Barbell Shrugged - Getting UNPLUGGED w/ Brian Mackenzie and Andy Galpin - 259

Episode Date: May 10, 2017

With all the sleep apps, heart rate monitors, supplements, air conditioners, coffee (and more coffee) we use, it's evident we live in an optimized world, and it is making us weak. In episode 259, we are bringing Brian Mckenzie and Andy Galpin back to talk about the research they are doing around performance, and what it means to be a resilient human in a comfortable world.  Never before have we had it so easy, and although we are training and optimizing our diet, our comfy lifestyle is holding us back from being as strong as we could be. It is one thing to have a training routine, but as soon as we go back to our air conditioned rooms and perfectly organized lifestyle, we lose the ability to adapt to the stress that our body has evolved to feel. Brian and Andy have co authored a book called Unplugged, and in it they have put in the work and laid out the practices we can adopt (and the one’s we need to abandon) if we want to create a resilient body and mind.  Every athlete should listen to this episode. If you want to learn how to build mental toughness, and a stress adapted body, you can head over to amazon and pre-order the book. Enjoy the show, Mike

The optimal state for us is to be in a continual state of stress. And I mean sleep stress, I mean hunger, I mean Brian's cold stuff, right? Thirst. So when you don't get that exchange, those things actually die away. I'm going to give it a shot. I'll spend one year off somewhere eventually. I found that I do less things when they're more convenient like this because I don't want to deal with it. If I lived out there, we would do stuff all the time.

We would go out, but now I'm like, I don't want to deal with the traffic. So we end up doing nothing. There's honestly days I don't even know how, like, they went by. Like, how is it the end of the day right now? Oh, really? When you're up there? Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah. Interesting. I think that's a good place to get started. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson.

And we have Dr. Andy Galpin and Brian McKenzie on the show. Yeah, let's do it. together. That's a test of a friendship right there. You guys are still hanging out socially. Don't hate each other. That's nice. The name of the book is Unplugged. Can you give us what's up with the title? Doc, that's you. Oh, it is? Oh, this is going to be a difficult one.

Instead of them trying to talk over each other get the point across they're gonna be like i don't know we all we all exist in the age of technology whether we like it or not and fitness is no different so any aspect that we deal with in human performance or fitness whatever the fuck you want to call it um ultimately has this technological warfare going on and so we've got this thing that we've got these things we look at that are telling us what to do and how to feel and where to be and but we don't know how to connect that dot so you know you've got something actually explaining to you what's happening but you don't know the connection physiologically

when there are actually physiological connections that are happening. Prime example? I've got alarms going off right now. He's being told to take a nap. I'm over here on social media as you're talking since the camera wasn't on me. It's fascinating because I run into people a lot of times who they do. They're tracking HRV. They're tracking heart rate they're tracking the sleep i mean a lot of these things are same things i track and yet uh there's no correlation to exactly how they're feeling i was

having a discussion um with somebody earlier was just talking about sleep apps i i wake up from i use this sleep app all the time i I don't trust it at all because. You shouldn't. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Because the technology it's using isn't really that advanced. And if you want to really track your sleep, you probably want more sophisticated technology. But the deal is there's so many mornings I wake up and I feel amazing.

And it's like, you got 60% rest last night. I'm like, no. And then there's days when I wake up and I feel like complete dog shit. It's like, you totally crushed your sleep last night. I'm like, no. And then there's days when I wake up and I feel like complete dog shit. It's like, you totally crushed your sleep last night. I'm like, no, none of this. And then it's the people who look at that and go, oh, I guess I didn't sleep good last night. And they go through the whole day thinking, I got shitty sleep.

And now it's like they believe something that's not even true. Yes. Well, we came at this from both of our perspectives. So Brian being more practical, me of course you know in the lab and dealing with science and we're finding the same thing where it was like okay what are you seeing from dealing with so many people and then what am i saying research wise and a lot of people i mean you can go on any magazine or website and you know top 10 reasons to unplug or you know stop looking at your phone and people have covered that that topic, agnosium. And we were like,

well, no one's actually telling us, number one, what the hell to do about it. Other than like, okay, I know I need to be off my phone and pay attention to people, but what about training? What about performance?

What about nutrition? No one's tackled that aspect of unplugging. And then more importantly, you can't just take the solution of unplug because that's not going to happen. If you try to fight technology, technology wins. You can't just ignore it and be like, I'm going to not have a Facebook account,

or I'm not going to do... You're going to lose. You're going to lose. So instead of bitching and whining and complaining about it and saying, well, let's go Henry David Thoreau and let's go in the mountains for seven months and never talk to anybody. Brian.

Instead of that, let's come up with a better solution and so the book really was is about okay let's come up with a better way to handle the problem let's talk about how to effectively use technology and how to integrate it properly but then not fall into the traps and so that you're so plugged into your performance and physiology and then some of the stuff you got into with the consciousness and what is that doing to our social interaction or personal relationship so that's really where the title came from it's like well let's let's the official title is unplugged um what's evolve evolve from technology to upgrade your fitness performance and consciousness so it kind of hits at all three levels there so how's technology specifically affecting people's fitness, performance, and consciousness. So it kind of hits at all three levels there.

So how is technology specifically affecting people's fitness and performance? I understand it could affect your relationships, your dinner, your texting. You're not paying attention to the person that you're at dinner with. It's the same distraction, though, but it's an internal thing. Okay. And so I'd say close to 15 years, maybe 12 years ago, I had a buddy of mine who actually owned the business that was in this building, which was Paul Frank. He's one of the owners. And we were on a run.

And we were running around the back bay, which is down the street, which is like a 10-mile loop. And we started the run. And we were, I don't know, a couple miles in. And he kept looking at his watch. And he goes, bro, we got to slow down. Like, we got to slow down. He goes, I'm about to blow and i was like well what's telling you you're gonna blow he goes if my heart my heart rate at 166

he goes i'm gonna blow i will blow at 166 and he was like at 164 and i'm like well first off you're not gonna blow if you're talking to me right now yeah about your problems like it's just this thing and so this was kind of one of the first things that really stuck in my mind about technology um and i still use heart rate monitors to this day but what am what am i looking for in the in using those things and are they just there to create a distraction or to tell me what is going on when something actually like there's a physiological response that he was actually indicating now we could all probably speculate and hypothesize that he was referring to his lactate threshold to a large degree and he was

continuing on that path he was going to blow up right that said he his lactate threshold had obviously made some changes and he had not correlated the feeling of what's happening when you cross over to that lactate threshold or your aerobic threshold or any other stress marker that's going on throughout that metabolic process. And that's arguably one of the biggest issues is that we think 10,000 steps a day because my, you know, whatever unit, and it doesn't matter, there's 500 of them right now, is telling you you've reached your steps versus how about you just move? Right. How about you just give a shit about moving? Like, just move. Don't let, you know, and, but the concept is great. The idea is great.

But we as a species aren't connecting those dots. And this is no different from the whole global warming phenomenon, which is, I don't deny in any way, shape or form, but all's anybody does is complains about global warming and what people aren't conscious of and we're not aware of and we're not right we're not we're not we're not aware like we're discrediting what is happening with global warming versus stopping talking about discrediting and let's give somebody a fucking solution as to what to do you know so the without getting too far down an epistemological argument the thing we say is okay data is good right and all of our lives have been enhanced by having more information this is a generally a good thing for

evolution but data is not understanding or data is not knowledge however you want to look at it so as we continue to go farther down the spectrum of technology and the things get better to where your cell phone has your heart rate on it and it has your circadian rhythms and you can measure your testosterone or your vitamin D in your cell phone because this is all here, if not coming very, very, very soon. Now the bigger discussion is, well, what the fuck do I do with all that? Or how do I integrate it?

What do I pay attention to? Because we're learning now things like the vitamin D is a good example. A really nice paper just came out showing it turns out we've been measuring this wrong for forever. Okay. Fantastic. So what happens when the data is wrong or needs to be changed? So all the blood markers we've been getting with vitamin d is actually the wrong thing to look at so if you have been doing everything in your in your daily if you set up your lifestyle to make sure you're in the sun and take vitamin d and you spend a or you started a company to

okay start over that's out and so we need to have a system ready so that when the data changes or the information changes we can now just integrate back into our system as opposed to being like i gotta throw my whole life out all right i gotta change my whole training program or how i do all my workouts because data changed because it's going to and how arrogant is it of us right now to think we're right on much of anything well i think i think uh it's interesting we we have all this data and then we make meaning of it yeah so we're yeah we we have to make meaning of it that's that's part of what being a human being is yeah okay we need meaning out of this and then and then the meaning we're creating is potentially not well most likely not great uh do you think ai

coming along will help clean a lot of that up so yes and no like the problem with ai is also it's functioning off of the same faulty. It's just getting better at understanding the current data so it's an echo chamber with the way that most AI is being currently built. So it would be great until we decide whether or not we've actually asked it to do the right thing. That's the bigger issue. It would be

amazing at upgrading itself on the mission, on the path that we set it towards, but if we set it in the wrong motion, we're screwed. AI is only as good as the questions you ask it to solve. And the data we tell it to look at. Yeah. Right. Gotcha. So take, for instance, a shark.

Is AI going to improve a shark being an apex predator at the top of its game in the ocean? After I get plugged in AI, it'll have to. Right. the ocean after i get plugged in the ai i don't have to right but i mean in in so i one of the most profound experiences i've had is actually swimming with sharks and it wasn't just because here's this predator that could shred me to pieces it was because it felt every little thing of energy i gave off yeah it felt it and there was 30 of them out there and you could see the entire shift happen when pete when a couple of buddies literally started

freaking out but you didn't know they were freaking out because you couldn't see that because i couldn't see them but the shark sure as shit felt that energy and just all of a sudden perked up like oh you're fucking prey and and then when that settles down they don't they're like oh okay you're normal you're cool and and but is that any different from you and me walking into a room and knowing somebody's in a good mood or bad mood or somebody who's a threat or a danger or not and so when we start missing ai is great technology is great but if that is setting us up to be disillusioned that we're not set up to understand things I think inevitably what technology ends up getting us to is where we naturally were really capable of being in the first

place and where we potentially were at at one point well yeah so you feel like technology is causing people to lose their intuition about how to make themselves healthy yes and no that's a yes and no. That's very good. I believe that it actually is something that if we use it properly, we can get back home. We can actually get back to this place that we were or are capable of. If not better. If not better. Yeah. But, unfortunately, when it's a whack-a-mole game or walking in circles like clink clink i'm just gonna go run today this

i'm waiting for this machine to tell me when i can fucking like look heart rate variability is one of the things like when i was at the peak of where i was coaching at like professional athletes one of the big things we were doing was a lot of heart rate variability stuff but it was also we were looking at mood and mood trumped the heart rate variability stuff every single time and it was like an athlete would perform who's in a good mood who's in a better mood who wants to perform versus somebody telling him or some you know sleep app going sorry bro you are at 60 even though you feel amazing i know better than you and that is not how it's supposed to work. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'll give you two really good examples of, of metrics and then not understanding. Number

one, a very, very easy one. If I gave you a golf club or a tennis racket or something, and say that that racket could tell everything about the ball spin, the velocity and all that stuff. Great. You would now have more information about how you hit the ball but what if you play a course where you need to be more accurate or you're playing an opponent and there's a headwind or you this is your fourth match of the day or you need to yeah you took down speed because you wanted to place it better whatever it doesn't factor any of that strategy or other stuff into the equation it just tells you hey all velocities down we need to work on your power well maybe maybe not like you're not accounting accounting for choice or the human,

I'm not accounting for competition. Another totally different example, like, imagine I could develop a supplement, sleep plan, you name it, whatever, that enhanced fat burning. Like, that's not necessarily a good thing. I could reduce your oxidative stress to nothing. That's not necessarily a good thing. And so it's a bad question.

And the AI example is great. Say we develop a cute computer software program, AI, that tells you to do whatever, everything you have to do, line your whole day up, your work schedule to optimize your fat burning. You're going to die. Your performance will go to hell, you will not recover, and you're

going to die. So it's a fundamentally bad question. It's not using the data that you're getting, which can be very helpful, not using it appropriately. Is that more a problem of optimizing your life to solve one question rather than to affect the entire system of your life? Yes, but I think it's bigger than that. The fundamental question is, what do you mean, why is that optimizing? Why should we be trying to optimize that in the first place or why why do we associate that as optimal like and there's a this is where we're getting the consciousness stuff is like there's a different relationship perhaps that we need to think about

our performance our metrics our things and and ask ourselves really well why am i trying to optimize that because that's not how physiology works. If you optimize this, you lose this. Like there is no everything gets better here. And so now we're talking not about optimization because there's no such thing. Physiology is more like a mosaic, right? You put your hand in water, it doesn't just shift the molecule. Everything ripples out in a way.

And so now we have to say, okay, let's back up from the whole pond and look at what do I really want the whole thing to look like? And if we're zoomed in on that little metric over here, you might have gotten a little bit better, but does that build you a better bridge to optimize even that metric down the road three weeks from now?

And then what's that do to the rest of the ship or to the rest of the building we're in? Does that screw us for the whole thing? So it's not a good question to ask. So what you're saying is we may be getting too narrow. We're looking at a single metric. Right. And we need to be looking at the whole picture.

Yeah, and then the flip side of that is if we increase data, that's not the problem, right? Like right now, and it's going to get even worse, data overload, mega data is going to be huge. And so you start, okay, I'm going to now look at three or four more things. Well, now you're looking at, call it 200 metrics. You know how complex your physiology

is? You need two million metrics to really understand it. So you've increased your number, it didn't make any marginal change in your performance or your health or anything, and you've overwhelmed yourself with data. And now you're more likely to be like, uh, to hell with it all, I'm just going to wake up when I feel like it. Yeah, you're just going to be system overload, and that's exactly it.

You know what? I'm just going to go off of how I feel when I wake up. Damn. And it's like, oh, whoa, yeah, we just came full circle on that. And it doesn't mean that something like that can't be used, but it's like, can the AI learn? And although we're teaching things within the technology world to learn, because we are doing that, but it becomes, are you learning?

What are you learning? And because if you're just desensitizing yourself and shutting off to things you don't need to learn, you don't need to understand, I mean, why are we all more ADD, ADHD? Why are we all so in this manner uh you know where we live in this place where everything's so convenient i mean this is part of the conversation we were just talking about like where i'm like look convenience made me basically create fake busy like i because i've got so much so many things at my disposal i can go and get that thing

at like that and then i need to fill my time with something else to do other things, maybe get on Facebook or social media or whatever. It doesn't matter, but inevitably we've taken this whole moving the concept of where I'm not saying we need to go back to being cavemen at all. It's, hey, we were designed to move. We were designed to flourish through movement because we were constantly active and why is it when through physiology the more we move the better we move the more optimal we become yeah like like even through the henry david throw thing i told

you earlier the famous story about him i'm not really sure if this is true or not but fuck it let's pretend it is youtube will fact check check this, I guarantee you, someone. But he went out for whatever it was, seven years or seven months into the wilderness, and then he eventually came back, and he was even like, actually, I don't think it's optimal to be detached like that. I don't think that should be the goal. He just needed to reestablish his guidelines or his boundaries of what he was going to use. Technology. Now, the funny part is technology at at the time was, you know, like paper.

Yeah. And like pencils. Right, right. And there were people, you know, freaking out back then. Right. Well, in my opinion, people have, we as a Western culture have lost a lot of our intuition. And going off of that feeling, like a lot of the intuition is driven by the body. And we put a lot of emphasis on developing the mind.

And part of developing the mind is building understanding. Do you think that our pursuit of understanding how things work has cut us off from our intuition? Yeah, I mean, it's really good. You kind of threw us both because it was a really good question. But here's the basic breakdown is saying, okay, if we don't have that, it's very hard for us to progress. So this is a good thing that we want to change.

And the more we know about something, the more likely we are to be bought into something. It's gamified, right? This is a good human thing for us to get better at that. But we need to understand the limitation of that information and the limitation of the search itself, which is hard because you're going to get lost in it, right? I mean, we've all played literally a game, a Facebook, whatever it is, and you're like, I hate this game.

This is stupid. Like seven hours later, you're still playing it, right? You still hate the game. You're like, this is dumb. But you can't get off of it. And so we need to have continual perspective about saying, okay, why do I even care about this? Does it really matter?

Am I pseudo busy? Like have I created this problem to get over or not? Or have I really gone about this in the healthiest approach? And now this can be applied to your training. It could be applied to your relationships, the other stuff that people are talking about detaching from. But here's, I mean, another example of the same problem. If we optimized any of these things and we got more and more and more information about any of these things, well, at what point do you now dull physiology to no stress? That is the exact opposite way.

We're actually supposed to be stressed. The physiology is optimized when you are stressed. How stressed? Everything. Oh, fuck. I've been doing it wrong. Yeah.

So the, well, I mean, but it's the, it's the manner. Like it, what, what he's getting at is it's,

it's the type of stress we've created, right? We don't move. So therefore we've created this internal stress. There's a need for the, it's a need for the physiology to create stress in the absence of movement. Exactly.

Gotcha. Exactly. So now I've got these fucking neurological diseases and things that I'm overloading because I'm not dealing with this and I no longer can socialize with human beings because I'm focused on my Facebook account or whatever it is.

Yeah. But it's like, I mean, dude, we see this. It's real. I agree. I mean, I've seen it. is. But it's like, I mean, dude, we see this. It's real. I agree. I mean, I've seen it.

Yeah. But it's bigger than that. So think of it this way, physiologically. And I'll kind of make this dumbed down a little bit. But imagine you have a molecule who's – we tend to personify physiology, right? So there is an enzyme that does this, or there's a molecule or an atom that does this.

That's not how physiology works at all. It just does something when something else is in front of it. It wasn't built to do A and B. It just happens to do these things, and when A and B are around, it does it at a very high rate, right? So the optimal state for us is to be in a continual state of stress. And I mean sleep stress. I mean hunger, cold. I mean Brian's cold stuff, right?

Thirst. So when you don't get that exchange, those things actually die away. Now we have literally lost our ability to adapt to anything because we never actually challenged it. And so we end up in this very dull, extremely unhealthy state.

Those proteins, those enzymes are all gone and dead away, which is crushing to our physiology. So if you are like so dialed with your nutrition and training and I do this every day and I sleep this amount every day, it's actually not a good thing for you in the long term because now we've lost our resiliency. Yeah. We can't handle anything. And, you know, like the classic example of, oh, I don't eat. Okay, I don't eat carbs. I don't eat bread.

Great. And then you have one cracker and you feel like shit. That's not a good thing. That's not where you should be. If you have to go one night a little hungry or a little tired one night and you're train wrecked for three days, you are not resilient as a human. Hangry. Yeah. Hangry is not a good thing to be.

Exactly. Yeah. I started fasting a couple years ago on occasion, maybe a day here or there, maybe once a month. And I mentioned that to people and they freak out. And if I would have mentioned it to me five years ago, I would have freaked out too. Right. And it's just they're like, oh, a whole day. I'm thinking, man, now knowing what I know, I'm thinking you should be able to go a week.

There are people that go weeks on a fast for different reasons, but that's normal. This is the first time in human history that we've been able to do three meals a day. Right. If you haven't eaten or if you haven't gone longer than 12 hours without eating something in like 20 years, do you know how many enzymes and other things have just gone completely dormant in your body that actually do other physiological things that fight off cancer, that save off other things that are going to be a real problem for you? So that's the issue. That's a great example of one. And hence where all these things come from that say, oh, we can help cure cancer. We can help with this thing if we just fast or we do this thing, right?

And it's like, well, yeah, you're waking things up that actually should have been in tune and been working anyway. So those were like the fasting and cold water and all these things. Yeah, like on a cellular level, like you actually have enzymes and proteins that are responsible for adapting to cold cold shock proteins heat shock proteins and the heat these things actually exist and when they're expressed your body is able to handle them you can handle heat you can tolerate heat to a larger degree you can tolerate cold to a larger degree your actual you know blood vest you'll actually create more elastic blood cells or vasculature. You'll capitalize hands, cold feet, things like that start to go away. All these things are.

Well, it's interesting. My wife has always said, you know, oh, if my fingers get cold, I'm like, that just means you need to get more cold. And she's like, but it doesn't feel good. I'm like, oh, come on. No, it doesn't. Go get in the ocean. To anybody, it doesn't really feel good. It becomes something that you actually have to want to do right and that's the thing we have to explain is yeah the

cold never really feels great but it's the byproduct of what happens after that which actually most people do feel phenomenal after they get out of a cold plunge yeah right oh yeah amazing yeah if you're optimizing everything and comfort constantly, you're never going to adapt, which is going to be a real problem because now we can't adapt when it comes time to do things like age, which is just another adaptation we need to be able to handle or another exposure. Or now all of a sudden I had to skip this meal and now I'm just cranky at work. Like, really? You're cranky.

You haven't eaten in three and a half hours and you're cranky. So a great example, like check your blood sugar. Marcus, that's all I'm going to say. Call you out, Marcus. A good example, like go, if you're a breakfast person or whatever, skip the meal and then work out in the afternoon. And then really actually think, like, is this training that much worse? If you really are there, you're like, actually, it's pretty much the same.

Like I'm not really that worse. You might be a few percentage points less, but it's not that big a deal. So if you're constantly trying to optimize everything, that's not a good place to be in. Dude, I had a total pump session yesterday morning, fasted. What kind of a pump session? Two hours. In the gym.

I was in the gym. I was pumping iron. Yeah. I haven't done a whole lot of ice baths lately, but I did take your advice from the last show we did here where you were talking about taking cold showers before you go to bed. That's money. Getting a cold shower before I get out of the shower, dry off, straight into bed.

Dude, I feel so much better going to bed in the evening. But even looking at the physiology on that, most people would be like, fuck, why would I do that? I'd be all ramped up and like, ugh. But it's odd because, yes, it puts you into a sympathetic state at first, but it's bringing you back to more of that natural cycle of where an animal fucking turns on, an animal also turns off, like that. And that learned response is huge dude there's nothing

there's very few things i enjoy more than getting into a cold plunge or a cold shower prior to going to bed not does that just send you into a compensation yeah you go up and then and then if you go get into bed it's like dude you just fuck it you literally just start to drop out especially if you add some sort of like apnea protocol or a down regulation breathing sequence, you will literally just, I mean, I can't tell you how many people I've talked to. They're like, I had, I don't even remember the last time I slept that well after doing that or even a down regulation breathing sequence that might've taken a few minutes. I, uh, I float once a week and I, and I float from six to 8. And then I basically go home, eat a light meal, and hop in bed.

I mean, that's a huge down regulation as well. Oh, absolutely. I do the cold showers usually in the morning. I've done it at night a few times. Yeah, I know people who, like Juliet Starrett, cannot do the cold plunge before bed. It just ramps her up, and she can't settle down after it um but i i was kind of the same way and then i've just learned to reorganize that and be able to handle it how long is your cold shower um i mean as long as it takes to shower so that could be 30 seconds

no it doesn't know like three to five minutes probably. Yeah. You know? Yeah. You always cold shower though, right? Pretty much. Well, I mean, to a degree. I'm not going to lie.

Because when you live where it can be negative 20 degrees... Turning on those pipes. The pipes are okay because the house is warm. But the house is at like 65. But there's another thing. It's like everybody's set at 70. Turn that sucker down a couple, and that'll change your life as well. I've got to talk to my wife about that because I keep my house intentionally chilly in the winter because I think we need to have that variability.

You do. It's a cycle, man. It is, but I will take warm showers sometimes, but I always try and finish on a cold shower. But the cold showers up where I live right now, those are in the 30s. Yeah. Like, it is not a joke. Oh, yeah.

Well, the cold shower here in the summer is no big deal. It's like, oh, I just kind of cooled off. Yeah. Totally. Those pipes are like six inches underground. Exactly. The thermostat is another great example of the reason we live at 72 degrees was not some physiologically engineered training optimization program. It was just like, oh, that feels comfortable. Some marketing thing, right?

Yeah. It's a comfort thing. It's Big Pharma. It's the soda companies. Monsanto. It's Monsanto. All of them, right? No, so someone arbitrarily decided from some company, an engineer or something,

that said, okay, we're going to make you have the ability to set this thing wherever. Well, all of your fitness technologies are making the same big assumption, right? I'm telling you, I've consulted with a lot of these companies, and I work behind the scenes, and they have a new technology that can... You're the wizard, huh? You can put a sock on your foot, and it'll tell you your heart rate or whatever, but they're using algorithms, right? You can put a sock on your foot, and it'll tell you your heart rate or whatever. But they're using algorithms, right?

That's all math. And the algorithm is totally dependent on who wrote the software. So the number you're getting, these things tend to be very, very reliable, which means they'll always tell you the same thing over and over again. But the inaccuracy or the validity is terrible on them because they don't know if they're actually measuring what they're measuring because they're using this to assume this to assume this. And 38 assumptions later, when a different programmer made a slightly different assumption here, two competing products are going to say totally different things for the same physiology.

So that's how they can claim in their marketing we are accurate and not get sued because their data is totally accurate. But they have decided what that means for you, and they've made it into a green, yellow, or red. Yeah. I mean, it'd be like two astronomers, one believing that the Earth is flat in the center of the Earth, or the center of the universe, and then somebody else who goes, no, the Earth is round, and we're

just a part of it. And then you start building astronomy science off of that, and you end up with two totally different things. Yeah, sort of. I mean, it's the same data. They're not going to argue, disagree in the same data and I totally lost that analogy, by the way. I have no idea. I was trying to piece that together. How did we get on the flat earth stuff?

I was like, here we go. I was trying to bring Galileo into it. Somebody help us out on Twitter. So it is just a lot of assumptions. You just got rubbed into a conversation on Twitter. And you think because you paid $350 for it, it must be really accurate. Well, the more I spend, the better.

I know that. Yeah, right? Exactly. But that's the whole thing of the thermostat, though. Hey, we've got something to sell. You can adjust this to where you are comfortable. And that's the whole illusion is comfort is such that. And so it becomes, okay, where can I find that happy medium of where maybe comfort is, but then I can play with that within my own physiology.

Like what are the things I'm playing with? Because there's going to be far more than just cold or heat or breathing or training, lifting weights, going hard, going long. There are so many other variables like walking around barefoot, not taking antibiotics so you're not ruining your gut biome. I mean, it goes on and on and on and on and on. Yeah, I'm digging this because I think a lot of times people go, well, I heard that was good, but it's uncomfortable. It's like, no, no, no.

It's supposed to be uncomfortable, motherfucker. Yeah. Do it. That's the point. Yeah. Well,. It's supposed to be uncomfortable, motherfucker. Yeah. Like, do it. That's the point. Yeah. Well, the initial question is. That's the stress. Yeah.

That was the problem. Like, it's not good or bad. Like, it is what it is. We need to understand how often we choose good and how often we choose bad, and then we need to make that relationship a little bit more aligned. There's a certain ratio. I don't know what that was. Well, we make meaning of it, too.

It's like we say uncomfortable is a bad thing. That's because at some point somebody told you that or you've created this belief somehow. Take a three-year-old and let them play in the rain. They're not going to care. No four-year-old stops. I promise you. We just had a three-year-old

the other day and we're swimming outside. Her teeth or her lips are turning purple. You want to get out? She's like no like why like she was having a great time no if we told her she was cold and that was uncomfortable for years and years then it was like oh i'm not going out there that's that's 75 and i like my water 78 like no way right so she we have learned to tell her things that no no if you're hungry eat well like no some points you should be hungry and it should suck ass and that would be and that's really really good you need to experience that and you need to be able to still go and function and do work by the way like and ironically you

see people in colder climates who expose their kids to cold tend to have kids who don't have the issues the kids who are basically nope you can't get cold nope you're not little bitches yeah yeah pretty much yeah pretty much how do the kids do better sorry like from not only from a neurological standpoint from a massive physiological standpoint like you'll like there was just a video that went viral about these russian kids that went outside during us like it just like it was dumping snow the day before went outside grabbed water and they were dumping water over their heads cold water and they're like oh yeah and and then they run around and then they came back in and they warmed up but it's like they're doing this stuff and they do this in

all like scandinavian cultures but you know the sauna is also a big part of these cultures as well and i mean a lot a lot of these cultures didn't have running water you know hundreds of years ago and the only way they could get running water during winter was to start a fire. And they'd probably be using that to drink because it was so precious. So they would use things like the sauna to cleanse themselves. Right. And there's all these things that are in place that are kind of a wisdom pass down. But a lot of us get so disillusioned because of the comfort scale

and we get and i'm look i'm as guilty of this as anybody and i deal with this all the time you know and it's like fuck how comfortable do i need to make myself to like do this and it's like i gotta i gotta really change that whole thing yeah maybe before i jump in a cold shower i'd say you know a third of the time i'm i'm having a two thirds of the time i'm just like okay i'm doing this and then a third of the time i'm like oh fuck i two-thirds of the time, I'm just like, okay, I'm doing this. And then a third of the time, I'm like, oh, fuck, I really don't want to get in there. And we all have that. And I have that conversation. I'm like, you're going to be glad you did it when you get out.

You're going to enjoy it. Once you – after 30 seconds, it'll be fine. Yeah. And I have to hype myself into it, and then I do it. Yeah. Even Wim Hof is like, the cold sucks, man. I fucking hate it. But he's like, I know what it does.

And it's made me, it's done some good things for me. Right. So it's, dude, it's, and it's not just about cold. It's not, it's about your heart rate monitors. It's about your, I got to walk 10,000 or I got to sleep this much. Right. No. Yeah, we had a bunch of examples of that in the book of people using,

and it's similar to what you said at the very, very beginning of... Galileo. God damn it. Actually, it was something about nootropics and mushrooms and other... No, just kidding. Okay. Wrong one. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Wrong show. About letting the sleep app make your decision for you and then saying like, actually, I thought I felt good, but I guess I slept terrible. And then what did that set you in motion for the rest of the day now your mind's gonna fuck with you yeah you're totally gone and now you're questioning your own understanding of your own body and you've made totally different decisions again based on an algorithm some dude in san jose wrote eight years ago probably not san jose well these these programmers are in the the czech republic

oh that's where they're getting hired from yeah so, so we have good examples of the 10K step, right? So we'll have people, and this is one of the reasons why people are still getting obese, even though we have these numbers, and even though you can buy your Fitbit, you hit your 10K steps, and a year later, you're 30 pounds heavier because people are like, okay, I've checked physiology today.

I've done my fitness. Everything's over. Now let's celebrate and have pizza and ice cream. Donuts. Right, and you are like, okay, I've checked physiology today. I've done my fitness. Everything's over. Now let's celebrate and have pizza and ice cream. Donuts. Right. And you're like, okay, fantastic. And then eventually what happens, and if you don't do that, let's say you don't and you reward yourself with broccoli and you eat less and well, eventually when the only goal

is to check the box, you have totally lost the enjoyment and the purpose of the movement itself. You've lost the connection to your body and it is now just a task that you do. How good are we at doing monotonous tasks for very long? We suck at it. We're going to make it... You'll make it two months, three months, whatever your number is, a year, and then eventually...

What was the number in the book? Something like 91% of people that use those things end up quitting. It just doesn't work the data is amazingly clear those you don't stick to those programs that that's the irony in this is that these they are selling the snot out of all this stuff and all the data is saying this doesn't work this doesn't work and so where is the real business model is it in the selling of the product or is it in the collection of the data? And now we start to map this thing out. It's like, oh, okay.

I've got your data and now I've got all this money. Data is definitely where it's at. Yeah. I mean, I won't name any companies, but a lot of these companies that are offering services that are sounding really great in this aspect, they don't care at all about the product, really. In fact, a lot of them are selling the product at a very low price point to losing price point. They're trying to collect all that data on a

bunch of other things. And so there's a really interesting bioethics discussion going on right now of how... Okay. Now I know what your DNA is. And now I know what your DNA is, and now I know what 300 million people's DNA is. I never consented for that.

I can't have you walk in my lab, like I see a hair fall off, I let you leave the lab, I grab your hair and then analyze that and then publish that. You didn't consent to that. Well, they build these little things into the purchasing thing that's hidden in packets no one pays attention to,

and there's real potential problems with that. Not right now, like they don't really care about your heart rate, these little things into the purchasing thing that's hidden in packets no one pays attention to. And there's real potential problems with that. Not right now, like they don't really care about your heart rate. But really soon, that stuff's going to really, really, really matter, especially now that China has done the CRISPR stuff with the humans. That's gone. That's going now. Like we've got real things coming, and we have to have a real discussion about how we're going to handle these things.

The real question, Andy, is what have you got to hide? Yeah, exactly. That's a really interesting topic. What is CRISPR for people that don't know? So it's about when we sequenced the genome in 2000, I think, three, we're able to know exactly all of your nucleotide base pairs, right? So all of your DNA, you've got around, we'll call it 20,000 genes in your body, depending, plus or minus. But you've got something more like,

well, millions at this point of nucleotides that make the gene. So what CRISPR can basically let you do is come in, it's technology, and you can selectively add or delete a gene for the most part, right? So basically translated... Fairly easily and fairly cheaply is the big part of cheaply is extremely easy for

a couple of hundred dollars yeah like at the most and it's so dialed and so effective that it can be something as quick as like oh you want blue hair or you want brown eyes instead yeah okay boom done it's very very easy and so they just did their first trial in china in humans with it and they weren't supposed to oh shit it wasn't like a live human person it was just you know human tissue oh oh and so like now we're i was freaking out i was thinking gattaca is here i mean it's not like a future thing it is here and it is right there um they're gonna have a hard time dealing with this because it's gonna be one of those things where now you're having the ethics questions too late.

Like that ball's rolling. You're not stopping anything now. There's a ton of things happening in biotech where people are like, well, what if this? I'm like, it's already done. They're already doing the cloning thing somewhere. It's happening somewhere, which makes it really scary

because once it's been done, you can't undo. A lot of things with AI is the same way. It's like, well, what if AI gets to a point where the machine decides that we're, you know, we got to go. Yeah. And now, you know, but that ball's already rolling to say, oh, we just need to stop doing AI. Somebody somewhere is going to be like pushing that forward until the end of time.

Think of it this way. You got an AI program to tell you when to train. Cool. Like the first year, it's going to be awesome that forward until the end of time. Think of it this way. You've got an AI program to tell you when to train. Cool. The first year, it's going to be awesome, right? Cool. I guess it's off day, and it tells your program, does everything for you, tells you exactly. Again, how fast is that until that turns into a task?

Like, oh, god damn, the machine said I've got to work out today. Oh, sweet. And now all of your training is like, oh, my boss is making me work out. What do you mean your boss? Yeah, my computer boss. He tells me I've got to go breathe right now. I think AI is going to put Jim's out of business. Well, so, okay, this is where I'm going to disagree massively.

We have this pendulum, okay, where data used to not be important because there was no data, basically, and it was so slow and so long. Now we're in the middle of this pendulum swing where it's starting to be like, you know what, information is not that valuable anymore because of the internet, because of Wikipedia. You used to go to college and pay these exorbitant prices because some person had information. And unless you paid them and you were there physically, you didn't get access to that information. That's all gone. Right.

But now what's going to be moving forward, the value is going to be restored back in the human-to-human connection because you are going to have all the information you ever want, and you're going to be like, man, I just wish I could talk to somebody. And I don't know. I downloaded the program. I got it. That's cool. But can you just watch me?

Can you watch me for a few times? Oh, yeah. That's where we're going to be craving, that stuff. And, yeah, I know I have my virtual coach, but, man, I would love for it. I'll pay you extra. Will you actually come into my gym and work? And the value there for coaching is going to skyrocket because of that please hang out with me yeah i don't disagree with that yeah i think i think with ai things like programs are going to

be written for everyone and that tool is something that a coach isn't necessarily going to have to develop and they're going to have to spend more time being there for the purpose of connection. And the more authentic these coaches can show up and really be concerned with what's happening with the athlete, the better. I agree with that. I don't think it's going to get rid of coaching necessarily. No, no. I'm just – I'm thinking – my mind when I start thinking about AI and movement is AI is going to go, oh, moving one hour a day and sitting 23 hours a day is dumb. Let's move five minutes every 30 minutes. And it's going to prompt you to go, oh, you should do these movements. And it's going to keep up with what you're doing.

And then that way, a lot of people who just want to look good naked and feel good may not necessarily need to go do an hour-long session in the gym because they already got it throughout the day. They already logged two hours of total movement over a 12-hour period i feel like we've almost gone down two separate tracks i want to tie them together real quick so we went down the like we we went overboard on technology and and that's not like that's not what we need necessarily to to be fit we we have our own intuition about how we feel, et cetera, et cetera. And then we went down the track of artificial stress, cold,

heat, exercise, or whatever is really important for, uh, maintaining a long, healthy life. So how are those things tying together here? Well,

go ahead. I'll see. Should we take a break and then do that? We'll do it when we come back. I think that's a good idea. We're back. Oh, come on, man. You're looking at me.

I'm looking at you. We had that connection like the shark. I know. I guess I was a little premature. It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while. All right, we're back now, right? Yeah? Okay.

Doug, you had a fascinating question that we needed follow-up on. What was it again? I did. I was wondering, we went down two separate tracks. So one track was technology. We overdid that for a while. We're losing our intuition, et cetera, et cetera. And the other track was we're talking about artificial stress with heat,

cold plunges, exercise, et cetera. Like how do those things all tie together? So it's really, I think it comes back to kind of what we were talking about in the beginning where it's like we have to be able to learn from this stuff. And I think that's the key component to all of this is that we're learning something, not being told something and so you know going into a lot of like the physiological you know because we got into the heat and the ice stuff like these are just things that we can change with your physiology on a positive note we know that we know they have a profound effect but it ultimately it comes down to hey what am i doing with the technology

that i'm using if i have it and learning from that because the fact was is i've are we we've manipulated heart rate variability with breathing protocols with cold plunge with with hot you know you wake up and you're in your heart rate variability saying you can't do something send you through you know a little breathing rhythm and boom all of and your heart rate variability is saying you can't do something, sending you through a little breathing rhythm, and boom, all of a sudden heart rate variability says, oh, you're good to go, 100%, ready to go, or 80%, 90% ready to go. Oh, yeah, really weird, isn't it? But it's like they're not accounting for the – you cannot create an algorithm.

You cannot create something and not account for other things that are happening. Yeah, it's not to pick on HRV because – no it's not because yeah it is a great tool and there what what that is is a it's a it's a way for humans to interpret the nervous system right very very uh at a basic level right so are you stressed are you not stressed yeah what i would like to know as a coach is i'd like to see the hrv reading without the athlete seeing it yeah i feel like that's where it could fuck them up. So here's the other thing is, okay, because that's really good. I want to follow up on that and give you the solution to that, how you do that. But here's the thing.

This thing is telling you if your nervous system is ready or not, right? Now there's accuracy problems with that in general, but the bigger problem with all that is why are we thinking the nervous system is something we can't change? Right? Just like you just said, aha. HRV says I'm in a tank. Okay, let's assume it's accurate.

Let's give you all those cards. It's perfect. It's great. But why do we think we can't change that in five minutes with a cold shower or a thousand other things if that's not your jam? Yeah. Food, other stuff. There seems to be a 24-hour assumption. Like you wake up and, well, it's not good today.

I have to wait until tomorrow. Yeah, what the hell is that? But why does it have to be 24 hours? Yeah, why can't it be an hour or 30 minutes or 7 hours? You just blew my mind, Doug. That's the bigger problem. It obviously changes. You could always take a nap. Yeah. It's off today, so it changed from being optimal

whenever that was, so it doesn't have to be 24 hours, though. Right, exactly. So, my HRV was in the tank this morning. I ticked a day off. What? No. How about you train tonight? Oh, okay. Like now it's totally different. And so I really liked the question that you brought up before we took the break because that answer is the point of the book. It doesn't sound like these things are connected, but as Ryan always says, everything is everything. So that's really what a big impetus of why we wrote this thing is to show you how this stuff all does come back together. And the reason why we're tackling fitness performance and consciousness in the

same book is to show you that question and show you how maybe whether it's breath work or food, any other stuff we've been focusing on those examples, but we go in a bunch of other different directions and it could be anything, pick music. I mean, whatever writing, whatever you do that you'd like to do,

but that has a relationship because you only have one body and everything you're doing is playing a role in that somehow. And so whether that then changes your outlook on life or how you interacted at work or whatever it is that you're important to, it is all in one big connected dot. So it's super interesting that you're like, I'm not seeing this here. And we didn't think other people were seeing it either. And that's why the book came because we're like, I'm not seeing this here. And we didn't think other people were seeing it either. And that's why the book came.

Because we're like, let's show you this. And in the book, we outline a bunch of different steps, examples. Brian wrote an actual training program. But we have other things of saying like, okay, let's use technology to get some calibration. And so the HRV is a great example of one way you can do it is something like that. Okay, let's take HRrv number blind the score take my mood track these things and then without seeing them together have somebody else look at

them say are we actually seeing a relationship between your performance your mood and your hrv score without you seeing it because if you do you're going to sync right up yeah i mean it's a calibration tool same reason like i've I've weighed and measured my food before, but no way I'm doing that every fucking day. Maybe every six months I do that to remind me what 28 grams of chicken looks like. Exactly. So a calibration tool is fantastic, especially for early on people, or I think because basing your performance training off of how you feel is a good idea, but let's remember that's also evolving,

so you can learn to lie to yourself. Yeah. I mean, for instance, like a heart rate monitor, and one of the examples we use in the book is like, hey, let's do some sort of metabolic test where we see where you've got stressors going off, right? Linear test of work. Your heart rate should follow.

If the work is linear, the heart rate should follow because this is part of the stressor, and when the heart doesn't follow if if the work is linear the heart rate should follow because this is part of the stressor and when the heart doesn't follow the same linear path we've got a stress marker that's deviant from the linear path of the work so we can then pick up on different points granted if we're looking for specifically your aerobic threshold and lactate threshold it's one thing but if i've got markers going off and at many other places guess what you've got stress stressors going off in these places to change so can you if you look at the numbers and those stressors connect the dots when you're actually performing of what those stressors or those markers feel like that way you're not going hey this is what that feels

like you're going oh here oh i just felt that breathing shift or i'm just starting to feel a little like achy right you know that onset of that burn starts to set in okay what's that number boom oh there's that lactate threshold okay great like i'm at that point and you're starting to make these these these realities of what is really going on versus being glued to this. So that when you actually progress in two or three weeks, you're going, dude, I'm not burning right now. And I'm at that same number. Exactly.

So I need to take it to that burn. And oh, my God, that burn is now happening up at 165 versus 157. Yeah. And this is the awareness piece you were talking about. 100%. This is consciousness. Because so many people fucking check out when they train. Yes.

They go in the pain cave and they're just like, uh. And they want to rely on that number. They don't want to go into the feeling of what's happening. Yeah, and this is kind of a touchy subject because I'm really wrapping my head around this new kind of, it's not new, it's just a different concept with it because I've been focused so much on this exact thing where it's like people just want to go I and we've watched this forever right people go into the pain cave they don't listen to you how if you've coached athletes you understand what I'm

saying you're like stop picking the bar up like that your backs are not stop picking the bar up like that your back's rounded stop doing that and they don't stop doing nope, stop picking the bar up like that. Your back's rounded. Stop doing that. And they don't stop doing it. They keep picking the bar up and their back's rounded. And you don't understand why they're doing that. And it's real simple. The subconscious is 33,000 times more stronger than your conscious mind. Right. So it's the ability to get somebody to actually make the decision, fuck, I'm going to work on this to feel this so that my subconscious override becomes this entire process of understanding my new position to pick something up or move or transition. And then it's like, no, you don't have to fucking think about this the rest of your life.

But it's like walking around. I understand what my ass is supposed to do is I walk when I'm in when I'm an extension. My butt should be on. If it's not, I make a compensation. Right. And so we start to see people walking around like ducks and it's like, they just don't understand this mechanism. So yeah, you're going to need to think about this, keeping your feet straight and, and squeezing your ass as you walk. Well, fuck, I don't want to do that. Well, you have a choice. You can start to understand this now. And so you don't need to think about

it later, or you're just going to fall apart and you're going to complain about your knee or your you know collapsed arch or whatever's fucking going on because you're in pain and you all always had the answer to all of this yeah conscious competence comes before unconscious competence yep to just rewire that subconscious yeah i think most people think they do have to do it forever yes but you only have to do it and now you have to do it a little bit longer than you want. Yeah. And then your subconscious will get it. Until it becomes habit.

We integrated other stuff, too, with, like, outside of performance. And I used, actually, an example from you, Doug. I remember a while ago you showed an app that you can use and you can check off, like, your daily things. Like, I want to take Riley out in the sun for 30 minutes and all this stuff. Yeah. Fantastic part of technology. That's a great thing to use to look back and have some calibration and to have some accountability. Like, yeah, I've been taking them out a lot.

I've been taking them out a lot. Oh, man, I've taken them out three times in the last four weeks. Okay. But now you don't want to use it so much where you're like, okay, I'll build in a system to where my alarm will go off and I'll take my kids out to play. That's not going to last, and it's going to turn into tasks. So how we avoid it is to say, okay, let's use technology

to bring me calibration, to bring me awareness. Then when I see and I've got good numbers and solid stuff, the next piece or the evolution now is to can you reproduce that good habit, that good position, that good training when you remove the technology? Because if you can't, it's not a part of your consciousness. It's not a real habit you formed, and now you're outsourcing to the tech to say, oh, I don't take Riley out until my app goes off.

Which instead of being just consciously aware and being like, man, it's been a while, I'm going to take him out more. This is a conversation I end up in quite a bit with technology and consciousness. And there is a group of people who are very focused on their consciousness who believe that there's going to be somewhat of a split. There's going to be a lot of people who adopt all these technologies and become reliant on it. And, yeah, you take that technology away and then you're fucked. Yes.

And, in fact, there's going to be a point where people are born and they'll be they won't survive without technology is the way things will evolve well we don't know but it's going to get worse but man we love to predict the future and then you have

the other people on the other side who are constantly developing their consciousness to do these things and they're not going to need the technology there's the reliance isn't going to be there and so there is a theory that there's going to be a split in people there's going to be the people who have to have it and then there's going to be the people who don't have to have it yeah it's based on basically who's willing to develop the the conscious aspect i i think history is the basically the marker to look at something like

that and look at how we've behaved with anything else that is what we do and so let's just take the thermostat how many people are reliant on being at 70 degrees yeah totally a lot totally versus hey i know how to like if i can do enough cold and hot immersion i can literally get my body to learn to adapt to these extremes. And so when I go to bed, I don't actually need any of that shit. And I could either pull the sheets off of me or I can put them on top of me and I'm fine, you know? Yeah. But it's where can I, you know, use the technology in order to advance myself.

I mean, you're saying it's already happening. And as technology keeps moving already moving the gap is going to get bigger but history plays a role of our only way to understand the way we move into the future and and all we can do is speculate about what will happen and how it will happen because new ideas will form new things will happen somebody's going to think of something even greater and all of a sudden it's just something nobody even thought of and it it's like, Oh, we got to go this way now. Yeah. You know, and that's what we do. So anyway, totally. So regarding your own personal day to day, and you guys can answer this separately if you'd like, for people that they're, they're not experienced with, with the cold plunges and saunas and even

the breathing practices, like what does your day-day look like as far as incorporating those things into your lives uh every day pretty much um the cold and heat are not an everyday thing i would like them to be but they're just not because sometimes i get ground down um moving is an everyday thing to a large degree depending upon what it is the breathe the breath work has been an everyday thing although i don't think it necessarily needs to be yeah you had a good example in the book actually uh doing a lot of had a good example in the book, actually, of doing a lot of, I think you used it in the book, a lot of breathing stuff and actually found yourself having a bad relationship

with the breathing such that if you didn't get it done, you had a shitty day. Yeah. So you had to go back and change your breathing pattern and have a healthier relationship with the breath because you learned that all of a sudden became... There's no difference in chasing that versus chasing drugs or chasing fucking running marathons or you know spirituality it's all the same thing if i'm chasing something and not using it to the way but to to kind of circle that back around my daily

practice is i do breath work it but it but it changes every day it's based on what i'm feeling going on and how i've been able to connect dots with specific things. Like some days I might be doing some sort of Wim Hof variant or some super ventilation practice, or I'm doing some sort of pranayama or a cadence rhythm or an apnea protocol or some breath of fire work, whatever. It all plays a part, but the real question is where does it fit in in life

and and that's like so i'm not a huge fan of flying um although i'm good at it and i can get on a plane and do it and yeah i'm fine when i'm on it massive turbulence i tend to get a little control freaky um and out of nowhere on the flight down here we just hit some pocket and it was just like wham wham and i noticed the first response i did was and i held my breath and i went like that and i noticed that i did that and so i immediately went into and it instantaneously changed what was going on and i think that's the importance of what we're getting at is to hey can you make your daily routine resonate throughout your life to where you're not picking up the bar around it anymore? Right. So it's a moving practice.

I lift. I run. I ride. I play. I climb trees. I climb whatever. But it largely revolves around a lot of stuff that I know I can play with the physiology but learn

from so I'm in a constant state of learning to understand even though I know I'm going to basically scratch something and then it's like okay hey what's going on and if you toss it at somebody like Andy who then goes ooh that's interesting let's really look at that

even deeper I'll go a bit Wittstein, some meta on your answer there, which is like I constantly, I don't, I specifically do not want to have any kind of daily routine like that. I don't want anything. And so what I try to now do is just be more conscious with saying, okay, it's noon, I got a long work day, something really, really important. Do I go for that noon coffee?

Well, let's make a conscious choice. Sometimes that's yes, but then sometimes that is, no, let's struggle today. Like, let's be under-caffeinated today. Let's take the coffee away for a week. Let's take it back. I do the same thing with the breath. So I do not do the breath,

not even remotely close to everything. Sometimes when I'm struggling, I do it, and then sometimes when I'm struggling, I intentionally don't do it, so I go embrace the struggle here and learn to deal with it without a vice. Same thing with the food, with other exercise.

I try to specifically have nothing that I have any reliance on every single day, but then just to be aware. This is going on. You're going to get through it, but sometimes no, don't get through it and but sometimes no don't get through it caffeine up go for the triple vent day after lunch like optimize everything and get some stuff done and put myself in that optimal position and then other days not so for me that's i just

want to be aware of the consciousness of all of it and then make your choices so it's ultimately the goal that you would not need any of these things to be your best? No, I don't think so. I don't think that's the goal to do that. But it's just to be aware of saying, let's make the choice to then use it. And so here I'm in a phase, whether that's a day or a week or a couple of months, where I'm going to use all my tech and I'll use all the apps and the HRV, everything. I'll make the choice based off of that.

But then be able to go back and forth. So for me, it's just having the resiliency of being able to do whatever we want, not necessarily just to get in a position where we're completely unplugged from all of it. Because it's not going to work, right? And like we said at the beginning, I don't think that that's even the optimal goal anyways.

We can probably get better with this stuff. We just need to have a better relationship with it so it doesn't overtake our lives or so that we're not making decisions about how you live based on some software designer. Yeah, and I think what I was actually agreeing, I thought I was going to agree on, was it's, you know,

we both basically wake up and go off feeling that day. I'm not going, oh, hey, i'm on a strict routine i'm done with strict routines i i don't do that shit anymore i've done plenty of that i know where that got me you can get results out of it but i also know what it's like to put in a fence across seven acres or shovel snow for two and a half days straight you know and it's like hey how does that fit in what does my training regimen fit in with something like that? And if I'm regimented on something, I fall apart on things like that. And so it literally becomes a functional thing of, hey, how am I actually going to function in life and allow this to happen?

So when I wake up, it becomes what I feel like doing right now. It might be getting on a walk bike or it might be going on a run with the dogs. But now you have the ability since you took time to go this end of the spectrum. Yes. If you had a race in eight weeks or something you wanted to do, you could jump right back into that. You could have a calorie count. You could have a daily. And you have the ability to thrive in that program and in this one.

And so my point is just don't get stuck in either one of these spectrums because we don't think either one of them is a great place to be in. If you can't get in it, you're screwed. Like, that's the problem. Yeah. So say you did have a race in eight weeks. How would you effectively use technology to prep for that? I'd sign up on PSE Pro. Which Aaron is over in the corner working on right now the website okay but no yes i i would

because there's like an eight-week cycle on something like that but i'd also i'd also jump on the metabolic cart that we actually talked about that we actually set up on the site so that people can actually connect those dots which is what we actually tell them to do across the six weeks that we give them a program for basically this is what you should be doing for one of your interval sets, another interval set, and your longer effort stuff. And there's very clear markers as to what we're looking at as to where that fits in. But the misunderstanding is, oh, I just go hard on that shit because it's intervals and it's like stamina.

And it's like you're not understanding how that really works. And I think that's where a lot of what I've done has evolved, has been able to clearly make, you know, change, not change, but communicate that stuff. And so I would actually hop on a program exactly like that, but I would make, I'd take the test that we actually work at so that I understood exactly the stress markers I needed to focus on for the next six weeks. And preparing me for, you know, and then

to taper off and be ready in eight weeks. We have a program in the book too, that incorporates actual training stuff, as well as other lifestyle practices, eating, sleeping, all this stuff. And it says, okay, the way that we set it up gives you flexibility to build this into your own system because you can't just be like, I'm going to work on all this stuff, right? It's not going to work, but let's give you some metrics and some standards to play with. So, for example, I'm going to take a month or whatever, if you want to be, and I'm going to do cold this many times. I'm going to go hungry this many times.

I'm going to also, the inverse, I'm going to get hyperfed for a while. I'm going to massively hydrate. And let's pay attention as we're feeling these different things. And now we go next month, okay, let's actually take some of that stuff away. Let's make life easier. Let's not complicate things, and we're not going to worry about it. And so what we build is like, okay, by month, by quarter, by year, you should experience this so often per quarter.

Now you do it whatever you want. You do it three days or whatever pick the day you do it. But let's put some framework around all these things so we have something to build in. And we can use the anti-running example of weightlifting. So say you've got a weightlifting meet in eight weeks. I would get a coach. I would get a program. I would get Dartfish or Coach's Eye or something

and work on your bar path and dial that thing in. But here's how you use it to optimize your performance. You guys ever try to snatch in front of a mirror? Yeah. I have before, yeah. Yeah, and it usually goes terrible, right? Because your eyes are way behind where you're actually good. But if you trained every day in front of the mirror, and then you went out to your weightlifting competition, and that mirror was not there,

you'd be dead in the water. I guarantee you'd miss a snatch. But when you're eight weeks out, maybe you use that technology and you work on something so that you can see what your coach is talking about you get the all the extra data you use that to make that slight change in your poll or whatever you practice it a thousand different times but now in order to master it i've got to remove the technology because if i can't do that i'll never be able to reproduce that in the actual meet yeah you're wanting to associate the objective data

with the subjective feeling you You have to be able to Okay, okay, when this is happening, I feel this way. Now I know when I feel this, this is more than likely what's happening in reality. You don't find an elite athlete who goes, oh, why'd you miss that pull? I don't know. Right. They're going to go, oh, yeah, my hips got a little high. They didn't

need it because they had that many reps and that much practice at it before. They've now gotten dialed in. At the entry the entry phase though you do need that because if you tell the beginner oh your hips got high i don't know what that means really like lower what and so we can use our technology now for them oh i see like you're you're rounding your back no i'm not you're running your back no i'm not running your back show you oh yeah i guess it was rounded right i didn't realize this was round i it felt straight to me so that's how we use it when we get closer is let's put all the Rounding your back. Show you. Oh. Yeah, I guess it was rounded. I didn't realize this was rounded. It felt straight to me.

So that's how we use it when we get closer is let's put all the technology we can together, build a system, build a program, buy a program, whatever we're going to do. But then after the meet in the offseason, now remove it, and let's see if we can actually make some longer-lasting performance changes. So that's really it. Yeah. I took a year off last year from any plan training whatsoever. Right. And then two weeks ago, I started building that plan out again. It's interesting. I started doing some, some things similar is I'm tracking how much I do certain

types of things throughout the month. It's like, Oh, I do a max effort and I'm just keeping, I'm just keeping a tally. All all right i do this much aerobic work an hour or longer i'm doing this much lactate threshold i'm doing this much whatever so i've got i think eight different things that i'm tracking and i'm making sure i'm just like putting making sure i'm doing as many of these a month as whatever and then just going off a feeling every day it's like oh this feels like a good day to lift or this feels like a better day to go for a beach run or something like that so take and taking that whole year off one thing i found was uh my my joints felt way better because i wasn't like having to stick to something no matter what and

push through pain and all this stuff i feel way better the two things that i saw go down uh was my core strength and my grip strength right and so and i started recognizing that before i even started doing a more you know proper assessment but these two things started going down it's like oh these are things that i avoid because these are these are things i don't enjoy working on i don't enjoy working on grip i don't enjoy working on core. Okay. And so now as I'm working it back in, I'm watching those two things very closely. And it's interesting how fast they're, they're coming back because now I have like all this, all this creativity I got from doing only intuitive training and it's the melding of the two is like, okay, the plan, having the overview, the outline,

the, what I know works. And then also melding that with the intuitive piece, I think is going to end up being pretty cool. Yeah, well, a lot of people struggle is they don't actually plan out their year with those markers of performance, which is like they don't have that competition. So a lot of the CrossFitters, they have the Open or whatever, right? Right. But then they're trying to burn down the bridge the entire other 11 months. And they think that's what they're doing to peak. Like I got to work hard the whole time,

like Brian mentioned with the heart rate thing. But it could be the same with a CrossFitter or weightlifter. You can't be optimizing performance for 11 months. You're not going to actually get there. That's not the state. We need to have major stress and then major recovery and major stress and major recovery come back. Then we can actually push the bridge a little bit. But if we're just like working out constantly, like it's like what Kenny talks about, Kenny Kane with his mastery stuff, right? Like we need to have a different thing because that has been clearly shown to not, with no context, that is not a sustainable practice. You're not going to, if you might handle it physically for a couple of years, but you're not going to if you might handle it physically for a couple of years but you're eventually going to hate it and that's unfortunately what a large

piece of elite athletics is done is it's i work that's what i do i'm awesome i i'm awesome at working that's what i'm great at it's like well so how long is that going to last and you had a five six seven year career now you're burnt out and cooked and done you don't know why because you weren't willing to look at this and you've got these people who are following you who think that's the cycle yeah and so the information that's going out is like all the time work work work work work and it's like you got to understand that work needs to change and you're going to have to come up you're going to have to go down you're going to have you know it that's the importance of this,

is that we're learning something and really connecting those dots and being able, you're not going to be able to do that, all of that work all the time, and that's where the stress comes, and if we're getting, you know, sitting at a job or living a life that's stressful and then going into the gym and training our asses off in the gym to deal with that stress although the head might understand the body's reacting the physiology reacts in the exact same way and when you end up in adrenal fatigue and you end up cooked and you end up messed up you

know why and so i think there's a lot of ways we've we've been able to connect a lot of dots with this thing in order how to use this technology to kind of advance your own your being into your own you know space yeah we can use other stuff like blood work so say you get your blood work done uh and then you see we'll go back to the vitamin d okay so the vitamin d is maybe we're measuring the wrong measure but maybe that gives you a good idea if you're in the tanks on the whatever company you go with you're probably not looking good. So now I think that is a good use of technology immediately. Let's put it back in the system, but do we have the ability to actually notice a change? Can you feel that difference?

And more importantly, did that seeing of low vitamin D help you, give you the kick in the ass you needed to be like, you know what, I actually need to get outside more. That's the better solution. So let's take the vitamin D so that your health gets back. But the sustainable practice is we probably shouldn't have to be sucking down pills of fish oil the rest of our life. We should be making better dietary choices, better exercise choices, better environment choices, so that we don't have to rely on those things.

But they are a good fix in the short term, and they are nice to have available. We want to embrace those when we need those. But can we use that to understand, oh, boy, my body is not optimal right now, and I need to make a change? That's the bigger use of the tech. Yeah. What I'm getting out of this is everything runs in cycles. You don't want to do the same thing every day all the time.

You want to take breaks from everything i mean i even put myself through sleep deprivation every once in a while on purpose and going through these cycles where you're not taking the same supplements all the time eating the same food same type of training program and and sleep and everything sounds like we should be adding more variance to this than we previously thought. Go on both sides of it. Suffer a little bit, but then also thrive. So go through a cycle where you do a little sleep depth. And we've got a program for

sleep stuff in there too. But then go through one where you do the opposite, where you get hyper sleep. Like commit to 10 days, 2 weeks, or whatever of massive 11 hours a day plus or more. And it's going to suck. You're going to have to give up some things. You won't be as productive. Or whatever you're going to do. You might not be able to train as much that day because you won't have the time.

But if you're never getting that end of the spectrum. Well, here's the thing. Don't bury yourself with the lack of sleep and the massive amounts of work and shit you're doing to the point that you can't go back to something and be able to sleep hard for weeks on end and then get out of that. Because that's where the problem starts. That's where the chronic bullshit starts to happen, where we're just losing the whole connection.

And I've been there. Awesome. I was going to say, if you could just sum up the book in a paragraph or two, what are the big take-home points? The big take-home points? The big take-home points, I really think that technology plays a great role for us to understand ourselves.

But if we're not using it to understand ourselves, there's no real use for it. And so that's where the importance lies in what we're doing with this book. Right on. Yeah. All right.

Where can people find the book? What's your preferred place that people make the purchase? I don't know. Amazon. Where do you buy anything? Yeah, I mean, Amazon. You know, there's that technology thing.

Click. Excellent. July 11th, right? Yeah, July 11th. Pre-orders are up now, I think. Yeah, pre's that technology thing. Click. Excellent. July 11th, right? Yeah, July 11th. Pre-orders are up now, I think. Yeah, pre-orders are up now. Get a better price than you will July 11th. So Amazon unplugged.

Where else should people be following you? Powerspeedendurance.com. Sportsfuel or 3fuel.com. 3fu3l.com. You got my stuff on there. Instagram. People know who I am. Followfu3l.com? Yeah. You can get my stuff on there. Instagram. People know who I am. Follow him on Instagram.

Yeah. Dr. Andy Galpin. Instagram, at IamUnscared, and Twitter, at Brian McKenzie. Perfect. All right. Yeah. Thanks, guys. Thanks, boys.

Thanks for coming on the show.