Barbell Shrugged - Electrical Brain Stimulation for Optimal Performance w/ Dr. Daniel Chao — Barbell Shrugged #349

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

Dr. Daniel Chao, CEO of Halo Neuroscience and creator of Halo Sport, dedicated his whole life to understanding the brain and its function. Specifically, how electrical stimulation can help the brain more rapidly improve physical performance, cognitive function, and overall happiness.   Halo Sport is the first-ever brain stimulator used to accelerate movement-based learning. In other words, it speeds up the development of skill, strength, and endurance, depending on the type of training that you pair with it.   Halo Sport works by applying non-invasive, mild electrical current to the motor cortex (part of the brain responsible for movement), allowing your brain to build stronger connections and learn movement faster. For example: You can wear Halo Sport for 20 minutes before your training session, which gives you one hour of what neuroscientists call “hyperlearning” or “hyperplasticity”. Training with it accelerates gains across skill, strength, and endurance.   In this episode, we talk to Dr. Chao about how the brain is wired for movement, how to increase mastery of movements by 50%, incorporating meditation and visualization into performance that matters, how to increase fine motor skills and advanced movements through brain stimulation, how to maximize performance in CrossFit with 20 minutes of use in your warm up, and more.   Enjoy!   - Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_halo ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.tryomax.com/shrugged and get a box FREE with your first purchase @foursigmatic - www.foursigmatic.com/shrugged  to save 15% on your first purchase @vuori - www.vuoriclothing.com “SHRUGGED25” to save 25% storewide   ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Shrugged family, we're back. We're hanging out with Dr. Daniel Chow from Halo Neuroscience. These guys have created this really cool headphone device that does brain stimulation, sending some electronic shocks into your brain, and they help you get better at fitness. It's pretty cool stuff.

I'm not a neuroscientist. I actually came into this interview pretty skeptical that you could shock someone's brain into getting them better at snatches and clean and jerks, but he did a very good job of making me think a little bit different about how our brain is wired for movement and how we can speed that process up. So very cool stuff. And I think you're going to enjoy the show. Make sure you are getting signed up for our email list. November 5th, we are launching a brand new series, 30 Days of Coaching coming out. I have scoured all of the website. That's over six years of articles and interviews, like thousands of podcast interviews, hundreds of articles to bring you the best 30 days of coaching

to get you stronger, faster, leaner, more dialed in on your nutrition, meal prep, all the pieces that go into living a healthier, stronger life. If you are interested in being in the 30 days of free coaching, just make sure you get signed up for our email list. Get to the shrug collective.com. We have endless resources on there for you. And if you don't want to scan through all of the endless resources,

that's what I just did. I signed you up for 30 days of free coaching. So I'm going to bring you the best 30 days of all of those resources. Get into shrugcollective.com. Get signed up for our mailing list. And I think you're going to love the 30 days and you're going to learn a ton.

And there's so much good content that we have created over the years. And I am very excited to get it to you. So stick around. Dr. Daniel Chow, Halo Sport. If you get over to gethalosport.com forward slash shrugged, you're going to save $100 on the Halo neuroscience headphone things that make you better at all things fitness. This is a really cool interview. I'm excited to bring it to you guys. And back to the show.

Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. My name is Anders Varner. Hanging out with Doug Larson. And Mike Bledsoe. Dude. Coming back to the Barbell Shrugged microphones. That thing fits you so well. It's formed to your ears.

The microphone looks so good near that beard. Is blast from the present an appropriate term here? Blast from the present? It's a blast from the present an appropriate term here? Blast from the present? It's a blast from the present. Yeah, it is. I dreamed of this moment, and now it's coming to fruition. Being back on here. He hasn't even said a word.

No, he's just staring at you. He's got that creepy look on his face. And we are hanging out with Dr. Daniel Chow from Halo Neuroscience. How are you doing? You came all the way down from San Francisco today to hang out with us. Oh, yeah. In this lovely, the hippie hostel in Encinitas. There's like eight people living in this house.

You walked in. We were swinging maces. Bledsoe didn't have a shirt on. Where did I get? He was questioning what the hell he was doing here just for a second. I could see it in his face. Are we doing a podcast? It's right on.

How are you doing? Yeah. Tell us. You have a massive background in all things the brain. I do. Where did this thing start for you? It's a nerd from a very young child interested in the brain. I love that.

Yeah. Fascinated by the brain since I was a little kid. Studied it in college. Studied it in graduate school. Still fascinated with the brain. Yeah. Still unsolved, but we have made so much progress in the last 20 years that we are at this point where I think there's a lot we can do with it that we aren't. So, yeah, I'm a brain

stimulation guy. Like brain stimulation for this talk, we're all defined as using electric fields to interface with the brain. And that's been my whole professional career. Halo Neuroscience is a neurostimulation company, but it's not my first. my first neurostimulation company is this company called neuropace uh we built a medical device uh to treat people with epilepsy so this is uh you know using electric fields using electricity as medicine basically the last company we built it's like a it's like a pacemaker for the brain that uses electricity on demand to treat seizures. Basically to treat seizures before they actually clinically manifest. And, you know, what started with an idea, you know, led to this FDA approved product that it's, you know, it's helping thousands of people with epilepsy today.

So, you know, in a way that drugs can never touch. So, you know, it sounds like a crazy concept, you know, electricity is an interface with epilepsy today. So, you know, in a way that drugs could never touch. So, you know, it sounds like a crazy concept, you know, interface with the brain, but you know, it's, it's out there, you know, it's, it's, it's working, it's helping people. And, you know, what we want to do with Halo is to really unlock it, right? Like most neurostimulators are surgical products. And let's face it, like brain surgery with electrodes in your brain is not for everybody. It's only for those who are very, very ill. But what if we can build it into a wearable form factor such that just about anybody can benefit from it?

So that's, you know, that's sort of our vision for the company. That last device was a medical implant placed directly on your actual brain, not over the top of your skull like the current version of Halo we're talking about. Yeah, I mean, we're talking electrodes surgically inserted into the brain with the pulse generator implanted in the skull. So, yeah. It's in there. Well, it's in there. But, you know, I guess that illustrates how desperate some people are with the disease of epilepsy. It's incredibly debilitating.

I imagine that's not the first place people want to go when they have a condition is cut my skull open. Yeah, so they go through years of drugs. And if they fail drug treatment, then what's left for you? Like a really poor quality of life for years and decades? Or do you go for something like this and maybe you could really change you know the outcome of your life right so you know i'm really proud of you know that effort um it was a big effort it was you know 10 years of my life and you know having been a part of this team to develop to develop this product to help so many people it's been like really inspiring to me and it's like i don't just feel really heartened that we've been able to

help so many people um you know with this crazy concept of using electricity in the brain but you know maybe i guess like one of my secret hopes for this podcast is that by the end you know i hope i can convince you guys and your listeners that maybe it's not so crazy you know maybe what we're doing to get today is crazy maybe we should be using more electricity and less drugs right maybe five years from now we'll be looking back at today and being like holy shit that was weird yeah why are people on so many damn drugs i think that already when you're a kid what does it look like to be obsessed with learning about the brain like what most kids are out playing in the streets and doing whatever it is and you're what like what are you learning about like how does this kind of progression happen just to you throw it out

there like you're like yeah yeah yeah. Just a level set. I was like a more or less normal kid. Okay. I played sports. You weren't like dissecting brains at eight? Like, oh, check this out. Look what I found. I wasn't like Doogie Howser or anything like that.

So I just want to try to save some of my public perception here. I was like a more or less normal kid, but I was fascinated by the brain. I read books about the brain. I just thought about the brain a lot and how things work. Even as a little kid, you pick things up so quickly, and you notice that your parents don't pick it up as quickly, and you start asking questions like, wow, this is magical. Yeah.

When you conceptualize what the brain is now, what is that story that you tell yourself? Because when I think about it, it's like we've got a couple hemispheres. There's electricity flying back and forth. Our bodies do things what is when you start to build a product or medicine type product isn't medicine but you know what are the electrodes trying to come up with whatever the thing is that you're putting on people's brains um how do you view the brain is it something that's like this malleable thing that you can start to change the shape of thoughts, actions, health. Yeah, I love that you used the word malleable

because that's exactly the way I get it. It's good because I forgot the word before it. That was plan B? Yeah. Go malleable. Andrews, that's what we... Plasticity, huh? More brain stimulation for you.

Exactly. If I had the product on right now and not this headset. I've been offering him all sorts of brain stimulating things and he's been turning them down. You're stuck with a Sennheiser. Go to Halo. But yeah, you know, this is, it's an important concept. You know, Doug, you mentioned neuroplasticity and Anders, you mentioned malleable, the two of the same thing.

Neuroplasticity is the process by which our brain changes itself to help us right neuroplasticity is how i you know imagine a supercomputer that could change itself so that it's continuously improving itself and adapting to its users needs. That's, that's our brain. Right. And, you know, when you think athletically, think about CrossFit, you know, it's that it is that problem, right? You're the sport asks you to do a variety of different movements. I was just talking to you guys. I'll say it again. You know, I don't think CrossFit is one sport. It's like a hundred sports and it's continuously changing. And, uh, you know, for that, it's this constant motor learning problem. It's like, um, okay, we have to, you know, there's, there's this new movement that we need to perfect and we might even need to use it in

competition. So how do I get good at this as quickly as possible before, you know, the guy next to me beats me? Like, you know, like he or she who learns the fastest wins. So, you know, for our first product, Halo, it's around movement learning. It's around using neurostimulation to go back to these words to make the brain more malleable, to make the brain more plastic, right? So that when you feed the brain training repetitions, like movement training repetitions, it adapts faster. It learns faster. So my understanding of brain development and neuroplasticity is at a younger age,

say what kids pick up new skills very quickly there there's a number of things going on but they have slower brainwaves and there's and as we age there's a you could probably tell us way more than I could as we age are, get harder and harder to learn. And I think there's even, people used to say a lot, you know, to pick up another language, the older you are, the harder it is to pick up a new language. That's creating new neural pathways. And I would say in the last decade, it was about a decade ago, I started hearing stories of people being able to learn faster again at older ages and using all

sorts of tools and techniques and things like that. And also even increasing gray matter density, which was something that I heard, you know, a decade ago, people said, there's no way that even happens. And now there seems to be a shift in that conversation. Yeah. So, you know, a couple of decades ago, there was this, yeah, a lot of people thought like, well, neuroplasticity pretty much stops after a certain age. That's not true. I mean, that is conclusively not true. Like neuroplasticity definitely slows down and it starts slowing down in our late teens. But it never goes to zero. Like, even for folks that are pretty elderly, it's not zero in those people.

So this is awesome, right? Like, you know, all of us, we can still learn, we can still use plasticity to our advantage. But I guess what's frustrating to me and what we're trying to solve for is, boy, it was fun to be a kid and to learn so fast, right? Learn different movements fast. Learn different languages faster than you could as an adult.

Learn just about anything faster. And when it slows down, it becomes frustrating. But, you know, with neurostimulation, you know, I like to say like a simple way of thinking about what we're doing with neurostimulation is that we're making your brain temporarily kid-like. Like what if we can make it so that, you know, for an hour, like after you stimulate your brain, you can sponge in that information that you feed it almost like you were a kid. And, yeah, I mean, that's one thing that I think is so fun with brain stimulation is that you can do that. So physiologically, as you're stimulating the brain, like when you had your medical implant device that goes right on the brain it it feeds an electric signal into your actual brain tissue and then then what's happening there physiologically like what's actually changing yeah um yeah so this is my

last company the medical implant um so basically like imagine a pacemaker for your brain. So, you know, a pacemaker for your heart is constantly listening to your heart's rhythm. And if it's out of rhythm, then it takes over. It says, all right, I'm going to pace the heart. And it starts firing and controlling the rhythm of the heart so that you can live a normal life. Now, you know, with the brain, we put electrodes into the brain, so this is my last, this is the NeuroPace device. It's constantly

monitoring the brain's electrical activity such that if it detects electrical signals suggestive of a seizure about to happen, it proactively delivers a small electrical impulse to the brain to normalize the brain's activity. So it's like this onboard computer that's helping you constantly 24-7. It's like your watchful friend that never goes to sleep, that's listening to your brain. And if it feels like, hey, something's not right I'm gonna deliver a little bit of an electrical impulse to the brain that you can't feel you sleep through you that there's no sensation at all but the beautiful thing is is that you prevent a seizure from

happening kind of like preventing a forest fire while it's still a match instead of a 10,000 acre forest fire. The word that comes to my mind as we're talking about this is brainwaves. Is that what's being controlled there? I've heard we have beta, theta, alpha, brainwaves. Is that part of that conversation? Is that part of conversation with halo it's it's less around that conversation so let's talk about brain waves and why i don't think it really applies to what we do so uh if you put electrodes sensing electrodes on your scalp um and you hook it up to a machine so that you can see what kind of rhythms your neurons are producing, you can often notice these different patterns.

And there's these certain frequencies that come up. And you name the frequency after the Greek alphabet, alpha, beta, gamma, so on and so forth. And then neuroscientists can say, oh, okay, well, this frequency band is for focus. This frequency band is for really deep sleep. And you can kind of put phenotype with what they're seeing together, and you can start making judgments about what frequencies mean to us as humans. So then the question is, can you drive those frequencies?

Like, let's say you want focus. Can you drive those frequencies that are seen when people are focused and then produce focus? Maybe. Maybe. I think the jury's still out. Sometimes it's too simplistic to say.

It's like, oh, we see this and therefore it causes that. Right. Right. So if you see it and it causes that, then shit, well, why don't we just go ahead and force it to happen? There's more of a correlation. Right. This is correlation, but maybe not causation. So, you know, what we're doing is something totally different. Like we're not this brain stimulator that we're offering through Halo Sport does not drive a frequency.

Okay. And, you know, what happens with this DC pulse is that it drives cortical excitability. It just makes the cortex more excitable. And more excitable means greater potential for learning. How did this thing go from the medical community kind of into the sport side of things? Great question, Anders. So, yeah, it started actually with stroke rehab. So, you know, 50% of people who have had a stroke have some sort of movement disability. You know, maybe some of your loved ones in your life have had a stroke and they can't walk or use an arm or something like that.

So, some scientists had a question. It's like, wait wait a second we've got this thing that can help the brain learn faster so what if we stimulated the motor cortex and then we paired this with physical therapy after a stroke actually it works works great so you've got people like learning how to use their hands and arms and learning how to use their legs faster if you pair their physical therapy with neurostimulation. So that's awesome. So then the next logical step after that is like, well, what about healthy people? Can we get them to learn movements faster? So you do different types of exercises.

You don't do physical therapy exercises. You do other types of exercises that are more designed to test healthy humans. And they got a result there. And we got really interested in this. My co-founder and I got really interested in that data because we said, okay, well, what's the next logical extension after that? So instead of just using these laboratory tests tests, like what if we tested this with real athletic movements? Like vertical leap, right? Vertical leap is, it's this great discrete test that you can measure pretty, pretty nicely, especially if you have access to a force plate.

And it's also this very translatable athletic movement, like a variety of different sports, even the sports that don't involve a lot of jumping, like those athletes who can jump higher are often just better athletes. So we got a result there. And then, you know, the next logical extension after that is like okay well all right so you know if you're so you know we got we got this result with vertical leap like let's test some other things like let's trust let's test maximum voluntary contraction so that's

sort of the scientific word for your one rep max we got got a result there. So, you know, in like on one side, this kind of coordinated explosive movement, looking at vertical leap, uh, on this other side, this more discreet movement, looking at strength, we were able to get results. And then like that got us really excited because, um, not only are you able to get results in kind of like boring, but highly rigorous scientific movements, you're able to generate these same results in complex but very athletic movements. So that, I mean, with all of that data, it got us really excited about a sports application. Just for people that aren't familiar with what this looks like, this is a headset that you wear that looks like you're wearing Beats by Dre and you're listening to music, more or less. And just to clarify, what you're suggesting here is it's not that I can just put that on and all of a sudden I can jump higher.

If I wear that through training for a period of weeks or months, then the outcome after a period of time is that I'll have learned quicker, gotten stronger in a shorter period of time or got more strength in the same period of time rather. Very important that you brought that up because if you were to just wear it sitting on the couch drinking beer, you'd just get better drinking beer faster. That's right. Yeah. That's why we do this together. But you wouldn't get better.

Beer drinkers. Did you see that face of disappointment? He was like, oh, God. I came all the way from San Francisco for these guys. I'm a part owner in a brewery. So I am very okay with sitting on the couch. There it is. So the conditioning is up. Peak performance and brewery owner.

There it is. But a very important concept is that you have to pair the neurostimulation with athletic training like that's where you get the results when you so to further that is that something that now i need to wear this thing for my entire workout or i can just wear this for like a period of time like my warm-up or just for like my heaviest sets or what do you guys typically prescribe there yeah so we need 20 minutes of neurostimulation so you know a lot of times that pairs really nicely with you know you're stretching and you know like you know your warm-up routine and what those 20 minutes of neurostimulation buys you is an hour window of hyperplasticity

so you know what we want ideally is for you to wear the headset for 20 minutes right before your training. So get nice and warmed up so that you can go straight into your training, like the hard part of your training, right when you take off the neurostimulator. Good news is, is I don't have a hard part of training. I just wear this thing all the time. What happens if I wear it for a whole hour? Do I get too much neuroplasticity? Does my brain just become mush? Yes, we'll lock you out. It'll just leak out of your ears.

Of course, it's this guy that asks. Yeah, so we'll lock you out. Yeah, so 20 minutes has been proven to be this really magical number. So 30 minutes has been tested. 40 minutes has been tested. 60 minutes has been tested. And it turns been tested. 60 minutes has been tested. And it turns out there's diminishing returns after 20 minutes.

Two minutes has been tested. Five minutes has been tested. And that's just not enough. So 20 minutes is that sweet spot. I got this headset. It must have been two years ago. Maybe it was last year. I at a spartan race i ran into i think your cmo and he got me this headset and i threw it on to learn slackline better i don't know if i had no control in that study so i didn't i didn't have a twin not using it so we're not sure what happened but

yeah i did use it uh for that it was good i feel like you got a result oh yeah something i'm really interested in is the complex kind of movement patterns um i know you worked with like the san francisco giants um and then crossfit athletes which means there's a bunch of olympic lifting going on with where there's, I mean, in baseball, just the ability to hit a curveball is borderline magic in itself. And then Olympic lifting, that's not the easiest thing in the world. But how does something like this, like, really help with the speed, accuracy? Are you able to, I mean, I guess in just baseball alone,

like the hitting hitting pattern the ability to hit a baseball hit a curveball you're getting into hand-eye coordination things of that that magnitude is that something that can be benefited from here yeah so you're right like some of these athletic movements involve so many different systems, like within the body and certainly within the brain, that we can't affect it all. Like, you know, what we are really good at is the final mile. So let's think about what does it take for a batter to hit a curveball? They need to pick up the pitch with their eyes. They need to do some very quick analysis on timing and placement of that ball. Then they need to decide whether to swing or not.

And if they decide to swing, they need to put the bat where they planned on swinging. So we're good at that last step. So that motor program to swing the bat, swing it hard, swing it accurately, all that other stuff upstream of that final step, I don't think we do anything for it. Yeah. So the way this headset's designed is it's supposed to go, it's stimulating the motor

cortex. That's right. Part of the brain. What if he made a whole helmet and just stimulate the whole brain? Have you thought about that? We've already gotten into the second half of the show where we just come up with random shit. Let's just jump to the end. We have an entire football team that we'd like to try this on.

That would be a lot of energy. So, yeah, there's certain limits that have been tested, and they've been tested to be safe. So we want to stay within those bounds. So, yeah, to fire an electrode the size of your whole head, that would take quite a bit of current. Well, you know, Shrug Collective, our motto is safety third. We can bring a helmet and hook it up to a 220.

I think we're going to be good to go. Peak performance. So to play devil's advocate for a minute, say you're new to something like CrossFit and you want to be a better weightlifter and so you want to solidify those movement patterns. That way you can be the best weightlifter possible in the shortest period of time. But maybe you have a coach who's inexperienced and he's actually teaching you how to do the movements incorrectly.

That's a problem. Are you solidifying poor movement patterns faster? You are. A bad coach is a problem because you're going to learn, and you're going to learn whatever reps that you feed the brain. So if you have a bad coach and you're learning bad technique, you're going to learn the bad technique faster.

So a coach is one of our greatest allies, right? Most coaches, you know, like good coaches are our greatest ally because, you know, they're just a catalyst for, for everything, right? Like they themselves are like a catalyst for you learning faster. And then if you layer on top brain stimulation, it becomes faster yet. So a great coach is our greatest ally, and a bad coach is our worst friend. As a coach, one of my biggest frustrations is when I'm working with a group of athletes, I notice that people that have the least amount of experience in whatever we're doing learn quickest because they don't have all those bad patterns. It's the person that was training in the gym without a coach and they've been picking up this bar a thousand times without any direction and they come in and now to to get that person to unlearn

to learn that is extremely difficult this tool seems like it would be even more beneficial for people who have really bad habits get a good coach stimulate your motor cortex and then start start working on really solid reps yeah my good great use case um the the maybe the most extreme use case um or application along that theme is running. So think about how many reps a runner has ingrained that same. Oh, yeah. The worst. Right. I mean, literally millions of steps have ingrained that movement pattern

in their brain from the time they were a kid. I had to relearn how to run years ago, and it was arduous. Probably took you years to do it right yeah such that it actually and if somebody who knows what they're doing watches me run now they probably think i'm terrible but yeah but you were worse before i'm better now yeah if you were to put some i mean maybe not the exact numbers um but if the idea of mastery comes at the 10 000 hour mark and we've got great coaches we've got a phenomenally athletic person that's trying to learn Olympic lifting or, you know, whatever the skill is.

Do you know how much quicker we can get to a X goal? Everybody loves like this linear, like put this on and 10,000 hours just turned into eight. I mean, is there any research on on yeah the ability to progress things that much quicker yeah so you know our data shows that we can help someone learn 50 faster 5 000 hours to mastery wow 50 faster so um but let's talk about that because you know mike you brought up like yeah you know with uh with the novice um with the because, you know, Mike, you brought up like, you know, with the novice, you know, they're on that juicy part of the learning curve, right? Like every day they feel progress and it's so much fun.

So we could tilt that curve up by about 50%. But then you take someone who's like, you know, elite, professional, you know, been doing it for a decade. You know, the rate at which they're learning is actually pretty flat. Yeah. Right? Because, you know, they're pretty good. You know, there's a ceiling effect. So even though their curve is flatter, we could still tilt it up by 50%.

Oh, wow. And, you know, for someone at that level, you know, it's like small differences make everything. I mean, you take somebody who comes in 10th in a competition, you improve them by 1%. They're now on the podium. For sure. When you start to think about other ways that people are kind of training their brain, especially with meditation, visualization, there's a lot of techniques that are out there. Is the actual electrical stimulation side of things that much more beneficial than, say, just sitting and visualizing something in quiet? Yeah, so let's dig in.

You know, I think meditation is a really interesting brain training exercise to really just teach focus. It teaches cognitive control um it teaches you to um relieve yourself of the temptation to like check your phone or just like be distracted by by thoughts that are like you know at the end of the day meaningless to the ultimate goal in life um so i love that and you know i think it's more important today than at any other point in human history um and it's because of our phone and notifications i mean we're just constantly distracted and they're really good at that and it's like this little drip of dopamine every time you check your phone and it's just terrible so meditation is a nice counterweight

to that that that temptation so i love meditation i'm going to the flip phone there you go yeah we were all talking about last night how there you go how tiring social media can become it yeah really yeah and just notifications i'd like one thing that i've done is turned off notifications on my phone on my computer like no sms comes up on my computer just like when i'm ready for it i'll go to it um you asked about um meditation and just visualization visualization like i wondered if if i sit in a corner and i have complete silence and i'm visually thinking and connecting with my body visualizing the perfect snatch over and over again and i've got the great coaches i've got the the movement patterns down um how much i guess not how much more beneficial but is there

additional benefit to having the the stimulation as well so all right so just visualization visualization on its own i love it yeah i think it's free reps. Um, it's, it's free reps in the sense that it doesn't load your body, um, in a way that could generate fatigue or risk of injury. Like you could sit on your couch and you can think about those things that you were talking about. Um, and you can get better. Um, you can, you can, you can help learn that movement without putting load on your body. And let's face it, your body is like a bank account. And every time you train, there's a small withdrawal. And over time, just things happen, wear and tear.

And before you know it, you're not the athlete that you were. So conserving those reps is important, and I think visualization is one way that you can do that. Now, the question is, could you combine neurostimulation with visualization? I love this idea, but there's no data. So I can't say that it works, but I love it because if you put someone in an MRI scanner

and you have them visualize movements a snatch or whatever their motor cortex is lighting up like a christmas tree without producing any movement their motor cortex is doing stuff um so what if you just so since there's activity in the motor cortex what if you put a brain stimulator right on top of that while you're doing that? So I would love to do that experiment. Never thought about it. I would love to do. So, I mean, I think it can work, but it's really just a thought.

Like, I don't have any data to support it. Sounds like a study to come out. Right. Hey, we're going to take a quick break. Since you flew all the way down here from San Francisco to hang out with us today, Shrugged Family, get over to gethalosport.com

forward slash shrugged. You're going to save $100 on the Halo Sport. Sweet earphones, headset. We just had one shipped to us. I'm excited to use it and uh we're gonna take a quick quick break and we'll be back drug fam we're back at the break here i told you this guy is really dialed in um want to let you know we are adding we have added barbell shredded to the program vault. So that is now 12 programs inside the vault. And this one is going

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Back to the show. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. That's right. I'm not pregnant. No, no, no. Doug Larson, Mike Bledsoe, Dr. Daniel Chow from Halo Sport. We're going to get weird here in the second half. We're going to talk about stimulating people's brains.

But you've been doing this in the CrossFit space for a little while. I actually remember when you started working with the CrossFit Invictus athletes and their team. What was a little bit of that? I mean, you mentioned it's like 100 sports all in one um what was a little bit of the motivation i guess going from working with the the giants um olympians and then you're like let's go check out these fitness kids they're doing weird stuff uh you know why we love crossfit as a sport in general. Let's put that a little closer to your mouth there. Because everyone's crazy,

and they like headphones with electricity on them. So it's one of the few sports where people still get a scorecard. And it's one of these sports where um you know folks can still have a regular job and do it after work and still really care about performance so there are other sports where just mere just just doing it is enough like a you know like my wife she runs she runs a you know, like my wife, she runs. She runs, you know, two, three miles, never looks at a watch. She's just happy that she does it. Same thing with yoga.

She does it, and she's happy, and there's no scorecard, and that's cool. But CrossFit athletes are totally different, right? You know, you can ask them, like, you know, what's your two rep max? And they're just like, oh, it's that. Yeah, and they just know it and they're um you know it's a sport where um you know because it's performance based like people are always trying to get better at it it's not just about doing it it's about getting better so we love that that sets up so perfectly for a product like ours crossfit is a kind of sport where training is a part of the journey

there aren't many sports like like you look at pickup basketball there's no training like guys just show up right nobody's going to very few people are going to the basketball court and just not shooting baskets and just practicing dribbling behind the back between the legs this kind of thing like that after high school pretty much all of that stops and all you want to do is just show up and say who's got next and you play but crossfit's different right like you know the the blood sweat and tears that go into training um like that is part of the journey like you the journey. Another sport kind of like that, but very, very different culturally, is golf.

More lunatics. Those people are crazy as hell too. Doing the same thing over and over again. Hitting the ball in the middle of nowhere. Practice, practice, practice. Practice, practice, practice. And then you play. So you're looking for sports

that are easily quantifiable. Quantifiable where training is a part of the journey. Where a score at the end of the day is important to you. Those are our people. I like that. Outside of the sporting world,

I'm curious for something like smiling. I'm using facial muscles to produce a shape of my face. Okay. So if I wear your product and then I smile a lot, am I more likely to continue to smile in the future? Right. Is there a happiness component to this potentially? There's the deep end. There's the deep end.

Right. We jumped. I'm very curious about this. I mean, your physiology determines your psychology to some extent and vice versa. I have a friend who practices smiling every morning because he has this thing called a scowl and it runs in his family.

And he's a presenter. And his business partner said, it's Mark England if you could just learn how to smile you'll be successful so he's been training his smile every morning for four years and I I've spent a lot of time with him this past year better yeah he's gotten better I've known him for a year and a half and he smiles way more now but we'll be hanging out you know we'll be in florida or something and i'll get up in the morning and he's in his room with a big smile on his face and just like he it's it's for real one of my old mma coaches told me about a study i didn't actually

see the study myself but google it where they took two groups of people one group smiled in the mirror for 30 minutes every single morning these are depressed people and the other group took prescription drugs of some kind some sort or another and the smiling group pulled out of their depression at a higher rate than the the drug group confidence there's a there's an entire ted talk on the just the way you can wake up look at yourself in the mirror and like stand tall do the smile thing man i wish i could remember the name of that ted talk but she crushed it millions and millions of people have watched this thing on building confidence we're not letting dr chow talk now but i do have one this professional very interesting stuff yeah back to the original question though like butto what do you got going on tonight

does this influence your entire physiology not not not just the the external movement of sport but any any firing of any muscle within your entire body yeah so it's we've been asked about um facial muscle control from folks in hollywood so actors actresses you know want to you know control like their facial expressions and that's all like firing different muscle groups yeah you know i guess it would work i would think that it would work but i just don't have any data to support it right like you know i could i could already visualize the experiment on how we can quantify like smiles and frowns and you know confused look scared look um but it just hasn't been done.

But I bet it would work. You mentioned multiple times collecting data. What are you collecting in CrossFit? What are you collecting in Major League Baseball? What is the actual experiment to prove this 50% learning curve? Yeah. So classic way to do experiments is take a group of people and divide them into two groups.

So one group gets real neurostimulation. The other group gets fake neurostimulation. So feels like the real thing, but it doesn't work. And that way, both groups feel convinced that they're getting the real thing. And we want that because feeling like knowing that you're in a neurostimulation research trial and then feeling a tingling on your scalp that's like super motivating right you're like oh shit something's happening okay so uh both everyone like beta alanine here take this pre-workout you feel the tingles it's working

so no we want no that's that is important we want we want both groups to think that they're getting the real thing right just like the beta alan in effect like there's no control for beta your pre-workout doesn't work uh you're only laughing really hard if you've done that crawling through your veins so uh anyways it's like good god back to my point put us back on track yeah you take these uh so okay so everybody um everybody gets one form of brain stimulation either real or fake we do some baseline testing we do a bunch of training and then we do testing afterwards and we compare the baseline to the post-training testing, and we look at the difference. So with baseball, we did something really interesting.

We looked at bat speed. So it turns out that the speed at which you swing the bat is directly proportional to your success at the plate. So there's all kinds of saber metrics that show this. So all things being equal, if you could swing the bat with more speed, that's a better baseball player. So we took a bunch of players in the minor leagues,

divided into two groups, and we put sensors on the bat. And we trained them up for two weeks, did before and after testing, and the result wasn't even close um you know this is like a very conclusive result where the group that used neurostimulation improved their bat speed i think by two miles an hour which at that level and that length of time is like very difficult to do um whereas the control group i mean i think maybe it was like 0.3 of a mile an

hour how long was the study it was two weeks two weeks of training oh wow that's a very short period of time so those people are just practicing swinging the bat as fast as they possibly can hoping to get faster yeah and some strength training too um so it's not just swinging the bat but um you know like complementary strength training to um you know to to you know make that all happen um but importantly they all got the same training um prior to the show you were talking about like there's there's so many other applications that that you could go into with with a device like this you know we're talking about crossfit right now but you're talking about fighter pilots and anything else that's not sports specifically.

Where do you think you can take something like this? Our biggest customer is the military. They use it for shooting. You just think about the mechanical skill around handling a gun and acquiring the target, pulling the trigger, making sure that's all on target, and also like doing that as quickly as you possibly can because speed matters. So yeah, that's been a really interesting use case for us. We're working with a couple of commercial airlines. Turns out that when a pilot goes from Airbus to Boeing, everything's backwards and it's an entirely new like set of muscle memory that they need to just be second nature so that they can fly this plane safely and it takes a long time like when

you pull fine i know i just started feeling better about flying you know i'm back in the you're gonna walk on your next southwest flight and the guy will have halos on. You're like, oh, God, he just switched. Just terrifying. Just today. I know why he has those on. Everything's backwards. I feel good about Southwest. They're all flying the same exact plane.

That's right. All 737s. That's right. So what other? We read the same book. Musicians. So musicians, we think read the same book. Oh, musicians. So musicians, we think of musicians as athletes.

So about 15% of our sales go to musicians. So it's not with the artistic or creative side of producing music. It's really with the technical mastery of, think about playing a violin, right? And what kind of skill the left hand needs to perform mastery of like you know think about playing a violin right and like what what kind of skill the left hand needs to perform when you know they're playing like some very difficult piece so you know our argument or the the value proposition to musicians is like you know what if we can make it so that your fingers moving is almost second nature well Well, that allows more brain space

to do all the other stuff that makes you great. Like people don't go there to watch you because you're a technical master, right? They want to see the artistry of the music. So yeah, if we can offload, or if we can make the movement pattern second nature, then that's a better musician because they can now think about other things. Uh, quick question about something we

talked about earlier. You were saying 20 minutes is kind of the sweet spot. And then you have about an hour where your, your neuroplasticity is, is elevated, so to speak. And then is there, is there like a latency period after that? Like you can do it one time a day, but like, is it like 20 minutes? Then you get an hour and then you do another 20 minutes, you get another hour, you do it all day long.? Like, how does frequency play into this? That's a great question. So we need to let the brain rest for about eight hours before you can use it again.

So conceivably, you can use it twice a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. But, you know, realistically, it's once a day. And so, like, why does that, like, you you know if you tried to use it just let's say you used it and you tried using it two hours later you might get some effect but it won't be the full effect yeah if if all of this is just electrical stimulation in a piece of your brain that controls movement um what are the other pieces of our brain that we can start to work on by firing a little shot of electricity in there and yeah can we start to it's the helmet idea i know can we start to work on like more maybe like some emotional

intelligence personality traits like how do we how do we start to just move those little centers around a little bit and start controlling things yeah yeah so then we're gonna ask when does it get crazy when do you take over the world hopefully never yet let's talk about some really what I think is really exciting research so there's a part of your brain that is responsible for language um so you think about uh learning a secondary language uh you know what if you stimulate this part of the brain while you're messing around with burlets or duolingo on your phone turns out like you can you can learn that secondary language faster

um you know a lot of this comes from the medical world where if you have a stroke in that part of the brain, you have something called aphasia. So this is a language disability, like you have difficulty producing words because your language center just had a stroke. These people recover faster if you stimulate that language center

paired with speech therapy. So it's, you know, like I think learning a secondary language with the assistance of neurostimulation is really exciting. There's this other part of the brain that's more frontal. It's called the prefrontal cortex. So this is a cognitive center that is really important for focus and attention. Like, you know, we were talking about meditation earlier and why I think meditation is so important these days. It's training yourself to be more focused and attentive to the things that you want. Like, what if we could, you know, what if we could further encourage that with brain stimulation? So many things, so many great things come out of increased focus like if you're more

focused you remember that stuff more so your memory goes up if you're more focused you can control impulses better like you know the impulse to eat the impulse to check your phone the impulse like you know some people have you know problems, you know, drugs or whatever it is. You know, if you can control, if you have more focus, you also are able to, like, control these impulses, these distractions to a greater extent. So, you know, stimulating that part of the brain is also really exciting to me. So would it make sense to you know sell a couple hundred of these to any random university and have them just like chain them to the tables at the library so their students could potentially learn things like language math whatever faster yeah

yeah we look forward to that day yeah i mean i mean it's not just physical skills is what i'm getting at you're talking about language and whatever else. That's correct. Universities, the military, Fortune 500 companies. So where would it have to be? So this is made for the motor cortex. Where would it have to go for prefrontal, like right across? Yeah, yeah. Can I just take this and put that there? You absolutely could, and we know that people do.

It just looks a little funny. That's okay. I'm used to that. Yeah, if you don't care about that 100 confidence well actually in that case then like back to the question about frequency like if i if i put it across the top of my head and then now and then i rotate to the front of my head is that my starting over or do i still need that that lag? You know, it's poorly studied. I guess, you know, if and when we come out with a second product that stimulates a different part of your brain,

I would err on the side of caution and just use one or the other, you know, one time every eight hours. Yeah. Helmet. Where's the language center? Like, where would I go for that? Yeah, it's like kind of the side of your head, like temporal parietal area. Okay. helmet. Where's the language center? Where would I go for that? Yeah, it's kind of the side of your head,

like temporal parietal area. Okay. Yeah, like above your ear. Getting back to... I'm going to start electrocuting myself after this. Maybe a little bit more on the medical side of things, but overcoming maybe dementia, Alzheimer's, later in life. Yeah, yeah. Is that something that you guys are looking at? Yeah. So, um, probably not Alzheimer's.

Um, I see not just me, but a lot of people in the field, um, see Alzheimer's as an end state where there's just not enough like neural substrate that's still alive for you to do anything meaningful with. So there's a there's another condition called mild cognitive impairment mci that is seen as a stepping stone to alzheimer's so like so i'm really excited about um catching people early and doing something. So, you know, what if we could catch someone while they're still in MCI, use brain stimulation to really bolster this part of the brain and to really bolster their cognitive facilities, their memory facilities, such that if they do develop Alzheimer's, they have a bigger bank account that they can withdraw from. So, you know, a lot of Alzheimer's research is showing that it's kind of like osteoporosis,

where if you build up your bone density, live an active life, exercise, you have more bone density, so that you can carry that into latent life, where you have a bigger bank account that you can draw from. And then you don't get the fractures, the hip fractures, and this kind of thing, because you took care of yourself when you're younger. Same kind of thing with cognitive reserves. Like, you know, this is why, you know, we should live active lives, keep our brains alive and healthy, such that if we do, like, you know, if very unfortunately, if one were to get Alzheimer's, you know, they would have more cognitive reserves, cognitive facilities to draw from.

So I think with that research strategy or that therapeutic strategy, we've got a chance. We've got a chance with brain stimulation. A question of safety. Say someone just decides to make their daily headset for listening to music or podcasts or whatever else, and they listen for five hours a day. Is there any potential downside to doing it too much?

So the brain stimulation will, through the app, we can help monitor that. So we'll lock you out after you've used it for eight hours after that. So yeah, you can wear them like regular headphones and listen to Barbell Podcast, for example, for hours on end. And just use them like regular headphones. Yeah, the audio quality is actually pretty good.

Okay. And then you just mentioned the app, which we hadn't brought up yet. How does all that work? So the app is how you turn the device on and off. It's how you pick the part of your body that you want to work out. So, you know, if it's like for most folks in CrossFit, it would be the setting called legs, core, and arms.

But we also have settings for the left hand and the right hand. So those are more designed for musicians. And those applicants. Yeah. Doing the left hand stuff would be so crazy. We've talked about this before. Yeah, you gotta put it on

before you brush your teeth. Yeah. Or the other one that you made me do which is terrifying. Wipe yourself. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.

I gave him the challenge. I was like, what did I challenge him to do? Challenge me to go learn how to wipe myself with my left hand. It was terrifying. Yeah, that is pure fear.

Yeah. You're like, oh, no big. Oh, my God. I need halo neurons right now. You get good at wiping with both hands, change your life. Pure athleticism. Yeah. Really?

Oh, are you kidding me? I've been riding my whole. I've been missing out my whole life. Yeah. Really? Oh, are you kidding me? I've been riding my whole – I've been missing out my whole life. Well, here's the deal. So like thoracic mobility is a big deal. And I noticed that I'm good at twisting out to my right. And I go, when do I twist back to my right the most? When I'm wiping my ass.

So I said – You didn't know about this application? No. Everybody has to wipe their ass. I mean, we're going to sell thousands of these. I've got like a whole other thing. So I'm like, I also use a squatty potty, but I'm like squatting, not using the rest. So I'm squatting and twisting two, three times a day. Thoracic mobility is fantastic.

And you need a place to use it for 20 minutes before proper application. I can't think of a better use right now. I have heard once you lose that amount of spinal rotation and you can't wipe anymore, that's like the definitive line in the sand where people are like, okay, dad, you're going in the home. Yeah. That's like people are like, I'll dad, you're going in the home. Yeah. Like, that's like,

people are like, I'll take care of you, but once you have to, like, wipe somebody every day, you're like, all right, we're out. We need some help. Yeah. I want to get back into some CrossFit, maybe. Wiping yourself is...

You don't want to keep talking about that? No, we can. Is there... I brought it up. I will do it. Have you guys done any studies involving sexual performance? Yeah.

He's like like i knew you were gonna ask that damn you can see it in my eyes i hope so i have not done that study but looking for volunteers we can connect you with some folks i was thinking some of mike's friends yeah i've got a whole they're more experienced there's a there's a whole sex positive crowd that we can pull from and be easy that God, sex positive. That sounds so nice. Where are they right now? Yeah. They don't wake up until after the sun goes down.

Yeah, I can see that. What are you testing kind of going forward with the CrossFit athletes that you're working with? Like what are you using these really high- level athletes to continue whatever testing is going on? Yeah, so a lot of it is, I mean, three general areas, like skill, skill acquisition, strength, and endurance. Yeah. So, you know, with skill acquisition, you know, like, you know, sometimes we'll take intermediate CrossFit athletes who are beginner who can't do a muscle up yet. And, you know, there's a lot that goes into that movement.

It's kind of a rite of passage for a lot of folks. And, you know, we could look at that, like time to figure it out, time to get it. You know, with strength, we like to look at two rep max, one rep max is a little, it's too dangerous. Um, but two rep, well, two rep max is not safe, but, um, because, you know, the data is like for a lot of folks is being recorded. And, you know, whether people admit it or not, for a lot of folks that have been in it for a while, there's a plateau. So, you know, if we could see a lift off of this plateau, then, you know, can we lay claim to some of that lift? I think so. So, you know, in more novice athletes,

it's harder to show because there's so much natural improvement. But, you know, folks that are in tune with their body, you know, they can, like, even if you're in that, like, fun, juicy part, like early, early learning where it's like the learning curve is very steep, like think people can can feel a difference it's like wait a second this is steeper yet do you guys have any other similar products on the way or or like new versions of this coming out like what do you see as far as like your product line yeah next year we're gonna we're gonna get better um you know we're gonna're going to improve upon the current product, and we're going to release a different product line.

So, yeah, not to give away too many company secrets here, but, yeah, we're working on it. Do you have anything that you guys have tested on, like habit creation, the ability to wake up, morning routine to put this on? There's ways to be more productive in your day. Unfortunately not. Yeah, I need these things. Discipline.

Is there a part in my brain that will make me more disciplined? Yeah. How can I get someone else to do it for me when I don't do it myself? For you, you've been in this world for a long time. You have this product. Like, what do you use it for like on a daily basis?

Are you experimenting with things yourself like outside of running controlled experiments? Yeah, yeah. So, I'm a,

you know, what we call dogfooding. So, I definitely use my own product. What in the world, Ms. Bledsoe? Yeah,

dang, what happened to you? Damn, the leather just rolled through here. The sun's gone down. Ms. Bledsoe is out. It's had a lot of beauty walk through this room. She was wearing Halo Sport earphones earlier. There you go.

Now she walks out looking like that. I love it. It's what happens when you have 12 houseguests at all times. There's no telling what will happen next, really. What was your question, Doug? Sorry. Your self-experimentation. Self-experimentation.

How do you use it? Keep those leather pants upstairs uh i'm into cycling and um i used it uh so i did an experiment on myself there's a there's a hill um just north of the golden gate bridge called hawk hill that's like uh it's like a benchmark for anyone in the who's serious about cycling. Everyone knows they're hot kill time. And getting below eight minutes was kind of a badge of honor. You joined a certain club. And I could never do it. So I'm 47 now.

When I turned 40, I said, that's it. Probably not going to happen. So I gave up. But then I founded this crazy brain stimulation company and we were there were some real applications in sports I started using, so I did this

training program, this two week training program that I've done in the past and I've tried Hawk Hill and I couldn't get below 8 so I did it again with neurostimulation this time, and I got comfortably under 8. So I'm like 745 now, and I went back,

and I did it again just to make sure it wasn't like a tailwind or something that helped me. So, yeah, I mean, I guess against all odds, you don't expect to set a personal record for yourself in your 40s, but I did it. So, yeah, that was really awesome. And now I still use motor cortex neurostimulation, but we're interested in other brain areas,

as we've been talking about here. So I'm kind of off to the next thing now. Do you have a bunch of contraptions at home? Like, oh, I'm going to hook this part of my brain up today. Not at home, but at work, yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I want to come up there and hook up to something. You can, yeah. Door's open. home like oh i'm gonna hook this part of my brain up today not at home but at work yeah yeah yeah that's cool can i i want to come up there and you can't something yeah doors open why are you here and i'm not there i'm coming up come on up i'm coming up all you guys are like a biohacker

movement of kind of trying out electrical stimulation that isn't the safest way to go about yeah there's maybe that product there's a lot of biohackers out there going to Radio Shack and Fry's and putting these kinds of things together. I watched a documentary on it. That sounds crazy. Crazy people. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean.

I know some of them. Everyone's looking at Mike for some reason. I don't do that. No. I wait for at least a dozen people to try it on themselves before. At least a dozen. At least a dozen. But, you know, biohackers, I think, I love them for being, you know,

just taking control over things that, you know, they relate to, their body relates to. I love it for their spirit of experimentation, but I just wish it was more organized. You know, it's like a lot of one-off experimentations that aren't controlled. You know, you don't know what the equipment is actually doing because so much of it is home-built. you know if halo sport or our future products can become like this vehicle for experimentation and biohacking like i would love that very cool um before we close up shop here is there anything that you you normally like to touch on that we have neglected to mention so um yeah i would love to talk about safety okay safety third yeah i've heard that before amongst this room okay yeah we we briefly touched on it but what else would you like to say about it yeah so you know i think um it you know and maybe your

listeners aren't the people but you know, for a lot of society, when they hear about brain stimulation, like two things come to mind. It's like, one, it's bullshit. It doesn't work. It's like snake oil. And or, number two, it's not safe. So I think we hit on number one.

We've talked a lot, a lot of research, a lot of data, sham control trials, this and that. But, you know, for safety, you know, I guess, why might people think that brain stimulation is not safe, other than that they've never heard of it? Right? I guess we are all afraid of things that we're not familiar with. And that's okay. But, you know, for me i feel like because i've been in the field for so long like i've seen it with my own eyes how safe neurostimulation is like you know electricity is the currency of the brain and you know what we're doing is nothing new to the brain like providing an electric field to interact interface with the brain is like nothing different from the what the brain feels every day of its life um and you know if you just take a step back and you just look at the data like you know it's

kind of boring but you know the data often tells a story you know there's been 4 000 papers published um looking at this technology it's called tdcs transcranial direct current stimulation with tens of thousands of subjects studied and the safety profile has just been completely reinforced by all of this data as that it is a safe product within like used within certain limitations which you know halo sports certainly abides by it's a safe product and then you know you know, ourselves as a company, like, I think we just crossed the quarter million neurostimulation mark. Like, you know, we have an army of customers out there doing neurostimulation. And, like, we count the number of times that they're using the neurostimulator.

You know, in our folks, in, like, this amount of neurostimulation, which is probably the biggest safety database in the world at this point. Yeah, it just continues to reinforce that safety profile that the literature has suggested. It is a safe product. In the weightlifting world, everybody takes supplements, drinking protein, taking creatine, maybe some more heavy-duty supplements. But this really just seems like something that is almost like a topical thing that granted is electrical. So it freaks people out,

but it seems like probably has the same kind of capacity as, as taking a creatine for, for muscle growth. As far as your movement pattern or repatterning patterning goes, this could be a very effective supplement to that. Yeah, yeah, I'd agree. And, you know, maybe even lighter weight than a creatine. I mean, you know, with creatine, you're taking like two grams at a time. You know, with neurostimulation, we're turning on a pretty mild current for 20 minutes.

And when you turn it off, it gone right like with creatine you're kind of stuck with it you take two grams and you know it's in your body for a while you know if you're having a bad day with it there's no antidote right you can't turn it off so you know that's that's something that's i think very different from neurostimulation in a chemical like you know with with things that you like these supplements that you take by mouth and you know they go into your blood and you hope they go into the right spot and not and not the wrong spots um because wrong spots produce side effects um you know with neurostimulation like we know the electric field is going to the motor cortex and not to other parts of the brain and we also know that when we turn it off, it's off.

So, you know, there's a lot of safety benefits to using electric fields in the brain that I guess when people first hear about it, it's like, whoa, that's scary, that's different. But, you know, like if you peel a couple of layers of the onion and you get into it, it actually makes a ton of sense. I think from some of the stats that you told us on the show today, it's more effective than almost all the supplements.

When I look at studies for supplementation, it's like, oh, something like creatine may increase your power output by X amount or whatever. It is solid, but you're talking about 50% increase in learning. But I mean, that's also in in direct to performance

and so like if people are taking creatine to get a three percent improvement then the benefits of learning 50 faster over a period of time is i mean it's yeah to me it's like way more important the older i get you know when i when i was a younger athlete my 20s like i just want to put things in my body to make me go faster and harder and all that kind of stuff. The older I get, the more I realize, had I put a little more attention into the

learning, the movements cleaner and all this, I would have been a much better athlete instead of dumping way too much whey protein into my body this also seems like a little bit more of a passive way to do some really good hard wiring for movement patterns which when you go to a crossfit gym or if you're in a gym in general running whatever it

is movement patterns are the thing that drive performance efficiency um on on your website is there a collection of these studies or someone that wants to actually go look at methods and outcomes and go read them? Yeah just go to haloneuro.com the top navigation bar has a science tab so click that and you can go as deep as you want there

there's a lot there killer. Gethalosport.com forward slash shrugged get over there. Save $100 on your sweet headset. All the things you could want in there. Besides that awesome link, where else can people find you? That's a great spot.

We would love to stay in touch. So there's an email collection window at the bottom. If folks want to drop in their email, that's a great way to, you know, we won't spam you. We hope that our content is really, really on point. We've got social media handles like Halo Neuroscience on Instagram, Halo Neuroscience, I believe, on Twitter. If someone has questions and they want to reach out to you or a member of your team, what's the easiest way to do that? Is it still just DM on Instagram type of thing?

Yeah, that'll work. Yeah, we've got people monitoring both social handles pretty much 24-7, so it's a great way to interact with the company. Awesome. I'm way more motivated to use – I mean, I've used the device on and off the last year or so and uh now i'm thinking about i just got i just moved i was i was traveling a lot so i wasn't learning a lot of new skills but now i'm picking up new skills i'm looking forward to using this to help me out sweet yeah get halosport.com forward slash shrugged mike Bledsoe. Where can the people find you?

Mondays? Oh, wow. Yeah. I forgot about that. That podcast thing. Yeah, the podcast thing. The Bledsoe Show on Monday. And if you want to follow what I'm doing on Instagram,

I post there periodically and consistently. But when I do, you are going to enjoy it. Mike underscore Bledsoe. He's a strong coach. Talk about the strong coach. Oh, yeah. What when I do, you are going to enjoy it. Mike underscore Bledsoe. The strong coach. It's all about the strong coach. Oh, yeah. What am I doing? Changing the face of coaching. Jesus. Thank God there's a host here. This is what you're here for. If you're a trainer or a coach and you want to take your game to the next level, go to thestrongcoach.com. We have had a few classes of students go through and get incredible results.

If you're following The Strong Coach on Instagram, at thestrongcoach, you will get to see all the testimonials and see what they're up to. We've got quite a few high-level coaches that have got really great things to say. I think you're going to like it. I am in the group. Doug Larson's in the group. In the group. I'm friends with a lot of people actually in the group that have been on their podcast and whatnot.

And it's a really cool thing just watching everybody grow, go through the 12 weeks now. And, yo, the Mastermind's cool once you graduate that thing. Don't tell them about the Mastermind. That's a secret. We're working on it. We're working on it. We're working on it. Doug Larson, where can they find you? You can check me out on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson,

although I haven't really been posting much lately. I've been trying to stay off social media. It's bad for you, but you should follow me anyway. Figure that out. Just in case you post something. Just in case I do. I also have my own website, Doug Larson Fitness. A lot of stuff about nutrition and or perfecting your movement on that site.

Barber Swag every Wednesday, sometimes on Saturdays, and I host Technique WOD every Sunday. Check it out on YouTube. I'm at Anders Varner. Get into the Shrug Collective. Five-star reviews on iTunes, maybe on YouTube. You can leave a nice comment. Don't be creepy. And make sure you get over to Halo Sport. Oh yeah, actually creepy's

cool too. I'm creepy. He likes it. Six shows a week in the Shrug Collective. A million downloads a month. This thing is really cool. And we love talking to you guys every week. Share it with your friends. Right. We'll see you next Wednesday.

Shrug family, I know you loved that interview. We even made sex jokes talking about brain stimulation. See, I could go on and on right there talking about stimulation and the sex jokes we were making, but we're going to stop right there. Just make sure you get over to gethalosport.com. G-E-T-H-A-L-O-S-P-O-R-T.com forward slash shrug. Shrug listeners, you're going to get $100 off of your first Halo Sport headset. It's going to make you learn the Olympic lifts 50% faster.

That's what he said. That's what he said. He's a neuroscientist. I'm not. They have hundreds of thousands of stimulations in the last year and tons and tons of research saying that this stuff works. I'm excited to try it out. I'm doing it on some handstands.

I'm going to be doing it for the next couple weeks. Just make sure you get over to gethalosport.com forward slash shrugged. Sorry, not shrugged. Gethalosport.com forward slash shrugged. Save $100 off of your first purchase. We will see you guys next week.