Barbell Shrugged - Feed Me Fuel Me  — The Big Picture w/ Dr. Andy Galpin  — 92

Episode Date: June 21, 2018

Dr. Andy Galpin is a teacher and story-teller. He is the co-host of Shrugged Collective’s The Body of Knowledge (@thebodyofknowledge), has a PhD in Human Bioenergetic, and is a tenured Professor in the Center for Sport Performance at CSU Fullerton. Dr. Galpin now focuses his attention on teaching classes (Sports Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, Designing Exercise Programs, Applied Strength and Conditioning, Athlete Assessment and Measurement, etc.), and running the BMEP lab, which studies the acute responses and chronic adaptations of human skeletal muscle in response to high force/velocity/power and fatiguing exercise from the whole body, down to the individual muscle fiber and even into the individual DNA. In this episode, Dr. Galpin shares with us his journey coming from a small town in the Northwest to ending up in Cal State Fullerton, he also shares some experiences from his sports performance lab, sheds a light on why quality research is getting more challenging, explains the difference between a variety of physical practices, touching on the limitations of certain programs such as CrossFit, and much more. Enjoy! - Jeff and Mycal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/fmfm_galpin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------   ► 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

Hey there ladies and gentlemen, this is Doug from Barbell Shrugged. I just want to let you know that we now offer 11 of our top training programs as a part of a single membership site that we're calling the Program Vault. We used to launch training programs every few months and people were always bummed that they couldn't sign up at any time. You had to be around for the launch. The launch was only four or five days. If you missed it, then you had to wait six months or a year, depending on what training program we were offering next.

And it was kind of a hassle, even when people signed up for training programs, to switch to a different program when they got to the end of their current program, or they just happened to be in a new phase of training. They hit their past goal, and now they have new goals, and new goals require different training programs. So inevitably, it was a pain in the ass for people to switch programs. So we took all that feedback, and we decided to just put all of our programs together on this thing we now call the Program Vault.

That way all Shrugged athletes can have access to all the workouts that we have and move from program to program as they saw fit for themselves. Makes sense. So there's 11 programs. Three of them are long-term, very comprehensive programs where there's a warm-up and there's mobility and there's nutrition added in there. All the workouts are there. There's a cool down. There's stuff to do on your off days. They're super, super comprehensive. And those programs last for over 18 months if you want to stick around for that long. And there's also eight short-term programs. These programs are three months long and these are basically add-on programs. So if you are already doing classes at a gym and you

don't want to stop doing your classes but you want to work on one particular thing maybe you want to like work on your shoulder health or you want to work on your conditioning like your your aerobic capacity or maybe you just want to work on your squatting strength or your pull-up strength or something like that then we have these short-term add-on programs that are super low volume but they're just like an extra you know two or three exercises at the end of your workout to help work on whatever those very specific goals are that you have so the three long-term programs are flight weightlifting that's a very weightlifting specific training program it builds it builds you from someone who's more like beginner intermediate at weightlifting and builds you up to be a more technical professional professional-style weightlifter over the course of 12 or 18 months.

We also have Muscle Gain Challenge. If you just want to put on muscle mass and you want a higher volume training program, this, in my opinion, is more of an intermediate program. If you don't have good technique on the Olympic lifts yet, you're going to kind of be thrown right to the wolves, so to speak. It doesn't ramp you up like flight does flight has very specific progressions for weightlifting to let you learn all the technique over time muscle gain challenge kind of just throws you right into it so ideally you already have

some experience with olympic weightlifting before you start the muscle gain challenge and there's a very high emphasis of course with the muscle gain challenge on gaining muscle so that means you got to eat a lot of food so there's a lot of emphasis, of course, with the Muscle Gain Challenge on gaining muscle. So that means you've got to eat a lot of food. So there's a lot of emphasis on how much to eat, what to eat, and your recovery as a part of that program. So that way you can get bigger and stronger. Also, we have Strug Strength Challenge, which is more of a traditional kind of CrossFit program. If you do CrossFit classes at a CrossFit gym, you probably do some strength movements at the very beginning of class. You know, maybe you do front squats for five sets of five, and then you do a Metcon that's, you know,

20 or 25 minutes or whatever it happens to be. That's more typical of the shrugged strength challenge where strength is the goal, but certainly conditioning is a key part of that as well. It has more of a strength bias than kind of a regular generalized CrossFit-y type program. So the eight short-term training programs, again, these are about three months long, than kind of a regular generalized CrossFit-y type program. So the eight short-term training programs, again, these are about three months long, and they're kind of an add-on program. So the first one is Boulders for Shoulders. That's a shoulder health and stability program, health, mobility, and stability program.

That doesn't mean you're going to be doing a whole lot of jerks and overhead presses necessarily this is again an add-on program so you're gonna be doing a lot of assistance work for your shoulders your thoracic spine uh etc that way you can have the healthiest shoulders possible there's the aerobic monster program which is adding in a bunch of extra mostly aerobic conditioning you'll be on the airdyne a lot you're going to be on the rower a lot you're going to be doing a lot of monostructural stuff so you know if you already have your regular workout you do strength you do your metcon and then you know as a very overly simplistic example you do you know 20 minutes of rowing or you do 30 on 30 off for 10 rounds where you're doing a hard 30 and an easy 30 or whatever it is just a little bit extra aerobic work there's the squat the house program where you where we add in two leg exercises three days a week.

So you might squat and then do some lunges or something like that. Depending on what your regular classes are like, you might already be doing a lot of squatting. But if you're not currently able to do a lot of squatting and you want to do some more squatting and you just want to add that onto your current training, then Squat the House is a great program. Anaerobic Assault, that is a high intensity interval style program where you're doing very fast Metcons. So you might be doing airdyne sprints, you know, 30 seconds on, 100% full speed, and then take a three minute break and do it again. Or even, you know, five touch and go deadlifts followed by, you know, 10 burpees, rest two minutes and then do it again.

But you're doing it all 100 full speed really teaching how to kick it into high gear and move very very quickly when you're doing your metcons there's my first pull-up which is not going to give you a whole lot of actually doing pull-ups these are this is a program for people that can't do a pull-up yet so there's a lot of assistance work for pull-ups and there's a lot of extra assistance work for just all the muscle groups involved in doing pull-ups everything from just doing extra lat work, extra scapular retraction, rhomboid lower trap work, extra bicep work, etc. To help get you to the point where you can do your first pull-up. There's a strongman accessory program where you can be doing yoke walks, picking up stones, pulling heavy sleds, and things like that.

And then there's two more programs that are kind of a little bit higher volume. You could do them on your own if you wanted to. And you also can combine these. You could do Aerobic Monster and Anaerobic Assault and My First Pull-Up all together if you wanted to, if you just wanted to add extra volume. But the last two, Open Prep is exactly what it sounds like. Just gets you ready for the CrossFit Open or other similar competitions. You'll be doing a lot of Metcons.

And the last one is Barbell Beginner to Meet. It's prepping you for your first Olympic weightlifting competition. Each program is scheduled between three and five days per week. There's videos explaining all the programming. There's demos. There's technique explanations for everything. And then also you have access to the Private Shrugged Collective Facebook group. That way you can get advice from ourselves.

We'll be in there hanging out. Our guests from our shows. We also have a bunch of athletes, coaches, and strength experts that are friends of ours that are in there too to help you out. If you're interested, since I've been talking long enough, you can go to shruggedcollective.com backslash vault for all the information. Again, that is shruggedcollective.com backslash V-A-U-L-T. That spells vault. Go there, check it out. If you have any questions, email help at barbellshrugged.com and enjoy the show.

Mike Bledsoe here, CEO of the Shrugged Collective. Today, we bring to you a new show, Feed Me, Fuel Me, hosted by Jeff Thornton and Michael Anders. As we're expanding what we offer, traveling to great guests, and introducing you to the best content, we have partnered with amazing companies that we believe in. We talk and hang out with the founders

and owners of these businesses. Not all products are created equal, even if it looks like it on the surface. We've done the research and have been in the industry long enough to see what really works and what will make the biggest difference for you long term. With that being said, one of my favorite companies, Thrive Market, has a special offer for you. You get $60 of free organic groceries plus free shipping and a 30-day trial. ThriveMarket.com slash feedme. This is how it

works. Users will get 20 bucks off their first three orders of $49 or more plus 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 hit up Thrive Market today. Go to thrivemarket.com slash feedme. Enjoy the show. This is episode number 92 of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast with our special guest, host of Body of Knowledge podcast and author of Unplugged, Dr. Andy Galpin. Welcome to the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. My name is Jeff Thornton alongside my co-host Michael Anders. Each week we bring you an inspiring person or message related to our three pillars of success, manifestation, business, fitness, and nutrition. Our intent is to enrich, educate, and empower

our audience to take action, control, and accountability for their decisions. Thank you for allowing us to join you on your journey. Now let's get started. Hey, what's good, fam? Welcome to another episode of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. Darius and Jeff coming at you from Scottsdale with our guest today, associate professor at Cal State Fullerton, author of Unplugged, and the host of Body of Knowledge, Dr. Andy Galpin. What's good, man? Durs, man. Finally, so good to be here. It's been a long time. We've been trying to put this one together for, I don't even know, a year maybe. Yes, damn near. Like eight months. I think I saw you in October at the NSCA conference.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. You know, and the reason that we really wanted to have you on the show is I watched your presentation to all those grad students. And I think there was a couple of handful of undergrads in the audience during your little seminar there. And I thought that the authenticity of your presentation was so on point with, you know, the message I delivered to my apprentices over at CrossFit PHX who are like about to get their feet wet in the real world. And, you know, the overarching theme of your presentation was that, you know, yes, you're accredited, you have credentials, you have a degree, you have a piece of paper, that's all well and fine. But your real education doesn't start until you're in the application

phase of all that knowledge you just accumulated and i yes i agree but i was sitting in the audience though and what was so profound to me about it while i agree wholeheartedly with your message was like the look like the the starry-eyed look of the kids in the audience was like uh like some of them had this like look of instant worry like what the hell did i just get myself into and then others were like well if my education doesn't really start until after i get out of school why am i here you know um and you just really shed some solid light on what it is to actually you know bring value to that that education piece because we all struggle right when we're breaking into the industry and whether it's in academia uh in your case or out here on the commercial side uh running a gym or being a trainer or strength coach or whatever uh you know there's

that that damned if you do damned if you don. You either have too much experience and not enough education or way too much education and not enough experience. And there's that fine line of that happy medium of both. In your experience, because you're obviously doing big things in the research of strength and conditioning. How do you, how do you get you, how do you prepare your students for what they're going to face in the real world, man? Boy, I don't know. That's a really, really tough one. Of course, this is a topic I tend to be very passionate about. I actually spend a lot of time in my classes, even probably more so with the students that I mentor directly.

So my graduate students and the students that work in my lab. I obviously have a different approach and a spin on it. I would say that we can plant some flags on the end of the spectrum here, and then we can move on from there, because I don't really find it tremendously productive to talk about things that service a very very very very low percentage of people sure so those flags would be on one of the spectrum yes you have your occasional bill gates and your occasional um steve jobs to where college was a complete useless tool that well it didn't really matter maybe elon musk is in the same category. I don't know. But what I can tell you is I teach at Cal State Fullerton. That's in Orange County, California. And we have the,

although it sounds prestigious, we have the highest percentage and rate of diversity of any college in America. We have one of, if not the highest percentage of, first in their family to go to college. We blow the numbers down with people who are in multiple family homes at our university. And we have a very, very large department. We have about 2,000 undergraduates in my program alone. Wow. And I say that to let you understand, like, I can tell you right now, a very, very large percentage of those people going to college significantly changes their life, their family's life, and their next generation's lives. And they would not be getting there without college.

And so I want to set that up to make sure you understand that because I get extremely irritated with the conversation that college is useless. It's like we don't need to do it anymore. Well, maybe if you're on that far into the spectrum, but I'm telling you right now, there are a lot of people out there who, it changes their lives, it changes the lives of their families. And if you make those comments,

it's probably because A, you didn't go to college in this field, or B, you went to college in this field a very long time ago, or you're in a very small circle of people and you don't understand what it's like to be some of the other 350 million people in this country. That you have a very limited lack of perspective on that topic. So on the other end of the spectrum, of course, there are people like probably even you guys like me who I left my undergraduate curriculum and I don't know but it's a very small percentage of the things I learned in those four years actually helped me you

know in my quote-unquote job and that happens too and there are some very bad programs out there of course I will grant you all that but the honest answer is I think that's a very slighted look at it um now that's a whole separate conversation i don't think we want to get into now about is it worth the price okay that's a separate conversation we can do it if you want um but just to say like it's useless i can also tell you this and my the final thing here i'll pause after this i can't even tell you how many not a couple or dozens hundreds of students hundreds now maybe thousands at this point who i have seen

walk into my class telling me about how they're going to do x in their career and this is what they want to do and why should they have to take a sports psych class when they know they're going to be a physical therapist or why should they have to take a um whatever class biomechanics when they know they want to be in some other field right and this is a waste of time why did i have to take that writing class why did i have to take these g's and then two years later three years five years some metric down the line they email me back and go oh it turns out i'm a sports psychologist now oh my god like i hated this stupid business class i had to take and now actually i opened up a gym and i'm a sports psychologist now oh my god like i hated this stupid business class i had to take and now actually i opened up a gym and i'm so thankful i had that one business class

or whatever and so one of my colleagues lenny weirsman always says well come back in 10 years and tell me what turned out to be important what didn't because you're not going to know until then and to put the onus on us to know that going in to know what you're actually going to need to know 10 years down the road in all of your lives like that's ridiculous expectation sure so i can tell you like it's a pretty well this the general university system is completely broken and i've spoken i've spoken at that at length um the very scaffolding of what we try to do at least in our field especially in our program um it's pretty good man. And we get a lot of people jobs and careers in this field that without our program would not have had that. And even if that's personal trainers at Equinox or strength coaches in high school,

I mean, we're not making too many guys that are going to be the next Brett Contreras and things like that, but we're making a whole lot of people who are your kids high school strength edition coach. Right. And they're doing a pretty good decent job. So that that's what I don't answer your question at all. No, that's all right. That's I wanted to get that because that's always when I think of when it's just like, okay, how do you educate these kids to prepare for the world? The first comes down to man like they do it there is tremendous value and understanding the basics. And then we can have the conversation about, which I think is a more interesting one, what I do to how I approach the classroom because it is extremely different than anyone in this department and anyone that I've interacted with in this field. What I actually do with my students, how I approach class because I do not use textbooks.

I do not use exams for the most part. So we can get into those details later, which I think is the bulk of your question. But really, I wanted to make sure you understand, like, that is my fundamental belief, is we are at net massive gain, and we're moving this entire field way forward by having the thing. And then, sorry, this is the last thing I'll say. All the time when I hear the comments about what university programs in this area are not doing, it's always from people who are not in the university system or don't know anyone in the university systems. Because every time I hear like,

well, university systems don't do A, B, C, and D, I can immediately, almost always within 10 seconds go, yeah, actually that program does that, our program does that, that other program does that. So shit actually exists that people say don't exist but they don't even look so like that drives me insane it's like oh really you sure that there's no masters crazy strength conditioning where you know the strength conditioning coaches on the floor with division one athletes all day because i can name you three off the top of my head right now where that's

exactly what you do like like oh there's no program that does this oh i can name you four that do exactly that right now like so those programs exist a lot more frequently than people think they just it's just cool to talk about how universities aren't doing cool stuff for this field so that was a lot no worries man take take it and run with it man it sounds like but your your stance on everything seems like you have a lot of uh is so passionate because of your experience and your track to where you've uh uh your your career path uh post undergrad but for everybody who doesn't know what that journey looked like can you give us the cliff notes of where you started

and how you got into the the academic side of strength and conditioning? Sure, man. I mean, I grew up in a very small town in the Pacific Northwest. So outside of Seattle, but quite a bit outside. And I went to a small school in Oregon and got my degree in effectively exercise science, played college football, spent some time working for a company that's now called Exos. Back then it was Mark Verstegen's company, Nathie's Performance, and it was down in Tempe, actually. You guys know that place, right? So I was right not too far from you guys. And from there I went back, got my master's degree in the same field at the University of Memphis. Started up, or I should say helped.

I was sort of around when Mike Blesso started up some stupid little barbell company that you may have heard of and started a podcast that you may have heard of of a similar name. But I left actually because I wanted to get my PhD why they built up barbell shrugged and everything and so I went on got my PhD in human muscle physiology effectively and then got my job out here at Cal State Fullerton and I work with athletes I do research I teach classes of course so a little bit of kind of the whole spectrum so I am a practitioner on a very small scale and I was a much more extensive practitioner back in the day. I still train, of course, every day. That's why I was about five minutes late here

as I had to get my last set of pec deck in. Just kidding. No, but like I said, I still work with athletes right now. We test athletes. Our laboratory focuses exclusively on sport performance. So we do things that enhance physical function performance we don't do disease treatment prevention management things we do maximize performance so we take muscle biopsies and we study muscle of elite power lifters weight lifters UFC fighters bodybuilders you name it so I want to

dive into that sports performance because because, you know, going back to your your reference of what universities don't do and the funding available for research, you know, it would seem to me from the outside looking in that if you're not in the grand scheme of things dedicated to studying the sick or disease prevention and you want to you know focus your attention on sport performance and you know potentially the the scalability of high high performers to the the average person you know what would you say that the you know if it was a 50 50 perfect world we're studying disease and performance and you know all of all the funding is available in the world for both what's the the reality of that that funding availability on either end oh it's 99.99% disease that's I mean there's there is no other funding for performance the NSCA does a very nice job and they think they give out hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for sport performance but hundreds of thousands of dollars it sounds like a lot but like that it does almost nothing

hmm it's you know you're getting $10,000 and by the time my university takes It sounds like a lot, but it does almost nothing. You're getting $10,000, and by the time my university takes their cut and all that, I've got a couple of thousand dollars left, and that doesn't even pay for a 100th of the chemicals I need to run a single fiber study or something. Sure. It does well for people like Brad Schoenfeld who do studies where it's like, okay, let's take two groups and put one group through this type of training for 12 weeks and put this group through this type of training for 12 weeks and then look who got you know the most muscle gain at the end so it funds things like that at a small level but it doesn't if you want to start talking about doing some more invasive science and

understanding why muscle is growing let's learn the mechanism let's get more detail let's have a more complicated study design let's include women you know uh then it starts to get very expensive um very fast so it's it's almost entirely there um crossfit apparently is trying but they have a thing where they're they're keep marketing that they're giving money to support scientists but i haven't heard a single person get that money and we we've contacted them several times and they don't even respond so i don't even know i't even know what they're doing. I don't mean that to be a criticism because they're trying, but I don't know what they're doing with that money or if they're giving it out.

I don't know where it's going. The rest of it, man, like it's scraping by and taking money from supplement companies or taking money from companies that come up with new exercise equipment or devices that they want tested. That's how almost all sports science survives. Why do you think that that – I feel like that's very much an American phenomenon. We had Rebecca Balkovic. Yeah, Rachel.

Rachel. Rachel Balkovic, yeah, excuse me, on the show a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, she's sourcing further education in sport performance but she's looking at uh you know institutions of higher learning in europe and australia where it doesn't it seems to be way more commonplace to you know study exercise science from a performance standpoint and i feel like in america it it's you know obviously uh skewed the other way and very drastically why why do you think that is uh in in american society when it comes to the education of sport performance versus disease prevention yeah it's tough man

australia does a new zealand my friend john cronin down there they do a great job of funding sport um the flat answer is man we're just a lot bigger like it's not that hard to fund New Zealand Sport Science Institute you know relative to funding 55 different sport science labs in America or whatever it is you know like there's a lot there's 100 maybe yeah you know some some places in Europe do it some of them don't do any of it um so it's not like we're the only ones not doing it uh china and takes care of it but it's all in-house so they do all their stuff they just kind of keep it and use it for their own thing um it's tough man like the ioc doesn't kick out grants to do things like this uh like usa weight

lifting is a good example like they don't have any money right okay they can't give us money to do this usa wrestling doesn't have any money they can't help us even though we're doing stuff for their athletes um unless it has a very specific uh like this is what we're going to start doing toward tomorrow or you could picture that this is this directly saves injuries or something but that's kind of hard to do yeah I don't know man it's just not the infrastructure is there that from a federal perspective it's just not part of the budget at all yeah so but do you do you see the the the needle moving towards uh the sport performance end of the spectrum in terms oh no no no it's going the other way is it really yeah it's getting worse yeah with what the current administration is doing, all of science is getting worse.

So they have dramatically reduced science funding. So that's coming down. So to give you a little bit of perspective on that, about, oh, I think 20 years ago, about 30 to 35 percent of federal funding went to people, scientists under the age of 35. Okay. That number is now less than 1%. Good God. Wow.

So your chance of getting funding under the age of, you know, say 40 or 50 years old is effectively zero. I mean, statistically it's zero. So it's getting worse and worse what happens is the people that sort of had grants going just kept getting their grants renewed and the rest of us just didn't get anything so it's um it's getting far worse sport performances is getting massively depleted and federal funding for science in general is getting crushed so yeah it's not a good place man sure i mean i just you know i'm definitely incubated in the the circles that i run in on a daily basis um you know but we always hear talk especially within the medical professionals that make up some of the members of crossfit phx um that there you know there there

is a shift in using physical activity as preventative medicine versus uh you know, there is a shift in using physical activity as preventative medicine versus, you know, big pharma, if you want to be a conspiracy theorist. Yeah. So actually, I'm going to cut you off sort of right there, because this is another one that drives me insane. Okay. Like, people do not, like, they live in a fantasy land here. I don't understand how you think science is going gonna get done unless somebody funds it Right, right. And now what I mean by fun is I guess think people think that You know me as a scientist if I could study funded You know, I'm taking two hundred thousand dollar that and I buy a new car or something like yeah

Scientists don't get that money. Like I can't pay myself that money. Right? So like I'm still getting my State college salary, you know to do this stuff. But it is extremely expensive when you start looking at basic logistics, paying for people's parking to get to campus, paying to have a physician in the room when you're working with anything, paying to have a blood drop, paying for the plastic, paying for the tubes, medical costs are tremendously high paying for somebody to manage your databases because the databases get extremely large, right? You got Excel files everywhere. You have to have a server to hold this stuff. You have to have a computer to do this stuff on. I mean, just the very basic operations

get very expensive, very, very fast. Um, I'm spending, I'm applying for a grant now, and I wrote in to spend $30,000 a year on student salary. And that pays my grad students $15 an hour to work five hours a week for the whole year. Their whole salary is like $7,000 a year. So I'm like, I have to pay, and I live in Southern California, man're it's very expensive to live here i have to be able to do something if not they have to get jobs and they have to get jobs to just survive and pay rent and they already

have massive students so like the logistics really just don't work at all for it so when people look at things that are funded by big pharma by supplement by industry you have to realize guys like that money has to come from somewhere right and just because i take money from which i've never done but in theory i'll just put myself on the bus here if i took money from a supplement company or big pharma like people think that it's like you know like ah they bought them out like are you stupid i wish like i'm begging for a big pharma to come in and be like, hey, we'll give you $200,000 to do this study and show our product works.

Where the fuck is that email at? I've never gotten that. Where's my million dollars to cover up some stuff? So while I grant you that has probably happened sometime, that's fantasy land. Like that is such a low percentage of the time where they actually influence what happens. I mean, Farm is a little bit different because they can play some shady games, but that's not really happening that often.

It's more like you have a thing and you pitch them and you beg them for some money and they give you some money and you publish the stuff either way. And they oftentimes don't get published what they like published. And that's the more realistic application. Certainly there's some scientists that make up data or just severely twist the study so that it comes out positive so they can get more funding. That definitely happens, but it has to come from somewhere. I mean, having said that, your bigger point, yeah, I mean, ACSM has been preaching this exercise as medicine movement for a decade or more now. The benefits of physical activity are a huge, huge portion of federal funding. You can totally get funding for physical activity exercise. You just have to have an aging component or you have to

have a kidney failure or obesity or diabetes component you're just not going to get it to study young healthy right that's that's the twist so in fact it is a very strong component of their funding for the prevention and treatment and it's just a i mean a portion a big chunk of federal funding goes to no we have people that are sick and dying right now. We need something to stop them from dying tomorrow. The prevention side of it almost exclusively covers nutrition and heavily on exercise. So the government has done a very nice job of recognizing that and providing funds to support that.

It just has to be involved around old or disease. It's still exercise, but it's because you're exercising to save somebody from kidney failure or treat their kidney failure or something. It's just not going to be in young, healthy, or even middle-aged healthy. We actually just tried to apply for a grant to study 35- to 55-year-old middle-aged people before they got sarcopenia. And they're just like, nope, that's not aging. I can prove to you right now an extensive ability to stop all the bad effects of aging. So if we could do this, this would save us trillions, but they're like, nope, not directly aging. Interesting.

That's interesting. And with the limited funds that you all have, what is the normal test size group that you would need to have the amount of data for a study that you're going to run because i mean it's tough when you don't when you have limited funds that you guys are working with yeah so here's the other fun part um people love to criticize sports science because we notoriously use very very very small sample sizes and it's a legitimate criticism because you can't extrapolate data to 350 million Americans based on a study with 12 people in it. Having said that, this is why that happens. There is no funding.

Like how am I going to do a study that costs $12 million when I have $3,800 to work with? It's just not going to happen. And so most of the time in our field, 8 to 15 people, that's a very, very standard number. If you hit double digits, you're like, cool. Depends on the metric and all that stuff. But 8 to 12 people is a very, very standard number.

We've published as low as 1. We've published as low as 6. So it just depends on how unique the group is too. That's really interesting and like from i guess from a business mindset or or can you use like like a kickstarter a gofundme to start like raising these raising your funds or way people can start delivering you money so you can get the data that you need because i know if the if the science or if the the agencies are going to give you these grants and things like that are you you allowed in your field to take advantage of those business opportunities that are available nowadays? That's interesting.

Last year, we actually ran a crowdfunding campaign on experiment.com. And I have a reasonable outreach compared to most scientists. I'm probably in the upper echelon for audience and things like that and my ability to reach people just because of these things. And we ran a crowdfunding campaign and we got funded only because somebody stepped in at the last minute and funded like 80% of it. And that was, we were pretty pretty lucky so we tried that and the honest answer is no one no one cared so we had a lot of people with very large social media followings with huge audiences post about it and just nobody

wanted to commit five bucks so I don't think that's a viable option at all for most people and again considering I have a very large audience um all told and I mean we had people that had millions of millions of Facebook followers were making posts about it and just the money didn't really come in so yes we can and this is one thing I have done differently than I don't know a single other sports scientist who's even tried these things but that's why i do things like this that's why i'm having a conversation with you now that's why i do you know other podcasts and stuff is because our lab has actually at this point been effectively 100 funded on exactly that so we have people that will you know we're officially labeled as a philanthropic

account so people get their tax donations so Renaissance periodization has been phenomenal and two years in a row they've cut us very large checks and like we're not testing any of their products we're doing anything for them we don't have to do any social media posts they just cut a check and walk away they don't even I don't even tell them what I use before they don't have a clue so we survive on things like that because they realize the importance of moving science forward in this field. And other people, we've had gyms cut us checks. We've had random people who are just like, hey, I need to help here.

And we've had checks as big as, from random people, as big as like $20,000. And we have some people that sign up and they deposit 50 bucks a month and they have an auto-withdrawal from their credit card. So like we take everything, man, but that's, that's how we survive for sure. Well, you know, to backtrack just a little bit with regards to your, your reach, your audience and your, your presence on social media. That was another thing that struck me about your presentation back in october and how you're bringing your research uh as uh digestible to the layman as possible uh to the forefront um uh via social media which is like unheard of in academia because like i remember if i'm quoting you, the only people who read research are researchers, um, pretty much. And you're trying to change that

using social media as a vehicle. And I applaud you for it because I think it's very forward thinking. And it really, you know, you said that, you know, nobody cared. Well, if nobody knows, they can't care. You know what I mean? Um, so i mean so why um yeah i guess the question is why uh as obvious as it may seem but why do you take that why are you taking that stance and why is why are the rest of your colleagues so reluctant to do so as well yeah well a couple of things with the reluctancy it's generally been frowned upon in this field for a long time to really do anything besides your specific job so this has generally been as there's people again across the spectrum but the basic idea is look social media in this

case takes a lot of time and that is all time you could have been spending writing another paper, submitting another grant. So this is a huge waste of time, all so that people can learn more. Well, the papers are out there. If they want to learn more, they should go read them. That's generally been the stance. And in addition, I still get this constantly. I just don't care. I mean, I get this constantly. I just don't care. I mean, I get it constantly that like, oh, my God, you're so arrogant.

And you like you just post your stuff out there so you can get more attention. Really? Oh, yeah. Constantly. Constantly. They call it academic oversharing. But I don't I don't get that, you reading your posts, the vibe that I get is that you want to create exposure and that it's for the greater good. Why anybody would fault you for that, I mean, look, let's be honest. I've been very, very, very fortunate with the people who have put me over on their social medias or on their platforms. Like people have made my career in terms of that. Right. And so people are probably just pissed about that, that they're not getting asked to go on podcasts, that they're not being asked to do and things like that. And so it's easier for them to just be like, well, like I don't do those things. I'm too busy in the lab you know if i would if i if i did this stuff too i could be on there but i'm too busy doing my job you know it's that like oh okay so you're a third

grader now um but you know like the general thing is like it's a waste of time um having said that i have had a lot of meetings with my university with the dean with everybody that are like tell us what you're doing. This is incredibly smart. They see that this is the future. And I've had a lot of meetings with even the CSU, the chancellors across the country, or across the state and stuff that are like,

help us through this. Show us how to use social media. Show us how to use these things because this is what we need to do. Because, look look i said this i think in the presentation you're referring to if you're a young investigator and this is the same answer by the way if you're not even a scientist but just change out the variables and the equation is the same right so put your variable in for what you do for a living or what you want

to do and the story remains true that if you in the case of science if you, in the case of science, if you go into the traditional route and you do the traditional thing and you do it with your advisor who's 65 years old and what they're training you to do, you have to realize you're going to step into a field that is not the same game that your advisor trained you to play. Because it's not the same field he or she had success in. I told you earlier what happened it went from a you have 35 chance down to a statistically zero percent chance so now you're gonna step out and play that game and your whole career your livelihood your success is going to be riding on that that's your fault like you you don't i fundamentally believe you don't get to complain about the rules of the game that you chose to play don't play the game i like that don't play the game right okay so when i graduated i came out and i did it in my interview here i'm like look i'm not going to sit up here

and and run the big farm and i'm not going to run to federal funding and i'm not going to do these things i'll try but i'm not going to base my career on getting a grant that I'll spend 15 years applying to finally get and then do nothing in that interim time I'm gonna play a different game I don't know it's gonna work but here's what I know I have access to athletes I have access to these things I'm gonna go play a game that no one else is playing it and that's why I've been so successful um but some metrics some scientists look at my thing and they say like oh my god you haven't been successful at all because they're comparing me to their metrics. And I'm like, I don't know, man.

I think I'm doing pretty good over here. I don't have as many publications as other people do because I do spend more time on social media. But because of that, I've raised funds that I wouldn't have got even if I had those publications. And I've worked directly with a lot of athletes man I've got to take I got to play a very extensive role in winning a gold medal the first gold medal in the sport in American history like I've won I've been in the arenas with high-level you see fights and like I've done all these these cool things man I'm like I don't know like I don't know any scientists have got to do that type of shit like I've been on Joe Rogan for God's sake not too many other sports scientists

get to do that I'm just teasing about that someone just texted me so I'm just but no my point is like I've done paleo effects I've done these podcasts I've talked to practitioners I've had hundreds of hundreds of emails and

messages from people that apparently something I did or said or something I put out either inspired them to change their course or their action or help them with their training or something. And I just don't know too many other scientists that have had that experience. My guess is they get like one or two of those a year at most. Right. So I feel like I don't know, man, like we want to talk about who's actually changing people's lives like I think I went oh for sure that's that's for sure because I even go back to the time when I was going through school which was 06 12 2011 and seeing that show I don't know if you remember was that sports science where it was like on spike tv do you remember that like john brink the style yeah and that gave me as like an athlete so much access to an area of study that I didn't even know about because I was a computer science major.

And just seeing all the breakdown of like the data that goes into studying athletic performance, like in the power of a punch. And then you see how all these different, you know, specialties of these fields work together from the scientists breaking down the sports, I call it, or the, what do you call it? The sports side of things. And then you have the data scientist and the computer scientist and seeing all those fields work together. But the access and the information I got from that opened up like an entirely new world for me and my friends who were, you know, in the sports field. So what you're doing is incredible because that's where the audience is, where these kids are playing. They're looking at YouTube. They're looking at the Instagrams and Facebooks. And by having somebody that they can relate to like yourself, it's giving them inspiration and motivation to go out there and attack these big problems in

these industries that maybe we know about or we don't even know about at this point. Well, that's the thing, man. Like if you look at my website, this is actually finally the answer to one of your questions from sort of earlier i think but the reason why i did the website the way i did it is because of that like my my single goal and actually i have an awesome intern um lauren who just got here for the summer she's going to help me with my with my sports nutrition class and're going through stuff, and I have to reiterate to her, I'm like, look, my single goal of this class is just to inspire these kids. That's it. I don't care about covering information anymore.

Information is long lost. It's left to train for importance. It's inspiration. It's motivation. If I get them excited and motivated, they will spend the next two weeks two months two years 20 years of their life reading about how vitamin K works what it does how what it's a cofactor for is it a cofactor they will read up on a niacin if I just take them and teach them what niacin is in class

here and they're not inspired extremely motivated and I try to you know put a fire in them that they've never known before by establishing wonder in them and they're gonna learn that for now they're gonna forget it they're not inspired and extremely motivated and I try to you know put a fire in them that they've never known before by establishing wonder in them and they're going to learn that for now they're going to forget it they're going to move on so this is the time in our life because there is so much information out there already I just want to motivate and inspire and have people go like wow wonder and I want them to all of a sudden wake up at 2 a.m. and be like, oh, my God, what? God, I wonder why this happens. And then get on their phone. And like part of me wants that to happen. I want them to just get lost in amazement of physiology in this case. Yeah. Or whatever they're going to do. And so that's really what I what I try to do to people. And that's my

service. And that's what I think is important. And that actually harbors back to what I was sort of alluded to earlier, was saying, I run my classes quite differently. These are the types of things that I do. It's like, this is what I want the website to be, this is what I want my classes to be, my student experiences to be. For them to just walk out being so inspired

to learn on their own that they spend the next 25 years of their life diving hard into something and then they'll get the information and the knowledge that way they're not gonna get it very well if I just lecture sure sure I think that's a amazing but be extremely profound and and forward-thinking you know coming from that that exercise and wellness background and you know, coming from that exercise and wellness background and, you know, sitting through the skull drag of PowerPoint presentations and just, you know, brain dumping, you know, study after study and referencing author after author.

You know, that stuff doesn't really, it doesn't stick if it doesn't resonate. And it sounds like that's your your your true mission, your true passion is to strike a chord with these kids so that they go out and do the homework without being assigned it. That's exactly right, man. That's a great way to say it um and i think that that's a true testament to your ability to not only teach but you're you're you're approaching academics from a coaching standpoint i mean that's that's what we all want right is as performance coaches is to inspire an athlete or a student in your case to go out and do the extra without having to be asked to to watch the film without having you know outside of sitting down with the team and and do the extra without having to be asked to, to watch the film without having, you know, outside of sitting down with the team and, and do all those, those extra things that, that make, you know, what an athlete or a student great. Um, and, uh, I've not, there's only,

you know, obviously a handful of, of coaches or, or instructors I've ever had that had that ability. So it's awesome to hear that there's somebody out there that you know um consciously approaches their craft in that way it's a lot of extra unnecessary work man i'll be honest it's a lot of times i'm like what why just like got phoned in like everybody else and boy there's things i could do that would make me a lot of times I'm like, why? I just got phone-ered in like everybody else. And boy, there's things I could do that would make me a lot of money. And there's opportunities I could do

that would make me even some money. And that some money would be a lot more than the little money now. And I don't know. But at the end of the day, I'm just like, whatever. Let's do the cool shit. But that's a really cool thing

that you've been able to create because even looking at your post and even Dr. Eddie Ho. Is that how you pronounce his name? Joe. Oh, Joe. Dr. Eddie Joe. What you guys have been able to do by being on these shows. And I remember Durs, he told me to watch that show with Dr. Eddie Joe. And I may not understand all of the things he was talking about,

but listening to the message, it sort of gave me like, it lit that fire of like, I want to investigate the research and what they're talking about even further. And that's without me having the knowledge of what you guys are studying and what you've learned throughout your career.

And I just think like, even though you're not, you're sort of surpassing the money in the short term, long-term payoff is going to be huge for you because of everything that you're bringing and all the exposure to the – to everything – to the information that you have and that most people don't have the availability to get a hold of and even to understand it. So that's incredible, man. My hat's off to you with that. Well, I sure as hell hope so because I got a kid in the way, so that money better be coming sometime. You know, you guys know Eddie Joe is one of ours too, right? He's out of Fulton.

Well, he was a graduate here. Oh, okay. No kidding. That's awesome. Oh, yeah. He's a good guy. Well, I think that that's also part of the – I guess the best way to summarize it, or to put it simply, would be a coaching tree, right? You know, that your legacy is your students that, you know, you've lit a fire

under their ass and inspired them to make, you know, potentially do their own research. But, you know, in an amazing situation, they're carrying your research forward, right? So now instead of, you know, looking for millions of dollars for one study, you have multiple scientists, you know, doing similar research in other areas. Now you're, now you have, you know, just you cast a wider net with more bodies, you know, kind of a divide and conquer over the long-term approach. Do you see the fruits of your labor in that respect? Well, yeah. I mean, most of my kids, because I'm a bit young, most of my kids are just now starting off their careers or they're still getting their PhDs.

So that long-term play thing hasn't really resolved yet. I was fortunate, though, that when I came in, we had a guy named Lee Brown, who was one of the most prolific sports scientists of all time, and he just retired. And so a lot of his former students are out there and crushing, and a lot of the people I interact with now are those folks. And so in a lot of ways,'s his lineage that that we're carrying on and so I'm just you know like I'd love to tell you how innovative and all that stuff I am but you know I'm really not I'm just continuing on the work from the foundation

that other people set up but that part of it of course is fun man like I I don't even know how many times I've reposted Eddie Joe's stuff and put it over him. It's like, follow this guy, follow this guy. And Bill's like, you know, he probably owes me like 95% of his followers. Like, legit. But that's something like I love it. I love putting over, you know, this other guy, Jimmy Bagley, and all those other people that are doing good shit. It's not just because they're our kids.

I don't put anybody over on my stuff that's doing good stuff I don't care um just to spread that sort of message but yeah of course that's fun like you know what they all say and you know as I'm not quite a parent yet but I'm almost right the the the thing that is in a lot of parents mind is like the plan is for your kids to surpass you right that should be the the goal and you know the adage that you know when you're about 30 years old or when your kids are about 30 years old they should be surpassed you but that's the same thing man like i would love it when my kids trying to graduate and you know they're they're five or six or seven i would love for them to be doing to look back at what i did after five years of my career, look back to what they did after five years of their career and be like, wow, they blew

me out of the water. Oh yeah, man. Like that would be the goal. That'd be fantastic. Sure. But you know what, that speaks to your abundance mentality. Cause there's too many, there's a lot of people that sit in a similar seat to you that, you know, hoard all their knowledge and, you know, don't expose their mentees to the, you know, the entire bag of tricks. Right. And I think that just does such a disservice to your, like your legacy. Um, your, your, your handicapping, uh, the, the potential of the kids that you have a direct effect on Yeah, I mean like I don't even know how many times How many different platforms and things that I've been to this one on but this is another reason why people don't

What you guys don't really maybe understand is one of the reasons why people don't want to post their scientists post yourself on social media Is there still this this fear from I guess like old Cold War stuff that someone's gonna steal your idea right it's like I did bitch like the last thing I need is more ideas I don't need the last thing I need is more ideas what I need is more time and money. So, like, if someone steals an idea, great, fine. Like, who cares? So, you know, I love putting this stuff out there.

We've talked about this with CrossFit, too. Like, I don't know why the administration there has to feel so divisive all the time. It's like, hey, look, the more people we get in this field, better like the more the more crossfit makes the more all of us make and this is why even as a you know kind of a coming from olympic weightlifting like i loved it when that stuff came in because i'm like this is gonna get more people weightlifting and then of course now that's bared i could completely change that sport it brought it back from dead right oh yeah for sure i mean and the examples could go on and on i have this conversation all the time with people in the industry whether it's barbara shaw or people that are scientists or um brett contraire sort of selling things like no no like of course i want to put you over yes i

want your book to do well yes i want people to buy your training program i want people to buy renaissance training program i want renaissance prioritization to just kill it murder it and i want your guys's company to murder i want I want all these people to murder it. That only helps all of us. We're not running out of people who need more nutrition and exercise help. If we get there, maybe I'll start being more protective. But for now,

I want it to be a normal thing that every single person has that goes to a strength conditioning facility. And every single person has a nutrition consultant. I want this to be the norm. And I want every single person to have half their social media feed be a sports scientist or a physiologist or whatever it is like i want i want everyone in our field i want your platform to have 30 million downloads a month that i want i want you guys to have a million

instagram followers like this is this helps everybody so why people would hesitate to put up people over on their platform it's stupid because because when you go up and when it's normal for a sports scientist to have a million Instagram followers, then that's a very good day. No doubt. So where does that come from for you? Is that mentality just something that you picked up through the experience you've had with others? Or is that something that was deliberately ingrained in you from a mentor of yours? No, not at all. Definitely not. My mentors were terrible.

I mean, my master's degree mentor, Andy Fry, at Memphis was great. He's at Kansas now. And I mean, talk about a phenomenal program that he runs. If anyone's interested in a master's or a PhD in this field. I mean, Andy Fry's done a ton of studies looking at like squatting with chains and muscle adaptations and short-term overtraining where you do something like 10 sets of one at 100% of your max squat. And you do 10 reps, 10 singles at that, and you do it every day for 14 straight days. And things like that.

Like he's done real sports science and cool shit. And he offers a PhD, which I can't do. But my doctor advisors were terrible with this stuff. They were just the worst of the worst. And, you know, I wasn't much better because I would say that, I mean, you use the abundance mentality. That was something I learned, you know, just a few years ago, those terms anyways. And it was definitely that I was, you know,

probably much more inclined with the scarcity mentality before of scarcity mentality before that and so where i'd say i picked this up is man it's a combination it's a combination of uh podcasts that i listen to it's a combination of books it's a combination of being around people like you guys and being around people like mike bledsoe and going to things like paleo effects which were very much outside of my comfort zone right and it's like I'm not going to this stupid-ass paleo conference. You know, like, sports scientists don't go there. It's like, oh, okay, great. I'm listening to podcasts.

I'm reading books. You know, I'm interacting with entrepreneurs in this field, and I'm interacting with people who are way too into drugs. And that's not something I'm, have an arm with but it's like okay This is there and that's something that I do that's very different than again than other sports sciences So because of that I've I've came across People that talk about that and then once people talk about and I heard people use hey, this is scarcity mentality This is a bonus mentality. I'm like, oh, yeah. Well, obviously abundance is a way better strategy

I didn't have to be convinced. I just, I never heard any package. Sure. So that's what I'm like, yes, of course, this is the language I want to start using. And then I just started, you know, reflecting and saying, okay, well, what other aspects are you doing enough of this? What, you know, like, oh, actually I thought it was being abundant now, but I was being super scarce in this aspect of my life. Okay, let's fix that. And so just a lot of reflection, writing the book, all that stuff has helped me learn that. So I would say that that's very much a learned mentality. That's something that from interacting and doing the types of things

that most of people in sports science aren't doing, but a lot of the people in the private sector are. That's awesome. And with everything that you, as you continue to evolve in your career and, you know, the release of your books and things that you're doing, your podcast, what do you see for yourself long-term? Do you see yourself staying within the academic, um, career field or do you see yourself branching out into doing your own business or, you know, that way? No, no, nothing related.

I hate business. Oh my God, I hate it. Like I hate the concept, not the concept. I mean, I just, I hate all that stuff, marketing. And I'm not trying to learn a new skill set. So will I see an academia? I have no idea. I would say probably not.

But definitely, I don't run a single business. I don't even have a part of one or really anything at this point. Because I don't like that type of stuff. I like teaching. I like storytelling. I like communicating. And if someone could find a way to take over the business and then run the business and I could do my part, great. And I would align it and do projects like that.

But I'm not interested in collecting emails and signing up for newsletters. And I don't need to do that stuff, man, because, like, that's how it all moves forward too. Like we talked about earlier, there has to be money, a back end to move this thing forward. I just want someone else to do that. You know, it's like, great, okay, you do that. I'll bring my skill set together and move forward.

But, no, man, I'll never move into private exclusively. I'll never move into a private full-time research facility. I just like teaching and interacting with the kids way too much. I like going to conferences. I like going to events like NSCA and speaking, like Paleo FX. I love going to – I do some stuff with Special Warfare and SOCOM folks. I like going out there and working with those folks. So I like working with athletes too man i especially like and i got this affinity for working with poor athletes too which is which is a whole fun thing it's like i

just always work with the athletes who are just broke as shit so it's just like oh like you just lost your stipend great let me help you but that's like then the nfl guy calls me i'm like i'm sorry i'm too busy what's it doing that follows along the guidelines with your the abundance mentality or the giving mentality that you have you know working with athletes that don't have as much income that goes along with everything that you've been working on you know yeah man like i say no to way more people than i say yes to. People that reach out all the time, my answer is almost no. That's not what I do for a living. If I say yeah, it's got to be something else in the story that grabs me. But almost always I refer out. I'm like, no, no, no that you brought up and it was the divisiveness of CrossFit HQ. And, you know, there's the, the riff, if it's, if I should say it still exists between the NSCA and CrossFit. And I don't, I don't know which, which direction that,

that riff is coming from in particular, but I just – Oh, that's an easy one. I mean I love walking into an NSEA conference with my CrossFit PHX shirt and then being destroyed by you in a PVC pipe on my snatch technique in front of a bunch of other conventional strength and conditioning professionals um but you know aside from the research that you do directly what's your stance on just fitness in general is it as long as you do something you're in the right or is you know one one program is better than the other like where where where where do you because i know you you associate with all these people as you said but you know where where's your school of thought as far as that's concerned? So the answer is always this context. Um, what I would say is of course, there's a lot of things

that CrossFit has generally done for the whole space that has been great. Uh, there's an unquestionable thing that they played a massive and probably such a large role that when we look back at it 100 200 years from now they're going to have a place in history but that's comfortable to say having said that my gripe with crossfit is is generally just the way that the hq operates man like they're just not nice people you know what i mean like that they don't do the things that we just talked about they don't have abundance mentality they're very petty and extremely childish and just like all that shit I'm like you don't have to be an asshole for your product to stay alive like you can be a nice person and still defend your territory and all

that stuff um I mean we can get into what happened between them and the NSCA, but there's no point. I mean, the quick answer is, like, in a lot of it, CrossFit was right. Like, it was a very, very, very bad study. Right. And there were all kinds of problems with it. But you've got to remember, like, the NSCA, like, CrossFit is one guy. Like, CrossFit is Greg. Greg tells, like, he, well, CrossFit does what Greg does, what Greg says. Sure.

There is no – like, the NSA is not a person. It's not an entity. It's not. So there's no guy sitting at the top going, let's hammer. That doesn't exist. There's a person who runs as the president for a couple of years, but then that rotates out. Right. And has never had the same one twice.

And there are random people from all across the world that rotate and there's no executive board that's running it the the board rotates every year and there's hundreds of members and everybody votes on everything so it's it's not like a collective nsca is against no like when the ncaa has a position stand on something that has 30 or so authors that come together but the ncaa doesn't have a very doesn authors that come together but the nsa doesn't have a very doesn't have a singular voice like that it doesn't have a stance on something so when people say well the nsa said like no they didn't like somebody who's also in the nsa said that right that would be just as stupid as me who like goes to a crossfit gym saying this like the

crossfit said this no like some dude who happens to do it across from Jim also said that like that's not The same thing sure so that message gets the loss there So so it set that context up that that's what I wrote concern is just that like it's he's just such an asshole That's the real answer man like if you look at what he's done with a lot of people that have associated with him in the past that Man, he will love you if you do everything he wants, and the second you offer up any slight alternative or say something that, anything that he does is anything besides 100% perfect,

then he's going to hammer you and fire you and put you to the flame and talk, like do really defamatory stuff. So it's that part where I'm like, I don't want to be associated with things like that. I just don't want to be around that energy. Like, why would I? I get questions like this all the want to be associated with things like that. I just don't want to be around that energy. Why would I? I get questions like this all the time about other people on social media that are in this space. I won't bring up their names on purpose, but it's like, man, it's too bad because they

probably offer some really cool stuff that I would love to learn from. But I don't want that energy in my life. I don't want to be around someone who's that childish and petty and always negative and talking bad about other people and half their social media is hammering somebody else like i don't that doesn't help us rise the tide right this is this is childish let's just move out of here sure so i mean my view on fitness is it's always about context right what's the goal what's the purpose and then you apply modality uh do i think that that i mean here's a good example you guys know this better than i am but do you think crossfit programming and methodology has evolved in the last 10 years

at all oh considerably okay then so by definition then what's that say about what they were doing 10 years ago it's outdated it's not right it wasn't right was it right so right there that is in itself an admission that it wasn't perfect but if you ever tried to get something like that out of hq's mouth you would be ostracized like well how can you why why aren't you doing it that why aren't you doing it exactly you did it 15 years ago if it was perfect so by definition it wasn't as good as it can be right so also by definition what you're doing now has faults right because in 10 years, you're going to look back and it's going to be different. So that sliver of humility is what kills the whole thing for me.

It's like, no, of course, why would you think it's perfect now? It wasn't perfect 10 years ago. You should have said, hey, yeah, we were wrong 10 years ago. But that admission of wrong would never come out of their mouth for the most part are a lot of people involved in circles sure and that doesn't help anything so when you look at the context of what people should be doing physically in their physical practice you have to realize that every single program and methodology has a tremendous limitation i mean talk to you all day about the limitations because the reality of it is crossfit is still the same workout every day it's like oh it's so very no it's not it's the same

workout every day it's the same thing it's dead lifting it's overhead pressing and it's pull-ups like that that's a crossfit done and repeated with some very minor variations so it's not that varied um oh you might do a lunge okay squat that's the same thing i did on the kipping pull-ups same thing i did on roast same thing like oh you had sit-ups okay great thing. I did on roast, same thing. Oh, you added sit-ups. Okay, great. It's not that when we start to expand the conversation on what physical practice means, it's not that it's more monostructural than CrossFit likes to think it is. Is it as monostructural as jogging every day? No, but it's not that different.

Is it as monostructural as weightlifting? No, but it's not that different. Powerlifting? Well, okay, not that bad. But if you look at what people engage with in terms of i mean like what your brother probably does right like that bitch is not that's that's polystructural like he's doing different movements every single day like what happened with the movement patterns you go through the physical practice that you have to engage with when you're fighting another person there's you know maximum velocity training it's rotation it's it's it's unilateral it's some pure

raw strength it's it's anaerobic conditioning it's aerobic conditioning it's interval training like he's going through a lot of different things that require movements and then some of the days lifting heavy and some of the days he's doing sprint work and so I'm just I don't know he's doing but I'm guessing right but this is my point is like when you doing sprint work. I don't know what he's doing, but I'm guessing, right? But this is my point. When you start to really understand, I don't know, physical practice is not just pull-ups and hinging and squatting.

It's a lot, lot more than that. Oh, and occasionally some jogging, 400-meter sprints. No, there's so much more that can go into your physical practice. And so I think people should use whatever it is they want um and enjoy to get whatever adaptation they want so i'm not tired or married to any particular program or philosophy i love that yeah that's awesome you know i you don't you don't hear that uh very often um you know very people, approach fitness and performance very much the way people, uh, approach the, um, nutrition, whatever nutrition platform they decide to stand on in a very dog, dogmatic way. And, you know, if it's not my way, get the, get the fuck out of my

life. Yeah. I mean, if you look at this,, get the fuck out of my life. Yeah. I mean, if you look at this, like, I laid this out in one of the episodes of our podcast in the first season. But the vast majority of people in the fitness space are in a certain set of perspective and they don't even realize it. That's the key. Like, just realizing that you're completely, you don't even realize the track that you're running on. You can still choose to run that track if you'd like it, but I just want people to understand what all the tracks are, and then they can pick whichever one they want.

I just don't like people being ignorant, not realizing they haven't seen the light yet. I mean, that's really it. So if you look at what Ben Pokalski says all the time, he says, look, exercise is just an external stimulus that you use to cause an internal adaptation. So who gives a fuck what the external stimulus is? Just make sure the internal stimulus is the same so you get the internal adaptation. Right.

That's all it is. So figure out what internal adaptation you're trying to achieve and then go through your un endless number of external stimuli you could apply to get that and then pick some like that's it you don't have to be more complicated than that sure and you know it just it it just broadens the spectrum you know uh you know you talk to somebody in CrossFit, you know, about, uh, anything that is not CrossFit and it's, they just bastardize it and vice versa, you know, like the, it used to be, it used to be the runners and the bodybuilders and then CrossFit came along and they, they kind of played the middle ground and, you know, you out, outlift a runner, but you outrun a lifter kind of thing. But now you over – generally you have these three camps that kind of bastardize each other all over the floor.

And it's just like, well – Well, you forgot about the big one there, which is you forgot about the bodybuilding aspect of it. So if you look at this, I mean, effectively for the first 30 years of structured exercise, uh, resistance exercise, it was all bodybuilding, right? Right. And that was great for a long time, but I'm making a, like an hour story. I'm my podcast into like a one minute. So you're going to get the highlight version, but that allowed things like CrossFit to come along and say, well, wait a minute, bodybuilding, you're not getting healthier, you're not losing body fat, you're not doing all these things because there's these holes. It's not complex, it's isolated, you're spending two and a half hours at the gym because you're doing seven different exercises to isolate your tricep.

It's taking too long, therefore adherence is going down, etc. And so they came up with a system that is big, complex movements that are very, very short time domains. And you can get a lot of work done, and this leads to very big changes and people who are fairly untrained very quickly and then i wouldn't um this is what happens in science basically there's a thesis thesis is like a fancy way of saying like this is your contention this is your hypothesis right that's where hypothesis comes from so thesis and then what happens is the pendulum swings all the way to the other side and that's called antithesis or antithesis and then you're over there and then eventually what happens is that antithesis settles back down into the middle somewhere which is what we call synthesis

so what you saw with crossfit was you know that the thesis was bodybuilding is the key there to your health and the antithesis was no no no crossfit because it's more functional and then everyone swung to that thing and then because of that they threw the baby out with the bath water it was like okay therefore all bodybuilding concepts are wrong and evil and stupid and useless they're not functional right with which is the stupidest phrase ever right so it's like okay so what do you mean it's not functional well now people then started saying okay well man i'm doing crossfit but i'm getting broken and this is a problem and i'm not resolving this issue and hopefully where we're at now and i

actually know what we pretty much are is we're landing more in that synthesis area where it's like okay great so you tried jogging as your only exercise intervention and you got hurt because you don't move well and you didn't add any muscle mass because you didn't do any lifting. Okay, well, that had a hole in it. Okay, well, you did bodybuilding and you added muscle, but you didn't improve your VO2 max, your cardiovascular function didn't go anywhere, right? You're a little bit stronger, but maybe not great and you're spending six hours a day in the gym and that's just not sustainable.

Well, then here comes CrossFit and it's big movements and you're burning a lot of calories, but you're broken and you're not really causing any changes and it's too, too general. Now, hopefully we can land in the middle then and go, okay, well, what is it you're looking for? Let me steal this concept from CrossFit. Oh, and then you know what? I'm having this shoulder problem when I do all this overhead stuff because my right tricep isn't as big as my left one. So let me steal this bodybuilding concept, shore up my right tricep. Oh, okay.

Well, now let's spend some time working on movement quality. And, oh, well, you know what? I'm pretty good, and I'm pretty good at strength and anaerobic domain. But my ability to sustain a single effort over a long period of time maybe hasn't gotten very good because I haven't done that in a long time. So let me build some – let me steal some concepts from that area to improve my well-roundedness my fitness so I can jog for two straight hours it's not an unreasonable task for a human to be able to move for two straight hours efficiently without you know their heel blowing up or something like that and so I think hopefully where we land is in the middle is going like okay like none of us

had it perfect and all of us had something to offer those. So let me grab this from over here. Let me grab this from over here. And you know what? I don't need my triceps flying great. So I don't need that bodybuilding stuff anymore. So I'm going to stop doing the isolation exercise at the end of my workout. Okay, well, now I need to add this concept.

And now maybe I've gotten really strong. So maybe I don't need to do as much barbell squatting anymore, and maybe I can add more human movement. So let me maybe throw on some grappling in there. All right, let me throw on some parkour, whatever it is you're going to do. Okay, well, now that's gotten pretty good, but I need to add some muscle mass back. All right, well, let me ditch some of the rowing I've been doing, and let me add in maybe some more machine presses. Whatever. I don't understand

why people get so irritated by some of these things like let's use let's identify what we're trying to get after and identify the task and a tool that helps us best get there without being so worried about like whose name is on the front of the building who cares right yeah you know I feel like that mentality really speaks to the truth behind your message. If you're really out for the greater good above and beyond your financial well-being, that is a very honest approach and really allows for the versatility to create a sustainable program for your membership as a whole. Right. And above and beyond, you know, simply lifting heavy every single day and doing a Metcon that makes your heart pop every single day. You know, it's in your best interest as the owner and coach to make sure people are continuing to progress get better and they're still training like this is in your best interest so why people are attached to a training with like i don't understand that you should be attached to

keeping your people as progressing and healthy as possible right like that's the win for you that's how they stay in your gym that's how they keep paying those monthly memberships. Nailed it. Well, shoot, man, let me, before we let you get out of here, let me ask you two questions and you can answer them on any level, mental, physical, spiritual, whatever's good for you. The first of which being, what do you do each and every day to feed yourself and kickstart that that fire that you have for coaching and teaching and then the follow-on to that is what do you do each and every day to fuel yourself and create that sustainable motivation for what you do day in and day out when there's you know no like as you said a lot of unappreciated extra extra work that goes into what you do to do it so well.

So the question was literally like food-wise first? No, not necessarily food-wise, but just in terms of your daily practice. So what do I do to fuel myself for that? Mm-hmm. Is it books? Is it meditation? Is it reflection? So what do I do to fuel myself for that? Is it books? Is it meditation? Is it reflection? Oh, no. No, no, no, no. I am fully in recognition that I think meditation is going to cause a significant improvement and change in the health and functionality of millions of people people and potentially one of the most important things we can do over uh it just doesn't like it's not a good use of my time man the honest thing is like i'm like i think for me it's they don't really

care for it too much um to be honest with you man like i have the opposite of the spectrum and this kind of irritates some people sometimes but uh i i generally don't need motivation i don't need inspiration i don't need things to focus me or to get me on task i generally wake up really fucking excited and like wanting to do with a pretty clear head of what I'm going to do. So I think those are great practices. I tend to get a lot of that stuff though, man, from, I get really inspired when I sleep. I get very inspired listening to podcasts or going for a walk on the dogs or training in the morning or whatever,

interacting with the students tends to really fire me up so uh i i actually don't like having a very specific practice i think having a morning routine is a very bad strategy for me um i i like if i wake up in the morning and i'm just really motivated to write i want to go right i don't want to have to be like well i gotta get my my coffee going and then my my puer tea and then i have to do my three hours of acro yoga. And then like, no, if I'm jamming, go. Like, why not go? I'm inspired. I'm clear headed. Like, I want to be able to wake up and just grab my computer and just go. Right. I hate having routine like that.

That does not work for me. It ends up being a task. And I forget that like that's supposed to be something I'm doing for the sake of fun I like to give myself freedom to wake up and also be like no like I'm not feeling like working right now so great I'm gonna go you know gonna go move a little bit I'm gonna go to the park I'm gonna jump in the ice bath I'm gonna do whatever I want to do because I'm not feeling great so but some like man a lot of days, to be honest with you, I wake up pretty raring. So I don't feel like sitting there. If I sat there and meditated for 20 minutes, I would be like, well, I'm just as excited and clear-headed now,

and I just waste 20 minutes. So cool. I love it, man. I love it. That's my honest answer. And, again, I want to make sure that I end this with what I have to do with it. I am fully recognizing the difference between inter inter and intraperson mechanics here. So I am not even remotely suggesting that anyone do that.

Like what I'm suggesting is you find you and you should explore all of those things that people tell you because you might realize your day is better when you do that. Sure. Even if you think your day is great, it might be better might be more focused you might be more excited i have explored those things a lot and for me i prefer a more fluid system but everyone should explore those things so that they understand kind of what works and what jives for them and we can definitely appreciate that i mean, I find that to be a highly enlightened point of view. It's something that we definitely appreciate, brother. Cool. And then before you get out of here, Dr. Galpin,

where can everybody follow you and support you and everything that you have going, either professionally or both, professionally and personally? Well, you can follow social media. That's pretty easy at dr andy galpin so dr andy galpin on instagram and facebook and all that stuff that's pretty easy my website andy galpin.com where i take all my class material my lectures and all the stuff i do and i put it up there for free so that's up on youtube as well so on the website or up on

youtube and there's no there's no membership site. There's no newsletter. It's just you just go there and for crush-free information if you want. And then, of course, if anyone is interested and able to make even the smallest donation and contribution to the lab, again, it is philanthropic, so you can get a tax break for all that stuff If you want to make a small one or a large one It's tax time whatever I could put you in contact our people and that's how we survive and that's how we do sport science So every five or five or fifty five hundred thousand dollars all of it helps

We'll definitely get that out there in the show notes brother uh for everybody out there in feed me fuel me land make sure you uh reach out to dr galpin on uh anything um you know strength and conditioning related i mean that is definitely his his wheelhouse and he's really pushing the the envelope when it comes to research in that field. So donate to his cause, donate to the lab so that he can continue to drive the field forward over the long term. And we really appreciate you taking the time, man. We know you're super busy. We've had this on the calendar for a couple of months now, and you've definitely provided a lot of value to our community. And until next time, guys, feed me, fuel me.

And that'll do it for this episode with our special guest, Dr. Andy Galpin. If you want to follow everything that Dr. Andy Galpin has going on, please go to the full show notes on shrugcollective.com. Be sure to connect with us on social media including facebook snapchat instagram and twitter at feed me feel me we would love to hear from you if you found this episode inspiring in any way please leave a rating and a comment in itunes so we can continue on this journey together be sure to share it with your friends and family on social media including facebook snapchat instagram twitter or any other social

platforms that you use. We really appreciate you spending your time with us today and allowing us to join you on your journey. We would love to hear your feedback on this episode, as well as guests and topics for future episodes. To end this episode, we would love to leave you with a quote by John Wooden. It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen. Thank you again for joining us and we'll catch you on the next episode. Way to make it to the end of the show. As always, go to Shrug Collect over at iTunes.

Give us a five-star review, positive comment, and hit thrivemarket.com slash feedme to get that great deal on awesome groceries. See you next time.