do know that out of all my friends, you know, what what kept me going was when i when i gave my

brother's eulogy i had um man if i tried giving a speech any day before that in school or anything i would shake i had like this tremor in my voice my leg would shake i was just not good in front of people like that and i knew that i had to be that guy i knew i had to be strong i knew i had to move forward i knew i had to keep pushing and i knew that like my parents were going to be worried about me even more so than ever because now that my brother was gone i was their only son and like so i just knew and i just never looked back it didn't matter what the happened you know if you you win and you lose no it's like you win and you learn and i just kept on learning from these losses and from these crazy moments in my life from you know getting a con getting winning a tournament to a contract to separating

my shoulder to my dad passing to my brother you know all these things that kept going on i just knew that there was something greater there was like a greater purpose and there was there was something so much more out there and i mean and i i maybe i can attribute a lot of that to you know i started smoking weed when i was young and i kind of saw like a bigger picture at a young age and i saw you know i went to africa and i saw, you know, I went to Africa and I saw these, you know, only five to six years earlier there's complete genocide of a half a million people and now these Hutus and Tutsis are completely cohabitating and friendly. And like, what are we holding on to here?

You know, through all the things that we've all put each other through on this continent. You know, so I just kind of started seeing things as, you know, my problems aren't that big, you know. You're saying weed helped you see that differently. Yeah, man, for sure. I find it does that for some people, but not others. No, I mean, it could definitely cloud you.

Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't, I'm not like condoning it and I'm not saying it's something that, you know, it's for everybody, but it definitely helped me during certain times, uh, you know, during my, during my life just to kind of understand and see things just a little differently. Yeah. And I have the same experience and I know some people go, really, I don't get that at all. Yeah. So like for me in certain situations, it's, it is like medicine. Right. I think the problem with them is they're trying to get it. That's, that's right. No, that's very common. Actually. I just had a conversation. They're trying to get it. They were like,

every time I do it, I don't get it. I'm like, Oh, you totally missed the point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's yeah. So, um, so yeah, I mean, I just, I kept moving forward and there was this, uh,

life motto that I said one day that just stuck and it was earned the day. And, uh, I have a tattooed on stuck and it was earned the day and I have a tattoo down my finger but through the years of working out it kind of wore off but earned the day to me was almost more fitting now yeah yeah yeah yeah totally yeah I mean I actually I didn't fix it because I do like the way that it's wore off you know you know earned the day to me was tomorrow is not inevitable, right? And these actions that I take today, it's, you know, I'm going to just do my best. I'm going to work my hardest.

I'm going to, you know, call people that, like, didn't I just call you? Oh, yeah. Yeah, like, and that was just to say hi. Like, I just want to call people, you know, just to connect with people, just to let them know that, like, they're being thought about or, you know, that they're valued as people. And I think that's important. And that's, you know, just really helped me move forward. And, you know, thank God for my wife. And, you know, the greatest saviors of all, my children.

You know, four years ago when I had my daughter, it was three months before my dad died. And, man, that was insane. The highest high. Yeah. dad died and uh man that was insane the highest high yeah you know like being becoming a father to this lowest low of losing a parent and losing a parent was so much harder than losing a sibling and to me i mean not everybody's situation is different but it was it was very different for me and uh my dad and i we had like a rough relationship and then when i built my gym up i hired him as my maintenance guy and to like work together and we like built three gyms over the

course of three years through the growth of that gym so yeah there's a lot of introspection and it pushes you kind of in the movement piece so yeah you'd go across the country now you're training with edo yeah so now across the world sorry so no no no no no this is this is actually where the that is where that exactly comes in so my brother my my dad passes away and uh i had this emotional release and it this manifestation of just immense pain the emotional anguish that i was going through right into my neck my c5 c6 i woke up one day and i literally couldn't move couldn't do a pull-up couldn't do a push-up couldn't even kiss my wife because the idea of puckering my lips hurt everything the day before i did nothing that would do that like

nothing it was just like a and you're fucked you know. It was just like a, and you're fucked, you know, like it was just like, and everything you didn't deal with, there it is. You know, you thought you were tough eight years ago and your brother passed, should have handled that, you know, whatever it was, you know, it was like, you know, you can't just move past things. You got to deal with them too. Right. So that was an interesting lesson. So I so i uh i did a go fund me and my clients and some friends paid for me to go to thailand where i trained under ito and uh two months prior to that i went to toronto and i trained under uh some of his people as well and we started doing these cervical movements and these neck slides and all these great things. And stuff that I actually was naturally good at because there's a little secret about me is that I like to pop and lock.

I like to dance. There was no secret. We called that as soon as we walked in. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can smell it. You're like, this guy looks like Boogie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the minute they're like, oh, yeah, you just do this.

And I'm like, you know, and I'm like, oh, shit. So two days later of doing that. Got this neck thing. Yeah, I'm like, hey. He taught me the neck thing. Oh, yeah? Yeah, he got me going. Now I impress my friends with it.

Took me about a year to get it. Right on, brother. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that neck thing kind of. Two days, one year, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah, that neck thing kind of days, you know, whatever, but I mean, it opened up everything and I started, uh, I started connecting, uh, all my martial arts back together because I now was no longer overly concerned with,

you know, pushing more weight, right. Or whatever it was, I was now more concerned with controlling my body even on a higher level. And I mean, like I, I mean, I'm, you know, I have a, you know, even today, like I just did a vertical check and I had still had like a 34, you know, 34 inch vertical. Like I, I have a, you know, I'm 5'11 with a 36 inch vertical and 205 pounds and I'll, you know, and i'm moving like handstands and all these things and i was kind of the odd man out at ito because all these guys are like 100 and like 60 pounds yeah you know 165 pounds i mean ito's like this big you know 100 and like 45 150 pounds um you know so it was it was definitely interesting getting into that world. So I couldn't do their game.

I had to do my game. Because that game was too much impact on my wrist, my neck. When I started getting too much in inversions, my neck started bothering me. So I started rethinking movement like a handstand is a good transitional tool. I don't think it's a move that we necessarily have to hold as so much as it is a good way to understand that you can pivot off your off a hand or off two hands you know like a mini cartwheel or whatever it is that you have the strength and the control to do that and if you're like say in mid movement you have to change directions you

can kind of like you know and go the other way so i i started connecting all this stuff for myself and i uh trained with rave kelly who you know i if I didn't mention him, I'd be a total asshole. I mean, he really got me kind of more into nature. So, you know, owning a gym, I found myself kind of stuck there. And I started having these feelings that movement, if I increase my movement capacity, my emotional capacity would increase as well. And it was helping me handle the stress and take in the love. I mean, to be a new parent, not of one kid, but of two in 15 months after everything has happened, like losing your dad. And, you know, it's, I had to be accepting of love and I felt closed from all the years

of fighting and sitting in this position and being under attack. And I started having these intuitive thoughts before, you know, this stuff was even being talked about, you know, where I was listening to it or seeing it in any way. I mean, I'm living in Wisconsin and I'm like, man, I think fascia holds trauma. I feel like there's like the tissue inside my body. And I thought I had cancer you know because I started freaking out because my dad died of cancer right my brother died at 35 and I'm like 32 and I'm like I'm gonna fucking die man like like shit man I got cancer too now like all this shit hurts like what's going on you know I thought of like some weird necrotic issue or something

that was happening to me and I just realized it was just all the years of trauma, the hard slide tackles that I was known for in soccer, the fucking just hard kicks that I threw that would hurt me, but it hurt them so much more. Whatever it was, there was just so much trauma that was internal. So I started doing it external, and I started doing ballet. I started, yeah, I have a bitch in pirouette. You know, like, you know, I've-

That's the first time I've heard that. I have a great suit and new, you know, like I like to do, you know, the arm movements, you know, the, you know, it's, for me, it's, it feels good to move like that. There's, I mean, pumping iron to begin with starts with Arnold in there. But, I mean, even like the old Russian hockey team, like all those guys used to do that stuff. They would maybe add weights to it and stuff. But there's so much balance and just movement principle in there that it transfers to everything. Right. And martial arts is very internal, right? So like when you throw a punch, you want to internally rotate that thumb.

So one, you get more torque just like you would with a compress. And two, you carry the movement that actually starts in the leg over to the hand and you just let it snap out, right? So everything's internal kicking, kneeing, whatever it was. So then doing something that was external was crazy. Mind blown. You know, I mean, it was very, it was very different and I, it felt so good to open up. Right. I mean, I've even, you know, you know seen uh studies and people talk about like just changing your posture getting more open produce more testosterone oh yeah things like that for

sure so if you're always in this position if you're always trying to protect your chest right in your head yeah well i mean think about all the the you know the physiological things that happen within that that super physiological things that happen within that, super physiological things that happen within that physiological, where now your breathing has changed. You're now going parasympathetic. You start basically just restricting your breath, and that's going to cause stress to your system, which is going to raise cortisol, which is going to decrease testosterone. It's all going to feed into one another. So I, you know, got a little bit more open and it helped me out a lot, you know.

Yeah. Let's take a break real quick. Yeah. Come back. I want to talk more about ballet. Sweet. Yeah. Thanks for watching the show.

If you'd like to learn more about how to improve your snatch, clean, and jerk, we have a free 55-page e-book you can get at flightweightlifting.com has sample programming specifically for weightlifting weightlifting how-to technique videos and other tips on how to improve all of your lifts go to flightweightlifting.com and you can download that ebook for free download it now and we're back with adam and um so what what how did you get from ballet to California? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you taking ballet in Milwaukee? A lot of pirouettes.

No, yes, yes. So my original gym that I opened, I had the 6,000, you know, at the end it was a 6,000 square foot group fitness studio called Drench Fitness Boutique. And it was a really cool system of like eight treadmills eight trx's eight boxing bags and we i cycled people through these hard intense training programs and that were like mimicked like fight training and all different stuff and kettlebells and uh no conventional stuff at all it was all unconventional for like six years and um after uh i got casted i uh in a two-month time period uh during the last years of uh drench i had been doing live tv uh stuff for the news on a regular basis so i really started doing a bunch of things on tv doing workout tips or recipes on the local NBC channel.

And it all kind of circled back. So seven years, you know, six years earlier, living in California with that agent that got me that job through that ex-girlfriend had me audition for Biggest Loser one time six and a half years ago. And the same casting agency called me up six and a half years later and was like, we have a perfect TV show for you. And they're like, we've wanted to call you every year about Biggest Loser, but you never totally fit the bill.

But this one you do. And we need your character, they said. What the fuck is that? I know I had one. I'm just me. I'm just a northerly guy. He doesn't even know. He's aware now.

Shit. That's how they see me. So my dad had passed you know i'm i i got two kids my neck's not hurting anymore i'm feeling good i'm i'm training hard i'm you know i've got a really good training program going and in two in the span of two months i got booked for a huge versace shoot which me and gigi Hadid made out, and she punched me in the face as part of the thing. And it was like a part of the thing, and she literally had to hit me

because of the camera shot that we were having. She hit me so hard that my cheekbone actually bruised, and she, like, hurt her finger on one of the shoots. That modeling wife. Yeah, yeah. No joke. It was kind of really challenging. They're like, Adam, do you mind?

Do you mind being hit by her? They're like, we wouldn't ask any of the other guys. We know that you actually fought. They're like, we know you actually fought, so would you mind taking a couple licks from her? And I was like, nah, man, whatever. You know, just don't turn them all the way over. And I just took a couple of

bare knuckle punches to the face for this Bruce Weber shoot. They ended up not even using the damn scene. And I'm like, yo, you need to send me that shit so I can at least see it. And then I got a call for Strong. So NBC, I was one of ten of the ten best trainers on the planet. You know, whatever the NBC said. Whether I'm one of the best on the planet, you know, whatever the NBC said. You know, I mean, whether I'm one of the best on the planet, I don't know, but I know that I'm really passionate

and I really love what I do and I have a unique approach. I got a quick question. Yeah. Are they really gathering the top 10? I mean, I know you're good, but what about these other nine? They're all going to hear this. They're great. No, you know what

I mean you know okay here this is the thing I out of 10 how many are you hiring at Drench? How many am I hiring at Drench? I would say 2 out of 10 I would hire 2 at Drench

or I would trust 2 with maybe my programming you know in some sense right I mean one of the guys couldn't even cross a set of fucking monkey bars you know and I'm not to say that like your physical characteristics

you know show what your knowledge is but this show was a trainer slash we had to compete right so i get on the show well here's the thing i think if you're a trainer then you have a duty to to be oh yeah well i mean you certainly should be unless you have like uh unless you're just a total cerebral trainer and maybe you have something like that uh trainer i was telling you that trained me dan wiktorik he ended up having uh a stroke and he can't really well that having a stroke. And he can't really...

Well, that's a different story. But now he can cue it and he can teach it without really needing to do it anymore. He can just do a bar, but he can't load it with weight anymore. But, you know, I mean... He has a real reason. Right, he has a real reason. I mean, the thing is, is we're very confused in today's market where social media is like an indicator of knowledge. And we are confused that following is directly related to how good they are as like a trainer or something.

So we see some guy with rippling abs and a huge chest on Instagram. We're like, that guy must know so much. I'm totally going to buy this $149 program from him. And it's, you know, some bullshit hypertrophy workout with some massive amount of caloric intake with, you know, and, you know, whatever it is. And you're not on the right amount of steroids for it to even work. You know, whatever. Well, there was a conversation we were having the other day. I don't remember who it was.

The difference between authority and credibility. Yeah. I've gotten completely blurted. Yeah. And I think that's what happened here because they were obviously, they were looking for people who had following. Like like I had the lowest following. I had the smallest resume, like they all, like I train, you know, Tom Cruise or, you know, like I own, you know, this big CrossFit gym in, you know, LA. I, you know, it's this, I, I, you know, that,

whatever it is, there's this, there's this thing that they had that was this kind of celebrity, the celebrity feel. Yeah. I just want to point this out because I think people get confused. Yeah. I, I have talked to a lot of people who watch Biggest Loser and they're talking about what's going on and I've seen some of it and I'm like, don't do that. No, no.

I mean, and don't do it like that if you're going to do it. No. Yeah. That's my, so one of my biggest things is positioning. You know, and there's a great saying from jiu-jitsu is, you know, position over submission. Like, never give up your position for a submission, right? And unless you totally have it, right? Why I think that so many trainers allow this position or they themselves don't even understand the position

where they're using a TRX and their butt is completely dumped out and they're doing tricep presses and they wonder why they have lower back issues. And this is the kind of stuff that I saw on the show. And I'm not to say that some of these guys don't have great knowledge about certain things. Like Leon is a great boxing coach. I don't know what his other knowledge is, so I can't speak about it. But he's a really great boxing coach. Or Kai was a really good Pilates instructor.

Or somebody who was a really good CrossFit coach. But that doesn't mean that you're going to make the greatest change and the greatest impact because you have the right amount of knowledge and the right amount of information to feed the person. When you look at all the contestants, I think what really speaks volumes is my contestant, in the end, is the one that stuck through it all. Like she is in the best shape of all of them. Like after the show.

Oh, yeah. Because I gave her an understanding of a mindset. It's a behavior. It's not a result. I told her, don't worry. The weight will come. Let's not Like after the show. Oh, yeah. Like, because I gave her an understanding of a mindset. It's a behavior. It's not a result. I told her, don't worry. The weight will come. Let's not compete for the weight. Let's compete for the win.

And let me just keep giving you as much as I can knowledge-wise. I was making her hang for three minutes a day as part of her training. Like, doing all these things. I'm like, I'm going to strengthen your hands because you want to do pull-ups. Now she does six to eight strict pull-ups. You know, she's like deadlifting 320 you know like she can move pretty well for a 44 year old woman who went through menopause at 33 years old and was told that she would not have any weight loss from the show doctor she has a six pack wow i mean she lost 60 pounds and she has a six pack i mean like obviously the doctor didn't

know what the fuck he was talking about right you. You know, like they said, her hormones are off and it's like, I, I got her, I, I, you know, I looked at her hormones and I got her on pregna loan and DHEA just enough to kind of give her like a little bump up, got her eating on point because she has, um, uh, uh, what is fibromyalgia? She has fibromyalgia. So, uh, she lot so I had to really help her with her diet and her nutrition and now she doesn't have the flare-ups that she's used to all the time. So I legitimately changed her life. I didn't just help her lose 40 pounds. Where do you

take somebody that clearly has a long way to go and your background is in fighting people, ballet, Ido Portal. What are some of those entry level steps where you really start to pump the education and just the basics? fighting people, ballet, Ido Portal. What are some of those entry-level steps where you really start to pump the education and just the basics?

What does that look like on a program for someone like them? Man, you know, that's an awesome question because I have a really strong opinion on the idea of bodybuilding. I still believe that bodybuilding is the best entry point for 90% of the community. I think 90% of the community, even three years into their fitness,

should still be bodybuilding. I did bodybuilding from 12 to 20. And when I say bodybuilding, I'm speaking of isolated hypertrophy movements, volume, switching volumes like 60% to 75%, dropping down to 40% for a deload week, but kicking the reps up a little bit, decreasing rest time, increasing tempos and tensions, playing with those things

to elicit more muscle fibers, more neurological connections, your neural pathways, and really understanding the movement and what's happening. So when I say stop pulling with your elbow elbow when you're doing a scap movement, you understand where the hell your elbow is from your asshole. Because if you don't, you don't. And that's where the disconnection is. People are like, oh, my shoulders hurt. It's like, yeah, or my wrist is hurt or my elbow is hurt.

It's like, yeah, it's because your shoulder is fucked, whatever it is. Because everything you do, you're compensating or you're moving something that you shouldn't be moving. So I believe that bodybuilding is a, you know, like, and I just kind of prepare, putting all that together in one big bag is bodybuilding. And some good activation work, you know, something like FRC type work.

We're just doing activation, functional range mobility, joint articulation type stuff. Some of my clients, like I literally teach how to, you know, pop and lock a little bit. I have this kind of theme in my workouts. It's like move, lift, fight. So it's like I move with you a little bit and we do some movements and like joint articulations, opening up the body. Then we lift and then we do about 10 minutes of pad work or 10 minutes of parkour work. Something that is applying what it is that we just did that comes full circle. And all of a sudden they understand why it's so important for them to understand how to hold a straight arm.

Because now I'm teaching them like a parkour move that they have to like brace the arm and throw their body over the box and not bend the elbow. Yeah. Because they won't have enough clearance. One of the big things you were talking about kind of in the weight loss and in the pain seems like a lot of people just struggle from just generalized inflammation everywhere in their body. Are you coming at that from nutrition with them? Is it breath work? What are some of the pieces that you implement into their programs to maybe just deal with some base level inflammation problems that I think everyone struggles with? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely, I'm always trying to get into somebody's mind that, you know, if we can reduce sugars, you know, refined sugars, you know, grains, whether you're

gluten tolerant or intolerant, whatever it is, grains still have, you know, grains, whether you're gluten tolerant or intolerant, whatever it is, grains still have, you know, certain enzymes, phytic acid and xenoestrogens that, you know, if we're not soaking our, if we're not soaking our grains and, you know, rinsing them and before we prepare them, whatever it is, our bodies aren't absorbing certain things, you know, it's anti-nutrients um calcium magnesium zinc and without those things we're going to get more muscle tension we're going to have different different issues so i think that if we can find a very low moderation i kind of have this um diet mindset that i i it's uh like it's like a keto sport kind of style diet where I eat a certain amount of

carbohydrates based off the amount of time that I worked out and the intensity I worked out. And I have a scale for that, how I do that. And I only place my carbs around my workout before and after. And then I have a small amount before I go to bed because I found that I sleep better if I have a little carbohydrates before I go to bed so I so I eat right for my activity type so if I'm really high volume I'll increase really high volume high intensity I'll lift up my carbs a little bit you know for longer longer period of time if I'm not going very high volume lower stress oxidative type training then I'll keep my fats higher, carbs lower, and go more for the metabolic effect of, you know, just staying lean and preserving muscle with, you know, the right amount of protein. So it's really about muscle preservation for me.

I'm, you know, I'm 36 years old and I haven't lifted weights hard. And, you know, this year has been really great, you know, cause because we we just moved to california but and it's brought some of the most amazing things that you know i can't wait to talk about but the one of the things that has brought is a lot of car time so i'm not able to train as much as i used to and i have two little girls that you know they really want their dad and i really love my kids you know i love my kids more than i love weightlifting you know and more than like being better you know like in that like manner it's like because i could be better by being a better father i don't need to just be better by bench pressing more weight right right so it's like the narrative

yeah so i i think that um you know yeah awesome yeah how did you figure out that eating carbs before bed was was something that was really valuable to you? I guess the obvious answer is you tried it and you just felt better. But was there a process there? Yeah, yeah. When I fly, I take a little sugar bump like an hour before I get on a plane. And it helps me fall asleep because I get like an insulin spike. So because I'm kind of wired hot, it helps me to bump up my insulin just a little bit every once in a while so that I get a crash.

And that crash helps me sleep deeper. And it works for a lot of people. I think that people who – I talk to a lot of people who do a lot of fasting and they find themselves restless at night. Or they find themselves – I find the same thing. Eat a little bit of carbs before bed. Helps me go to sleep. Yeah.

I talk to people all the time. It's like, if you want to get tired in 20 minutes, eat sugar now. Right, right. Then you'll be tired in 20 minutes. Yeah. I do L-theanine. Maybe not everybody, but that's been my experience. Yeah.

No, I do L-theanine, L-tryptophan, and a little chromium picolinate, and take a little carbs and, and you know a little bit of protein together and just in a drink or something to something to snack on you know maybe walk to the donut shop with the kids and i'll take two bites of their donuts you know like oh dad's got to try it first dad's got to try it first that's what i always tell him dad's got to try it first and make sure it's not poisoned we'll'll know what happens to your six pack. Yeah, I know, man. So what happens to six pack? So your training time these days isn't what it used to be.

Like what does your training look like when you're pressed for time? Yeah, when I'm pressed for time, depending on how I, you know, I train around how I feel. So if I'm not, you know, if I'm a little sore, I'm a little, you know, when you get, when you've been doing it long enough, you can feel like what's going to break before it breaks in some ways. Like you're like, if I train that, like that's not going to be good tomorrow. So I have, I have two things that I do every week that are like standard. I do a 150 cal assault bike ride or row as fast as I can.

And then I do a 300 and I try to beat the halftime of one 50 per half. So like, I try to beat that 300 time. So like, I'll get my 300 down to like 19 or 20 and my one 50 took like 11, you know? So I'll try to beat it by like 20 seconds 30 seconds so whatever i did on 150 on like monday or tuesday i try to beat that halftime on my 300 on like friday something like that so you're on uh you're on the assault bike twice a week yeah twice a week

or a rower so if i whatever i do on monday i have to do on the next day because it's like a mental game for me because I've never been a big fan of cardio. But I love the sweat and the breath that starts happening, and it starts making me feel kind of that fight kind of feel. We'll do, I always do, I do scap work every day. Hanging scap work, you know, elevation, depression, retraction, protraction, you know, whatever I can do to get those scaps to move. Do some spine work. I have, you know, some really good hip exercises that I've been working with. And then I'll warm up. So I earn the workout is kind of the way I have to think about it now. So if I have 30 minutes

and I warm up, say I have an hour and it takes me 40 minutes to do my warmup. Well, it's like I get a 20 minute workout. But no matter what, I'm doing the warmup first. And I'll warm up for like 30, 40 minutes of good functional activation exercises.

And then I'll just grab two things, like a heavy ass sandbag and like a 220 pound sandbag, 225 pound sandbag. And I'll do five sets of 12 squats with, you know, 400 pound sled push, you know, 50 meters. And then like four dumbbell 80 pound snatches on each arm, rest two minutes, do it again. And I'll just do like four or five rounds like that. And then I do some accessory work. I find that, you know, a lot of people are all like, almost like bragging that they don't do biceps and triceps. Well, you're not gonna be bragging when your elbows explode, right? So if, you know, it's really cool now when you're younger

or before you reach the volume I have, I tell everybody, like, I'm like your crystal ball, right? Because the seven, eight years of fighting that I did aged me to a higher level of, like, what it feels like. Like, I feel like I'm 45 at times based off of the impact that my body has taken. Oh, there's age and then there's training age. Right, there's age and there's training age, right. And so I find that, you know, doing like biceps,

biceps a day and triceps a day keep the elbow doctor away. Like I'm just, you know, high volume, 30 reps on rubber bands, tricep extension. You know, just go for the pump. I'll throw even some BFR bands on. Katsu. Katsu is dope. It's these bands that you put on your upper arm or you also put on your leg.

Occlusion bands? So occlusion is different than blood flow restriction. So the material and the pressure that it does is all through a machine that digitally calculates the pressure of your arm. And what it's doing is it's blocking the vein from carrying the blood out, but the artery is carrying the blood in. So one of the issues that we have behind muscle size and training volume is fascia restriction. So if you can pump the blood into the muscle at a greater rate with less resistance, you'll have less impact on the joint and you'll get the fascia to expand, making the muscle grow

also releasing a lot of IGF-1. So you can help your body heal through doing Can I get one of these for my penis? Yeah, it's like a cock ring I think. You just pull the thing and release. Never heard of that. Two bucks in the ring. I think that's what they call it. Yeah. You just pull the thing and release. I got a couple of those. You got to get the pull string, the pull release.

The one with the battery in it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Got a cape on it. So a little, so a little blood, so a little blood flow restriction training kind of speeds up the arm work. Um, and that's, you know, that's about it. I mean, I'm lucky if I get a workout in like that, like two days a week, three days a week, you know, and other than that i just i i eat as clean as i can except for eating my kids

donuts and you know one pizza one pizza shared a week with uh me and my kids on friday night yeah i feel like so many of us have so much fitness and training and like in our savings account yeah and now we just try and let's get rid of all the problems that we caused. And there's just little things that you can do and then push a sled. You're going to be awesome. You don't have to do that every single day of your life and feel like you're going to die to still get where you're going. No, no.

And sometimes, I mean, I love a good 10-minute yoga flow too. I mean, like I love stretching my wrist, getting on the floor and just doing cat-cow for five minutes and just feeling your breath. Yeah. And just letting your stress go. I mean, that's really what it's about. Getting into, you know, I'm getting, I was telling you guys, I'm going back into martial arts. And, you know, I mean, it's been so long. I mean, when I left fighting, I left everything.

Like, I just was like, I ain't touching shit. You know, like, I like i didn't do jujitsu for seven years or like kickboxing at all like muay thai nothing and no training so i'm going back to you know taekwondo to start taking my daughter and just so i can just move my body around a little bit more in different ways that's not so you know lift weights yeah that's a great idea for a lot of parents out there i think a lot of times parents feel like they have to put their kids somewhere where they go to the gym right you could just go take a martial arts class totally yeah you don't have to do crossfit no of course shape you can do other things no i mean martial arts climbing you know i mean there's there's so many great options that you can get a child into that can give them real life skills and confidence that, you know, that's what I try to do.

Having two little girls, I really, you know, I was telling someone the other day, I'm like, I raise them like boys so that like the equality of how everyone else treats them, it levels out. So I don't want them to be like raised like girls because I don't want them to think that they can't do something. You want to make them capable. Yeah, I want to make them fully open to the idea of, no, wrestling's not for girls. It's not for boys. It's for people. And now I'm double-legging you, and you ain't going to say shit about it. So I wrestle with my kids all the time.

They love it. When you are moving into this next step, we've got some coffee love it. Yeah. When you are moving into this next step, we've got some coffee going on. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, we, we moved to California, uh, a year and a half ago and I was working with XPT at the time and, um, they kind of put it in my mind to like come out here and, you know, after NBC and everything, I was like, okay, you know, let's do it. I sold my gym my gym to my uh employees for the cost of the equipment that was it just walked away and um they're uh they're still rocking over there they uh that's Como uh Comotion it was called Como when I opened it but they uh changed the name just a little bit but that's a uh it's a cool movement gym that they're trying to do in Milwaukee. It's a hard place to do fitness though.

So unless you're selling Broughton beer, it's a, it's a challenge. Um, but yeah, so I'm, uh, I moved out to California and I have, uh, I, I honestly, I have to say my clients are the shit. You know, I've met some amazing, amazing people out here. I trained the founder of Tom's, Blake Mykowski. You know, a bunch of other great guys from like Joaquin Noah to Ray Lewis. When they visit town, Mark Ballas. I mean, like just a bunch of amazing performers and athletes and entrepreneurs, John Durant. And through those relationships, through Blake, actually, I was introduced to a guy named Ben Goldhirsch.

And Ben is the founder of GoodCorp, which is a large organization that does fundraising and marketing for large corporations. And it helps raise money. So it's all about doing good in the world and he uh so it's my first training session with him and i had literally just gotten back from san jose's fit expo and i was field testing this product so four and a half years ago i started a company called strong coffee company. It was a coffee shop in front of my gym that I was selling bulletproof coffee out of. And their collagen and everything, but the margins were so low, I couldn't afford the space. So I decided to bottle my own collagen and my own MCT. And I made certain blends where I took collagen and MCT and

L-theanine and i combined it into a single product called strong cream and then i had another product called strong sugar and that was coconut palm sugar mixed with you know low low low-cal sugars mixed with uh things like madagascar vanilla beans and bioactive curcuminoids and uh and then we had one that also had uh mocha and maca so four and a half years fast forward, I shut that business down right away because it was undercapitalized. We didn't have the right investor,

all this type of stuff. Four and a half years later, I revisited the idea and with new science and new thoughts behind it that I've been thinking about for the last four years and watching kind of the market to be primed for it, where it was like, if I was too early, I would be looked over. If I'm too early, I would be looked over. If I'm too late, I'll be last, you know, whatever it is.

And I feel like it's a great time to not only have a really great product, but a great brand that stands for something. That's not just something that's going to be delivering, you know, some fitness, you know, like whether it's fitness information, but really delivering people's words and information and some strong words. So Strong Coffee Company was made possible. Ben is my investor and my business partner now on this journey. He actually just retired as the CEO from Good Corp to take this on. And we are fucking stoked.

I mean, it's a, so what the, what the product is, is you know, first of all, if you, you know,

follow strong coffee company, cause we're going to be doing a really amazing giveaway and brand launch over the course of the next couple of weeks. And you know, there's gonna be an opportunity to get some really dope prizes and uh your supply your supply and lifetime supply actually a strong coffee through some of these giveaways and it's a hundred percent instant latte that is made from a cold brew powder so it's 70 percent lower acidity it's got L theanine for an anti

it has a special anti-anxiety formula an anti-inflammatory formula and then a hydration formula all within 15 grams of protein and 5 grams of fat and all in a single powder and we're doing vanilla latte mocha latte and cafe latte and then we have a side product called strong cream which is all the components of what the latte is made out of without the coffee so you can just add it in your coffee at home are these going to be individually packaged so i travel i can just dump it in hot water is that how it works yeah so our initial launch what we're actually going to be doing is we're going to be we're going to be doing bags um for

the initial launch and um we're going to be doing bags for the initial launch. And there's going to be this cool to-go thing that it comes with that allows you to take multiple days with you on the road. The good news about it is acidic is cumulative. So the more coffee you have, the more acidity you're taking in, changing your pH. So when you look at the coffee that we're making. You got to put your coffee inside of a rock vortex. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's cool with Paul Cech? Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. He knows. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Ben Greenfield, I was just up at Ben Greenfield's house a couple weeks ago. I took my family on this dope road trip,

went to the Pacific Northwest, you know, and drove up to Washington and hung out at Ben's house, checked out his farm and hung out at Nora Gagadius's house and ate paleo food with her and, you know, talked about her new book. And it was a cool, cool trip. And he loved the coffee. He was like, dude, I feel insane. So one of the things that's really interesting about it is. I thought that was just Ben in general. Well, we are using something very interesting that will make the coffee,

a single cup of coffee lasts about six and a half to seven hours of energy. Oh, wow. So we're using a special technology that is micro-encapsulated energy. So it's like Adderall. That's time release. It's a similar technology. You figured it out. You figured it out. Coffee that's like Adderall. You just sold everybody.

There's a couple of people like Brittany Cattow, who's like a well-known fitness figure girl. One of these NPC girls that does the bikini shows and she had a a thing with adderall and you know she was telling me about when she tried the coffee that she was like yo where do i sign up like how do i help you you know get this out there my my biggest thing with making this product it was kind of like um for me what i wanted to do is I looked at the things that we're facing in our work day

and what coffee is doing to us and how the two are compounding. So the anxiety, the stress, the dehydration, the inflammation. And I wanted to find a way to deliver that all in a single cup of coffee that gives you a value in which you're actually getting a meal at the same time. Because you sit at Starbucks or wherever it is and somebody buys your coffee and then they buy that coffee and then they buy a kind bar or whatever it is. You know, and that's like bullshit protein. They try. Yeah, they try.

You know, they're giving it a shot. But we're not trying to come from this scientific route. You know, we're going to have some great science. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is actually going to be doing our… Oh, yeah. Yeah, so she's a good friend of mine. She's going to be doing the Brains Meets Braun is our blog. She's going to be doing the whole blog portion of it. Where she is going to be

the hot doctor that explains why proteins and fats. You've got the right partner for that. Totally. Not only is she probably one of the smartest doctors i've met you know in this kind of vitality regeneration muscle preservation feel but yeah i mean she used to be on the cover of iron man magazine you know in a bikini you know just rocking it and she still looks great so um her and anthony her husband are really good friends of mine i was just got a nice iv drip yesterday some glutathione all that all that biohack geeky shit that uh people love i was like yeah give me whatever people come in for i don't know i don't know if it works but just do

it yeah yeah i just want to feel good so yeah so this coffee is going to be uh available and you know one of the things that i'm trying to do with it that's really important to me is that the message the message behind it is what's really important. I want people to wake the fuck up. For so long, in a sense, as an individual that's a brand, you feel like you're restricted to say certain things. You're on NBC. You can't say certain shit Yeah, like if I ever want to get booked again by X If I mentioned the fact that like if they listen this podcast and like oh Adams Adams a stoner like it's like now

I'm not America. I'm not like this like wholesome American that you dropped out of the top ten right right right? I dropped out of the top time. I'm now 11 good thing. I have YouTube TV right obsolete exactly it already is but but I just don't know it yet. Totally. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, now with like strong coffee, it's kind of like a pent-up situation that I believe has got a very current real-life need where, you know, there's a lot of people that feel misdirected and, you know, what's going on between the, you know, the government

and, you know, I don't even want to go into politics in any sense, but I think that people just need to be a little bit more aware of what's happening. And maybe that just means like, uh, it's symbolism in some sense that strong coffee is just to wake the fuck up. And you could also just consume it at the same time, you know? So it's kind of, it's kind of like, yeah, you can drink it and you also just need to, you know, embody it. kind of like, yeah, you can drink it, and you also just need to embody it. You need to – You have something else going on too. Yeah. Earn the day.

Earn the day is going to be coming around in late spring. I am teaming up with some really great people and we are going to be developing a create your own day thing like program that basically allows you to structure your day so that you frame it around your recovery time when you eat and then you can basically figure out how long you have to work out for and what you want to target and it will target the proper appropriate workouts for you so it's a bunch of like five minute and ten minute block sections that are gonna be auto-populating into a workout based off of your parameters so uh earn the day is uh something i've been saying for a long ass time and uh i've been living it and you know preaching it and uh you know earn

is real quick on it is it's like a exercise activity recovery and nutrition so these four pillars that we need and how different exercise and activity is and you know the recovery is sleep and rest and quiet time like you know these things that we actually need and how important nutrition is you know we all understand that yeah that's cool, you know, these things that we actually need and how important nutrition is, you know, we all understand that. Yeah. That's cool. If you don't, then, you know, you shouldn't be listening to this podcast. Or you should listen to all of them, all 300 of them.

Yeah. Shit. Yeah. So that's, so that's it. I mean, I'm busy, man. I, I love it. I love California. You know, it's, it's been really great.

I got to travel around with the Fit Expo this year. That was really fun. I love getting in front of people and just, you know, shaking's been really great. I got to travel around with the Fit Expo this year. That was really fun. I love getting in front of people and just, you know, shaking people's hands and meeting them. And I love the energy of, you know, the crowd. And, you know, it's not even being, like, in front of people. It's being around people. You know, that's what I love. I mean, Anders, I actually saw you there at the LA Fit Expo.

You were recording videos and running around. We were trying to chase you. You were, like, running. We're not groupies, I promise. You were recording videos and you were running past and we could catch you. Come back. Where are you going? Yeah, they had me do some interviews around on the floor on their Instagram,

which was fun. Yeah, it's like, you know, the fitness world is a different world, right? Like it's very different than like this paleo world. The mainstream fitness world. Yeah different world, right? Like it's very different than like this paleo world. Like the mainstream fitness world. Yeah, like the mainstream. Like the shit that you see on like, you know, Muscle and Fitness magazine, right? Like the guy that's been on the cover 175 times.

You know, like that guy. You know that he's got a booth there. I know that guy. And literally everybody's like, oh my God, I want to meet you. Yeah. You know, like my friend Diego Sebastian is one of those guys. You know, he's like been on the cover of like 100 some magazines. And he literally just has a booth and people just want to meet him.

You know, and he gets paid to do this. And, you know, he's a good coach, I think. I mean, I can't speak for like how he is as a coach. But, I mean, I don't know like what this fitness world is really feeding people because when you look at like the products, oh, man, like all the artificial bullshit that's in them, right? It's all disguised health food. Right, right, right? It's all disguised as health food. Right, right, right.

It's all disguised as health food. And that's one of the strong values that a strong coffee company will have is to make sure that the products are natural and that they're organic coffee and this and that. But we're trying to deliver coffee as a supplement because really it is. When you go to one of those events and there's maybe 100 booths and 98 of them are supplement companies and you're like, something's going on here. Oh, man. It's fishy. Yeah. Yeah.

It's super fishy. Why are there so many? And if you ask anybody about sucralose or any of that type of stuff, they're like, oh, there's such a minimal amount in there. If you ask them about red color dye number 29, whatever the fuck you people get prostate cancer from, it's like, there's no scientific proof about that. It's the same thing with artificial

sweeteners. They're like, will you try out my supplement? I'm like, oh yeah, let me look at it. I turn around, artificial sweetener's not taking it. And then they think I'm the crazy one for not wanting to touch it. Right. Why is there citric acid in this? Citric acid is really not good for you you know like why do i need that you know like like all these things why are they in there just to make it taste a certain way or like masks a certain

flavor that they're hiding it's like man if i if this product really works let me just take it let it taste like shit and let this result speak for themselves don't make it taste like fucking candy yeah i don't know man i mean i go back and forth on it because i definitely take some stuff that like shit and let the results speak for themselves. Don't make it taste like fucking candy. Yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, I go back and forth on it because I definitely take some stuff that tastes like shit. It would taste like shit if I didn't encapsulate it. Yeah.

You know, we got to put these in capsules at least. So, but yeah, using artificial sweeteners to do it. I mean, it is a funky thing because you got artificial sweeteners or you got to put sugar in it. Right. Like one or the two. Right. Do you ever,

but I, I would, I don't think any supplements worth either one of those. No, no sugar or, or the, uh, no artificial sweetener.

Yeah. I mean, I take very little. I mean, like I look back at the supplements and how much I used to take and how much I take now. It's so funny. I mean,

like a good, like I got to make up for all the shit. I'm like, Oh fuck. I put tons of bad shit in my body. Totally. I've got at least another 20 years of eating super clean. Right, right, right.

Every time you took an O Explode, you have to eat 10 vegetables. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just get that year back in your life. I've got another dozen Cambo ceremonies set up this year. Poison myself with frogs so I throw up everything. You lick the toad or something? No, no. He's got to catch it first.

Oh, no. You got to catch the frog. Yeah, yeah. Then you tie up each one of its legs. It's got to be a wild Amazonian frog. It's a very specific type.

You tie up its legs in four directions and you sing to it. And as you sing to it, you get this venom off its back. And then you put the venom on the stick and it dries. And then you let the frog go. And then you take a stick and you light it on fire. And then you stick it in your skin.

You sear a little hole in your skin. And you take a napkin and you wipe off the skin. And then you wet the— I can't tell if he's making this up or not. Only the catching the frog part. You wet the frog venom with your saliva, then you put it on the burn, and then it just gets into your body. Your whole body just starts burning, and you can feel it just pumping through your body.

And then you may get a little look funny during this process. And you end up throwing up, purging for like 30, 45 minutes. That sounds not awesome. It's exhausting. But the next day you feel like fucking Superman. Interesting. And they've actually got a lot of research on it so there's like a lot of compounds that are in it's called cambo um a lot of the compounds are a lot

of pharma uh pharmaceutical companies are trying to uh figure out which compounds do what and then work it into medicine but i say fuck it just do the whole frog yeah and it has to be an uh it actually has to be wild caught uh amazonian frog because because, I say Amazonian, but I don't know the actual name of the frog. It's just from Amazon. If you domesticate that frog, it stops producing the venom. Wow. That's interesting. So where do you get this frog from?

They're called cambo shamans. The frog guy. If you lived in Encinitas, you would know. I'll be in... Actually, one of the best guys in the world is in Sedona. I'm going to go see him next in about six weeks. That's amazing. You should come join me.

We can throw up together. That sounds great. Will you hold my hair? Yes, 100%. Only if we're going to video. Yes. Hold that. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I remember the first time doing mushrooms and the come up.

And it was just like, bleh, bleh. And your stomach literally started tremoring and convulsing a little bit. And I was just like, what's going on here? And then it was like, hello, darkness, my old friend. You know, just like this. And you're like, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. You know, yeah, that was, that was, it was funny. Somebody, the first time I ever did mushrooms was after I lost my, after I lost my dad.

And somebody was like, hey, man, try it out. And I did it. And it was like, literally, like, all of a sudden, I was no longer grieving. Like, two weeks later, it was like we had a conversation. I had a conversation with him at the river on mushrooms, and my dad was sitting there fishing. And I was like talking to him, and all of a sudden like after that, I never, it wasn't even like, oh, I'm sad about my dad.

It's like, oh, my dad's doing some shit. It's like you got closure and processed it and right you were able to move on yeah yeah yeah because we were like we just had this conversation in our minds you know in my mind because i saw him but i mean it was just you know me needing to see what i needed to see yeah and uh it's showing you i had a similar experience with ayahuasca yeah so yeah gotta say goodbye to my dad yeah in a way that i didn't get to previously. It's a shame that the people that need this stuff aren't getting

the real supplements or the real things that they actually need. They're just being sold a lot of times a bill of goods. It's like how one trip could just take care of your life. It's like, who knows? Go to Peru. One responsible trip.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Highly recommend. Well done. Yeah, well said. Yeah, I mean, again, not telling anybody to go do something, but it's like if you obviously are somebody who is open to it

and you need closure on something or you need to move past something and you're not having a good time doing it, I mean, shit. Might as well give it a shot before you just waste the next 20 years of your life. Actually, if you want to give it a shot, I'm going to do a Medicines of Mexico retreat in September.

September? I can be down for that. That sounds good. Can I bring the coffee? I'll bring the coffee. You bring the coffee. And then. Free room and board if you bring coffee.

I'm actually going to open it up for people to sign up. Oh, sweet. It will be like about a dozen. I think we're going to do like a dozen people in Tulum. Oh, dope. Summit just was there. I saw like a bunch of people posting like that a dozen. I think we're going to do like a dozen people in Tulum. Oh, dope. Summit just was there. I saw like a bunch of people posting

like that whole summit. Summit series? Yeah, yeah, the Summit Entrepreneurial. Oh, yeah. They were down in Tulum. Wonder what they were doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I just want to go to Shell Han and go swim with some dolphins on, you know, like, jumping in the water. Sounds great. I can only imagine. Yeah.

All right, man. I'm so glad you made it can only imagine. Alright, man. I'm so glad you made it on the show. Thank you guys for having me. I really appreciate it. It was a little mini goal and dream two years ago when I was on Strong. You guys contacted me back about my coffee mug.

My coffee mug made it on Strong. You guys posted the photo somebody screenshot it the fact that the caught because i'm like holding this drop everything and train mug and some asshole from the show stole it however you guys sent me a new one and uh it was really i liked it i liked how heavy it was it was a really good coffee yeah yeah yeah it was like i was like oh by the way i want to mention this you also did one of our training programs i did do flight and you bastardized it i did, yeah, yeah. I was like, Oh, by the way, I want to mention this. You also did one of our training programs. I did do flight.

And you bastardized it. I did bastardize it, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we actually talked about maybe redoing it like that. We did, yeah. Which I think still would be cool. Yeah.

Can you find the fucking files? I found them. They're on my wife's computer and there's something wrong with the mouse right now. We're trying to figure out. There's a mouse standing between us and the ultimate training program. It was my my heavy finger it was like the computer wasn't

moving fast enough and i got a little mad and i just smashed the mouse finger with my finger the bam and i was like oh we'll just go get a mouse so we hooked a mouse to it but it's like the button is stuck down so anything we pass over it wants to highlight and open up so yeah yeah yeah so that's a problem. Trying to figure it out. But, yeah, what I did was the flight program, which is a really great program. It's a weightlifting program. It's a weightlifting program.

Intended to be done with a barbell. Right. And I did it all with a kettlebell. Yeah. Yep. So I did the whole thing with a kettlebell. Because I cannot do anything that causes any type of over hyperextension and cervical displacement,

you know, to clear weight or, you know, so I, I don't do barbell snatches, but I love doing dumbbell snatches and kettlebell snatches or single arm barbell snatches. But my arms being pinned together as like we're equal is not like a fair

statement for my left shoulder. It's like, ah, don't put me in the same pool as the guy who'd never been fucking torn in half yeah you know so yeah i mean try that that could you still buy the flight program you can yeah it was an amazing program yeah you go to flightweightlifting.com yeah it was like 365 days i mean it was like a whole it was like a whole wasn't it i think we uh i think we wrote it out till 18 months yeah i, I remember it was like I did a whole year of it.

Yeah. And the kettlebells worked great. I got strong as shit off of it too. Since you told me that, I've been wanting to do it with kettlebells. Well, you were like, you looked heavy with kettlebells? I was like, yeah. But I didn't want to have to like think, so I was just waiting for you to send me the program. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. I'll send it. I'll figure out how to get this mouse working. Like, I fuck technology. We'll just do, like, flight with Adam, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

That was my speaking series when I was traveling with the Fit Expo was fight or flight. I love jumping. So, like, teaching jumping or just jumping in general is a lot of fun. You know, so, like, leaping in the air and doing stuff and, like, throwing your body in weird ways. Not, like, overly, like, gymnastics-y, but, you know, it's fun just to kind of jump in the air and be free. Totally. Yeah. Where can people find more about you?

What are all the websites? I got a feeling you got a couple. You know, well, there's earntheday.com where you can buy a dope Earn the Day shirt and check me out. Support the cause. No, sorry. Support my children. They need toys, food. No, seriously.

No, seriously. I'm broke. No, I'm just kidding. So, no, yeah. check out Earn the Day. And check out drinkstrongcoffee.com. That's where we're going to have the initial landing page. We're doing a huge giveaway. You know, like this whole training set with, you know,

a duffel bag loaded with brand-new Nike Metcons to, you know, jump rope and all this great shit lifetime supply of uh strong coffee um and then we're doing two follow-up prizes and you know follow us at at strong coffee company and uh also at von rothfelder you know where i'm at um you know i'm i'm not i'm i uh i don't i'm not too big, like, online training or any of that type of stuff, but I do love helping people. Like, if they reach out to me, it's not like I'm creating these – it's not like I've been, you know, doing online training in any way. I like the in-person stuff, you know, but I never turn down a question, you know.

So if people hit me up on Instagram or whatever, I love the engagement. Oh, thanks for joining us today. Anders, what are you up to? Tell the people. Come to movement-rx.com. Dr. Teresa Larson and I putting together movement, strength and conditioning, and physical therapy, helping gym owners, their members, functional fitness athletes, healing from shoulder, knee, low back pain, doing it in a manner that keeps you in the gym, keeps you healthy,

keeps you moving well. Sounds cool. What is that again? Movement-RX.com. Got it. Movement-RX.com. Douglas. Yeah.

I've got a fun side project I'm working on right now, DougLarsonFitness.com. If you just want my thoughts on training, if you think that we could be a good fit to work together, you want to come to any of my live events, I've got seminars coming up and other similar fun things in 2018. So you can go to DougLarsonFitness.com, or if you want to reach out to me directly,

probably the easiest thing is just to DM me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. It goes down in the DMs. Don't make it weird. Just don't send any dick pics. Yep, yep. Nobody was going to until you put that in their mind. No, no.

Put that in the show notes. Any dick pic I get is Adam Stroll. Yep, yep. Nobody was going to until you put that in their mind. No, no. I'm going to get a lot of dick pics. Put that in the show notes. Any dick pic I get is Adam's fault. That's right. But there's a template. If you follow Doug here, he will accept dick pics. There's a template for it. Yeah.

I have gotten a dick pic before. On accident, they got texted to me, and then they called me, and I didn't pick it up. Then I texted them back, and they said, who is me and I didn't pick it up. Then I texted them back and they said, this is Doug. Who's this? They just said, oh. That's great. I'm not going to let you

serve your own sake. What do you got going on next, Mike? All right. Actually, I've got a really great show called The Bledsoe Show. Go over to thebledsoeshow.com or just look me up on iTunes, Stitcher, all that mess. Having lots of cool conversations over there. I'll be doing some live events this year

as you heard, doing a retreat which you can sign up. It'll be an application. You can apply for the Medicines of Mexico. Do you have a mover guy coming with move guy coming with you or what? I've got like five mover guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good.

We can all collaborate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can all collaborate. Do something fun. Maybe. Yeah, yeah. And I'm also doing some seminars. We're calling it Flow Stated.

So repatterning your breath, movement, and language. We're going to have a good time. That sounds awesome. Yeah. If you enjoyed the show. That sounds like some human garage shit. Yeah. breath, movement, and language. We're going to have a good time. That sounds awesome. Yeah. If you enjoyed this show. That sounds like some Human Garage shit. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, not really. Yeah, but you know what I mean. Yeah, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not at all. It's like everybody who's talking to each other, we're all doing the same thing, but from our own perspective. Yeah, no, I don't mean it sounds like something Human Garage does. It's just kind of how we're all on this trend.

It's a deeper level shit. We're going to get down to the root of what's really going on. What's really keeping you from getting the results you're wanting to get. What's really actually the reason you can't stop eating donuts. Yada, yada, yada. We're going to nail that down nice

and tight for you. Plus, you're going to learn some breath techniques that actually make every workout you do better. If you do breath work before, and I've got special techniques for that, then you're going to actually notice that your aerobic capacity and your focus go through the roof. That's cool. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah. Nice, dude.

Yeah. Sounds like it's going to be a good year. Great year. Yeah. 2018. Did I already say for people to go to iTunes? We need some five-star reviews. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go to iTunes, five-star review, positive comments. Only. Subscribe. Subscribe. And give us a subscribe over on YouTube, too. We're always putting up some cool videos. Later.

Thanks for making it all the way to the end of the show. If you liked the show, which I know you did, please go share it on Facebook, Instagram, or whatever social media channel you happen to be loving at the moment. Pinterest? Twitter? Tumblr. Tumblr. Share it on Tumblr. Next on Barbells Truck,

we talk about the myths of lactic acid and muscle soreness with Dr. Eddie Joe.